by Huss, JA
I’m so angry now, I’m shaking.
“You hired me to bring her back here because you and your friends were done waiting.”
He doesn’t even bother to deny it. But he’s still not convinced he’s done yet. There’s still a slight glimmer of hope in his eyes that there’s a solution to this little snag in his plans.
“What are you trying to say?” he says. “You’re calling the police? You’re going to get me arrested? For what? Playing sex games with my stepdaughter? It’s not even illegal. She’s twenty-five years old.”
“Yeah, let’s just get to the point. I’m walking out of here with Lyssa right now. And you… well, you’re going to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Because her real father had no idea this was happening, but now that he does—”
Baylor laughs. “Now that he does… what?” And that last part definitely comes out as a threat.
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. That maybe, deep down inside, this man had some decency.
But it has, and he doesn’t.
So I say, “You know what? Forget about him. Forget about all of that. I sent that whole text stream to a friend of mine—she’s actually here, covering the wedding for the paper.”
“What?”
“Yeah. So. You know. If you don’t let Lyssa leave with me right the fuck now my friend is gonna post that shit all over the internet. Forget about the police, and jail, and morals, and the right thing, and how one raises a daughter, and people coming after you another day. Because Baylor—you’re about to have a fucking PR nightmare on your hands in less than thirty minutes.”
His chest falls. Like he was holding his breath and he just let it out.
The saddest part of this whole confrontation is that he’s worried about his image. That’s what changes his mind in this moment. He’s worried about what people will think of him. How they will talk about him. He’s worried about Twitter headlines and talking heads on the news. He’s worried about stock prices.
Not her.
Not Lyssa.
When I look at her she’s still standing at the bottom of the steps. And even though she’s all the way across the room I can tell she’s crying.
I turn back to Baylor and say, “I’m walking out now. And I’m taking Lyssa with me. And if you ever come near us I will—”
“You’ll what?” he growls, mustering up one final act of defiance.
“You know what? Never mind that either. Feel free to come near us. Because then I’ll make sure you get what you deserve.”
I turn my back to him and open the door. Walk over to Lyssa and take her hand. She said something that first day that comes back to me as I do this.
So that’s what I say to her now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - LYSSA
When I come down the stairs in my disgusting wedding dress I hear nothing. My world is blessedly blank. People gather around me, attendants fixing my hair, or my dress, or my makeup. They rush around with mouths opening and closing. Expressions on their tired, stressed faces. Exasperated at my lack of… involvement.
But they too, are all silent.
I can’t hear any of it.
“Lyssa!”
But I hear that.
I turn my head to find Mason pulling open the door to the office. But my father quickly slams it closed again. Leans down into Mason’s space and begins to talk.
I want to reach out to Mason. Tell him everything. Make him understand. But he’s locked up in that office. Being told what to do, and what will happen next, and that’s it.
That’s the end.
I turn my head to look out the window and see Dickerson standing in a group of tuxedoed men. Laughing, and joking, and oblivious.
Except, I finally face the fact that none of these people are oblivious. That their silence about what’s happening here is just like my silence.
And then the world goes quiet again and I give in to it and start to cry.
But there’s no sobbing. There’s no sound at all. Just… tears of resignation.
I know we’re supposed to save ourselves.
We’re told that in many ways when we’re little girls. But we’re also told, that every once in a while, a prince appears on a white horse and makes all the bad things go away. But… that almost never happens. If she can’t muster up the will to save herself, then the princess must be left to rot in her tower.
So I know it’s wrong to wish for a prince.
I watch the silent argument going on behind the French doors of the office and internalize that wrongness.
It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.
But… I really need a fucking prince.
The doors of the office burst open and Mason walks out, straightening his jacket. He walks straight towards me, hand extended. He takes mine in his as I stare into those brilliant green eyes, and he says…
I don’t know.
Because I can’t hear him.
And I think… it’s too late. I’m gone and I’m never coming back this time.
There is no Wild Thing in my future.
But Mason either doesn’t care or understands. Because he leads me out of that house and walks me right up to the Mercedes. Opens my door, helps me in, buckles my seatbelt, and then…
We drive away.
And still… my world is silent.
He talks and talks and I hear nothing.
We drive for a while. Maybe even a long while. And then he pulls over, reaches into the back seat, and drops a t-shirt and a pair of sweats into my lap.
I just look at them as he pushes me forward and unzips my wedding dress. Drags it down my upper body, then unbuckles my seatbelt and helps me get it past my hips and legs.
He pulls the t-shirt over my head and the only thing I think about is how it smells like him. A smile creeps up my face as he helps me pull on the sweats, then buckles my seatbelt again, and drives off.
I watch his mouth move. Every once in a while he takes his eyes off the road to glance at me. But still… my world is silent.
