Driving Me Wild

by Mia Carter

  Time to show Burke who’s boss, one way or the other.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chloe

  My thoughts are a mess.

  I shouldn’t have looked at his phone, and I know it. But now that I’ve seen it, it gnaws at me.

  She’s beautiful, like her mother.

  That had been his response to the baby’s picture.

  He’d called me beautiful, too.

  I’m not jealous of a baby. But if that was his baby, then he’s not the man I thought he was. The man I had constructed him in my mind to be.

  My shoes crunch on the gravel of the esplanade, taking me away from the hotel in a direction that doesn’t matter. I shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and walk, head down, sunlight bright in my eyes. Already my fair skin is starting to grow tight and hot on my cheeks, a summery warmth contrasting the cold, clear breeze. I should’ve brought the sunscreen.

  I rushed out.

  I didn’t think.

  But what the hell am I supposed to think? If chasing down worst-case scenarios was a qualifier for a real-world marathon, I’d win every award. I try to convince myself the mother must just be a friend. But what kind of man goes out of his way to praise a friend’s baby, tell her she’s beautiful? None of the ones I’ve known. Which leads me to believe it’s his child and this woman is or was in some sort of relationship with him. But if it is his child, what kind of new father leaves the country so near his child’s birth? She could’ve been early, that’s true. The baby did look like a newborn. Maybe he hadn’t been anticipating her until after he returned. But what kind of person sleeps with another woman, knowing his…whoever she is, is pregnant and due to pop any day? What if she’s not just “another” woman?

  The implications make me sick.

  I feel dizzy with the realization that I’d been foolish enough to think of this, Logan and me, as the start of something. But of course it can’t be. I don’t belong here. I’m scared and I’m freaked out because I slept with someone who I thought I knew, and even if the baby isn’t his, I can’t help but fall into the trap my thoughts have set for me. It’s always been there, dormant, beside my self-doubt and regret. The gutting feeling of betrayal, discovering that my last boyfriend, Drew, had been mocking me behind my back. And before him, Chad, who’d kept his dating apps on his phone, despite promise after promise to delete them. He’d keep forgetting and I’d keep forgiving, and in the end, I’d been played for an absolute fool. The needy side piece who dreamed in hearts and flowers. The conveniently fuckable joke.

  Is Logan the same as the rest of them?

  My standards for men are so low, the bar is literally on the ground and yet they always seem to be attempting to limbo beneath them.

  I walk, and I think, and I make no headway whatsoever.

  This isn’t just about the baby. Okay, it is about the baby, but that’s not the totality of my feelings, and I have enough distance from the moment and from him to be honest about that. There are things I just don’t know about Logan Weiss, for all that he’s famous and rich. I don’t know him. I don’t know whether he had a dog or a pet goldfish or whether he thinks pineapple on pizza is amazing or an affront to culinary traditions everywhere. I do know how he fucks, and what he tastes like, and how he sounds when he comes. I know that even now, my hands crave the warmth of his body, my thighs ache from the solidity of his hips, the way he’d held me. I don’t know him.

  Ergo, how could any of this have been real?

  And worse yet, if I’m the other woman—and now my worst-case scenario convinces me that I am—then what now?

  I don’t know.

  I’ve constructed a Logan in my mind. An ideal Logan.

  He isn’t real.

  This isn’t real.

  It isn’t anything.

  There’s an easy solution to all of this if I’m brave-slash-stupid enough to take it. I could just call him or even text him and ask for the truth. But how the fuck am I going to phrase that?

  Hey, so, by the way, do you have a child with another woman and what’s going on, thanks, have a great day!

  Nope.

  Or even the dreaded Can we talk?

  Hell no.

  And on top of that, he’s likely heading into a meeting right now, and I have no idea how long that will last. The last thing I want to be is the nagging woman who disrupts a man’s life just to get some emotional reassurance.

