Life as We Know It: A Treasure Key Novel

by Sarah Bates

  “Chloe Courtland!” he shouted, lowering his cup, and his grin went from flirty to sharp and wicked, even as he shrugged off his two companions.

  They both huffed indignantly and folded their arms at their chests as he headed down the crowded hall toward me.

  Hayden muttered an oath and caught my arm, gently but firmly tugging me behind him. “We’re just passing through,” he said, loudly to be heard over the music, as Neal approached us.

  Neal spared him a brief glance, the corners of his lips curving higher, and I felt Levi tense behind me.

  “I don’t believe that I invited you, Quinn,” he said, lifting his cup for a drink.

  “I wouldn’t have come if you had,” Hayden replied in the same loud, snide tone. “I’m just here for my brother. Once I’ve found him, we’ll be leaving.” He reached behind himself and caught my hand, holding it firmly. “All of us.”

  Neal snorted into his cup. “Good luck with that. Logan, who, by the way, is always welcome, unlike you, is having a grand old time upstairs with Ava, and I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted at the moment, given the rather personal nature of their current activities.” His smile, somehow, grew sharper. “I’m sure, given all the fun you and she used to have, that you remember how cross my darling sister can get when she doesn’t get to finish having her fun.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Hayden demanded, even as he pushed me back toward Levi and turned toward the stairs.

  Neal took a step to the side, moving to block him. “I don’t believe I said you could come inside,” he said. He studied Hayden with contempt. “Since you weren’t invited, I believe this means you’re trespassing.”

  Hayden took a step forward, placing himself only about a breath away from Neal. “Then why don’t you go ahead and call the cops,” he suggested, returning Neal’s contempt.

  I held my breath as I watched Neal’s eyes narrow, sure that he was about to throw a punch. Behind me, Levi shifted, and I heard him mutter something to Jason, but it was hard to make out what it was that he said because of the volume of the music.

  Before either of them could do anything to stop something from happening, though, Neal suddenly smiled and stepped aside, gesturing up the stairs with a flourish. “By all means, feel free to make yourself at home,” he announced in a loud, booming voice as he lifted his cup for another drink. “You already know your way around, and I’m sure if you ask the right way, Ava would be willing to swap your brother for you. You always were her favorite screw.”

  Hayden paused at the foot of the stairs, his shoulders stiffly set, and for a moment he didn’t move as everyone in the hall went quiet as they looked avidly between the two of them. Then Hayden turned and gave Neal a very dark, pointed look. He opened his mouth, but before he said anything he looked over Neal’s head at me and seemed to think twice about it.

  Keeping whatever it was he was going to say to himself, he turned and started up the stairs.

  Neal watched him go, his eyes narrowed, then he turned his gaze to me. He smiled again, with a bit more of his usual charm, and lifted his cup to finish his drink.

  “How’s about a drink, Chloe Courtland?” he asked as he crossed over to me.

  “She’s not interested,” Levi said, stepping between Neal and me.

  “I don’t believe I was talking to you,” Neal said in a mild tone, heard more easily as there was a momentary pause in the music. He turned his gaze over Levi’s shoulder to look at me. “What can I interest you in?”

  I shifted, feeling like my skin was crawling, with the way he looked at me. But I kept my gaze on his, not wanting him to know that he affected me in any way.

  “Thanks for the offer,” I said, keeping my voice even, with just the slightest hint of disinterest edging into it. “But I’m not thirsty.” I nudged Levi gently, and as I stepped around him, he casually draped his arm over my shoulders. “Come on, let’s go find the others.”

  Levi made a humming sort of noise, and pulling me just a little closer, he kept his gaze on Neal as we stepped around him and headed down the long hall.

  Though I had no idea where I was going, I didn’t let myself look around, simply followed the hall toward the back of the house, where the music seemed to be coming from.

