Page 10 of Save Me

“I’m trained as a physician’s assistant. It’s not exactly the same.”

“Well, it’s medical. Maybe getting fired will turn out to be a good thing. You can throw yourself into finding something in your field now.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Andie said, trying to sound more optimistic than she felt. She didn’t mention how badly depleted her bank account was. That would seriously hamper any sort of job search.

And if I get charged with a drug-related offense it all goes away. She’d never be able to get a job working in medicine. “I’m going to get dressed too. I think I have to go to the police station. Now.”

There was an urgency building in her. She had to make sure she wasn’t going to go down for something she didn’t do.

Andie left at the same time as Juliet, but the urge that sent her to the police station to file a report dissipated the longer she waited to speak to an officer.

Determined not to waste time, Andie sat on a hard plastic chair and took out her phone. She started making a list. The first few items were things she might be able to sell. Juliet was willing to let her crash for as long as she needed, but Andie paid her own way. At the very least she could contribute to groceries and the utilities. Her cell phone bill would be due soon too and she needed to keep it active. Without it all her job prospects were dust.

The wait stretched and eventually her mind wandered. She glanced down at her notes and her heart dropped to her knees when she read what she’d mindlessly typed—Call Eric.

Oh, hell no. She deleted the note and shoved the phone in her pocket.

She wasn’t going to get in touch with him. Not after all this time. Andie swallowed and blocked the mental image her brain had just thrown up, but it was a particularly vivid one of Eric’s head buried between her legs.

Squirming in her chair, Andie flushed while fighting tears. It had been two years, but it still hurt to think about him. Recklessly in love for the first time, she’d done things with Eric she still regretted.

I was a completely different person back then, she reminded herself. Everyone had one person they went completely stupid over. Dr. Eric Tam was that person for her. But he was in the past—and he was staying there.

Andie ground her teeth, trying not to think about him. Which meant he was the only thing on her mind now.

When Eric had first started coming to Lynx as a regular she’d been immediately infatuated with him. He was tall, with broad shoulders and movie star good looks. She’d gone so far as to bribe another waitress to give her his table. After a night of determined flirting, he’d made sure to sit in her section whenever he came back. One night she had “bumped into” him in one of the dark corners of the club. He’d wasted no time taking her up on her unspoken offer. They had jumped into a physical relationship that night, her very first.

Images of wild lovemaking in expensive hotel rooms flooded through her…dancing and having sex on the roof of the hotel…hooking up in the storeroom. Sucking him off in the bathroom—which to her shame had been heridea.

He didn’t even realize you were a virgin your first night with him. She hadn’t told him.

Andie had been in her early twenties and worried he would find her inexperience gauche. But she hadn’t wanted anyone enough to get physical before. Not until she met him.

Eric lived up to her every secret desire and expectation for a first lover. Soon she was like an addict, panting after him like a sex-crazed lunatic.

Stop it.

In the end, the man of her wet dreams had left her in the dust like everyone else in her life. It didn’t matter that she loved him. It was over and done with. And the only salve to her savaged pride was the fact he had no idea how deeply she cared for him. She never told him and he never asked.

Men were idiots.

Juliet was right. Andie had to watch out for herself. Getting up, she marched back to the reception desk. “I’ve been waiting for almost two hours and I really need to make a statement about a bunch of drugs found at Lynx last night.”

That got their attention. She hadn’t mentioned the club when she’d first come in, but everyone here must know about Calen, the club’s owner, and his ties to the Irish mob.

Within minutes she was ushered to a private office. There she wrote out a statement, giving them Todd’s name, and explaining how she thought the drugs got into her locker.

Yes, she was throwing her ex under the bus. If he hadn’t done anything wrong, he had nothing to worry about. And if he was the one who’d planted those drugs in her locker, then the cops were the least of his worries. She would kill him herself.

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