  He never promised me love. Or a relationship. All he promised me was dinner and a computer.

  I’d just inferred more. Assumed.

  And now I might be the “other woman” who just tangled herself up into something I really don’t want to be tangled up in. That’s something I could never do, would never want to do. I couldn’t bear it, knowing that something that we had shared, something that had been beautiful and amazing and wonderful and so close to perfection had been tainted like that because of a man’s dishonesty. She could just be a friend. But it’s likely that she isn’t. I don’t think it’s just my anxiety yelling at me, either. It’s just all too common these days. Men taking what they want from girls with low self-esteem.

  Girls who don’t ask before they leap. Girls who crave every scrap of attention, no matter what it costs them.

  Girls like me.

  And as I stand in line at a Robert’s Coffee located inside of a beautiful old department store, gathering my courage to order in a way that makes me seem like something other than the American tourist I so painfully am, I’m forced to confront that simple truth. We’d never gotten that far—to a conversation we so desperately should’ve had before we’d fallen into bed. Where does this go? What does it mean?

  I don’t do flings. I am not wired to do casual—but even if I were the kind of girl who was, this would still upset me.

  With my coffee in my hand, as well as whatever pastry I’d blindly pointed to in their wide glass case, I step out into the center of the city. A tram trundles by, mothers walk with their kids in strollers, people head to work or to shop or to play. A woman on a bicycle rides by, her floral skirt fluttering, groceries in the front basket. Everything so perfectly normal, so lovely and picturesque. There’s so much of the city yet to explore, but I just…

  I want to go home.

  Out of nowhere, the feeling of utter homesickness hits me, chased by despair. I find my way to a park bench and sit down, resting the paper packet in my lap. I need to be home. This isn’t fun anymore. I’m scared. Not of him, but of myself. How much I let myself get tangled up in him. The lies I told myself to pretend like this could work. I’m overreacting, I know it. But I can’t stop aching to be home in my own bed, with my own things, in a place where I can think and try to understand how I’ve got this far.

  I pull out my cell phone and shoot off a quick text to my sisters. Coming home tonight, is all it says. If the plane ticket is what Logan claimed, then I can take it and get on the next available flight.

  So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

  There are no direct flights available until tomorrow, but the somewhat confused gate agent agrees to use my ticket to cobble together a patchwork of connecting flights so I can get home. By the time she’s done scheduling them all and printing everything, I have to run to catch my first flight. With my bag on my shoulder, I speed through security and sprint past the duty-free shop.

  I make it there just in time. And as soon as I’m seated on the plane, it’s like a huge weight on my shoulders starts to lift. Sitting there, I check my phone. No texts yet, from either my sisters or Logan. I don’t know whether to feel relieved or sad about that.

  Helsinki to Frankfurt. Two hours of waiting in Frankfurt airport, my phone’s meager roaming plan way past its limit now, and disabled. I couldn’t text Logan or anyone even if I wanted to. Frankfurt to Heathrow, where I grab a sandwich at one of the airport kiosks, grateful that they let me pay in my leftover Euros since I don’t have time to get any money changed over. Then Heathrow to Keflavik, the
land waiting until the very last minute before it appears out of the icy, churning waters beneath us as we come down into wind and spitting mist.

  We disembark from the plane on a set of slippery metal stairs, and my hoodie offers no protection at all from the cutting winds. The Icelandic airport crew shuttles us onto busses painted like the aurora borealis, and I scan out across the volcanic landscape, which is almost alien in its raw beauty, resolutely thinking of nothing at all. It’s a hasty turnaround to the next flight, waiting in a holding area with flights to Chicago, Boston, and Toronto that all seem to be boarding within ten minutes of each other. I throw the remainder of my pocket change into a donation bin that has pictures of smiling children on it.

  Finally, I’m on the last stretch of the now-arduous flight home. I feel lonely and cold, no matter how many blankets the flight attendants bring me to pile on. It’s pointless to check my phone, and instead, I pull out my sketchbook.

