Driving Me Wild

by Mia Carter

  Burke presses his thin lips together, eyes bulging a little in his red, angry face. It makes him look almost like a lizard, I think. Some kind of weird, red lizard. Suddenly, all of this is hilarious to me. How easy it had been to catch him, all because of his own temper.

  “You can’t prove a fucking thing,” Burke says, and the veneer of calm assurance slips from him completely, shattering to the ground as he stands. “Not one fucking thing.”

  “Good thing you signed that NDA, and Chris did too,” I say, not even standing as he tromps over to the room’s exit. “That’ll definitely make cleanup much easier.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I expect your contact information is still good, so my legal team can get ahold of you about all of this,” I say, watching him as he shoves tables and chairs out of his way to race to the door.

  Only then do I stand, rising above him with a hum of satisfaction and vindication in my veins. Burke throws an incoherent curse at me over his shoulder, and I pick up my phone, tap to end the recording and to save it. It backs up instantly to my private home server. I’ve got him.

  I cannot wait to tell Chloe about this. All the while, as Burke had been wheedling and laughing at me, it had been Chloe’s face that had kept me grounded. Her smile, the memory of her laughter and the sweetness in her eyes, that had carried me through this shithole of a day.

  Because I’d had something to come back to. Her. That smile. That sweet, perfect body, the promise of more of it, as much of me as she wanted, she could take.

  I’m almost high on vindication and restless energy when I step out of the conference center and head out into the sunshine. I check my phone, verifying that the audio is safe and secure, yes, but switching quickly over to my text messages.

  Everything okay?

  Still no reply.

  I frown down at it, my pace slowing just a bit.

  I’m heading back to the hotel, I text again. Unless you wanted to meet up?

  It doesn’t even say she’s read the first message I sent.

  Suddenly, it hits me. I’d been simmering too deeply in the stew of anxiety about this meeting, but something had been off between us, too. I don’t want this. It scares me, how much more worried I am about Chloe than my own business right now. Yes, I want to succeed and protect my employees, save for the one that’s been leaking company secrets, but that’s for legal to handle. I don’t really want to have my hands in that, or in the code, or even a part of any of it. And I’ve known it for longer than I want to acknowledge.

  I’m tired.

  More than tired. I’m weary of it, all of it. It hasn’t been making me happy for a long time. And it took being with Chloe, being truly happy, to realize what I could have instead.

  But she’s not answering.

  I make it back to the hotel, heart pounding in my chest from a speed walk that turned practically into a sprint. When I get up there, I want to see her lounging on the bed, or coming out of the shower, or smiling at me from the couch, tugging on the laces to her yellow shoes.

  Nothing.

  No bag, no sign of her in the bathroom. Her things are just…gone.

  She’s gone.

  The realization hits me like a slap in the face. I don’t understand. Where did she go? Is she okay? I check my messages again, standing in the middle of the neatly cleaned suite, impersonal and cold without her things strewn around the space.

  No response still.

  What the hell is happening? What had made her run? She’d mentioned that men before had treated her badly, but I had resolved never to do that. Even before I had known what this was, I had been sure of that. From the very start, I hadn’t wanted to frighten her. But it had gone beyond that feeling. It was something more than just concern. Chloe had already become important to me.

  I would never just walk out on her without saying anything. And yet here I am, staring at an empty hotel room. The reality of it just can’t quite compute.

  If she’d been taken… No. I can’t think like that. There has to be a rational explanation. I feel sick to my stomach with worry as I make the last call I can think of, the one that will tell me whether she left or something worse happened.

  On the other end, when the airline representative eventually picks up after what seems like two hours of waiting, I hear the truth of it. Chloe’s ticket had been used this morning. She’s really gone.

  I don’t know what to do. And my texts are still unanswered, unseen.

  The elation of the meeting suddenly breaks, and I feel something inside of me shatter. It aches. I didn’t know how much I needed her until this moment. Or how damn close I was to something more than just need, or desire, or empty lust.

