Page 72 of Wild Hit
I’m going to have such a miserable night if I let my head keep running rampant.
“Are you ready?” she asks softly beside me.
For all that? Hell yeah. More than ready. Ineedit.
Eso no, pendejo, a voice that sounds suspiciously like my dad says in my head.
“Yes,” I respond, hanging by the last thread of civility in me. “And you?”
“I’m having a real life case of the sunk cost fallacy.”
“The what?” I do a double take at her.
Her glassy eyes stay scanning the attendees ahead of us as she explains, “You know when you’ve invested too much into something that you know is a complete mess, and you convince yourself to not give up when you probably should?”
“Yeah…” In fact, the one case that comes to mind about that was a year of trying to make a family with a newborn baby, and a biological mother who knew that wasn’t her calling. How does that relate to this situation, though?
Maybe this clever woman can clearly see the question in my face, because she stops to face me. “This thing we’re doing? Wild. Telenovela like. Very K-Drama.”
“What’s a K-Drama?”
“A South Korean telenovela,” she says without missing a beat.
“Ahh.”
“But we’re still forging ahead, aren’t we?”
I bob my head. “Sure are. Unless you’re having cold feet.”
“Surprisingly, I’m not.” Her eyebrows rise. “What about you? We can put a stop to this the second you’re uncomfortable.”
Me, uncomfortable next to her? Nah. Enjoying it a bit too much to be considered proper, actually.
“I’m good,” I say. But I’m not. I’ll force myself to be, though.
Blondie nods like we’re about to walk into battle, and steers me by the arm to the middle of the fray.
My lips can’t stop twitching. I want to laugh. Her pretty hair swings the opposite way her hips go, and it’s a shame that the skirt opens up from her waist and doesn’t let me catch thecontour of her body. Her legs look absolutely incredible, though, and I bet they’d look even better wrapped around my?—
“Hi, Dad,” she says in a shockingly cutting tone that snaps me out of my dangerous fantasies.
I kinda wish I’d been paying more attention to my surroundings so I could prepare myself psychologically for what I’m about to do, but here goes nothing. I slide my arm around Audrey’s waist, nestling her against my side in an unmistakably possessive way.
The world doesn’t stop spinning. No one stops and stares. Charlie Cox sure takes notice, though.
He turns away from a conversation mid sentence, and scans us from the top of our heads to our feet. On the return, his eyes stop at his daughter’s hands, which she has elegantly clasped in front of her.
Even I can see the glint of her rings from the corner of my eye.
Showtime, huh?
“What is this?” The team owner faces us, holding very tight to a glass of something that looks like whiskey. His eyes, same color as his daughter’s but completely cold and distant, zero in on my face. “Don’t tell me that this is what I’m thinking it is.”
Audrey and I exchange a glance. It’s interesting to see a glimmer of amusement in her eyes, when I also feel it on the inside.
This reallyislike a telenovela, after all.
Finally, I get into character and announce in the most obnoxious way, “Mr. Cox, may I present to you my wife, Audrey Machado?”