  By the time we stepped into a large, open space – from the furniture that was shoved up along one wall, my guess was that it was a living room or den – the music had been switched from hard pounding rap to something with a fast Latin beat.

  The center of the room was filled with a large crowd of people grinding on each other in some semblance of club dancing, while others lined the edges of the room, shouting conversations as they drank from various red or blue plastic cups, or glass beer bottles of varying shades.

  I spotted Margo first, sulking into a red cup, blatantly ignoring the greasy guy leaning into her, shouting over the music as he looked down her shirt.

  Levi saw her the same time I did, and motioned to Jason, who had followed us.

  Jason nodded and began to weave his way through the crowd toward her. I saw the surprise on her face when she spotted him, and when he reached her, all he had to do was narrow his eyes at the other guy, and he shrank back and moved away from her.

  With a look of intrigue on her face, she let Jason hook an arm around her and lead her toward us. “Hey,” she called out, giving me a strange look when she saw me standing there with Levi. She lifted her eyebrows. “What’s up?”

  “We’re leaving,” I shouted over the music.

  She opened her mouth, then seemed to catch herself and shrugged. “I’m bored anyway,” she shouted back, then she glanced toward a set of double doors that led out onto a terrace. Just beyond it I could see the edges of an in-ground swimming pool. She put the tips of her thumb and her middle finger between her lips and let out a loud whistle.

  Delaney’s head snapped up and he looked over the crowded room. When he spotted us, she waved a hand, and he stepped away from the group of guys he’d been talking with.

  I couldn’t help but notice that he held a can or orange soda instead of one of the brightly colored cups or beer bottles. So, he’d been elected the designated driver for the night.

  “Hey.” He gave the four of us a strange look as he approached us, as though we were the last people he’d expected to see together. “What’s up?”

  “Coco says we’re leaving,” Margo informed him.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “Where are the others?” I asked, leaning toward him so he could hear me better.

  He shrugged and gestured around us. “Everywhere,” he said.

  “Great.” I sighed and looked around us, then back to the others. “It’s going to take forever to find everyone.”

  Margo held up her free hand, as though to silently ask for a moment, lifted her cup and quickly downed the last of its contents, then tossed the cup toward a table that I was sure was an antique.

  Given that it was already littered with cups and bottles and cans, I refrained from objecting when hers joined the rest of the clutter. Instead, I watched as she pulled her phone from her back pocket and began to tap quickly at the screen.

  “Done.” She shoved her phone back into her pocket. “They’ll meet us out by the cars.”

  “How,”

  “Mass text,” Delaney said, nodding in approval. “Well done.” Then he glanced toward the center of the room when several people backed up into us. “Watch…oh, jeez.”

  I followed his gaze and blinked in surprise when I saw that the grinding throng had parted ways, making room for the couple in the center of the floor.

  A couple that turned out to be Jamie and Aly.

  I had to admit, I hadn’t expected my cousin to be the kind of guy who knew how to dance, like actual dancing. But as he and Aly moved across the floor, their bodies molding, swishing, and yes, grinding together to the fast, pulsing Latin beat, I had to remind myself that there was still a lot I didn’t know
about him, and the others.

  When the song ended, he spun her out, then back, caught her close, and kissed her – and in a way that told me he’d done so before, and maybe even a lot more, in a more private setting.

  A bunch of the girls in the crowd cheered, while some of the guys either let out catcalls or booed teasingly.

  Aly, flushed with pleasure and exertion, laughed and wrapped herself around Jamie, kissing him again as another song began.

  “James!” Delaney waved a hand over the crowd just as Margo had done, then, when Jamie looked toward us, gestured them over to us.

  “What?” Jamie asked when they reached us. He eyed me speculatively, and it was only then that I realized Levi still had his arm draped over my shoulders.

  “We’re leaving,” Delaney told him, raising his voice over the music.

  Seriously, my head was beginning to throb.