  Lady Heroine is there, just where I left her.

  I take out my pen and begin to draw.

  In her practical trousers and worn, billowy pirate shirt, Lady Heroine goes down to the base of her tower, surveying the scrap-heap of charred armor left behind from the knights who’ve tried and failed to rescue her.

  “It takes so much work,” the Dragon says, lazily landing beside her on the grass. “To get them unshelled.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” Lady Heroine says, tugging at one of their abandoned swords, pulling it from the grass.

  The dragon shrugs. “They’re sweet inside.”

  Lady Heroine makes a face. “For you, maybe. That’s not what I’m looking for.”

  “What are you looking for, then?”

  My pen stills, hovering above the page.

  What am I looking for?

  Honesty. Truth. Transparency. Something real.

  Could Logan have offered that to me? Not if he had some secret child somewhere. If he has someone in his life who is serious enough to have a child with him, that’s a pretty big roadblock to anything I could want from a future together.

  And I know, okay, I know this could all be some big stupid misunderstanding. But regardless, seeing that baby and knowing that there were entire sides to this man I had no idea about had snapped me out of my fairytale life. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me.

  Which means that whatever I feel for him, however intense it seemed, can’t be the truth. That’s not love, right? That isn’t how it works. Love takes time, and knowing someone, and trusting them. I can’t even trust him to tell me about his (probably-maybe) love child, and he can’t trust me to not read his phone. Nothing good can come of this kind of beginning.

  Thank the force that I’ve been on birth control for years. There wasn’t any time to stop and have that messy conversation about protection, and now that I think back on it, does that mean his eagerness was proof that he really is the kind of guy to get some girl knocked up and not even care? He hadn’t asked. I hadn’t volunteered. Not until after it was too late.

  Neither of us had been doing much thinking at all.

  It doesn’t matter now.

  I cap my pen and tuck it between the pages of my notebook.

  The flight drones on and on. Hit by exhaustion, I sleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Logan

  Minutes before my meeting is supposed to start, Burke sends me a smugly worded email, telling me that he has to push it back another hour.

  A power move, and we both know it. He thinks he has me in a corner, but I’ve got a secret weapon in my back pocket. A risky hope. It may just work. I hope to fucking God it does.

  Chloe still isn’t answering me.

  She’s fine, though. I’m sure nothing is wrong.

  But something twists in my gut, a worry that I can’t explain. Something that goes beyond this meeting. Beyond even Burke, or my professional career, or my reputation.

  I’m worried about Chloe.

  I’ve never felt like this before, for anyone. All I want is just a note, a funny picture, something to tell me that she’s all right.

  She’s fine, I tell myself. Chloe is a grown adult, she lives in a big city, and she doesn’t need you.

  I shift in the chair, waiting alone in conference room J with another hour to kill and no clear understanding of why my heartbeat is rushing loudly in my ears.

  She may not need me, but I’m beginning to realize that I might just need her.

  Everything okay? I text, when the worry gets too great.

  Nothing.

  Burke saunters in twelve minutes after five, looking like the cat that caught the canary.

  Got him, I think, but I school my face into a worried frown, and I don’t stand up to shake his hand, or even offer it. I want to make him think he has me cornered. Partially because I don’t want to tip my hand, but mostly because I want him to gloat as long and as loudly as possible. Because I’ve got a recording going on my phone.

  This is going to be good. At least, I hope it will be good. It could still be very, very bad.

  Burke smiles at me.

  “So, you’ve had a chance to think about my offer?” he says, choosing the chair off to the side of the room, not the one in front of me. “Had a chance to come to your senses?”

  I shrug and give in to my annoyance with him. Burke choosing a seat where I have to move to accommodate him is another one of his little power moves, and with any other set of circumstances, I’d be justifiably annoyed. I let that mask fall onto my face, feeling my frown settle into something closer to a scowl. Burke just brightens the more annoyed I look.

