Chapter Four
APOLLO
My heart hasn’t stopped racing since I got off the phone with Blue. I’m packed but I’m not ready to go.
What if her plan doesn’t work? What if the fuckers don’t fall for the fake tip? Or not all of them follow it? If even one stays behind, we could be fucked.
I don’t want to leave Towering Pines. I like it here. I have real friends here with Oliver and Blue. Parker and Blake, if he can stop breaking my face long enough to realize I’m not going to touch his girl again. If for no other reason than how much I want to touch Lily. The biggest reason I want to stay. To see where things go with her. Living together opens up so many possibilities. If we can’t get out of here unseen, we’ll never get the opportunity to explore them. And that would be tragic.
I check the time on my phone.
She should have been here by now.
It’s time I accept that my time here has ended. Go back to work and all the bullshit I came here to escape.
I’m bringing up my agent’s number to text her to call me a car and book a flight when the deadbolt turns and my door inches open.
“Hello? Apollo?”
Holy fuck I love the sound of my name on her lips.
“Hi,” Lily says when she finds me clutching my shirt over my heart about to melt where I stand. “Heard you needed some help.”
“My hero,” I say in a swoony-sweet voice.
“If you think I’m carrying you out of here, you got another think coming,” she jokes back and steals a little more of my heart as I follow her out the door.
“You may not be able to carry me, but this is the second time today you’ve come to my rescue,” I tease back because I can’t help myself.
“Smooth,” she says with a light titter in her throat that calls to me on a primal level. I have to refrain from throwing her over my shoulder, carry her back into my apartment, and throw her down on my bed to take her seven ways from Sunday.
If I wasn’t so worried about getting caught by some blood-sucking reporter any second, I would.
I keep myself in check down the stairs behind the pharmacy, through the frost-covered alley, between the backyards of several modest homes to Lily’s car parked at the other end.
“Get in,” she urgently whisper-yells at me when I start to follow her around the front of the car intending to open the door for her. I might be an asshole but that doesn’t mean I don’t have manners.
“What are you—?” She starts to snip when I don’t listen and continue around to complete my task. “Thank you,” she says in a much softer tone before going back to her more urgent, bossy one. “Now, get in the car.” And I have to admit, both get my motor running.
We’re buckled in and on our way out of town before she lets out a sigh and explains, “I figured going through town—across Main Street—would be too risky. We’re going to go out and come back into town from the other side.”
“Smart thinking.”
The second we leave the paved roads for graveled ones, snow peppers the beams of light piercing the night in front of us.
“So, I wonder,” I ask her when she doesn’t continue the conversation. “Would you have come to see me if your sister hadn’t called you to my rescue?”
“Wow. You get straight to the point.”
“If you want to know the answer, you gotta ask the question.”
The corner of her mouth ticks up slightly. “I wanted to but I thought it was too late. I was kind of glad Blue called and gave me a reason to see you.”
“Nice.”
There’s silence again as she weaves down the crooked country roads, the gravel crunching under the tires and shaking all the soft parts of her body, in the best way, lit only by the dashboard lights.
“That sister of yours is something else,” I say shifting in my seat to relieve the pressure of the growing bulge behind my zipper.
