Page 10 of Auctioned To Be Mine

I pushed off the wall and went around the side of the building, squishing with every step in my ruined shoes, hoping against all hope that Jack Montana had somehow waited for me out front. Maybe he’d had a moment of basic human decency. Maybe he’d looked around, noticed I wasn’t behind him, and thought he should maybe check on me.

He had not.

The front of the restaurant was still a circus. Drenched people clustered on the sidewalk. Staff propping open the main doors. A couple arguing loudly about whose fault it was that the wife’s bag was ruined. A woman crying into her phone like there had been an actual fire, which I had seen no evidence of.

There was a black SUV pulling away from the valet stand.

“Asshole,” I muttered.

I stood on the sidewalk in my sopping dress and looked up at the sky. The universe hated me.

I flagged down a cab. The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror when I got in. He didn’t comment on the fact that I was leaving a small lake on his back seat. He just pulled out into traffic and asked where I was going. I gave him my address and then sat back and debated what I would tell Betty.

She was going to panic. I knew that and I wasn’t sure how to avoid it.

The cab pulled up outside my building twenty minutes later. I peeled myself off the seat, overtipped the driver by enough to cover the cleanup, and went inside.

First thing in the morning, I would go on the hunt for more people to auction off or else we weren’t going to raise the money we needed.

5

CALLUM

Itook a long drink of my mimosa and leaned back in my chair, watching Drew retell the story for the third time. He was standing now, acting it out like he was performing a one-man show.

“So I’m standing there,” Drew said, gesturing wildly. “And I’m thinking, okay, this is easy. Just pull the handle. Just a little alarm to get my brother out of there. Clean. Simple. Professional.”

“Professional menace,” I said, shaking my head.

He ignored me and pulled an imaginary fire alarm handle with dramatic flair. “And then holy shit! Every sprinkler in the place goes off like it’s the fucking apocalypse.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing again. The image of Chantilly’s face when that water hit her was permanently burned into my brain. The shriek. The absolute horror. Her phone had gone flying out of her hand and skidded across the floor. For someone who documented every second of her life, she’d been too busy saving herself to film it.

“You both are terrible,” Cleo said, but she was fighting a smile. She picked up her coffee and shook her head at us. “Terrible human beings.”

“I didn’t light anything on fire,” Drew protested. “I don’t know why the sprinklers went off. They shouldn’t have. I’m innocent.”

Hollis looked genuinely concerned. “Do you have any idea how much damage that causes? The water damage alone is thousands.”

“I’ll send them a check,” I said.

Hollis didn’t look satisfied with that answer, but he didn’t push it. The damage was already done. There was no point trying to talk us out of it after the fact.

“Tell them about the DMs,” Drew said, sitting back down and reaching for his Bloody Mary.

I groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

“Oh, this is good,” Cleo said, leaning forward. “What happened?”

“Chantilly’s been messaging me nonstop since last night,” I said. “Started at eleven. Continued through the night. I woke up to too many messages to read. Sixteen. I think that’s borderline illegal.”

“Sixteen?” Cleo’s eyes went wide.

“At first, she was asking if I was okay. Then she wanted to know if I made it home safe. Then she started sending me screenshots of articles about the restaurant incident. Then she asked if we could reschedule.”

“Dude, you’re going to have a hard time getting rid of that one,” Drew said.

I groaned. “Don’t remind me.”