Bad Boy Blues (Get Wilde Book 3)

by Amelia Wilde

  Jackson is not a passing phase.

  Fuck, he’s so not a passing phase.

  He runs a hand down my shoulder as he passes, and something in his eyes tells me he knows just how fleeting this night will be. That it’s almost over.

  I square my shoulders and face the door, waiting to follow him out into the hall.

  “Do you think this was worth it?” I blurt out before his hand reaches the doorknob?

  “What?” He turns back toward, his forehead wrinkled.

  I gesture back toward the room, toward the bed. “This. Hooking up—getting together like this. Even if…”

  “Even if we never do it again?” What I’m seeing in his eyes is infinite sadness. The time went by too quickly. My heart pounds in my chest. Jackson takes a deep breath and looks into my eyes, the blue of his own eyes piercing right into my gut. “Yeah,” he says, lifting a hand to his hair and smoothing it down. “It was worth it.”

  The silence between us is laced with another rising tension that I’m sure we’ll never be able to take advantage of. Not if we walk out of here right now. It’ll be too easy to slip back into my old patterns of avoiding him, of remaining totally immersed in sorority life. In being the Harvest Queen. In dating boring, handsome Tyler Ashworth.

  “Okay,” I say lamely, my voice nearly a whisper. What the hell else am I going to say? I don’t have a follow-up question. I desperately want to keep him talking forever, to stay in this little cocoon of the past forever, but that’s just not going to be an option. I need to let it go, once and for all.

  Jackson turns back toward the door and reaches for the knob.

  “Fuck,” he mutters under his breath.

  “What?”

  When he looks at me again, his eyebrows are raised, and he shakes his head just a little, like he can’t believe this is happening.

  “It’s locked.”

  “Uh…unlock it?”

  “From the outside.”

  14

  Jackson

  Of fucking course it’s going to happen this way. Just when things are getting awkward and heavy—this isn’t what I want, not at all—we discover that we’re locked into this room.

  Suddenly, the room seems like it’s closing in around me. I don’t want to have some sad fucking discussion about the way things used to be. I don’t want to go around and around on the what-ifs with Alyssa until we’re both regretting everything from the past two years. Why should she regret anything she’s done? She traded me in for a life that will probably take her farther than I ever could.

  Even that thought doesn’t ring true in my mind. I might not give a fuck about getting a nine to five and commuting to the office, but someday I’ll put my degree to work and be successful enough as it is.

  Alyssa, though—she’ll be in the goddamn stratosphere. With the way she looks, and the slimy men she has access to, there’s no way she’ll be anything less than one of the richest women on the block.

  “Fuck,” I say, the strange tension of the moment arcing through my back.

  “What?” There’s a tinge of worry in Alyssa’s voice—a hint of tears to come. I fucking hate it.

  I give her a look like I can’t fucking believe this is happening, because I can’t.

  “It’s locked.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Uh…unlock it?”

  “From the outside.”

  She takes a breath, lets it out. “Are you sure?”

  I turn the doorknob again. It doesn’t budge. I jiggle it once, then twice, finally putting my weight into it. No matter what I do, the door doesn’t open.

  Alyssa steps forward and pushes me out of the way. “Let me try.”

  She grabs it with both hands, pulling backward, testing every angle of the doorknob. She pulls so hard that I see a couple of beads of sweat appear at her hairline.

  “Okay,” she says finally, dropping her hands to her sides. “It’s locked.”

  “Yeah.”

  She bites her lip, looking at me, and waits.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Well, we can bang on the door and scream.”

  I look up at the ceiling, exasperated. It’s probably our only option, but the last thing on earth that I want—aside from being stuck in here like a goddamn prisoner—is to have to be broken out by Mysterious Professor. Not that I give a fuck what people think of me, but it’s going to make life on campus really fun if everyone’s talking about the guy who got himself locked into a room at the professor’s mansion for the next month.

  With a sigh, Alyssa turns back to the door and puts her palms flat against it like she’s gathering her strength to call for help?

  Me? I go back into the room.

  When I don’t move back to her side, she turns around and faces me. “What are you doing?”

  I let my eyes travel slowly over the entire room. Before, I was in such a hurry to punish Alyssa—and then fuck her, and damn it if my cock isn’t getting hard just thinking about it—that I didn’t look at the details. Who the hell would? Not any man that I know of.

  “Looking for another doorway out of here.”

  I rule out behind the bed, because it looks way too heavy to move, and who would put a giant bed like that in front of a concealed door. Same for the fireplace. The fireplace is on an outer wall, so even if it spun around like one of those trick panels in the movies, we’d just drop down to the ground and probably die from the fall.

  There’s a dresser against the other wall, which leaves us with about an eight-foot span to the right of the bed. That’s where I go and lock my eyes on the wall, looking for any sign of a hidden passage. It’s desperate and fucking stupid, I know it—I just can’t help it. I’m just not willing to throw myself on the mercy of all the drunken idiots at this party. Not yet.

  “Are you serious?” Alyssa says from the door. When I don’t answer, she comes to stand beside me. “There is no secret door out of here.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She takes in a sharp breath. “I don’t know, but why the hell would anyone have a secret passageway in a mansion like this?”