  “We just got here,” Jamie protested. When Delaney and Margo both gave him a bland look, he hissed out a breath in annoyance. “Some of us were having fun,” he said, and Aly seconded this with a pretty pout.

  “Then stay and find another way home. The rest of us are leaving,” Delaney said, and he shifted when Maddie, Zach, and Donovan worked their way free of the crowd and joined us. “What the hell? I told you no.” He reached out and poked Donovan in the shoulder.

  “I overruled you,” Donovan replied, and he smirked when his older brother narrowed his eyes. “Relax, Dad, I’ve only had soda. The same, however, cannot be said for Alec,” he added, looking beyond him to Jason.

  “What?”

  “Leo and Demi are with him,” Zach said before Jason could say anything else. “They’re out front stuffing him into Demi’s car now, and sent us in to look for everyone else.”

  Jason muttered something under his breath, and after a quick exchange with Levi, turned and headed for the front of the house again.

  “Demetria actually came?” Margo asked while she watched him go.

  “Only to get Alec after Maddie texted her,” Zach said. He waited a beat, then added, “Did I forget to mention that Wes came with her?” When Margo gave him a dark look, he smirked.

  “Where’s Kat?” Maddie asked before Margo could say anything.

  “The last time I saw Kat she was with Leo out by the pool,” Delaney replied, and he gave Jamie a pointed look when he scowled. “Come on. Margo texted everyone to meet out front.” He pulled his own phone from his back pocket and checked for messages. “Esme’s already at the van. She says Kat’s with her.”

  Though neither of them seemed particularly happy about it, Jamie and Aly followed the rest of us toward the hall that led out front.

  We were almost to the hall when Levi stopped. I heard him say something, and when I looked up to him, he was scowling.

  “What,”

  “Go with the others,” he shouted over the music, pulling his arm from around me. “I have to go extract my idiot brother.”

  I nodded and watched as he headed toward another doorway that, from this vantage point, I could see led into the kitchen. Then, as I was more than ready to leave, I turned to say so to the others. I came up short, though, when I saw that they had continued without us.

  Great.

  Sighing, I shook my head and began to work my way through the crowd toward the front again. As I did, I decided that I really hadn’t missed much by not having gone to other parties in the past, and would be happy to consider this my one and only, for the sake of saying I’d had the experience.

  Wondering if that made me boring, and not particularly caring if it did, I thought longingly of an aspirin, and managed to get halfway down the hall before someone reached out from a darkened doorway and grabbed my wrist.

  I yelped in surprise, and pain, as they gripped my wrist tightly as they pulled me toward them. “What,”

  That was as far as I got before I suddenly found myself in a dimly lit room, and was pinned to a wall by a bigger, and much firmer, body.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Neal said, and his breath, which reeked of beer, was hot and moist as it brushed over my face before he crushed his mouth to mine.

  I stiffened against him, and tried to push him away, but I couldn’t budge him, and when I tried to turn my head, he moved with me, keeping his mouth secured to mine in a very forceful, demanding kiss.

  For a second my mind blanked completely as panic set in, and then he closed one of his hands over one of my breasts, and I felt pure, unadulterated fury surge through me.

  How dare he?

  Giving in completely to that fury, I shifted as best as I could, and discovered when I did that my legs were both between his, as he had spread his wide, to help brace himself against me. Without taking the time to think about it, I rammed one of my knees up as hard and fast as I could toward his crotch.

  I hit my mark – I knew I did, because of the way he jolted against me and cried out in surprised pain – and when I brought my foot down I did so with the same momentum and slammed the heel of my foot into the top of his bare foot, even as I wedged my hands between us and shoved him back as hard as I could.

  Wheezing in pain, he stumbled back from me, and I pushed away from the wall.

  “What the hell,” he demanded, his breath sharp and raspy.

  “Don’t you ever put your hands on me again,” I snarled, and I batted his hand away when he reached out to grab at me again. “I don’t know what makes you think you can do whatever you want, to whoever you want, but you can’t.”

