The Bad Boys of Summer Anthology(12)

Since we can’t go back into our room yet, the staff at The Veranda is nice enough to set us up in one of the smaller event rooms located on the main floor while they prepare us another room. A Happy Anniversary sign is still hanging at the front of the room, and napkins congratulating Moira and Tom on reaching twenty-five years together are stacked on the table where the manager left us sitting.

“They’re probably more worried about losing guests due to a break-in than us. I mean, I’m pretty sure they don’t really give a shit about our safety,” Heidi says once the manager leaves the room.

I roll my eyes. It’s all I can do to stop myself from saying something that I’ll later regret. For starters, Heidi’s key card mysteriously went missing while she was out with Shiner Bock. Then, while we stood outside the door of our wrecked room, the person across the hall wandered out and drunkenly told us—through sloppy bites of loaded nachos that made my stomach turn—that the guy from last night had just left. It didn’t take a detective to figure out that Heidi had been royally screwed over by Finn, the so-so one-night stand.

I hear footsteps coming in my direction, and I flick a wary gaze up from the blank police report to take in Officer Townsend, the police officer who answered the call. “Mrs. Martin—” he begins.

I cringe but quickly jump to correct him. “It’s Kylie,” I say, glancing up at him. Out of habit, I run my thumb over the last name tattooed around my ring finger. “Or Ms. Wolfe works, too. I never got around to changing my last name after my divorce.” It was more than seven years ago, but I’m not about to tell him that.

A deep flush spreads around the crown of Officer Townsend’s balding head. “I’m sorry about that, ma’am.”

There’s no need for him to apologize for calling me by my legal name, so I manage a ghost of a smile and shake my head.

When I drop my attention down to the sheet of paper sitting on the banquet table, Officer Townsend adds, “You’ll want to call your credit card companies and let them know your cards have been stolen. You’ll need to keep a copy of the report for your bank and a copy for your reference because it has your case number on it.”

I slump in the folding metal chair. For a long time, I simply stare at the police report, letting the typed words blur together into a dizzying cluster of black and white. My brain is such a catastrophic mess from what happened in the laundry room with Wyatt to finding out my room was robbed that I didn’t even think about taking precautions to make sure my bank account and my brother’s business account won’t be wiped out.

“Mrs. Ma—Kylie?” Officer Townsend takes the seat directly across from me, and I lift my face to his. “Do you need help filling out the report?” His heavy accent is gentle, but I shake my head.

“No, I’m fine, thank you.” I pick up the pen to begin writing out my statement. It won’t be much, considering I was bent over a running dryer with my jeans pulled around my knees while my room was being ransacked. As I scribble my signature and the date across the bottom of the page, I work my bottom lip between my teeth. “Can you show me what I’ll need to do to follow-up on this?”

Officer Townsend spends the next few minutes showing me where my case number is located on the report and what phone number I’ll need to call in order to check the status. When he’s finished, he asks, “Will you be in the area for a while?”

I rake my hands through my blue-and-black hair, pulling it up into a stubby ponytail on top of my head before dropping the strands to fall around my face. “No, I’m heading back to Los Angeles in the morning.”

The moment those words fall from my lips, realization hits me hard, making me wince, but Officer Townsend doesn’t seem to notice. He’s speaking to Heidi, explaining everything to her now.

Shiner Bock has my credit cards, which would be okay because I can get back home without my Visa or American Express. I’ve survived traveling without money before, and I can easily do so again. But when he cleaned out my room, he took everything in the nightstand drawer, including my ID.

I’ve had my entire makeup bag confiscated by TSA. There’s no way in hell I’m getting through the gate tomorrow without my license.

Or renting a car.

Or even boarding a Greyhound bus.

Fuck.

Clenching my teeth together, I amend my statement with Officer Townsend. “I might be going back to L.A., in the morning.” My breath hitches, but I swallow down the anxiety, making myself continue. “My license is gone, so I don’t think I have a way to get on my flight.”