  I laugh at that. “Why wouldn’t you have a secret passageway in a mansion like this? Look around. This place is crazy.”

  She takes in the decor—intricate wallpaper, heavy furniture, the overall dark mood of the room—and blows out her breath through her lips. “Fine. It’s that kind of mansion. But what makes you think there’s a door in this room?”

  “This.”

  It’s subtle, and if I hadn’t been so fucking desperate to get out, I never would have noticed it. But three panels on the wall don’t quite match up with the others. The wallpaper’s pattern covers up the seams. But there’s definitely something there.

  I squat down and run my hands along the molding, stained dark to match the furniture, and—fuck yes. There it is. There’s the slightest dip in the modeling that just fits my thumb. A press, a click—and my heart speeds up as a panel in the wall slides open, revealing a short, narrow hallway.

  Alyssa puts her hand on my shoulder and slides it down so that her fingers curl into mine as I stand up. “Holy shit,” she says, her voice a breathy whisper. “This is so fucking awesome.”

  Energy spikes through me, just like when I’d wait at the curb a block down from her house in the dark, heart in my throat, eyes sharp for any movement.

  She looks up at me with a wicked smile. “Let’s do this.”

  God, I missed her.

  15

  Alyssa

  I can’t fucking believe that there’s a secret passageway out of this room, but I can believe that Jackson found it. He was always looking for a different way out—of my house, of school, of the boring lives we were imprisoned in during high school. It surprised me when he announced he was coming to LSU with me. He was the kind of guy I pictured moving to New York City with a suitcase of clothes and living in some dive with six other people just to be part of a scene that nobody saw. I wanted to be
that kind of girl, but deep down, all my recklessness was shallower than a puddle on the sidewalk. When junior year had rolled around, I, like everybody else, had applied for college—even if I wasn’t going to admit it.

  This is the kind of adventure I’d imagined having in that hot, blink-of-an-eye summer before we left. Exhilarating and forbidden. I didn’t imagine that when that day finally dame, I’d be dressed as Marylin Monroe, clinging to a sexy Sherlock Holmes’ hand.

  Jackson is first into the hallway, tugging me along behind him. It’s definitely dusty. My skin crawls at the thought of spiders, but the firelight coming from the room behind us doesn’t illuminate the ceiling and I don’t dare look up. Edgy—right. I’m just bracing for the feeling of a skittering creature coming down on my bare arms.

  At the other end of the hall is another doorway.

  Jackson leans toward it, listening. All I can hear is the sound our breath and the fire behind us.

  “Wait,” I say suddenly, darting back the seven steps. I can’t see the wall on this side of the door, so I pull my phone out of my pocket and use it as a flashlight. At about shoulder height there’s a switch in the door, like one of those old-fashioned light switches. How old is this mansion?

  When I press it, the panel slides closed, leaving us in almost complete darkness. The crack outlining the panel is razor thin.

  Jackson’s phone lights up at the other end of the hall, and I go to meet him, shining my own at the wall.

  “Do you hear anything?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head.

  The second door has an identical switch. My heart is in my throat. Just because we can’t hear anything doesn’t mean there’s nobody on the other side. I’m not worried about getting into trouble—being with Jackson has turned up my old who-gives-a-shit attitude about authority and homeowners—but I’m a little nervous about coming face to face with…

  I don’t know. Could be anybody, given this party.

  Jackson reaches up and presses the switch, and a panel slides open.

  The room that’s revealed isn’t lit by firelight. Instead, recessed lights along the outer edge of the floor shine up in a gentle glow that’s obviously meant to inspire a sexual mood.

  Or maybe that’s the furniture.

  Jackson opens his mouth, then closes it again. “What the fuck…” His tone has more wonder than anything. I feel exactly the same.

  Jackson and I could spend hours in here. Days.

  There are…I don’t even know how to describe them. Benches and tables, a collection of whips in hangars on the walls, a giant X-frame with straps that look like they’d put a delicious pressure on wrists and ankles. The room is easily three times the size of the bedroom we’ve just come from, and it hits me: that room is actually for afterward.

  Holy Christ.

  I can’t help myself.

  I cross to a dresser on the wall nearby and pull open the top drawer to reveal a collection of meticulously arranged butt plugs. I bite my lip as Jackson comes to stand beside me. After a minute, he puts his hand over mine and slides it closed.

  I groan a little. “Why didn’t we find this room first?”

  The look he gives me is half longing, half knowing. “It’s a good thing. We’d never come out.” He raises his head, looking toward the door. “Did you hear that?”

  Giggling, the sound of stumbling feet half-muffled by the carpet in the hallway. If it’s Jeannine, or somebody else I know, the last thing I want is to have a discussion about this room with them.

  “Let’s go.”

  We both creep toward the door. The footsteps recede into the distance, leaving only silence.

  When it’s been quiet for several heartbeats, Jackson pulls the door open, and we hurry out into the empty hallway and back toward the door we came from. He doesn’t hesitate, going down the stairs two at a time.