  “You bitch,” he hissed, straightening up, one hand still cupped over his tender crotch. His eyes were watering, tears streaming down his flushed cheeks. “You’ll pay for that.”

  “You so much as touch another hair on her head, and I’ll put you in the ground,” someone said in a low, threatening voice.

  When I looked toward the doorway, I saw Jamie standing in the center of it, a furious look on his face. Behind and to either side of him stood Delaney and Leo.

  His murderous gaze still on Neal, Jamie held his hand out to me. “Coco.”

  I shifted, wiped a hand over my mouth, then turned my back to Neal and crossed the short distance to my cousin, adjusting my shirt back into place on the way. When I reached him, he leaned to the side and pressed a brotherly kiss to my temple, but still didn’t take his gaze off Neal.

  “Jamie,” I said, my belly quivering nervously.

  “Take her outside, Del,” he said in that same calm, heated tone.

  “Jamie,” I protested. “Let’s just go.”

  “I’m not going to put him in the ground – yet,” Jamie said, never taking his gaze from Neal. “But I am going to give him a refresher course on manners.”

  “You think I’m scared of you?” Neal spat. “Take your bitch cousin and leave, James, before I decide to teach her a lesson or two on how things go around here.”

  “Del.”

  Delaney looked between Jamie and Neal, hissed out a breath, and shook his head as he put his arms protectively around me and looked at Leo. “Don’t let him kill him,” he muttered, even as he pulled me out into the hall.

  “What? Wait,” I shifted in Delaney’s arms. “Jamie,” but that was as far as I got before I saw Jamie lunge into the room, and I heard both him and Neal shout.

  I tried to pull out of Delaney’s arms, but he was stronger than me, and simply ended up scooping me up and tossing me over his shoulder.

  I gasped at this and tried to wiggle free, but his grip was firm. The last thing I saw before he carted me out the front door was Leo lunge into the room, and the fight grew louder.

  “Put me down, Delaney,” I demanded, whacking him in the back as he wove his way through the cars parked in the yard. “Delaney, so help me,”

  “What the hell?”

  I jerked in Delaney’s hold at the sound of Hayden’s voice, and bracing my hands on the small of Delaney’s back, pushed myself up, shaking my hair out of my face as I turned my head to try to see wher
e he was located.

  Close by, by the sound of it.

  I heard gravel and shells crunch and tried to look in that direction, then suddenly Delaney flipped me up and off his shoulder, dropping me unceremoniously back onto my feet in front of him. He held up a finger, even as he gave me a look of warning when I opened my mouth.

  “What the hell, Del?” Esme echoed Hayden.

  “It was the only way I could get her out of the house without dragging her,” he said before anyone else could say anything.

  And there were plenty of people present who clearly had questions.

  Most of my cousins stood there, with most of our friends around them, and our collection of vehicles.

  It was only then that I noticed Hayden had parked behind the van, while Levi had parked behind Demi, who in turn had parked behind Leo.

  And speaking of Levi, he stood in the back of Hayden’s truck, beside his brother, Kade, and a pissed off looking Logan. “I told you to go with the others,” he said as he dropped out of the back of the truck, landing nimbly on his feet. “Why weren’t you with the others?”

  “I got separated, because of the crowd,” I said, and then I jolted, then relaxed when Hayden reached out to cup my face gently in his rough hands.

  So different from the smooth softness of Neal’s tight grip.

  “Coco,”

  “What happened?” I asked before he could finish when I saw the bruise forming on his cheek.

  A muscle in his cheek twitched and he cast a narrow-eyed look at his brother, then looked back to me. “A difference of opinion,” he told me. His expression softened. “What happened with you? When you didn’t come out with Levi, Jamie and the others went back to look for you.” He glanced at Delaney, his brow furrowed in a soft frown. “Why was Delaney carrying you out of the house like that?”