Josh
This was one of them.
He hadn’t expected Teagan to race off in his car, but after the things he’d said?
He didn’t blame her. How on earth she rode this ancient bicycle to school every day was beyond him.
Fired up from their argument, he made it to school in record time.
His car was parked across three spots in the lot.
She wasn’t in it. No surprise there. He rode down to the lake.
As he’d thought, there she was, out on the water in a single.
It was windy. Too windy. No matter how angry she was, Teagan Tao wasn’t stupid when it came to rowing. She was trying to turn her shell around when an idiot in a speedboat roared past her, pushing a wake into her.
Her boat flipped over, dragging Teagan under the water. He waited a beat for her to surface. And another.
Oh shit. She should’ve come up by now. He tore off his shoes and dove into the lake, pounding out strokes like his life depended on it. Hers did. And he was the reason she was out there in the first place.
She didn’t come to until he was carrying her along the dock to the shore. She blinked her eyes and looked at him, confused. Neither of them said anything until he set her down on a picnic table and returned with a pair of blankets he’d found in the boathouse.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Your entire personality is rowing. It wasn’t hard.” She smiled, then winced in pain, touching the back of her head gingerly. He took a look. “It’s not bleeding, but there’s a pretty bad bump—” He went to touch it, but she pulled away.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“I’m fine. I don’t need you to—”
“Make sure you don’t die?” he finished for her.
She scowled at him.
He laughed. “You’d seriously rather drown than be saved by me?”
“I’m still deciding,” she said haughtily, then gave him a sheepish look. “Yeah, no. This is pretty humiliating. I’m going to go back in. Finish it off.”
Josh pulled her back onto the picnic table, then held up his fingers like he was in the Boy Scouts. “I swear on Phil Collins’s life, I will not let you drown.” He shook his head. “Why are you making this a big deal?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Could it be because you’ve been awful to me since the minute we met?”
True, but it wasn’t like she’d run off crying. “You give as good as you get.”
Teagan made a shooing motion, teasing him now. “Yeah, I think it’s time for you to get back to your party.”
“That train wreck?”
She looked at him, surprised. “It looked like everyone was having a good time.”
“Oh, they were. Except the one person it was for.”
“You?” Teagan poked him in the side, then looked at his face and saw she’d gotten that wrong. “Your grandfather?”
He nodded.
“Honestly? Your family seem a little…”
“Batshit insane? Yeah, I know. People think a family business is a family that runs a business, but really? It’s the other way around.”
He could feel her eyes on him, didn’t want to risk what she’d see if she saw his.
How could his grandfather have said those hurtful things?
Told him he admired his ambition in one breath, then basically told him he was nothing more than a Viktor Regis wannabe in the next.
If Josh hadn’t been hunting for him, his grandfather would have left the party without so much as a goodbye.
When he looked across to Teagan, her smile wasn’t forced anymore. It was sympathetic, without a trace of pity for the poor little rich boy. “Well,” she started brightly. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and your entire life will blow up. It worked for me!”
It was kind of going that way already.
“Hey.” She nudged him. “I was joking.”
“I know.” He climbed off the table, removed the blanket from his shoulders, and put it on the bench. “I better get back.” He’d left Britney on “Keep Everyone Happy” duty back at the party. She’d probably be wondering where he was. Britney had all sorts of merits. Patience was not one of them.
“Thanks for getting me out of the water,” Teagan said.
He gave her a nod of thanks. That was pretty much all he had left in him. The rest of him was already turning to lead at the thought of going back to that stupid air hangar and pretending he had any pride left.
“You know,” Teagan called after him, “I know some guys who were promised a night of young, rich depravity. Now, I can’t supply a private jet or anything, but I do have the next best thing…”
Quaid and the guys were murdering yet another power ballad in the boathouse. Josh was loving every off-key minute of it.
Teagan pulled his disaster of a birthday out of a black hole and turned it into an aurora borealis.
With the help of a colored disco ball, sure.
But honestly? Pizza, a karaoke machine, and the crew dancing and singing and acting like idiots without a single worry anything they did here would come back to bite them in the butt? Perfection.
Perry had anointed himself team photographer and was taking pictures of everyone. Baloo sent one to the guy he was crushing on. Spoiler alert—the guy thought he was gorgeous.
There would be some regrets in the morning. But it wasn’t morning yet, so who cared?
Josh felt light, free, like all of the energy he was used to pouring into playing House of Regis had been gifted back to him.
Being the heir apparent was like being born into a game of chess without a rulebook.
He’d thought he was destined to be a king.
Only, as he’d found out from his grandfather today, he was like everyone else: a pawn.
Maybe because he was sick of it, too, Ryder had stashed his daggers.
Or maybe he was biding his time, waiting to check Josh.
Didn’t matter. Not tonight anyway.
One song ended and another began. Oh, hell yeah! He loved this one. It was time to call in that duet Teagan had promised him. “Coxie!” he shouted across to where Teagan was talking to Cam. “Coxie!” He held out the other karaoke mic. “I need you.”
She cocked her ear, listened for a second, then lit up, just as he had when he’d clocked the song.
She danced over, already singing the lyrics.
The rest of the guys joined them during the chorus apart from Cam, who, for whatever reason, was doing his lone wolf thing.
But that was cool. The Easton Eagles were a team!
He hoped every single one of them felt like he did right now.
Supported. Safe in the knowledge that no matter what he did—short of murder or stealing candy from babies, obviously—they’d have his back, no matter how big an ass he made of himself.
Life could trip you up, as he’d found out today.
Thought he had it nailed. Hadn’t. Face-planted in front of his grandfather, only for the one team member he least expected to pick him back up again.
He’d had to save Teagan’s life first, but he wouldn’t rub in that little nugget.
Especially after she’d put all this together.
The perfect birthday party. He and Teagan were front and center now, making dogs howl across the county with their high notes.
But no one called them out for it. Made them feel any shame.
This team accepted each other as they were—warts and all.
Not that he had warts. Gross.