Let Me Know (27 page)

Chapter Forty-Six

Marcus

Amber and I watch from the sidelines as Emma waddles down the court in her oversized duck feet, dribbling the ball. The sold-out audience laughs and cheers her on.

As she gets close to the three-point line, she passes the ball to Eric, who is dressed as a fairy princess. In basketball shoes. The women participating in the event argued he should be in heels, but good luck finding those for a six-foot-seven-inch man. Plus, the Chicago Bulls would have been royally pissed if he had fucked up his ankle or knee.

But even without the heels, he looks hilarious as his hooped skirt flips up at the front and reveals his...basketball shorts.

Beside me, Amber is grinning, free of everything weighing her down for the past year, especially after Paul was sentenced to life. He’ll never be able to stalk and terrorize her again. She’s a different girl now, but also the same one I fell in love with. Dressed in an overstuffed bunny costume and floppy ears, she bounces in her seat, cheering. And shit, even in that outfit she looks sexy as hell.

Eric catches the pass and makes the shot. Amber jumps up and down screaming for her best friend’s team. Our team.

I glance at Matt and Alejandro on the bottom bleacher. Like Amber, they’re freer than they’ve been in a while. Thanks to both boys, who found the strength to tell the cops what happened, Frank is currently serving time while he awaits his trial for multiple counts of rape and sexual assault, as well as attempted murder. While he can no longer be tried for Ryan’s murder, the D.A. decided to upgrade the charge to attempted murder for when he shot me.

I wrap my arm around Amber’s shoulders. She leans into me, letting me fully into her heart. The place I’ve longed to be ever since I offered to tutor her in math and she told me where to go. I knew even then there was something different about her, something special.

She smiles at me. I cover her mouth with mine.

As I slip my tongue into her mouth and taste her minty breath, the crowd cheers. Without looking, I know someone made a basket, but a small part of me pretends the crowd is cheering for Amber and me, and for how far we’ve come—both separately and together.

But I’m not going it alone. I finally gave in to Amber’s insistence that I need professional help. She was right. I do.

Someone nudges my arm. Reluctantly, I pull away from her.

“We’re up,” Liam says, standing. He’s dressed in a sexy French maid costume. In sneakers. I’m dressed as a genie. As in
I
Dream of Jeannie
. Complete with a pink bikini top stuffed with socks.

We swap places with Eric and Emma. Emma and Liam exchange a quick kiss. Eric and I high-five.

One of my teammates tosses me the ball and I dribble down the court, dodging past the opposition. I pass the ball to a player from the women’s soccer team. For a second I’m positive she’s going to dribble the ball, but with her feet not her hands.

She gets the ball down court then fake passes it to Liam before passing it to me. The audience counts down the time. Five seconds left. The score is tied.

I jump up and send the ball flying toward the basket. My shoulder, the one Frank shot over four months ago, aches in protest, but I don’t care. It’s worth it in light of everything I’ve been though.

We watch the ball spin in slow motion, and as the buzzer announces the end of the game, the ball whooshes though the hoop. The crowd cheers and all the players run onto the court.

We all hug or high-five. It doesn’t matter which team won. The real winners are the kids who will be helped. The charity game raised both money and awareness of sexual abuse in kids. Having myself and Eric step forward helped, too. Now kids know it’s okay to break the silence.

The total money raised hasn’t been finalized yet. The online silent auction won’t close until midnight, but with the ticket sales alone for the game, we’ve raised way more than we imagined we would in the beginning.

As the players spread out and sign autographs for the fans, members of the media head toward us.

I take hold of Amber’s hand. “You ready for this?”

She smiles at me, the confidence in her expression breathtaking. “Absolutely!”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Amber

Spring symbolizes a new beginning, a new rebirth. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. I do know it has brought us the warm weather that welcomes Marcus and me as we make our way through the cemetery.

With the birds chirping like a choir of angels, I tighten my hold on the bouquet of white and red tulips. Marcus leads me to the spot he regularly visits. It’s the first time I’ve been here.

To Ryan’s final resting place.

“This is it,” Marcus says, the excitement in his voice an odd contrast to the place of death and sadness. He hugs me close as we examine the large gravestone’s glossy black surface. “Ryan, I’d like to introduce you to the girl I love. Amber, this is Ryan.” A bird in a nearby tree tweets in reply.

Marcus smiles as he takes in Ryan’s gravestone, the one that brought Marcus and me together. Or rather, the lack of one that brought us together. If Ryan hadn’t died or if his parents hadn’t refused to pay for it, Marcus and I never would have gotten together. He never would have had a reason to spend time with me, beyond trying to get me into bed with him, which never would have happened.

A complete opposite to how things are now. Now I miss him when we aren’t together, in bed or otherwise.

It’s not that I’m incomplete without Marcus, like how Ryan’s grave was without the gravestone. But Marcus is my best friend and my lover, the guy who makes me laugh and makes me feel special.

Marcus is my life...and my future.

* * * * *

Find out how Marcus and Amber’s story began
with
Tell Me When
, available now!

Tell Me When

Amber Scott should be enjoying life as a college freshman. She should be pursuing her dream of becoming a veterinarian. She should be working hard to make sense of her precalculus math class.

She shouldn’t be waking up her college roommate with screaming nightmares. She shouldn’t be flashing back, reliving the three weeks of hell she barely survived last year. And she definitely shouldn’t be spending time with sexy player Marcus Reid.

But engineering student Marcus is the only one keeping Amber from failing her math course, so she grudgingly lets him into her life. She never expects the king of hookups will share his painful past. Or that she’ll tell him her secrets in return, opening up and trusting him in a way she thought she’d never be able to again.

When their fragile future together is threatened by a stalker Amber thought was locked away for good, Marcus is determined to protect her—and Amber is determined to protect Marcus...even if that means pushing him away.

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About the Author

Born in Brighton, England, Stina Lindenblatt has lived in a number of countries, including England, the U.S., Finland and Canada.

Stina has a physical education degree from the University of Calgary and a master’s of science in exercise physiology from the University of Alberta, where she specialized in energy metabolism. Definitely cool stuff. She also had the opportunity to work with elite athletes through the universities and at several sport-training facilities. During her undergrad, she worked in Helsinki, Finland, for one summer, cleaning bathrooms and saunas in a recreation center for the elderly. In grad school, she lived in Jyväskylä (central Finland) for a semester. She eventually became a pharmaceutical sales representative and now writes full-time.

In addition to writing fiction, Stina loves photography, especially the close-up variety. She currently lives in Calgary, Canada, with her husband and three kids.

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ISBN-13: 9781426898884

Let Me Know

Copyright © 2014 by Kristina Lindenblatt

Edited by Alissa Davis

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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