We’re about to leave the room when a woman raises her voice. “Excuse me? You need to wait here while I call security.”
“Call whoever you want, but if they are working this convention I’m the one paying their salary.”
I don’t wait for a response, leading Brianne back out into the hallway. She starts to regain her composure a few moments later. She puts a hand over her eyes and then folds her arms over her torn shirt, pressing herself to me to cover the damage as much as she can.
“I can’t believe I just did that,” she says.
“You were fantastic,” I say.
“What if they tell someone?” she asks. “Couldn’t we get arrested for something like that?”
“At the risk of sounding like an entitled prick, no. I don’t care if it’s immoral, I’d bribe the shit out of any cop who tried to take my Princess in.”
“That’s… sweet, I think,” she says.
“You’re damn right it is,” I say, grinning.
I lead us out a back exit and lead her toward the valet parking garage. I save her the embarrassment of having to stand there in front of the valets with her clothing in disarray and my cum drying on her legs, even though the idea of showing my claim on her so publicly has its own appeal. I have to remember she was a virgin only a few days ago. She deserves time to adjust. My needs are secondary.
As we’re entering the valet parking garage, the skin on the back of my neck prickles. I glance over my shoulder and see two men in dark coats moving into the garage on the other end. They are probably valets, but being around Brianne seems to make me jump to the most dangerous conclusions possible.
“Come on,” I say a little quickly. “It’s cold. We need to get you in the car and turn the heat on.”
“Okay,” she says, still holding me tight.
We have to scour the parking garage to find my car, which was a fact I stupidly overlooked. I guess it didn’t seem as important before I saw the men in coats, but now I feel a growing sense of desperation as we look for the car.
“Fuck,” I say tightly a few minutes later. We’re hurrying up the stairs to the top level of the garage when I hear the sound of shattering glass and then a car alarm. My car alarm.
When we reach the top of the garage I see my car with the lights blinking. The driver side window is broken and the two men in coats are standing beside it.
“Stay behind me,” I say through clenched teeth.
“No,” whispers Brianne. “Let’s just go. Please.”
Her words don’t reach me. Rage pulses through me as I pull her forward, not daring to risk leaving her behind, but consciously using my body to shield her.
The men see me when I’m a few steps away. I let go of Brianne’s hand and rush the closest one, who’s reaching in his coat for something. I plow into him, knocking him backwards and into the second man. The three of us tumble to the ground in a pile, but I quickly get to my knees on top of the first man, cracking my fist into his jaw three times. Each blow snaps his head to the side. The second man rolls to a sitting position and pulls a gun from his coat. I lunge for him, knocking the arm holding the gun down with my fist.
The gun clatters to the concrete. I grab it and point it toward the man who pulled it. I don’t think. I just squeeze the trigger, but it clicks uselessly. Fuck. I don’t have time to find the safety, so I whip the pistol across the man I disarmed. He rolls to the ground, clutching his bloody face and moaning.
The other man grabs me from behind, locking my arms in a hold. The gun slips from my grip and he lunges for it. Brianne screams and the man’s grip falters. I’m able to slide out and kick the gun away, turning to punch the man again in the jaw. He’s reaching for something at his back as I do. I put all my weight into a punch that topples him backwards. When he lands on his back, he arches and squirms, screaming in pain.
I realize when he rolls over there’s a shoe stabbed into his back by the heel, and then I notice Brianne is only wearing one shoe.
“Come on,” I say, hurrying to my feet and rushing her into the passenger side of the car, brushing glass from her seat with my coat.
I use my coat to brush the glass from my seat too and jump in, using my spare keys to turn the car on and pulling away. A savage, protective part of me wants to finish the men off. But my brain is telling me that’s not the right move. Right now they are pissed at me for making fools out of them. If I add murdering their people to the list, I may never be able to get them off my scent. And I have Brianne to protect. I have my sister to protect. Too much to lose. Way too fucking much.
“You should have just let them take the car,” says Brianne breathlessly.
“They didn’t want the car,” I say. “Look. I should have told you sooner. I got tied up in some bullshit a few months back and these guys are trying to get back at me for it. That’s how I wound up in the hospital.”
“These people want to hurt you? Why?”
I pull out of the parking garage, squeezing the steering wheel as I search for the right way to handle this. “It’s not important. You’re going to stay at my place for the time being. I don’t want to risk letting you go back to the dorm for now. Anyone can just walk in there if they want to. It’s too dangerous.”
“Wait, wait,” she says, holding her hands up. “Lacey would lose her mind if I don’t show up. She’ll think I died or something. I never stay anywhere overnight.”
“Then call her. I don’t care what you do, just don’t tell her where you’re going to be staying.”
“What?” she asks. “She’s my best friend, I can trust her with anything.”
“It’s better for her if she doesn’t know,” I say.
“Then we need to pick her up too. I’m not letting her stay there by herself if those thugs are going to come after her too.”
I sigh. “Fine. We’ll pick her up.”
