Page 45 of It's Not Home Without You

“Fuck my life! Run into the water. I don’t think it will go in there!” I said, taking off my shoes and dragging Emma with me. I’m sorry, Gucci heels, but you aren’t worth my life.The water was past our knees when Emma pulled out her cell phone from where she had tucked it in her bra.

“Oh… I have my phone. I can call the police. They can save us!”

I was about to freeze my ass off. The water was cold. Good thing it only went up to our thighs.

“Yes, this is Emma, Emma Miller. Freya and Iarelost. We don’t know how to get home.” Emma’s voice wobbled on the last part. I stopped listening to Emma’s conversation and instead tried to find the wolfy. I thought the water splashing must have scared him off.

What if it was spying on us waiting to eat us?

“No, but we’re stuck. please, it’s not a prank. There’s a werewolf spying on us.”

Aha, I knew the wolf was spying. That’s when I heard a loudribbit, causing me to jump and lose my footing and startling Emma, who in return dropped her phone in the water. I was all wet, might as well try to find her phone.

“Emma, what are you doing?” I asked once she sank into the water.

“It sounded like a good idea to submerge myself. It sounded warmer in my head.”

That’s how the cops found us, Emma and I in the water, splashing around trying to stay warm before the wolf ate us.

“Dammit, why-y-y did he have to c-c-come?” Emma cursed when Dex came in to view holding a flashlight.

“But he’s cute to look at.”

“T-that’s the p-problem,” she whispered. I could have sworn there was a hint of regret in her tone, but I wasn’t one to make reasonable assumptions in my inebriated state.

“Aw shit,” I uttered when I saw the man next to Dex. He was much older than I remembered, but I guess being captain did that to you. If there was one person who shouldn’t see me like this, it was Chief Timmy. I wanted to prove I had changed, matured, but look at me. I was drunk at a park.

Shit, parks closed at sundown. That meant I could get taken in.

“Next time, pick something safe for us to do,” Emma whispered as the men got closer to us.

“This was the safe option,” I responded, looking from Dex to Timmy.

“What was the other option?”

“Going all Carrie Underwood on Abigail’s car, maybe Max’s. I wasn’t sure we could pull both off without getting caught.”

“From now on, I’ll pick what we do.”

That was probably a great idea.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Nothing traveled fasterthan news in a small town—scratch that, nothing traveled faster than bad news in a small town. Emma was going to kill me. Just like when you see on those TV shows where the good girl snapped and went all American psycho on you.

Here I was, a sweet granddaughter getting her grandpa some breakfast, when he walked in laughing. “I wasn’t aware we had werewolves in the area.”

“You mean wolves?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Ran into Tim when I went to go put gas in the truck, and he told me about last night’s adventure. They have the Miller’s girl call on record.”Fuck.Emma wassogoing to snap.

“Isn’t Tim full of gossip this morning,” I mumbled.

“You should have thought about your actions before getting drunk.”

“Do you know if this recording was shared around already?”

“Figured all the boys have heard it.” Grandpa shrugged like it was no biggie that all the boys in blue were laughing at our expense. “Oh, look, you got visitors.” Grandpa left the room to grab his stuff while I went outside where Rusty and Jana had just parked Bow. Both of those assholes started cracking up when they saw me.

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