  We burst back out into the lobby, and the music hits me full force. The party is still going on.

  “Alyssa!” someone shrieks, close behind me, and I turn to see Jeannine, face flushed with champagne and dancing. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I—”

  I turn to look at Jackson, to see what explanation I should offer, if any…and he’s gone.

  He’s just not there.

  My mouth drops open.

  How did he get away so fast?

  My heart plummets into my shoes. Is this really the end of…whatever this was?

  If it is, why do I feel so unbelievably disappointed? Why am I suddenly on the verge of tears?

  I force a smile onto my face and turn back to Jeannine, who doesn’t seem to have noticed that anything is wrong at all. “Exploring.”

  Someone sidles up to her, throwing his arm around her and pulling it in. They share a sloppy kiss, and then she pushes him playfully away and reaches for me, hooking her arm through mine.

  “Come dance!” she says at the top of her voice, but I shake my head.

  “I’m going to go.”

  “Awww, don’t…” she pouts, but I give her a quick hug and back away. I can’t stand to be here without him. I can’t stand to be here with him.

  I just have to go.

  16

  Jackson

  In the light of Sunday afternoon, I lie on my back on my extra-long twin in my dorm room and stare through the window at the leaves on the tree outside. Someone down the hall is playing shitty music at an ungodly level, even though I can guarantee that at least three-quarters of the guys on this floor are wickedly hungover after Saturday night.

  It’s the fucking epitome of uncool to live in the dorms as a junior, but it was by far the cheapest option, and if I’m going to move anywhere after college, I’m going to need all the money I can get.

  Someone pounds on the door down the hall, and the music goes down a few decibels.

  Great. Now I can focus my attention back on Alyssa, where it’s been since I walked out of that party last night.

  I just couldn’t stand there in the hall with her, knowing that the stilted conversation about running into each other on campus would come. I didn’t want to exchange a damn word with her about how nice it was an how we should really talk or get coffee sometimes.

  I know I’m never going to see her again, and it feels like being gutted with a dull knife.

  I roll over onto my side and reach for my phone.

  Nothing there, from anybody. That’s not a surprise.

  Sleep was restless once I got back last night, and this morning at six I couldn’t fucking stand it anymore, so I took my shit down the hall and stood in the shower until I thought I would boil alive. In the dorms, hot water never runs out.

  Cleansed of the party, I caught another few hours of sleep, but I dreamed about Alyssa so vividly that I woke up reaching for her.

  It’s like I’ll never be free of her.

  I’ll give myself another hour of this, and then I’ll go get some food. Maybe the Mexican place. Who the fuck cares?

  Make yourself care, I think. Moping around like a useless asshole isn’t going to do me any good.

  I lose track of time. The shadows from the tree outside play across the wall as the sun goes across the sky. Has it been an hour yet?

  My eyelids are heavy, and I’m just considering going back to sleep when there’s a knock on the door.

  My eyes snap open. It was a soft knock, but sound travels in the dorm, so it could have been across the hall. All my nerves are on alert.

  The knock comes again.

  With a sigh I throw my legs off the side of the bed and run my hands through my hair. I’m dressed in jeans and a plaid button-down. I almost took the pants off when I got back on the bed, which is at least convenient for this moment. Whoever is on the other side of the door isn’t going to give a shit, anyway.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and take a breath, not bothering to look through the peephole.

  My stomach turns over when I see who’s standing in the hallway.

 
It’s Alyssa, only she doesn’t look anything like she did last night. Not that I expected her to still be in costume.

  Her hair isn’t curled to within an inch of its life—it’s just wavy, brushing her shoulders. And she’s wearing makeup, but she doesn’t look like the sorority girls who are in my classes, airbrushed to within an inch of their lives. She looks like a grownup version of the girl I used to know, wearing jeans and a tight-fitting gray hoodie that absolutely does her justice.

  “Hi,” she says, looking up at me, her green eyes huge, not hidden by thick layers of mascara and eyeliner.

  “Hey.”

  A charge goes through me as we look at each other for a long moment. What is she doing here?

  “Do you want to come in?”

  “Yeah.”

  She steps in, and I close the door behind us, flipping the lock. “That won’t stick, will it?” she says, shrugging at the lock, and I let out a courtesy laugh.

  “No, it won’t stick.”

  She looks around the room. There’s almost nothing in here she would recognize after two years of being apart, but she picks out the one object she would. “You still have that?”

  My guitar has been with me since freshman year of high school. I shrug. “I don’t play that much.”

  When I did play, it was only for her. I don’t know why I’ve kept it here, when space is at such a premium.

  No…I know why.

  “Listen,” she says abruptly, stepping closer to me. I inhale her, and my entire body relaxes in spite of myself. “Last night…”

  “I know,” I say, holding both hands up in front of me. “It was a one-time thing. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “That’s not what I came here to say.”

  “It was fun while it lasted, but—what?”

  “That’s not what I came here to say.” Alyssa is smiling, her eyes shining with tears. “Last night was…it was everything I’ve been missing for two years. But even if I could find another man who liked to do those things with me, it wouldn’t be worth anything. Not without you.”