  Good.

  “I’m considering it,” I say. “Some of my team has encouraged me to at least give you that.”

  Burke barks out a laugh. “Ah, led around by the nose, that’s a—”

  “Just get to the fucking point.” My words are honed into sharp blades, forged from genuine ire despite the cards I know I have in my hand. People like Burke just get under my skin. They make our industry toxic, and I’m sick of it. “I said I’d consider it. Under pressure from my team, but not because I want to. What do you have to say?”

  “You sell WhiteLight to me, lock, stock, and all of your fucking barrels, for forty-five million.”

  I can’t stop my laughter. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s a lowball offer, and you know it.”

  “It’s more than your leaking company deserves, and you know it,” Burke says. “You can’t try and fix something like this in a few hours. You think people won’t find out?”

  “You sure seem to know a lot about what I and my code can and can’t do.” I stare him down. “Why, exactly, is that?”

  Burke, naturally, isn’t at all cowed by this. He thinks I am just cottoning on to what he’s done. And he laughs again.

  “All right, hotshot. Thirty-eight million. The more you try to fix this, the more you’re gonna regret it. And when you’ve spent all your time going over the code by hand, you’re gonna be left with nothing but a sunken ship.”

  “A ship I own,” I counter. “One I control.”

  He knows I locked down the code, I think. Let him think I’m controlling and slipping up. He knows that I’ve restricted access, I almost have enough to catch him.

  Just say it, walk into my trap.

  “Control,” Burke says, a smirk on his narrow face. “And it’s all about control for you, isn’t it.”

  “When it comes to my company, yes it is,” I say. “And my intellectual property, too. You know you can’t move forward with a clone of Spectrum because you signed that NDA before you walked in the room yesterday. So where does that leave you?”

  Burke looks at me, then slouches a little further in the chair. To anyone watching, this might look like a gesture of relaxation. Comfort. But, spider-like, his right hand creeps up on the table, and he taps it, nails on the wood veneer, a drumroll for the trick he believes he’s pulling off.

  Focus. Think. Wait.

  “So I
did,” Burke agrees, mildly. “So I did. But then again, you’re in the position of having a sinking ship of a company, with no offers for farther venture capital from yesterday’s oh-so-carefully-guarded meeting. Except mine. So where does that leave you?”

  I shrug. He’s getting worked up, I can practically smell it on him. The smile on his face is brittle now, instead of sure.

  “I’d say it leaves me right here. And you still haven’t impressed me.”

  Burke’s face splits into a grin again. “So that’s your plan? Try and fix it up, change it, take a run at it again until someone bites?”

  “Change is inherent to the process,” I reply, feeling much more relaxed the more aggravated he becomes, but I can’t show it. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Burke scoffs, and he straightens up, leaning forward, an accusatory tilt to his head. “You think you’re really hot shit, don’t you?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” I lean back a little in my chair, hands flat on the tops of my thighs, angling my body away from his as if I’m intimidated by him. “Maybe I learned some new things during this conference. Maybe I wanted to implement those ideas straightaway. How does that devalue my company? If anything, wouldn’t my entirely hypothetical actions make sense, given this leak you were so kind to point out in yesterday’s meeting?”

  Burke smiles a little at this. “So you still have no idea where the leak is coming from. And you think locking down the network—”

  “Did Chris tell you that just now?” I say, cutting across him with a smile on my face. “That was quick.”

  “He didn’t have—” Burke stops abruptly, his face blossoming splotchy red as soon as he realizes he’s given himself away. And given the mole away, too, apparently. “What game are you playing?”

  I laugh out loud at this and take my phone slowly out of my jacket pocket, setting it, facedown, on the table in front of me. “Chris Gerrard, the person who’s been feeding you information. His was the only code that contained any changes pertaining to that layer of Spectrum’s functionality. So where does that leave you?”