Page 61 of Troublemaker
But I didn’t say that to him.
I deflected instead.
“You and your sister both misread the entire situation,” I told him. “I’m exhausted. I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow at film study. We won, but not by enough, and I need to make sure we’re prepared for game two.”
“Sure,” he said. As I turned to leave, he had a parting shot. “If you really care about Lucy, doesn’t what she needs matter more than what she wants?”
I kept walking.
There was a problem.
When I got to the parking lot, my keys were missing.
Shit.
I retraced my steps. Had I left them in my office? The locker room? Dropped them somewhere?
But the memory of Lucy reaching in my pocket earlier came back to me.
I grimaced.
She’d been kicked out of her second boarding school for being a pickpocket. I should’ve realized, but at the moment I’d been too busy trying to keep control of my cock to notice her stealing my keys. Her barely there touch had been too arousing, at the worst possible time. It certainly didn’t occur to me she had an ulterior motive.
She’d taken my car…but why? And gone where?
I pulled up the GPS app and pulled up her dot on the map. She was already headed out of Gehenom, going south down Route 13…I wasn’t sure where to. The city?
I needed to follow her. I didn’t care how expensive it was going to be, I ordered a rideshare off the app.
I was going to find Lucy and give her the apology and explanation she deserved. Hell, she deserved more than I could give her, but I’d give her everything I had, if it meant she’d listen to me. If it meant she’d give me a chance to make things right. And then I’d finally get my lips on hers, prove it to her with the kiss I owed her, and everything else I owed her. Because you kissed women you loved. And fuck me, I loved that little troublemaker. I wasn’t giving her up, no matter what. Even if both our lives went to hell in the process.
26
LUCY
Iwas drunk.
Not tipsy. Not toasted. Completely, utterly, floor- spinning-around, forget-my-own-name, happy-loud-funny-sad, drunk.
I was also at a bar in the middle of Nowheresville, New York, somewhere between the Finger Lakes and the city, without much cell service, or more than ten dollars and a very easily traceable credit card to my name.
I was an idiot, but I was having fun.
I mean, I was pretending to have fun.
Was I?
Right.
The guys on either side of me were clearly having fun. They’d started out buying me shots, then moved in closer, then closer still, playing it easy and lowkey at first as they asked me questions about myself.
Then the flirting started.
Then the touching.
I usually wasn’t this fucking stupid, but I was too drunk and pissed off to resist when one stroked the skin above my shorts and under my jersey, and the other rested a hand on my bare thigh.
I felt sick, disloyal, I didn’t want their hands on me, the man whose hands I wanted probably had them on someone else by now. And if I thought about Coach and Alison on that date, I’d either scream or puke.
