“I’m trying, I’m trying.” I dug my cell out of my back pocket and silenced it while Parker, Clay and Lauren slowly stalked towards us. I’d decided early on with these adventures to never involve weapons, not even fake ones, so they just looked like participants in a cautious game of red light, green light.
I picked up a rock and threw it into the bushes across from us. Two quail let out a warning cry and flew out. The ski masked villains turned to look and froze in their progress.
“Okay, let’s go, Granny.” I got her in on the passenger side and quickly folded up her walker, shoving it in the back seat. Then I ran around and jumped in, gunning it just enough to give it a sense of urgency, but not so much that my car would bottom out. I pulled onto the street and looked behind us.
Parker, Clay, and Lauren were jumping in Parker’s truck and following. They had to be sweating buckets in their costumes. Just my nervousness about pulling this off had turned me into a sweaty mess.
Granny glanced behind us. “Where do we go?”
I tossed her my phone. “Connor’s in my list of missed calls. Call him and tell him we’re being followed, and we’re coming to his dad’s office.”
“Missed calls?” Granny stared down at my shiny phone like it might be alien tech. She pressed her finger on it cautiously and frowned when it didn’t do whatever she was expecting. She pressed on it again and again until Siri boomed out, “I don’t understand.”
Granny stared at the phone. “Me either. Who is this?”
The phone didn’t answer, which really ticked her off. I grabbed it out of her hand before she could bang it on the glove box. So much for that part of the plan. Hopefully, Granny wouldn’t be suspicious of Connor showing up like a genie the second we pulled in. Which was in about thirty seconds. At the end of the street, I turned into the Sun Valley Heavy Equipment parking lot and scrolled down to Connor’s name, pressing send.
He answered on the first ring. “Melissa?”
“Hey, we need help. Some bad guys are following us. We’ve just pulled into your parking lot.”
I hung up and turned to Granny. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
Parker drove up next to us, and Clay and Lauren got out to circle our car.
I hit the lock button. “You okay, Granny?”
She glanced at the two circling and balled her fists. “It takes a lot to scare me.”
That’s what I was afraid of. This adventure would be a lot to one-up. Spotting Connor sprinting towards us filled me with complete relief. This meant the end of our adventure. He yelled at Clay and Lauren, pretended to get in a fist fight with Clay, and then ran them off back to Parker’s truck. After they took off down the road, I hit the unlock button and jumped out.
“Thank you.” I went to hug Connor and bumped him with my bird hat instead. He pulled it off my head and smoothed back my curls, probably catching a bit of sweat that was beading off my forehead.
“I’m so gross,” I murmured.
“Not gross.” He was so going to kiss me. I knew it. I was anticipating it.
“You two forgotten I exist over here?” I turned to see Granny leaning out of the car, looking quite irritated. Not because we’d been threatened by faceless bad guys, but because Connor was paying attention to me. And in that moment, I knew it wouldn’t matter if Connor pulled me out of a burning building. He wasn’t going to win her over because he wasn’t Damien.
I’d just have to keep them apart from now on. Connor didn’t deserve to be held against a standard that didn’t exist. He didn’t have to win her over, or Natalya over. My relationship with him could just be mine, and mine alone.
16
________
Connor
Melissa was going to be the death of me. I couldn’t imagine a day without her in it, and knew she felt the same way about me, but no one in her life was allowed to know. Not Natalya, not Granny, not her parents, not even the mailman. The mail truck had pulled up one day while we were out watering the grass together, and she’d dropped my hand like a hot potato and pretended I didn’t exist until it drove off. I also hadn’t missed the way she’d angled her stack of mail away from me so I couldn’t see it.
That was what led me here, to this Monday afternoon, a month after the stupid car chase that ended with Granny giving me the cold shoulder. Melissa was in her bathroom freshening up after work, and I was staring at the stack of mail on her counter.
Okay, staring is not quite accurate. I was also sifting through it. But that was it. I wasn’t going to open anything, not even the letter on the bottom of the stack addressed toThe Beautiful Melissa Cooke. It had no return address, but I didn’t need three guesses to know who it was from.
Damien was like toxic mold—under the surface, eating away at the foundation of our relationship. I needed an expert to find out the extent of the damage. Unfortunately, I was dating the expert, and the thought of asking her to get rid of his influence had my insides twisting.
The bathroom door opened down the hall, and the mail jumped out of my hands and fell all over the floor. I was such an idiot. I scooped it up as fast as I could, just in time to be holding it all when she walked out and stared at me.
“What are you doing?” She grinned at my panicked face, but then realizing what I was holding, she cleared her expression to something neutral and took it out my hands. Walking over to the recycle can, she sorted and dropped the junk mail into it. I noticed the letter from Damien was included in the junk mail, though she didn’t rip it in half like the credit card offers. Did that mean she would fish it out later after I left?
