“Look, I’m not sure what she told you, but we both know my Teagan can be a little dramatic.” He gave me the locker room look. The one that said, between us boys.
“Teagan belongs to herself,” I snapped. “But if you ever lay a finger on her again, your balls will belong to me. Now get the fuck off my property before I let Walt take preemptive custody.”
Walt barked as if in agreement, the sound clear…and close. I didn’t need to turn around to know that Teagan now stood on the front porch. It wasn’t in her nature to stay hidden while someone fought her battles for her.
Hopefully she realized this was still her battle—I was simply her weapon.
“You’re fucking mine, you understand?” he shouted toward her. “I own you. I own everything about you! This car? It’s in my name.” He flung his arms out and sneered. The trickle of blood from his split lip gave me a small spark of satisfaction, but it wasn’t enough to pay for what he’d done to her.
“Three,” I said softly.
Rick’s gaze flickered toward mine before nailing Teagan with another glare. “When you’re done hiding from what you’ve done, I’ll be at home. Where you belong. You’re the one who hurt me, Teag—”
“Two.”
Rick’s eyes widened slightly, and he put his hands up again. “Fucking fine. Stay here with your little friend. We both know you’ll be back. After all, I still have all your shit.” He chucked her car keys into the shrubs that lined my porch, then got into his car and drove away.
I stood in the driveway with my cell phone out, watching the gate’s security camera though the app. I didn’t relax until Baker’s car was off my land, and the gate locked behind him.
Then my hand started to throb like a bitch.
“Fuck,” I muttered, shaking it out as I walked back up my sidewalk.
Teagan waited on the porch, then followed me in with Walt. I used every deep breathing exercise in my arsenal to shed my anger and managed to be relatively cool when I faced her again.
She had enough worries—I wasn’t going to be one of them.
“He’s right,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her middle and looking up at me with the bluest eyes in the state of North Carolina. They’d always been her secret weapon—so secret she wasn’t even aware of the power they held over me. Damn, she was beautiful. “He has all my stuff. The bank account is in his name. My car. My phone. Everything is in his name. How could I have been so stupid?”
I pulled her into my arms and held her close. “You’re not stupid.”
“He said he was taking care of me. That he wanted me to focus on my art, and he’d take care of the rest.” She sucked in a stuttered breath. “What am I going to do?”
I cupped her cheeks in my hands and tilted her face toward mine. “You’re going to stay here for as long as you want.”
“So I can just mooch off of you?” Her brow furrowed.
“We had a deal,” I reminded her with a quick smile, flashing the dimple I knew was my secret weapon when it came to women—not that Teagan had ever seen me as anything more than a friend. That had always been the difference between us. I’d wanted her since the day I’d realized why I liked those curves of hers so much—we’d been fifteen.
She’d made it crystal clear that this was only friendship—that she’d never be one of my women. I should have set her straight when we were teenagers. She wasn’t one of my women. She was the only woman that mattered. Period.
“We had a deal?” Her eyes narrowed as she repeated my statement.
“Remember? Whoever hit it big first had to let the other live with them.” I shrugged. “I just happened to hit it big first, so now I have to pay up.”
“We were twelve.” She rolled her eyes.
“Wait…so the promises we made back then don’t matter? Because if that’s the case, I no longer have to keep cookies ‘n cream ice cream stocked in my freezer at all times.” That promise had been made at eleven, during one of her mother’s let’s-obsess-over-Teagan’s-weight phases.
The woman had never quite understood that Teagan was perfectly shaped to begin with, and as she’d grown into her figure, those lush curves weren’t just healthy—they were sexy as fuck.
“Hey, no ditching the ice cream,” she protested, the corners of her pink, kissable lips ticking upward into something that almost resembled a smile.
“Then accept the fact that you living here is simply fulfilling the terms of a verbal contract we made sixteen years ago.” I stroked my thumbs over her tear-streaked cheekbones and felt her melt slightly with surrender.
“Fine. But only if you agree not to hammer me with questions tonight,” she finished quietly. The plea in her eyes was impossible to ignore.