56
Brianne
Jackson follows close behind me and waits outside the dorm while I go in to get Lacey and tell her everything that has happened, including the story behind my torn clothing. It doesn’t take long to convince her she’s better off coming with us, and within a few minutes we both have hastily packed suitcases and are jogging back to Jackson’s car. I took a minute to change out of my torn clothes and into something comfortable.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around everything. I really don’t even know if I want to try. Lacy climbs in the back of the car and I sit up front. Thankfully, none of us seem to be in a talkative mood because my mind is anywhere but the present. I try to figure out how long ago it was that I met Jackson. If I trusted my gut, I could believe it was months ago. When I count down the days though… I met him in the restaurant just over two weeks ago. Two weeks.
No high school guy or college guy would have taken my virginity as perfectly as Jackson. It would have been a one to two minute ordeal of getting humped by some horny guy who would probably roll off me as soon as he was finished. With Jackson… My virginity felt like something precious. He treasured it and built up to taking it like it was a sacred ceremony, and I know I’ll always have the memory of that night for as long as I live. It will be a little piece of him I take with me forever, no matter what happens.
I just wish I didn’t have to learn he had been keeping things from me. In particular, things that call everything I know about him into question. I bite my fingernail and look out the window as we pull up to his house. I know one thing, Lacey is going to get an earful tonight. I’ll find some excuse to sleep separately from Jackson and get Lacey’s opinion on all of this. I have to, or I’m going to burst from holding it in.
Jackson lets us all into the house just before the rain starts outside. The storm comes suddenly and without warning. The sound of rain hammering the rooftop of Jackson’s huge house is almost comforting to me, though. I guess growing up reading books made me have a special affection for the rain. Other kids saw the rain as an inconvenience that stopped them from being able to go outside
and play like they wanted. For me, it was a promise that no one would stop me from reading that day. I could curl up in the nook beside the window of my room and dive into a book, reading until I had to turn on the lamp to see and until my eyes were so heavy I thought I could blink and wake up the next morning.
“Either of you drink coffee?” asks Jackson.
“Sure,” I say, realizing distantly that we don’t even know each other well enough to know our preferred drinks, yet I let this man take something I guarded for years. I try to ignore that thought. It’s just the same kind of destructive thinking that led me to push away every guy before Jackson. He’s a good guy. Who cares if he doesn’t know my favorite color? There will be time for that. Maybe. If these people he’s mixed up with don’t come and kill us all in our sleep, that is.
The thought sends a cold chill through me.
“Coffee would be great,” says Lacey.
We plop down on Jackson’s couch. I sigh and look to Lacey, who is narrowing her eyes at me.
“So we’re just going with this?” she asks.
“What do you mean?” I can distantly hear Jackson banging cabinets around in the kitchen and feel relatively sure he can’t hear us.
“I mean, I mostly came because I don’t want to let you get sucked into some shady crap by yourself. Like, Jackson really hasn’t told you what this is about?”
“No,” I say slowly. “But I haven’t exactly been completely open and honest with him, either.”
Lacey makes a face at me in disbelief. “What do you have to hide?”
“Oh I don’t know, the fact that you set this whole thing up pretty much so I could sleep with him and cure my writer’s block.”
About halfway through my sentence, Lacey starts making chopping motions at her neck and moving her eyes past me, but it only registers after I’ve finished.
I turn slightly to see Jackson standing at the doorway with two cups of coffee.
“That was… fast,” I say, clearing my throat.
He steps forward and sets the cups down. A little roughly. “Can you excuse us?” he asks Lacey.
“I think I’ll stay right--”
“Out,” he commands.
She pops up from the couch as if pulled by strings. “I did have to use the bathroom, now that you mention it,” she mutters, before scurrying off with no idea where the bathroom is.
“Is that true?” he asks.
“I was going to tell you,” I say. “That’s what I was trying to say in the car tonight, before we went to the convention center. Remember?”
Jackson’s jaw flexes. He paces in front of me, eyebrows drawn down. “And you didn’t think this was something I might want to know before I agreed to the contract with you?” he asks.
“How could I tell you?” I ask. “Yes, maybe that’s how this started, but that’s all it is. It was a start. I feel different now. I care about you. I’m glad this all happened and I didn’t want to let that dishonesty hang between us.”
He shakes his head, walking away from me and raking a hand through his hair. “You lied to me.”
I set my jaw, standing and stepping toward him. “You lied too. Or did you already forget? I wasn’t exactly agreeing to be hunted by mobsters. But I guess it’s okay for you to hold things back and not for me?”
“I was protecting you,” he growls.
“You said this was about trust. How can I trust you if you can hold something like that from me? How can I trust you if you still won’t even tell me why these people want to hurt you? I mean, how do I know you’re not some mobster, too?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks down, closing his eyes. “I gave them bad financial advice a few months back. Apparently they took my advice and lost millions of dollars, and now they want to show the world what happens to people who piss them off. Okay? It’s a stupid fucking misunderstanding and I’m trying to fix it.”
