Page 75 of Fangirl Down

A muscle popped repeatedly in his cheek. “I can’t let it stand.”

“No, you can’t. So beat him on the golf course.”

Wells continued to pin Calhoun with a death stare over her shoulder. “But I won’t get to hear any of his bones snapping that way.”

Calhoun let out a strangled cough.

An official approached hesitantly from her left. “Is everything all right over here?”

“Yes,” Josephine said, firmly.

“No,” growled Wells.

Josephine gave the official the sweetest smile she could muster, considering she was holding back a bull from charging at a red flag. “We just need a minute.”

“One minute to tee time, folks.”

“We’ll be ready,” she assured the official, before refocusing on Wells. “Listen to me. If that smarmy, self-important jackass is trying to rattle you, we must be doing something right.”

“I canhearyou,” Calhoun complained.

“That was the plan,” she called. Then, quietly, to Wells, she said, “Block out the noise. It’s just you and me out here.”

That wasn’t remotely true. In the few minutes they’d been standing there, getting ready to begin their round, a crowd the size of a small army had amassed. Commentators were chirping into microphones, spectators were shouting for Wells. Forher. If she listened hard, she could hear the buzz of a drone overhead, no doubt capturing a bird’s-eye view of the course for the television audience. It was total and complete mayhem.

For golf.

“I don’t like backing down from a fight,” he said. “You know that.”

“This one isn’t worthwhile.”

“I strongly disagree.”

Getting nowhere, she had no choice but to play her final card. “Are you forgetting about our wager?” she whispered.

She’d never seen a car hit a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour, but she suspected it looked something like Wells reacting to her reminder. The momentum of his ire came to a screeching halt. “I’ve decided to wait until we’ve played eighteen holes to kill him,” he said briskly.

“That’s all anyone can ask for,” Josephine said on a relieved exhale.

Wells held out a hand for his driver and she laid the club across his palm, smiling to herself as Calhoun snorted and swaggered back to his own camp.

One crisis down.

How many more to go?

***

One. One crisis to go, it turned out.

And it happened on the final hole.

Wells remained steady throughout the morning, managing to maintain his position on the leaderboard. Fifteenth place. To Josephine, they might as well have been in first.

All he needed to do was make par on the eighteenth hole and Wells would bank thirty thousand dollars. Ten percent of that would go to Josephine.Three thousand dollars.Ontopof the Under Armour sponsorship money. It was more money than she’d ever had at one time. But at that very moment, the imminent hope of rebuilding the Golden Tee and restoring her health insurance came second to Wells getting his professional footing back. Every time he swung the club, he did it with a little more of his old finesse.

The crowd had doubled since the morning—and they wereexcited.

She could practically hear her parents freaking out on the couch at home.

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