Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Caine
When I work, I get into a zone. I’ve been that way since I was a kid. Once my brain clicks onto the right wavelength, I’m unstoppable. Which is why when I finally stop long enough to take a sip of Coke, I realize I have no idea where Margot is, or when she left.
“Bee,” I call across the booth, interrupting the story Riley’s telling Hunter and me. “Where’s Margot?”
She gives me a quizzical look. “I don’t know, walking around somewhere?”
Hell no.
Letting her go back to the hotel was difficult, and I would have protested if not for the fact that Gremlin has a tiny bladder. Margot also told me she was going, and I kept a close eye on the time.
“I need a break,” I announce, ripping off my gloves. “Y’all can grab a drink. I’ll be back in a few.”
Hunter eyes me. “Is everything okay?”
“Absolutely.” I smile, wondering if it looks as unhinged as I feel right now.
“You want company—” Riley starts to say.
“Nope. I’m going to the bathroom. Now.”
Both women look slightly concerned, as if they’re expecting me to vomit or shit myself right here in the booth. Considering the urgency in my voice, it’s a valid worry.
“Be back in a few,” I say over my shoulder, pulling my phone out and calling Margot as I walk away.
Answer.
It goes to voicemail.
It’s loud in here.
If her phone’s buried in that huge bag of hers, she’ll never hear it.
Still, I call her again. And again. Then another time.
The convention center is huge, but I’m power walking, looking for her blonde ponytail. There are too many people—the visibility is trash—and I’m growing more agitated by the second. I know, realistically, her ex can’t be here. How could he know?
He found her at Claire and Shane’s.
Fuck.
A busy place like this might actually be the perfect spot to grab her.
When I decided his goal is to grab her, I don’t know, but right now, that’s what the voice in my head is telling me.
Screaming at me, actually. Each second that passes without seeing her makes me more certain that’s what’s happened, and with every step I get angrier.
Not at her, but at the fact that I can’t find her. I fucking lost her.
Breathe.
Do not lose your shit.
She’s in here somewhere.
Any other possibility is unacceptable. People try to wave me down as I pass, but I ignore them.
A dick move, but I don’t care. Besides, if people want me to be a jackass, then they can deal with this.
I try to call her again, and again I get her voicemail.
Row by row, I work my way through the hall.
I’m just past the halfway mark when I hear, “Caine?” At least three dozen people have said my name during my search, but it’s this voice, her voice, that makes me hit the brakes.
There. At the booth at the far end of the row, looking at a rack of vintage paperbacks. She’s confused, then worried. I’m moving, closing the distance and grabbing her hand, tugging her toward the nearest door, which thankfully isn’t very far.
“Caine, what the hell?” Irritation makes her words crackle, or maybe that’s just the tension rolling off me, electrifying the air around us.
When we’re in the hall, I spin to face her. “Are you okay?” I know I’m being over the top, but I can’t help it.
She blinks at me. “Yes. Why?”
My exhale is pained. “You gave me a heart attack. Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”
“I didn’t want to throw off your tattoo groove.” She looks around as if only now realizing I’m not in the booth tattooing, and I should be. “Are you done?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why—”
“Because you weren’t there.” God, I sound irrational, the reddest of red flags, but I can’t hide it. I am not rational with her. The Book of Margot sits in my desk proving that.
Margot narrows her eyes. I wait to be told off.
Whatever she sees on my face stops her. She drops her gaze to our hands, where I have hers in a death grip.
When she looks back at me, her cheeks are pink.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” The smell of her perfume, vanilla and peaches, hits me as she eases closer, sending my tension in a different direction.
“I’m way too fidgety to sit in the booth all day.” She gives me the exasperated look I know—and adore—and it makes me feel miles better. “But I know you’re here to work, and I don’t want to disrupt that.”
Running my thumb across her knuckles helps my heart rate return to normal. “I have an idea that will help.” I tug my phone out of my pocket with my free hand. “Let’s be friends.”
“What have we been?” She arches an eyebrow. “Because if we’re supposed to be enemies, I’m about to get a whole lot meaner. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“Not like that, and you know it.” It takes me a second to open my phone with my nondominant hand, but I’m not letting hers go, so it is what it is. “Sync our phones. So that the next time you go wandering I don’t have to chase you down. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.”
“Hmmmm.” Worrying her cheek between her teeth, she thinks.
“It’s the responsible thing to do,” I press. “You love that shit.”
“Fine.” She releases my hand to rummage through her bag. The loss is tragic, but I endure. Pulling out her phone, her eyebrow rises again at all my missed calls.
“Holy freaking moly,” she mutters. “You realize that if you didn’t have a track record of being mostly reasonable, I’d zap you again, right?”
“I was concerned,” I remind her.
“Try concerning.” She taps her phone a few times, and a notification pops up on mine, asking if I want to share locations in the Friends Near Me app.
I smash the accept button so aggressively I almost drop my phone. Her dot pops up on the screen. Tilting my phone toward her, I drawl, “Prettiest little blue dot I’ve ever seen.”