  It cuts me to the bone. For the second time on this fucking cursed trip, I feel like I’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, back to my childhood.

  The first time, Burke cutting me down.

  And this, the feeling of being walked out on, being left behind.

  I’ve had my revenge on Burke, but it’s this one, this echo of an older pain, that makes my gut twist. If only I could talk to her, figure out what happened, why she left. I know I’m a lot, I know I’m intense, but I never wanted to frighten her. I just wanted to know why I wasn’t good enough to make someone stay.

  To make someone try.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chloe

  The final plane lands at my home airport, and after what feels like another hour waiting to get off the plane, I finally breathe the familiar, rain-scented air of home. Ironic, me calling on Dryv to head back to my apartment. The driver is a middle-aged woman who cheerily tries to draw me out of my morose shell by detailing her past employment adventures as a realtor, why she hated it, how she sold a house to her daughter, and a half-dozen other things I really don’t care about. I have a discount on the rides, but I don’t even want to think about how much money I’ve spent on this trip so far. I don’t care about that right now.

  Tomorrow I’ll care. Or maybe the day after.

  Not too sure yet. Priority level of caring: low.

  My quiet apartment greets me with the scent of musty, rotten takeout, the trash I forgot to take down to the dumpster before I left on my little magical fucking adventure. Wearily, I take the garbage bag out, barefoot in the rain as I wade through the apartment’s parking lot to toss it in the bin.

  When I come back, I wipe my feet on my “No thank you we don’t want any” welcome mat and spray some lemon-sage air freshener around the can, and in my kitchen in general. I cough and wave some of the mist away.

  I’m so tired. My body has decided that, yup, that’s enough being awake for now.

  I stumble to my bedroom, toss my bag on the floor, strip down, and fall into bed.

  Into a definitely unoccupied, single-person-only bed. My bed. At last.

  I feel numb. Not just tired, but stripped away, void of color. I feel more melancholy than five simultaneous My Chemical Romance concerts playing at half speed.

  My last thoughts before I fall asleep are of Logan’s eyes. Dark and sweet. The smile on his mouth. The way his hands held me, caressed me. Maybe I shouldn’t have left like that, but I’m too exhausted even for guilt. I shove it down and cover over it with my blankets and my old familiar self-doubt.

  A dream. Only a dream.

  That’s all this ever was. Or will be.

  …

  I sleep for hours. Possibly days. The light is all strange when a sound in my apartment wakes me, and for the briefest of wonderful, terrible moments, I’m back there, with Logan. Listening to him get ready for the day, thinking of the way his body had awakened mine—

  Rubbing at my bleary, sleep-crusted eyes, I am greeted with the familiar sight of my own apartment, and my heart, which doesn’t know whether to sink or rise at this, just does a little sad sort of ka-thump in my chest. I nestle back down into my blankets and listen to the noises coming through my half-closed door.

  Miranda and Eleni. My sisters. I’d
know those voices anywhere.

  Of course. I’ve given both of them a spare key, and growing up with very little boundaries between the three of us means that the moment they think I need comfort, they’ll show up to dispense it, one way or another. It’s that thought that makes tears start to well in my eyes. Their unconditional, if a bit smothering, love. Much as I compare myself to them on a near-daily basis, I really do love them.

  The second sensation that draws me even further out of my sleep is the smell of home cooking. And it’s that smell which pulls me out of bed, makes me grab a pair of mismatched, though clean, pajamas, and wrap myself in my flower-print robe.

  As expected, my sisters are sitting on my couch, a mug of tea in each of their hands. They both stop talking and look at me in that surprised sort of way that people do when you’ve just caught them talking about you.

  “Chloe,” my older sister says, and then Eleni stands up, putting her mug of tea down and wrapping me in a hug.

  “I’m fine,” I say, mostly into her hair and shoulder, as she pats me on the back. “I’m fine, really.”

