Page 47 of Drive Me Wilde

"Stop, it's me. I've got you, Jones." My feet leave the ground. I'm dumped over a shoulder, and I'm out like a light. When I come to, the parking lot lights look blurry, like smears of neon paint, and there are red lights spinning in the darkness. The police are here. There's an arm around me. It's Hannah.

"What a night," she says sadly.

The lineman, the one who tried to kiss me, is being led out by a few of his buddies. His nose looks flat, and his face is covered with blood. Every muscle in my body tightens as he scowls my direction. I don't see Zach anywhere.

"Let's go home," Hannah says.

"Best idea I've heard all night."

Now

My eyes open. Zach flips his wet hair back off his face, and his tanned skin glistens with saltwater as he drags his long legs through the water and heads back to shore. He left the fight to avoid losing his scholarship. It's a good reason, but he left me there, in the chaos, and I came close to being sexually assaulted. In fact, under today's laws, what happened would have been classified as an assault. I searched frantically for Zach in the chaos, but he wasn't there. I was on my own. Until I wasn't.

"Jones," I say softly. The assault made me push the whole, nightmarish event out of my mind. Ignoring it was my way of dealing with it, and it could have been so much worse. Onlysomeone was there to pull me out of danger. How could I have not remembered it was him? It was Jameson all along.

twenty

. . .

Jameson

Iwake to the sound of someone knocking hard on my door. I open my eyes and squint into the painful light filling the front room. The sun is just starting to drop low in the afternoon sky, and there are no clouds to filter the harshness. The empty whiskey bottle is lying on its side on the coffee table. The knock rattles the door again, and I shoot up.

"Nicole," I say as I make my way to the door. My steps are heavy and plodding, and my head feels as if it's being hit by a jackhammer. "We need to talk—" I say as I pull open the door.

"We sure fucking do," Zander says as he storms past me. "By the way—you look like shit," he manages to slip in before he reaches the living room. He picks up the empty whiskey bottle and flares his nostrils. "You must be in a bad way if you're drinking this swill." The bottle lands on the table with a clunk. He turns to look at me. "You're bleeding."

I lift my arm. It hurts almost as badly as when the asshole cut it. The gauze wraps are soaked in blood. "I might have busted open a few stitches."

"I guess that explains the hole in your entryway wall. So, that nightmare of a woman took Rio?"

I nod. "I've got Charlie working on a custody case, but in the meantime—he said I had to let her go with her mom. She's her guardian."

"Only she gave her up when she got bored of her. We need to get Rio back and soon. I wouldn't trust my pet hamster with that woman. Getting drunk and doing things like throwing your fist through a wall is probably not a good start for showing the courts you're the better parent."

"Not the shit I need right now, Zander." I walk to the kitchen for a glass of water hoping it'll kick the drunkenness out of me.

Zander follows me and pulls the carton of orange juice out of the refrigerator. He doesn't bother with a glass.

"Help yourself, buddy." I drink the entire glass of water and go for seconds even though I'm not entirely sure my stomach will hold onto the first glass.

"What do we do in the meantime?" Zander asks. It's still amazing to think just how deeply Rio has giggled, smiled and pancake cooked her way into not just my heart but the hearts of the entire Wilde clan.

"Unfortunately, we aren't going to be able to use our usual Wilde ways to get her back. I have to do this the right way through the court system, or I risk losing her for good."

"Fucking court system. Who came up with that shit anyway?" He finishes the juice and crushes the container in his fist. "I raced over here like my ass was on fire when Dad told me what happened. You're taking this way better than I expected."

I lift my blood-soaked arm. "Other than drinking an entire bottle of whiskey and shoving my fist through a wall, you mean?"

"Yeah, good point." Some of the tension in his shoulders eases as he walks to the front window and stares out at the ocean. "You've got big money now—" He turns back to me. "That's got to work for something. Maybe you can pay Nicole off.She looks like the type who'd hand her kid right over for a nice sum of money."

"And after she spends it, she comes right back and pulls the same shit. I can't put Rio through that. I need to do this the right way, even if having to wait is eating me up. I will get her back, Zander."

"Yeah, I know." Zander flops down on the couch and stacks his big feet on the coffee table. "So, what about Indiana, eh?"

I sit down on the arm of the big chair. "What about her?"

"Does she still push all the right buttons?"

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