Chapter 13
“If you want, I can take you outside and run you over with my car.”
Applying a layer of deep red lipstick to my bottom lip, I eyed Khloe tucking into the ice cream reserved for heartbreaks and periods only. “You mean my car?”
“Semantics.”
“Solid plan. Only one teeny problem: You don’t know how to drive.”
Khloe pointed her spoon at me. “We live in New York, I see little point wasting my energy learning to drive in a city that forever exists in a state of gridlock.”
“As much as I want to take you up on that offer, knowing our luck, you’d miss me and knock over some poor innocent schmuck walking down the street.”
She rolled her eyes, taking another hefty mouthful of ice cream. “It can’t be that hard. Just press on a pedal, turn a wheel, and bam! A quick and foolproof way out of dinner tonight.”
“I’m not sure I trust you enough not to accidentally kill me.”
“I promise not to hit you hard, only a couple bumps and scrapes,” she said, “and if the worst does happen, just think you can come back and haunt the shit out of those fuckers you call family for the rest of their miserable lives.”
“When you put it that way, sounds like a win-win situation to me.”
Adjusting the waistband of my knee-high black leather skirt that I knew my mother would hate, especially the way the tight material clung to my thighs, I studied myself in the mirror on the back of our living room door.
Despite the fresh coat of concealer I applied, the tiredness beneath my eyes refused to budge.
Ever since my panic attack, me and sleep were no longer on the best of terms. I mean, I managed to get some sleep, a couple hours at the most, before it snuck away in the early hours of the morning like a disappointing one-night stand.
And by fuck, was it starting to take its toll on me.
“I know you feel like you have to go tonight, that you need to save face and prove something to those people,” Khloe said between mouthfuls, “and I know for a fact you’d rather use a cheese-grater for a dildo than go.”
“A cheese-grater dildo?” I blinked as a weak laugh broke free. “Now, that’s an image I don’t think I will ever be able to get out of my head.”
“Livi,” she sighed gently as the buzzer of our front door sounded, “all I am saying is that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
If only it were that easy.
It was days like these that made me even more grateful for taking the plunge and going against the grain by starting my own business, even if I had to make a deal with the devil to get it.
My line of work offered me the perfect distraction. Between the dinner, the upcoming wedding, and my biological father’s rapid deterioration, I was somewhat thankful for Ursula’s newest challenges.
She was becoming the remedy to switching my brain off to everything else.
Ursula’s latest demands for her daughter’s upcoming birthday meant I spent half the day trying to source a new location for the fifth time, and the remainder of my workday consisted of working my way through the insane guest list that, you guessed it, had changed.
I swore the woman did it on purpose, trying to push me to my breaking point for nothing more than pure entertainment.
It wasn’t until I picked up my dry cleaning and walked through my apartment door that I dared give one ounce of my attention to my impending doom.
It’s just a dinner.
A dinner where I had to lie my ass off.
It’s only a couple of hours. I can do this.
The salmon sushi and vanilla latte swirling around my stomach from lunch threatened to make a vulgar reappearance.
Maybe having Khloe hit me with a car wasn’t such a bad idea.
I mean, if she broke a couple of my bones, that wouldn’t be too bad. Bones heal, and to sweeten the deal, a certain doctor could nurse me back to health.
Speaking of the devil, Khloe had disappeared to answer the front door and reappeared with none other than Dr. Delicious himself, wearing the outfit I’d picked for him.
Dark olive trousers sculpting his firm ass, tempting me to rip them off him and take a bite.
It wasn’t fair that he was sculpted like marble.
A fitted suit jacket fanning the flames of my kink for strong arms and hands, and an open-collared white shirt that highlighted the sharp intensity of his hazel eyes.
Dulce infierno, he scrubbed up well—no pun intended.
Elliott’s mouth parted the second he spotted me. My pulse spiked as his gaze started at the pair of high-heels on my feet and worked their way up so freaking slowly, taking in every inch of me until he got to my painted lips.
His throat bobbed and heat sparked to life behind his glasses. “You look…Je n’ai pas les mots.”
My cheeks burned.
“I was explaining to your boyfriend here that there is to be no funny business.” Khloe threw herself back down on the sofa. “Don’t forget I am far too young to be an auntie, so keep your hands to yourselves.”
“Sorry about her.” Why did my voice sound so husky all of a sudden? Oh, freaking hell. “She thinks she is hilarious and gets a kick out of being annoying.”
