“What kind of ice cream do you feel like?” I ask. I kind of want to mention I’d like mine with a side bottle of bourbon, but a hangover won’t help me win a race tomorrow morning.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “Let’s just drive and see what strikes our fancy as we go.”
“Sounds good.”
I feel my phone vibrate in my bag next to my foot, but I ignore it. I don’t care who it is. It’s probably someone in India very concerned about my soon to expire car warranty anyway. I don’t want to talk anyone. Although I would appreciate the conversation about my car warranty. That feels like the only level of human interaction I’m capable of right now. Even this feels like it’s a little too much. I wonder if Bobby would notice if I jumped out of the car at a red light and ran screaming into the night. That’s kind of what I feel like doing right now.
I look up and notice that while I was lost in my dark thoughts, we’ve left the touristy part of Las Vegas, and I actually have no idea where we are now. The streets are considerably less crowded here. Before, everyone on the Strip was probably hammered, but if I screamed there, someone would at least notice, right? Here, there is no one.
“Where are we?” I ask, and now I’m worried. I look at Bobby. It wasn’t long ago that the guys thought he might be a suspect, but he can’t be, right? He wouldn’t have blown up his own garage, would he?
But then I remember he got one of my dad’s top of the line cars with all of the bells and whistles as a replacement when that happened. Maybe I’m not as safe with Bobby as I thought I would be.
“Don’t worry about that.” That is probably the last thing I needed him to say to me right now, becauseI amworried about it. What if Bobby is the one who wants to hack me to bits?
I need to get to my phone, which thank God is ringing again. I lean down to reach for my bag.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“My phone is ringing,” I answer honestly. “I’m just going to grab it.”
He stops at a light. “No, you’re not.”
And then he moves lightning quick and hits me in the side of the head with something heavy. I think I see a gun, but I don’t know. Pain blossoms out from my temple, and it’s lights out.
Everything goes black.
Chapter 17
Somewhere over the rainbow
King
Thirty minutes earlier
What the fuck was she thinking?
I want to rail at the sky. I want to throw things and rage. She can’t love me. What does she know of love? Nothing. Not one fucking thing.
I quickly pull on my clothes. I have to get out of here. I can’t look at her still in bed with the sheets rumpled from sex. I can still smell her arousal in the air and taste it on my tongue. Even as shaken as she has me, my cock is still half hard. That’s what she does to me.
But love? Negative.
I step into my boots and head for the door. But she’s not ready to let me go. Adrienne is going for blood. She wants to cut me, to gut me and watch me bleed for her. But I can’t let her do that.
“I love you,” she whispers again, and fuck me, I wish she would stop fucking saying those words. It feels like a fist has my heart in its grip, and it won’t stop squeezing every time she does. “I love you, and you’re never going to love me.”
“Are you happy now,fresa?” I snarl at her. I want her to feel the way she’s making me feel. Erratic. Off balance. Crazy. She clutches the covers to her breasts, hiding herself away from me.Too late now, little girl. You should have hidden yourself better a long time ago.
I say some more seething shit to her, warning her we’ll talk when I get back. Maybe after I’ve had a chance to drive around for a few hours, I’ll be able to stop seeing red. How dare she ruin what we had? We could have easily kept fucking for months, maybe even years. But now what am I supposed to do?
I’m not the monster she currently thinks I am. I just gave my heart away a long time ago, and my sweet Mae took it to the grave with her. I don’t have anything left to give Adrienne. But a voice in my head whispers that maybe that’s not so true.
When I walk through the hotel room door, Eric is there with a concerned expression on his face. I don’t know why. We probably all knew it would end like this eventually. I should have stayed away from her. I just… couldn’t. She calls to me like a siren. There’s just something about her.
“What?” I bark.
“Nothing,” he says. “Not one thing.”
