Page 14 of First Comes Revenge

6

CHARLI

Ididn’t run away from Jameson Wolfe. I just… made a strategic retreat. There is absolutely a difference.

I packed my things as soon as I left him in the lobby. I headed to the airport several hours before my flight, and I got back home in the early hours of the morning. I drove to my apartment and failed to sleep even though I was dead tired. I did all of this in what felt like a daze. I put one foot in front of the other and kept moving until Arizona and everything that happened there was hundreds of miles away.

But once I was out of his presence, I could think straight. I realized I don’t want whatever he’s offering. I don’t want to tie my book to some sort of deal with a devil. I don’t want to be linked to a man with so muchmomentum. There’s no way for me to be in control of my future or my career with him involved. He is too much Or maybe he’s just too soon.

Now it’s a new day. I’m back home in New York City and Dani is pulling stuff out of bags in my kitchen. From the looks of it, she has brought the entire “Boy Trouble” supply list. Alcohol, chocolate, cheese, and pickles. The pickles are more because I love pickles and she probably wants to make sure I’m stocked up.

Dani is two years older than me and people always tell us we don’t look related. She has red hair with blue eyes and I’ve got nearly black hair with green eyes. Honestly, my eyes are probably closer to brown, but if I catch them in my rearview mirror at just the right moment with the sun in them, I can hardly see the brown. Or maybe it’s just that I can hardly seeanythingwith the sun in my eyes.

Dani’s wearing scrubs. She works at a vet hospital four days a week and dog sits between shifts. She’s kind of an animal geek, and she doesn’t like when I call her that. But it’s what she is. She’s the girl who would’ve creamed herself if she ever got a pony as a birthday present when we were kids. Now she just organizes her life to involve animals in any way she can.

I’m twenty-four and she’s twenty-six, and we both have big dreams. She wants to start a fully inclusive doggy style resort for pet boarding. All I want is for millions of people to read my book. We’re both very grounded, very realistic people.

She holds up a bottle of tequila in one hand and a big thing of margarita mix in the other. “How drunk are we aiming for, here?”

“Mildly,” I say. I lay back on the couch, folding my hands over my stomach. I haven’t even changed out of what I wore to the convention. If I wasn’t worried getting truly drunk would lead me straight to internet stalking Jameson, finding his contact info, and calling him, I’d motion for her to skip the cutesy drink and just bring me the whole bottle.

She brings me an icy, alcoholic concoction. It is kind of gross, but Dani has always made terrible mixed drinks. I’ve never had the heart to tell her.

She sits across from me, expression serious. “I still can’t believe you just texted Vaughn that you wanted to break up. With the shit he pulled, he deserved an explosive break up. Something public and embarrassing.”

Once I landed back in New York, I sent Vaughn the quickest, least emotional breakup text in history. I think my exact words were: “I know you cheated. I’m breaking up. Please don’t reach out to me or try to change my mind. Yes, I’m sure.”

He read the text almost immediately, and I don’t know if he tried to change my mind because I blocked his number.

“I’m not the explosive break up type,” I say. “I really just want to forget it all happened. Dragging things out and making it messy isn’t going to help me forget.”

“Well, normal, sweet, non-combativeyoucould take a vacation just long enough to give that asshat what he deserves. Just a thought.”

“I’m not worried about getting even. I’m going to focus on myself, now. He wants to replace me with some girl he thinks is better? That’s fine. I’ll just take all the energy I spent thinking about him and put it into finishing the edits on this book. I’ll get discovered, and I’ll move on with my life. Why should I care what he thinks about any of that?”

“Because you’re human. Vaughn cheated on you, Charli. He took my sweet, adorably devoted sister’s trust and wiped his ass with it.”

“Okay, and?” I sound a little annoyed. I know I do, but I can’t quite put my finger on how I’m feeling. Maybe it’s just the not so subtle feeling that I’m talking out of my butt. Maybe part of me really does wish I had the balls to take revenge on him. Maybe I feel like sulking away quietly is another layer of defeat and embarrassment to this whole episode.

“And?” Dani asks, disbelief evident in her tone. “People like that need to know they suck, or they’ll go on being that kind of person to someone else. What about the next Charli McBride? Are you thinking of her?”

I sink a little deeper into the couch and take another sip. “No,” I admit. “But I don’t know if Vaughn is really going to change his ways just because I let him know how much he hurt me.”

“Well, yeah. I wasn’t talking about just calmly explaining how he hurt your feelings. I was talking about revenge. Nuclear warfare. Ruin his life, salt the Earth in your wake, and leave radioactive fallout so his descendants grow arms out of their foreheads.”

I stare. Dani is the sweetest person on Earth when it comes to animals. People, though? Not so much.

“You know I’m not going to do all that,” I say.

“I know,” she sighs. “So you really don’t want to call this Jameson guy? Even if you don’t want to use him to publish your book–which, for the record, is crazy–you could at least get over Vaughn by getting under Mr. Wolfe.”

“He’s probably already moved on. He didn’t strike me as the sort of man who dwells on the past for very long. He was…something.”

Dani leans closer. “What’s that glint in your eye?”

“There’s no glint.”

“There was a glint. A horny, hopeful glint.”

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