  Eleni gives me a kiss on the cheek, and over her shoulder, through the jungle of curls, I can see Miranda standing up as well. She gives me a hug, and then Eleni gives me a third mug of tea, and then we’re all sitting around my coffee table, blowing on too-hot tea like it’s a perfectly normal occurrence, the two of them showing up here.

  “We brought food,” Eleni says.

  “So—” Miranda says, but Eleni shushes her.

  “She’ll tell us when she’s ready,” my not-so-little sister says before fixing her deep blue gaze on me. “You will tell us, right?”

  I nod, sip my tea, and wince.

  When I’m ready. Will I ever be ready? Did any of that trip just happen, or did I hallucinate it?

  Miranda presses her lips together and forcibly prevents herself from rolling her equally deep, equally blue eyes at me. I’m struck, yet again, as always, by my sisters. Miranda is all buttoned-up business, in a cream-colored silk blouse with a fluttery necktie that I just know I’d somehow dip into marinara sauce or color with paint within the first four and a half minutes of wearing. She’s paired it with navy dress slacks and shiny patent pumps with a peek of distinctive red sole. Her black hair is smoothed back into an elegant, sizable chignon, low at the nape of her neck, and her pearl earrings are silver-gray and huge and definitely real. Basically casual daywear for Miranda.

  By contrast, Eleni is wearing a long, paisley dress in shades of muted peach and a loose kimono-type jacket, trimmed in cream eyelet lace and fringe. Wood and metal bangles on her slim wrists clink slightly as she tucks her bare feet up underneath her and leans over the arm of my couch. Moonstone and silver rings on her fingers catch the light. Her glossy curls are wild and untamed, but in a I-just-woke-up-like-this sort of way. Hell, she probably did just wake up like this.

  I scrub a hand through my own hair and wince at the tangles.

  “It’s complicated,” I begin.

  Miranda leans forward. Eleni sips her tea.

  I take a deep breath, and then I begin to tell them exactly what happened in explicit detail. The keys, the flight, the hotel. Okay, maybe not everything in explicit detail—there are some things even sisters don’t share. I tell them about the way I’d felt about him, before I’d even allowed myself to know it. Furiously blushing, and being as vague as I can, I tell them about the party and how we’d gone back to the hotel. Eleni gives me a look, and Miranda gives me a grin, and I bury my face in my hands and groan at the pair of them.

  “Come onnnnn,” I say. “How old are you two? People have sex, okay? Adults have sex.”

  “Oh, I know,” Eleni says brightly. “Last night, I caught up with Rowan from my kundalini yoga class, and you wouldn’t believe how flexible he—”

  “TMI,” Miranda says. “I do not need to know that my baby sister gets her jollies doing upward-facing horndog, okay?”

  Eleni laughs and waggles her eyebrows at me from over the top of her mug.

  “But here’s what I don’t understand,” Miranda continues, setting her own mug down on my coffee table after doing the searching thing with her eyes that I just know means she’s looking for, but unable to find, a coaster. “Why did you leave? If he was so nice and so good, why did you come home?”

  I sigh and shake my head. “I looked at his phone. I know I shouldn’t have, but it was right there, and there was a photo, and I just—”

  “Ooo,” Both of my sisters make the exact same noise.

  “—freaked out,” I continue, over their accompaniment. “I just got so scared.”

  “Other girlfriend?” Miranda offers.

  “Boyfriend?” Eleni counters.

  “Tinder profile?”

  “Freaky Craigslist ad looking for used panties?”

  “Ugh,” Miranda says, wrinkling her nose. “I hate that word. Panties. It sounds like something you’d buy in a vending machine.”

  “Rowan likes it when I don’t wear underwear,” Eleni says, her gaze growing wistful and distant and faintly besotted. “He says it’s more natural—”

  “Yes, well, that’s great to know, I’m super glad we’ve turned this into a conversation about your sex life,” I grumble, yearning for the brain bleach.

  Eleni grins and shakes her head. But it’s Miranda who continues the interrogation.

  “What did you find?”

  I sigh. “A picture of a baby. A newborn.”