Khloe grinned as she lapped up another spoonful. “You crazy kids have fun, but not too much fun, if you catch my drift.”
“Please ignore her. It’s her life’s mission to embarrass me around men and act like mi madre even though I’m a year older than her.”
“Watch the backchat, young lady, or you’ll be going nowhere,” Khloe smirked. “Oh, and remember, condoms are your friends, folks.”
“She isn’t going to stop until we leave.” Without thinking, I grabbed Elliott’s hand. “Bye, Khloe, enjoy your night with Ben and Jerry.”
“Oh, trust me, I shall, it’s the best threesome a gal can have,” she called after us. “Oh, and Romeo, make sure you have my girl home by midnight or else.”
Elliott chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
Out in the dying sunset, the cooling air settled in my lungs. Goosebumps lined my arms beneath my polo-jumper. Unease wrapped itself like a python around my chest as we walked toward Elliott’s car.
I already regretted my outfit choice. If I listened hard enough, I heard my mother’s passive-aggressive comments about the tightness of my skirt, the fact that my high heels were last season, and the sweat stains no doubt staining my armpits.
It wasn’t too late to turn back.
One phone call to my mother with a few fake coughs and sniffles would have her banishing me and my plague from her home.
Why didn’t I take one of those anti-anxiety pills before we left the apartment?
“We should come up with a signal,” Elliott said without warning.
“Huh?”
“You know a way for us to let each other know that it’s time to leave,” he said. “You give me the signal and we’re out of there in a flash, no questions asked.”
“What sort of signal?”
“I’m not fussy, whatever you want. We want it to be subtle but easy to spot.”
“Like a bird call? Or a wolf howl?” I was most definitely rambling. “Oh, or I could set something on fire, that would be a perfect signal, right?”
“Let’s maybe save setting something on fire as Plan C. I think we’re on the right track with an animal sound, though.”
“I’ve always been able to do a killer squirrel impression, how about that?”
A smile lit up his face. “How good is your wolf howl?”
“I mean, I don’t mean to brag, but it’s definitely above average.”
“Is that so? Show me.”
“You want me to howl?” A bubble of laughter formed in my throat. “Like right now, out here on the street?”
“You could sound more like a chihuahua than a wolf, and then the signal would be useless.”
“Trust me, I know how to howl like a wolf.”
“Unfortunately, I’m going to need to hear it.”
“I’m not howling out here.” I looked up and down the street and shook my head. “Other people will hear me.”
He shrugged with a glint in his eye. “Suit yourself.”
Nothing prepared me for Elliott tipping his head back, the low light catching the tips of his glasses as he bellowed out a long, drawn-out howl. Watching him, he looked so carefree, so unconcerned about making a fool of himself, that I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear.
Dogs in the neighborhood echoed in return, creating a chorus.
Fuck it!
I didn’t think twice as I threw my head back and howled, the air freeing from my lungs, and for the briefest of moments, I felt weightless.
I kept going until my chest ached.
Just as someone shouted for us to ‘shut the hell up or I’m calling the cops’ from a nearby apartment, I erupted into a fit of breathless laughter.
Elliott chuckled deeply. “Maybe we should stick to your squirrel impression, it’s a little more subtle.”
“Fine,” I wheezed, my lungs on fire. “But I am not ruling out the setting something on fire plan.”
“If it comes to that, I’ll hand you the matches.”
It wasn’t until Elliott opened the car door for me that I noticed I still held his hand prisoner in mine.
Staring at how our fingers perfectly slotted together, a tightness coiled within my stomach as his thumb skimmed along my knuckles so lightly that if I hadn’t seen it, I would think I imagined it.
Getting into the car, I wasn’t sure what concerned me more: how natural it felt holding his hand, or the disappointment settling in my ribcage when he let go.
Surprise, surprise, we were the first to arrive.
According to Gretchen, my mother was somewhere in the house, waiting to make her grand entrance, but as for Maya, it was common practice for her to show up whenever she wished.
The older we got, the worse she became. She’d always been the same, constantly in trouble at school for being late to class, nearly missing her own twenty-first birthday party because she spent the equivalent of nine hours getting ready, and at this rate, she was likely to show up at her own wedding once the cake was cut.
Walking through the obscenely white and golden hallway, Elliott’s gaze flicked from one wall to the next. Not a single family photo lined the halls, no memories, no hint or clue to the people who lived and grew up in the house.
My mother didn’t dare consider making it feel or look like a home.