Margot rolls her eyes. “Regret this already.”
· · ·
Compromise is not my favorite. But, like the reasonable individual I am, I did, and went back to the booth without Margot, leaving her to finish exploring the event.
Being able to side-eye my phone every so often and see that her blue dot was still on the floor made it tolerable.
By the time she got back to the booth, I was wrapping up with Hunter, and from there we did a quick pack-up and headed back to the hotel.
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed now, playing with Gremlin while Margot gets ready to head to the after-party.
The bathroom door opens, and Margot walks out.
Holy hell.
I am in trouble with a capital T. When Margot said she’d throw together something for the costume party, I expected some sexy eye makeup, one of her little black business casual skirts, and a pair of vampire fangs.
This is a different look. An absurdly hot look.
Blue jeans that could be painted on and a white tank top with a few strategically placed rips.
Her makeup’s smudged and her hair’s wild in a way that makes me think, Freshly fucked, even though I know it’s supposed to be disheveled from escaping a killer.
Scrawled on the front of her tank top, right across the gentle curve of her breasts, are the words: still alive.
Final girl.
It’s perfect. So perfect I nearly choke on my own tongue. “You look fantastic.”
She glances down as if she doesn’t know what she’s wearing. “Think it’ll work?”
“Hell yes.”
It’s working on me right now, taking me from functioning human to a desperate man ready to hit my knees and beg if it means I get to peel those jeans off her.
She grins at the Scream mask peeking out of the pocket on my black hoodie. “If there’s an award for costumes requiring the least amount of effort, I think we’re in the running.”
I’m so obsessed with trying to memorize every inch of her in this costume that it takes me a second to get what she’s saying. When I do, I laugh. “Yeah, this is pretty much my uniform, isn’t it? Maybe this is a sign that I need to switch up my style.”
“I didn’t say that,” she amends quickly. “It’s a good look.” Her chest turns pink.
Oh?
Tell me more.
Before I can coax more compliments out of her, she hurries across the room to give Germ one final pat. She’s so flustered I don’t have the heart to poke at her. I do follow her across the room, though, watching her fuss over the Yorkie, who is fully content in her bed.
“Is the Germ situated?” I say it to give her something to be grumpy about.
Margot huffs. “Gremlin is quite cozy. Thank you.”
I love how she acts like the little nugget’s name is something regal, and I’m insulting her dignity.
The dog’s name is Gremlin. Gremlin. As in “don’t feed after midnight, keep them out of the rain, might trash your house, but they’re cute as hell” gremlins, and Margot acts put out that I call her Germ.
When our tiny overlord is happy, we leave. At the parking garage, Margot glances around furtively. When she doesn’t see whatever she’s looking for, she steps toward the decorative landscaping and drops to her knees.
My brain is screaming, my heart is battering against my rib cage, and my cock is all systems go. Margot looks over her shoulder at me as she grinds her kneecaps into the dirt.
“Wh-what are you-u?” I stammer, any hope of composure slipping through my fingers when she smirks at me.
“Final girls are never clean.” Soil clings to her jeans as she rises. She brushes it off, then wipes her hands haphazardly on her tank top.
Do I have a thing for dirt?
Never would have thought so, but watching Margot rub her dirty hands over her body may be the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. I’m unable to look away, fully enraptured by whatever this is.
“You need a little on your face, then.” I mean it to sound playful, teasing her the way I always do. It comes out desperate and hungry.
Shit.
I hope she won’t notice, but she does, cheeks flushing the slightest bit. “You want to help me?”
“Yes.” I’m already moving, crossing the grass to the mulch and soil around the decorative shrubs in two huge strides.
Crouching, I collect a bit of dirt on my fingertips and stand in front of her.
She closes her eyes, like she’s bracing for me to smear a handful of mud in her face.
I would never, but she doesn’t know that, because she says, “Not too much, okay?”
“Of course not.” I study her face; she’s smudged eyeshadow to create the illusion of a bruise.
Lightly, I brush some dirt on her cheekbone, below the eyeshadow.
Another dusting on the right side of her chin, but something’s missing.
It isn’t until she opens her big doe eyes and wrinkles her nose in a Why are you staring at me?
expression that I realize what’s missing.
Butterfly-light, I swipe a dirty fingertip against the end of her nose.
“Perfect.”
She rolls her eyes.
Oh my god.
All I can think about is making them roll when I’m balls deep inside her. Or tongue deep. Margot nudges my shoulder, moving past me as she heads back toward the sidewalk leading to the parking garage. “Come on, we don’t want to be late.”
I could correct her and say that, yes, we do want to be late, because nothing is duller than arriving to one of these things on time.
I’ve planned our arrival so that we’ll be getting there about forty-five minutes after the festivities have begun.
Long enough for people to be loosened up, not so long that they’ve gone completely sloppy.
The contest I’m supposed to be judging is at ten thirty, so I’m not worried about missing it.
But I don’t say any of that. I just follow her sexy ass into the parking garage.