Page 71 of Wish You Were Her
Allegra was just lonely. In Lake Pristine for a season and then gone like the fine weather. She wasn’t staying. She just needed a new palate for a while.
He could be that for her.
“Come home with me,” he said against her hair. “Please.”
He knew she was going to say “yes” by the way she looked up at him, but before the word could come out, a strangled, excitable scream made both of them jump. They turned like two spooked animals to see Saffron Billingham and her older sister, Rebecca, staring at them in visible glee.
“This is too cute,” Saffron cried, her smartphone out and filming the two of them like they were two exotic flowers or a stag in the mist. As if they were something far more interesting than just two teenagers in the street with their arms around each other.
“Please don’t film me,” Allegra said softly, and Jonah knew it was a plea she had made so many times before.
More people were gathering, most of them people Jonah did not recognize—out-of-towners who had come to see Pamela. Jonah felt a stab of fear as he looked into some of their faces. He was invisible to them, as they stared at Allegra, ravenous.It completely terrified him, especially as they started to edge closer.
He tightened his arms around Allegra. “Back off her.” They ignored him. They progressed with terrifying intensity and Jonah saw the world, in a flash, through Allegra’s eyes. People’s individual natures, the parts that made them whole and loveable, gone in an instant as they formed into a mob. Their faces all looked the same. “I said back the fuck away from her!”
He pulled Allegra with him as he started walking toward home, and she followed him, gripping his hand tightly. The crowd, however, moved after them like an amoeba. Jonah wondered if they would follow him all the way up to his apartment, when a jeep suddenly lurched into his eyeline, pulling to a stop before the two of them.
“Get in!”
Jasper Montgomery, Lake Pristine’s twenty-three-year-old golden girl, was a sight for sore eyes. Allegra seemed hesitant but after noticing Arthur Lancaster in the passenger seat, and Grace in the back, she piled into the beat-up old car without a second thought. Jonah followed suit and, as he pulled the door shut behind them, the car tore off into the woodland surrounding Lake Pristine, leaving the unforgiving mob behind in the dust.
“Hoo, this is the getaway car!” cried the beautiful girl in the driver’s seat.
Allegra stared at the back of her head, feeling dazed. She had to be Arthur’s girlfriend, the one Grace always spoke about with such reverence. Arthur, the cinema manager, sat in the passenger seat and he watched Jasper with a look that made Allegra feel like giving them some privacy.
“You okay, sweets?” Jasper asked, throwing a quick look to Allegra through the rear-view mirror.
“Fine,” Allegra said, smiling gratefully at the stranger. “But thanks. That’s not the worst I’ve seen, but it can get a bit ugly when you’ve nowhere to go.”
“Not many places to escape to in this damn town,” Arthur muttered darkly.
Jasper flashed him a look. “I know a place.”
Allegra glanced away. The looks the two of them shared felt so intimate that it smarted. They were poking a wound that Allegra was not prepared to bandage up just yet. She turned to give Grace a sideways hug.
“Thanks for the rescue,” she said, to everyone in the car.
“We should have prepped for this,” Jonah said, sounding frustrated. “We should have known the fans would stay in town.”
“You didn’t think Pamela would even come,” Grace pointed out, leaning across Allegra to glare at Jonah.
“No,” Jonah admitted. “But… it wasn’t a lack of faith in you, Allegra.”
“No, just past experience with temperamental authors?” She turned to smile at him as she asked the question. He slowly smiled back and they stared at one another for a moment, his eyes dropping to her mouth. They were incredibly close, side by side in the backseat.
“Anyway,” Arthur Lancaster’s deep voice interrupted the moment. “We’ll drop you back home after they get bored, Allegra. And we’re not going far.”
“Jasper, isn’t this the ditch you crashed this car into?” Grace asked cheerfully.
“Gracie!” cried Jasper. “You’ll have them thinking I’m a dangerous driver.”
“I feel like I’m meeting a local legend,” Allegra said.
“You are,” Arthur, Grace and Jonah said all at once.
“No, you’re not.” Jasper batted the compliment away while checking her mirrors. “I’m mostly a chauffeur, these days. Driving her highness in the back to all of her auditions and callbacks.”
Allegra glanced at Grace, who was beaming.