  Both of my sisters blink at me expectantly.

  “His baby,” I continue. “I think, anyway.”

  Eleni’s brows go up, and Miranda makes an incredulous noise behind her pursed red lips.

  “Wait, hold on, you think?” Eleni says. “You… A guy has a picture of a baby on his phone, and you assume he’s the father?”

  “Well, yeah?” I say, feeling stupid, even as I try to compose my thoughts. “It looked like him.”

  “Babies don’t look like anything,” Miranda says. “They look like potatoes.”

  “They do not look like potatoes!” Eleni shoots back, incensed. “They have their own personalities, their own souls, from the very first moment they—”

  “It had big, dark eyes. He has big, dark eyes,” I say, trying to sound reasonable and failing. “And it wasn’t just a picture, it was a text, the baby’s mother sent him a photo and he said the baby was beautiful, just like her mom. That he couldn’t wait to hold her.”

  “So he has a sister.” Eleni shrugs.

  “Nope.”

  “A sister-in-law?” Miranda asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, shit.” Miranda says, picking up her tea and leaning back in her seat. “You can’t assume, though. Most newborns have kind of darkish, blue-ish eyes, right?”

  “Oh.” I suppose that is true but…

  “And did he seem cagey, at all?” Eleni asks. “Like, did he seem… How was his energy?”

  “His energy was energetic!” I throw my hands in the air in exasperation. “Enthusiastic, okay. Nothing seemed off.”

  “So when you asked him about this, he said what?”

  Miranda’s eyes meet mine. I settle my hands back into my lap and stare at them, forefingers pushing back the cuticles on each thumbnail in a habitual, nervous gesture.

  “I didn’t ask him,” I say. “I just left.”

  Eleni is the one to respond. “So you—”

  “Don’t say it, please,” I mutter.

  “—you looked at a guy’s phone, assumed he was a literal daddy and not just a sugar daddy—”

  “Well when you say it like that,” I grumble.

  “—and then you left him and didn’t even ask him about it, even though all babies look the same—”

  “Ha!” Miranda crows. “See, they do.”

  “Chloe, honey, I say this in love and light,” Eleni says, pressing the palms of her hands together and leveling me her very best enlightened yoga teacher face. “What the honest and actu
al fuck?”

  “I was scared, okay?” I exclaim, getting to my feet, conscious of my ratty pajamas and my messy hair and my cluttered apartment, turning to catch a glimpse of my broken computer, still sitting forlornly on my desk over by the window. “I was fucking scared. You were the one who told me this was crazy, running off like this, and you know what? You were right. It was crazy. And maybe I realized that, and that’s why I came back home.”

  Eleni’s eyes widen.

  “I got scared.” I dab at my face and realize I’m crying. About what, I don’t know. Maybe it’s self-pity, maybe it’s the loss of a relationship that never was. Maybe I’m just crying because my sisters came for me when they knew I had been gone and when they knew I needed them. At the same time, though, I ache to be alone.

  No, not alone.

  I miss Logan.

  “Guys like him and girls like me—”

  “Oh Lo-Lo,” Miranda says, reverting back to my childhood nickname. The way I’d said my own name, before I could fully pronounce it. “What’s this really about?”

  I shudder, fighting back tears, and stomp around the half-high island wall to get into my kitchen. On the counter, a spray bottle of orange zest all-surface cleaner grabs my attention, and I reach for it, blinking back the blur in my eyes. I grab a rag and start cleaning my counters, just to have something to do besides screaming. Or sobbing.

  “There was always going to be something,” I say. “It was all too good to be true, and it was better to end it before—”

  “But he was good to you, right?” Miranda, who has now stood up from her chair, slowly approaches the island’s bar-height counter and rests her elbows on it. “That’s what you said. He was good to you.”

  “He’s a very nice person,” I say, but Miranda cuts me off.

  “No, he was good to you. Your words, not mine.”

  I look up at her through tear-hazy eyes. “You don’t understand. I love you, both of you, but you don’t understand.”