And I think… I’m broken now. It’s too late.
But once we’re back on the highway he presses the button to make the convertible top fold back and the wind rushes past my face and blows my perfectly coiffed hair. The sun beats down on my body and makes it hot.
And then he reaches for my wedding dress, all bunched up in the middle between us, and hands it to me.
I look at him as he speaks. And even though I can’t hear him, I know what he’s asking me to do.
I unbuckle my seat belt, turn around in the seat, and throw the wedding dress out behind us.
It flutters for a few seconds and then crashes to the ground, and… I hear birds. And the rush of wind.
And Mason, still talking.
I settle in my seat and turn to him.
Because even though I didn’t hear what he said to me back at the mansion, I did hear what he said to me back at the mansion.
He said, “I choose you.”
So I stare up into those eyes of his, remembering the first time I saw them. Remember who and what I was that night.
Wild Thing.
And say, “You didn’t come in on a white horse. But I guess a Mercedes will do.”
EPILOGUE - MASON
My mother… God, I’m almost afraid to say this. But… she’s responding to the treatment. Lyssa and I joined her in Sweden a few weeks after I rode in on my white fucking Mercedes and saved the princess.
Or drove her Mercedes and became the villain in her stepfather’s tragic fairytale.
I’ll take it.
We couldn’t leave earlier because Baylor stole her passport right out of her apartment that day he was waiting for us. So we had to put in for a replacement.
Lyssa was livid. She raged, and ranted, and kicked, and screamed, and cursed, and…
And I loved every fucking minute of that tantrum.
I hope she never stops being wild. I hope it’s genetic and ti
ed to the X chromosome so she passes it on to all our future princesses and they will grow up mouthy, and strong-willed, and brave.
“You’re brave,” I say, tugging her up close to me.
She hums out her agreement and snuggles deeper into the covers.
I tell her this all the time now. Every night before bed. Every morning when she wakes up. Because I said it to her in the car as we were driving away from the estate that day and she told me later that she didn’t hear it. And it broke my heart.
So I tell her all the time now.
She told me bits and pieces of what happened with her stepfather over the years. It took her a while because I wasn’t ready to hear it all and she wasn’t ready to tell it all.
But there’s healing in truth.
Maybe there was a way to put Baylor on trial and maybe there wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Maybe dragging Lyssa into a very public, very humiliating scandal wasn’t what justice looked like in her case.
So remember when I said I was the good guy but I know lots of other guys like me who… aren’t?
Yeah. That’s how we got justice.
Don’t worry about Baylor. His punishment wasn’t just the humiliation of defeat.
When Lyssa asked me about my job I told her I was one of the good ones.
And I am.
Even though all my bad-guy friends got a little richer about two months ago when Baylor mysteriously went missing, I’m still one of the good ones.
We decided to stay in Sweden. I want my mom to be near her doctors. She’s not cured, or anything. It’s just borrowed time. But we all agree it’s worth the debt.
Besides, there’s a little prince on the way and she wants to meet him.
But there was one mystery left to figure out. Something I couldn’t quite piece together. Why was Lyssa giving that guy money in the club?
I already knew it wasn’t drugs. If Lyssa was strung out on drugs she’d have been in withdrawal that first week we spent together.
It was kids.
Little kids who would not, under any circumstances, ever end up at a country estate run by sick fucks like Baylor and his friends. She was using all her allowance to save kids from the threat of sex trafficking.
When I walked in to her life she was truly wild. Wild the way she was meant to be. She was getting better and learning how to be herself after many years of manipulation.
And then I broke her.
But that’s not the reason I want her with me now.
It’s not guilt.
It’s just love.
The fairy tale is never perfect. It’s dark, and filled with horrors and setbacks. It has a journey built in to it. The princess must live in hell first. And the prince must walk through that hell if he wants to save her. I never knew I was a prince until I met my wild princess. She made me this man I am today.
And as they make this journey, this princess and her prince—first separate, then together—they learn things.
They learn that they are stronger than they thought.
That some things are worth fighting for, to the death.
And that if they do that. If they face the truth together then they get—
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Lyssa asks me, turning over in bed and prying my eyes open with her fingertips.
I smile and kiss her lips as I reach down to caress her swelling belly.
Then say, “A happy ending.”
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit where Julie gets to blab about anything she wants. If you’re new to the EOBS (as we like to call it) then there’s two things you need to know about it. One – it’s never edited. I write these after the edits and proofs are finished. So you have to forget about all the fucks you give about typos when you read it. Second—I do have a tendency to ramble so sometimes they totally pertain to the book or the process and sometimes they don’t. Also, I like to swear and generally just say anything I want. So if you’re offended at the end, I don’t apologize for that.
