Luc laughed. “Yeah, sorry, I’m not flying to Palm Springs tonight,” he said.
Of course he didn’t want to do that. What was she thinking? They were both still exhausted.
But he wasn’t done. “Look, Casey—”
Nope. “Shhh!” She cut him off. “I’ll find someone to drive it back for you—that way you don’t have to go anywhere.” She unlocked her phone and made her way to her email. “That’s a much better idea. Yeah, I’ll check with LaRoyce, my manager. Her younger sister, Shandra, is a freshman at UCLA—she’s brilliant and wonderful and she’s always looking to pick up extra work, especially on the weekend. I’m sure she’ll be happy for the hours.”
Luc was still laughing a little, and shaking his head. “You really don’t have to do that.”
She looked up at him again, and yep, he was still as blindingly handsome as ever, with those eyes that she just wanted to throw herself into, to make the rest of the stupidly shitty world melt away. “Oh, I absolutely do.”
He was clearing his throat again. “Casey. There’s um... Well, there’s something you really need to know.”
Oh, hell no! Whatever he was about to say—he was bi, he was pan, he was ready and willing to dump Dave to make her crazy-assed dreams come true, no no no nuh-no—she did not want to hear it. Because her ultimate dream was for him to marry Dave and for them both to live happily ever after. God, she wanted that so badly.
Casey stood up abruptly. “We should go. Maybe Jon’s already back at your place.” Although no way would her brother go there. At this point, she didn’t want to go there. “Or maybe he went home.” She started through the crowded restaurant. “Reception in here isn’t the greatest. I’ll try calling him from outside,” she called back, even as she raced for the door.
Casey freaking Esparza was in motherfucking love with him.
Well, okay, only part of her was. The part where she was unconscious, but hell, he’d take it.
Rio finally unglued his shocked-and-awed ass from the bench seat of the booth and started after her, but a father carrying twin toddlers was staggering his way toward the bathroom. Casey exited Werewulf’s colorfully painted door before Rio could maneuver around them.
In fact, she was halfway across the parking lot, phone to her ear, by the time he burst outside.
“Hey!” he called.
She warily turned to acknowledge him, holding up one finger as she left what sounded like a message on her wayward brother’s voice-mail.
She also seemed to want to keep a healthy distance between them, backing up as Rio moved closer, so he finally just planted himself on the pitted pavement in the rapidly waning twilight and tried not to panic.
Part of her—hopefully a large part—was in love with him... and wanted to fuck him sideways. And yeah, she’d been joking, but the attraction was clearly there. How was that not good news?
Except it wasn’t, in this world of total fake-boyfriend fiction that he’d helped create.
Because Rio knew without a doubt that Casey would view his deceit as exactly that—deceit. And—he wasn’t sure about this, but it seemed a little too possible, considering that he knew himself pretty damn well and he truly wasn’t even close to being as amazeballs wonderful as she seemed to think he was—it was entirely possible that the reason she thought she loved him was his absolute unattainability. She was scared to death of risking her heart again—at least that was his opinion after getting to know her over these past few days. So who better to fall for than her best friend’s gay boyfriend?
Still, it was clearly time for the truth to come out, and Rio looked down to check his phone for messages from Dave one last time.
Because his head was down, he didn’t see where it came from. But when he glanced back up—the sound of a car engine getting increasingly louder caught his attention. And then he immediately saw it: a terrible accident about to happen.
A dusty black sedan, headlights off when they should’ve been on, going much too fast. A driver who didn’t see that Casey was directly in his dimly lit path—or, fuck, wait, did he see…? Was this motherfucker intentionally…?
“Casey!” Rio shouted as he ran toward her, feet pounding against the pavement even though he was too far away to reach her, too far from her to do anything but watch helplessly. “Look out!”
She heard him, thank god. She spun to see the car and hauled ass remarkably, athletically fast, throwing herself damn-near head first into the shoulder-high shrubbery that lined the parking lot, separating it from the sidewalk.
Did it hit her? Rio couldn’t tell. Jesus Christ, had she been clipped by the front fender, or worse, the front tire?
“Hey!” Rio shouted as the car didn’t so much as slow down. “Hey!” The motherfucker blasted past and the sedan bottomed out as it left the lot and barreled out into the street. It was sheer luck there was no traffic as it swerved and squealed away, leaving Rio with just a glimpse of the back plate—nearly obscured by mud—as he ran toward where Casey had vanished, his heart pounding. “Casey!”
“Holy shit!”
He heard her before he saw her, as he went crashing into the bushes to reach her.
In the dim parking lot light, she looked to be in one piece, but oh, shit, she was still lying prone, right where she’d landed, with her left arm twisted oddly up and back. As he dropped down beside her, savagely pushing the foliage back in an attempt to see her better, it was clear that she was struggling even to just roll over.
“Don’t move,” he commanded as he reached to get his phone out of his jeans pocket, to dial 9-1-1. “Were you hit? How bad is it?”