I can see the frustration and regret in his face. It cools my anger a little bit, but not completely. “So,” I say a little more calmly. “How are you going to get them to stop?”
He shakes his head. “I’m going to make a… financial offer tonight. I expect the offer will be tempting enough to convince them to back off. Otherwise, I’ll find another way.”
“Like what?” I ask, mind flashing back to the scene in the parking garage.
“Another way,” he repeats.
“Was I supposed to stay gone?” asks Lacey, who comes tiptoeing back into the living room. “Or…”
Jackson glares at her and stalks off to another room, leaving us.
“That seemed like it went poorly,” says Lacey.
I purse my lips, nodding. “Yeah. pretty much. We both agreed we’re assholes for lying to each other. I think that was the short version.”
“Right,” she says. “His lie seems a little worse though.”
I let out a long breath. “You’re just taking my side because you have to.”
“Girl. The only thing I have to do is struggle to keep my eyes off of him. I can’t believe you’re tapping that.”
“Oh my God,” I say, covering my face. “Can you please not describe my sex life like a horny middle schooler would?”
“Listen to Miss Sophisticated over here with the sex life now,” teases Lacey.
I glare at her.
“He’s already rubbing off on you. I could’ve sworn I just got that exact same glare from him a minute ago.”
“Maybe it’s not that he’s rubbing off on me. Maybe you just make people want to glare.”
“Well, speaking of glares, I didn’t want to mention this earlier, but when I got back to our dorm tonight, I caught Mia in our room. She was on your laptop and she got out of our room real fast when I confronted her. It was highly, highly suspicious. I thought you should know.”
“My laptop?” I ask. I rush to my bag and pull it free, opening the screen and suddenly regretting removing the login password because I was too lazy to keep entering it. When the screen flashes on, it opens to the desktop, but the folder containing my story is open, and the story itself is still highlighted.
“Lacy…” I say quietly. “Did Mia have a USB drive or something?”
She might have. She booked as soon as she saw me though. I can’t say for sure.
“I think she might have just stolen my story. Oh my God. I have to get over there before she has time to do something with it.”
“What is she going to do with a half-finished story in one night?”
“I don’t know,” I snap. “But when she first introduced herself she went on about how she always wanted to be an author. She said she just wished she could skip the whole writing part. It sounded like she’s tried to write before. What if she slaps something she already wrote onto the end of my story? I’d have no way to prove I wrote it first.”
Lacey holds up her palms to me, urging me to slow down. “Even if you were right about this and she somehow is planning to send this out for publishing, do you really think anyone is going to agree to publish something like that?”
“Maybe not, but nothing would stop her from self-publishing it. She might even just publish what I have right now and promise to write the rest in a part two or something.”
Lacey works her lips to the side and nods. “Okay. That actually sounds possible. And fuck her if she’s thinking that. What do you want to do?”
“We need to tell Jackson to drive us over there.”
She gives me a dry look. “Really? You think Mr. Keep My Woman Safe is going to want to drive you around town right now?”
“He might,” I say.
“Yeah, but right now he doesn’t know you have a reason to want to leave. If you ask and he says no, he’ll probably lock this place down. You’ll never get out.”
I rub my temples, hating that Lacey might actually be right. I might not be able to risk telling Jackson. Besides, I’m not an idiot, if I know these people might be looking for me, I can keep on high alert and st
eer clear of any potential trouble. I can do this. I can do this.
“Let’s go,” I say firmly.
“Yeah?” asks Lacey. “Hell yeah. Where does he keep his keys?”
I find Jackson’s keys on the armrest of the sofa and lead Lacey outside. Guilt rips at me for sneaking behind his back like this, but I’m confident I’ll be able to make him understand later. He’ll have to see there was no other way for me to do this. He’ll have to understand. I hope.
We close the front door to his mansion as quietly as we can and then rush toward his fancy sports car. The “keys” are really just a metal Ferrari emblem that apparently has some kind of electronics inside, because the car automatically unlocks when I get close enough with the key. I waste a few seconds trying to find where I insert the keys before Lacey reaches over and pushes the start button.
“You just have to have the key fob in the car to press the button.”
“Oh,” I say. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention before.”
I shift the car into reverse, thanking God that my first car was a manual transmission so I know how to work this thing. Once I very carefully back out to the main road, I engage the clutch, shift gears, and put the lightest pressure possible on the gas. The car roars like a caged beast and jerks forward. I yelp and Lacey laughs.
It takes almost the whole drive to the dorm to get a feel for how much power the car has. I’m so distracted during the drive that I forget to keep an eye on who’s driving behind us and making sure no one is following us. When we get to campus though, I decide to park by the library, which is on the other end of campus. Anyone watching for us at the dorms would probably expect us to park on that side of campus, so we may be able to sneak in through the back of the dorms on foot and avoid notice.
Knocked Up by the Dom Page 43