When I first starting writing the End of Book Shit back in 2013 I had no idea I’d have to write one for every damn book because people loved them so much. Honestly, it was a one-time thing! But I got so many comments about my unique author’s note at the end of the book I just kept doing them. Sometimes I have something very relevant to say and sometimes I just burble on about stuff that makes no sense at all.
This one is mostly burbling.
But I still kinda like it. It’s fun to talk directly to the readers and let them know what’s up in my brain.
Wild Thing is the last book I’m releasing in this semi-related trilogy (Soon to be called the Naughty Things Series) about “slightly taboo” stuff but ironically it was the first one I wrote of the three. When I start a new book I always put the date at the top of the first page so when I’m done I can see how long it took me. I wrote most of this book back during the first week of February 2019 but it sat around collecting dust while I moved on to Sweet Thing and then Pretty Thing.
I don’t think I had quite gotten the hang of writing “less-twisted” and “short” when I wrote it so I just put it aside for later and gave it another try. And it’s funny that I ended up releasing them in the opposite order. I wrote Pretty Thing last but I wanted to get that out into the world first. Mostly because it had a direct link back to Five, one of my all-time favorite characters to write.
And if you’re counting pages or locations (as us readers are wont to do) you might’ve noticed that I’m not very good at sticking to the 50K word count either. This one ended up being about 55K. Which is only a good thing in pretty much everyone’s opinion.
I just have trouble writing short, I guess.
But… the real reason I moved on to Sweet Thing after I wrote this was because this is the typical weird story that is usually hanging out in my brain. Slightly dark and twisted with a mystery to solve. And I was trying NOT to do that. lol I only went back to it a couple weeks ago and by that time I guess I just accepted the fact that this story was over-the-top strange and I decided to embrace it.
I have done this before. Mr. Perfect and that whole Mister Series started the same way. Mr. Perfect’s story starts out mostly normal and then by the end… yeah. We’re moving on to Mr. Romantic and his rape-fantasy scenes… lol And by the time we get to Mr. Match Five is there, and Rook & Ronin are there, and fucking Spencer Shrike’s son Oliver is the star of the show.
It just happened. I didn’t plan it that way. I just can’t help it.
Anyway, it is what it is. Welcome to my brain. Where “write what you know” makes no sense because I promise you, I have never been a spoiled-rich brat who needed a hot Mason Macintyre to tame my ass down for a forced marriage and long career in sex trafficking.
If you guys only knew how many stories I started like this one and then put away, never to pick up again, because it was “weird”. I wrote at least four of those last summer that are still collecting dust on my laptop. One of them was the first version of In To Her. There were a whole bunch of other dudes in the first version. And a cult. lol (There’s something wrong with me). One day I might write that other story. But it’s really fuckin’ weird, so then again, maybe not. I’m trying to appeal to more readers in 2019, not fewer. Haha
But in between sending Wild Thing to the editor and releasing Pretty Thing I started another book. And I was SO fucking sure this one was not twisted, and not weird, and there was not gonna be any sort of mystery twist at the end… AND, it was gonna be 50K WORDS FOR SURE!
Yeah. Right. lol
I’m 15K words over my limit and I didn’t even finish the epilogue yet. So… best laid plans. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing all these twisted stories is that those best-laid plans almost always go to shit.
That’s coming out at the end of June 2019. So… get ready for a whole new family of hot brothers who fall in love with their soul mates while doing weird stuff.
Most of my regu
lar fans have enjoyed my little side trip into the world of “almost normal stories” and I’d just like to thank you for sticking with me as I move forward in my career.
One other thing I started (unconsciously) doing since the release of The Triangle last fall was this whole idea of not naming the “city” the story takes place in. Johnathan and I did that on purpose in The Triangle because we wanted a city that had everything we needed but we didn’t want to pin it down to a real location. So instead of making up a fake big city (because that’s a hard swallow in contemporary romance) we just called the city “The City”.
You can make up fake small towns in contemporary romance. Writers do it all the time. But a big city is not so easy. It starts to feel less contemporary when you do that. That’s the kind of thing I do in my Sci-Fi and Paranormal Romance because those genres have different rules.
So the “City” in these three books is different. I think the “City” in Pretty Thing is probably Denver. The small town they’re from is definitely Elizabeth, Colorado. I lived there for ten years so I used that small town to write that story. But at the same time I used the townhouses I lived in when I was a small child and those were located in Mentor, Ohio. (Hey, I told you my brain is fucked up). The “City” in Sweet Thing is more like New York. It has that kind of vibe to it. And the “City” in Wild Thing is wherever. Maybe Chicago. The “city” location in Wild Thing played such a small role in the story it really didn’t matter.
There truly is NO CONNECTION between the locations and characters in these three Naughty Things books.