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And that’s when I finally found him leaning against the wall, making out with a slutty barmaid-looking woman with white knee socks and a red cape flowing down her back.
Groaning, I hurried toward them. What was he thinking? We had no time for this.
“Brick,” I said as soon as I reached them, only to realize the woman was none other than Sabella from Belts.
I guess he hadn’t avoided her too well, after all. Whoops.
Neither seemed to notice my arrival.
Desperation made me lift my voice. “Brick!”
Nothing.
“Oh my God, Brick!” I screeched and smacked his arm with one of Ezra’s high heels, making the couple finally startle apart. “We have to leave. Now.”
“Hey.” Brick grinned with glassy-eyed amusement before licking his bottom lip and wiping the back of his hand across it like a man satisfied with what he’d just tasted. “Where you been, kid? I looked—”
I jostled his arm trying to get him to hurry. “You don’t want to know. Suffice it to say, we need to go. Right freaking now.”
He straightened, his gaze growing alert. “Why? What’s wrong?”
I waved to Sabella as I began to drag him toward the door. “Sorry, Sabella. You can have him back as soon as he drives me home.”
“Whoa, hey,” Brick tried to protest. “Where’s the fire? What’s going on? It’s not even midnight yet.”
When he refused to budge, I ground my teeth and spun to him, but he couldn’t read the death threat expression I was sending him from inside my mask, so I said the first thing that came to mind that I knew could scare him off.
“Your mother’s here.”
No other words were needed. With a shudder of revulsion, he gripped my arm and whisked me from the building.
CHAPTER TEN
I woke up Sunday morning touching my lips as if I could still feel Ezra’s mouth against them.
Ezra.
It felt so strange to think of him with that name, like someone I didn’t even know. Then again, the man I’d met last night had been a stranger to me, even if he’d ended up being someone I recognized.
Nash could stay the haughty but fair CEO I wanted to emulate before I overthrew, but Ezra… Ezra was the kind, compelling, entertaining man with a passion for me that made my head spin and blood heat. Meeting him felt like a dream.
I sat up in bed, frowning and worried that maybe he had been a dream after all. Not sure why I would put him in a Maleficent costume and then have a boob war with him in my dream, but hey, dreams were weird things.
In fact, maybe the entire night had been a dream. Had Brick really given me a job and called me family? Had Hayden smiled at me and accepted my cookie? It all seemed too good to be true.
Across the room, morning sunlight shifted through the window and glinted off the size eleven black heels sitting on my dresser. Ezra’s shoes.
My shoulders went slack with relief. No dream. He’d been real, and he’d kissed me, and it had been magical. So wonderful and magical.
Ignoring the fact it could never happen again, I decided to be positive and just remember the night before for the beautiful experience it had been.
Humming to myself, I swung the sheets off me and shimmied off my mattress so I could dance my way to the window and open it for a little fresh air. The breeze was crisp and made me shiver and hug myself, but I still inhaled deeply. The bakery down the block must be making something full of cinnamon and sugar this morning. Mrs. Tremaine on the second floor must be doing her laundry with her lavender-scented detergent. And the potted roses of Mr. Duke’s to my right must be blooming. Because the day smelled absolutely glorious.
When I said, “Good morning, day,” a pigeon sitting on the ledge of the building next to mine cocked its head my way. Then it cooed out that sound they make that was something between a turkey’s gobble and a cat’s purr. So I nodded to it, calling, “Good morning, bird.”
The pigeon flew away. I had to laugh. A bird person I was not.
I also wasn’t a