He gives me a sympathetic nod. “We’re going to do everything we can to recover all your belongings, ma’am.”

As Officer Townsend escorts us out of the banquet hall, so we can book a different room for the night, Heidi shoots me a pitiful look. “I’m so sorry, Ky,” she whispers.

Since most of my initial irritation with her has evaporated, I lift the corner of my mouth and shrug. “Shit happens, babe. I’m just glad he wasn’t dangerous.”

My words must do her in because by the time we reach the entrance to the empty lobby, tears are streaming down her face, leaving dark eyeliner smudges that ruin the rest of her makeup. Miserably, I lower my brown eyes to the polished black floor just as I hear Wyatt call out to me from the concierge desk.

“Kylie?” The panic resonating in his deep voice causes my throat to swell. He reaches me in a few long sprints and yanks me to his muscular chest. Cupping the sides of my face between his large hands, he bends down, so our eyes are level. “What the fuck?”

I’m startled by how wild his blue eyes look, and I immediately blurt out, “I’m alright.”

I dart my gaze to Officer Townsend and whisper a thank-you. He gives me a nod of his head before taking off to talk to the manager on duty. Heidi slinks off toward the front counter, looking behind her in my direction once before dropping her eyes to the floor.

Pushing my shoulders back, I turn my gaze to Wyatt, and he straightens, dropping his hands to my waist to encircle it. “I’m fine,” I say once more.

He slightly loosens his hold on me, only moving his fingers to the small of my back. It’s as if he’s unable to let go, and I find it comforting. As he guides me toward the couches in the lounge area, I stay as close to him as our bodies will allow because, truthfully, I don’t want him to let go of me either.

Not just yet.

“Don’t put me through that shit again.” His voice is hoarse. Before I’m able to respond, he continues, “I text you, on the right number this time, and I get nothing back. When I go to your room, a fucking cop is there, and still, nothing from you. And then these fuckers at concierge refuse to tell me what’s going on.”

“I was filling out a police report.” We sit on the couch at the same time, and I accept his hand when he reaches for mine, linking our fingers. I tell him everything that’s happened before and after we met up tonight, leaving out the part about the disastrous double date with Shiner Bock and James. “I honestly didn’t even think to check my phone.”

He brings our hands to his mouth, running his lips across the backs of my knuckles. My chest expands, my muscles relax, and I squeeze his fingers.

“Don’t say sorry, Ky. Just don’t fucking…scare me again.”

Wyatt McCrae. Scared. Something about him admitting that to me tonight—on the night that we’ve agreed would be our last—sends multiple emotions pummeling through me, beating against my heart like a strong fist.

I pull out of his grip and scrub the heels of my palms over my eyes. “God, why do you have to say things like that now?” I drag my hands back, slicking tears through my hair as I push it away from my forehead. Asking him this makes my thoughts flash back to a string of days and nights we’d spent together a few years back, and for the briefest moment, I let myself relive the memory.

Wyatt had come to me after my brother or Sinjin—I can’t remember which one, not that it matters now—had told him I was sick with a particularly nasty strain of the flu. He’d let himself into my apartment where he found me lying on the couch, and I’d shivered violently as soon as his fingertips made contact with my feverish body. When I finally found the strength to ask him to leave, fearing that he might get sick and be out of commission, he’d swooped me up effortlessly in his arms and taken me back to my bedroom.

“Breaking and entering is illegal,” I had coughed into the front of his tee-shirt shirt. “So get the hell out.”

“You gave me the key, beautiful,” he’d pointed out, holding me closer. “I’m not going anywhere with you feeling like this.”

“I’m not kidding,” I’d argued, each word practically wheezed. “Go home, McCrae, before you catch this crap, and I have to hear Lucas’s mouth about getting you sick.”

“You mean more to me than a goddamn fever,” he’d told me as he dropped me on the bed and then reached for the bottle of Nyquil on the nightstand. “And I don’t give a shit what your brother has to say—never have. I’m not leaving until you’re better, beautiful. And even then I don’t want to go.”