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None of it matters. I can’t stop. I get there just as he’s leading her away from the pool and take her by the shoulders.
“Fuck off,” I spit out. “I told you to stay the fuck away from her.”
“Hey man,” he says and reaches for Ella who doesn’t spare him a glance.
“I thought you didn’t want me,” she says. As if I’ve ever not wanted her.
His eyes go wide, darting between us. “Have you fucked him, El?”
I’m dimly aware of cameras around us. Cameras and phones. Recording. We need to get the hell out of here. “It’s not like that,” Ella says. Her voice is soft at the margins. She’s been drinking.
I lean in, looking him dead in the eye. “She’s mine.”
“Z,” she says and her voice is broken. I know I didn’t say the things she wanted. But I’ll be damned if I don’t fight for her to give me a chance to make it right.
She’s fucked up. I’m fucked up, but together we work.
“We’re leaving.” I see the opening in the crowd and move us toward it with Ella tucked tight into my side, my arm across her shoulders.
Her pace barely keeps up with me. If I didn’t think someone would call the cops, I’d throw her ass over my shoulder.
“Zander,” she says, her voice barely audible over the noise from all these people talking, talking, talking. They make so much noise. “Zander, stop.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
It takes forever to get us through the house. The crowd seems to have multiplied and all of them want to be in our way. In my way. Ella’s not helping. Every time she turns her head, she sees someone else she wants to talk to and tell them it’s fine. I can’t find the words to make her understand the situation we’re in. She jumped off a second-floor bar and into a pool below.
She could have died.
She could have died.
Cade and Damon both said the same thing. Don’t make a scene. They said they’d be there after she took the first shot. A fucking half an hour and a goddamn heart attack later and they still aren’t here.
“Zander,” she protests as I pull her along, her long legs and heels not keeping up with my strides. I swear I’m two seconds from throwing her over my shoulder. I can barely contain myself.
I can feel myself falling into that old spiral. It’s the same thing that happened after Quincy died. I questioned every action I ever took, trying to figure out which one would have kept her alive.
I can’t do this again. I cannot fall into that shit again. It almost destroyed me the first time.
“We need our coats,” Ella says as we make it to the front entrance. “Coats!” she yells out and everyone around us takes notice. “You’re acting like a maniac,” she scolds me under her breath.
Soaking fucking wet, dripping from head to toe, somehow still gorgeous, she dares to tell me that I’m the one acting like a maniac?
My exhale is long and audible as I stare down at her. “We need our coats,” she repeats clearly and I swear I’ll lose my mind if I don’t get her out of here and across my lap in the next five seconds.
There are dozens of coats here now. Maybe over a hundred. I park Ella at the door of the coat closet and dig through them.
“We don’t have to leave,” Ella says from behind me, her arms crossed, onlookers watching her calmly berate me. I swear to God.
Cade and Damon’s directions about not making a scene are fucking hysterical by now.
My coat appears and I toss it in Ella’s direction. It’s another fifteen coats before I find hers. Step over to her. Put it around her shoulders. I take my own coat by the collar, and take Ella by the arm.
“Z,” she says and the single letter is a plea on her lips.
“I’ll deal with you when I get you alone.” I’m too loud and too obvious, and from somewhere nearby I hear the click of a shutter. I don’t care. Anyone who takes a photo right now is taking a photo of a bodyguard doing his job.
“Zander, please calm down,” she insists, her voice getting rougher. It’s been too much. This night out has been too much for her. At least the last round of shots were water, courtesy of the hefty tip I paid the bartender, but still. I should have put a stop to it earlier. The second she asked me if I loved her, the words slurred on her lips, we should have been out the door.
The only thing that kept me here was the fact that she needed this. She needed everyone to see her. It was going so perfectly. Fucking hell.
I guide Ella out the front door and down the steps. Maybe it will look like a jealous man taking a woman out of a party before she’s ready.
