Page 99 of Five

“You’re my boyfriends, not my captors!” I tell them. I can see the exact moment the statement registers because Gabe’s, or maybe Bez’s, breath halts. I’m too furious to care.

I take advantage of it and jog toward my car—with a very upset Wednesday. My Adam’s apple feels so big that I don’t think I can actually talk around it.

“Fuck, no! Stop, Lori,” I hear Clover. I turn with my hand on my car handle as he whistles, pushing his fingers inside his mouth, and a taxi magically stops a few feet from him.

“Sari, come on!” he calls him, who, without hesitation, walks toward us. As the taxi starts to move, I see Uri coming out of the van with an unhappy—and kind of scary—expression. Gabe is still where I left him. He’ll take care of my car, or fuck, I’ll come get it tomorrow.

I push down the window and move my head out to tell the bros, “Oh, the prick was paid by the Skid Mark brothers to kidnap me.” Gabe’s head snaps toward me. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and then clenches his fists, all the muscles in his arms bulging on either side of his chest. How does anyone have muscles like that under a t-shirt? It’s so bloody unfair.

I pull my head back inside. “We need to leave Wednesday home,” I remind Clover.

The taxi takes a left turn, and Gabe disappears from view. My chest aches the more distance I put between us.

I look at Clover and Sari whirling and twirling on the dance floor from the inner balcony on the second floor of the club. I have a Bloody Mary in my hand, and I’ve told four blokes to sod off already—almost breaking a groping fucker’s finger.

All my anger has gone, replaced by disappointment. Will Bez and Gabe ever accept the fact that I’m capable of defending myself? I know it’s their way to show me they care and blah, blah, blah. I on the other hand don’t care. I want to be respected. I found out I like to be submissive-ish in bed with them, but I won’t tolerate being babied outside of it.

“I’m here!” Ollie’s voice from behind me makes me smile and surprises me at the same time. “We have around thirty minutes before my beast of a husband comes here with reinforcements to drag us out.” I scoff at Rague’s possessiveness, but the truth is that I crave Bez’s troglodytic ways just as much as Gabe’s conniving ones.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“Sari called, said you were mopping the floor with your long face or something like that.”

Sweetidiot.

“So? Wanna talk?” he adds.

“I always need to talk to you,” I tell him.

“What, are you sick of talking with the magic mirror on the wall?” he teases.

“How long have you been sitting on that?” I sniff at my bestie.

“A month.”

“Prat!” I cuss at him.

“Don’t be snippy. You’re using your mean voice,” he accuses me.

Am I? “No, I am not.”

“Mean voice again,” he singsongs.

“Why did you make him come?” I ask the universe.

“To talk about your three-way crazy relationship of course.You’ve never disliked someone like you do Gabe.”

“I don’t dislike him.” Not anymore.

“But you did…hate him?”

I don’t think I ever did. “Pleeease. I have a list of archenemies, Gabe doesn’t even reach the top ten.”

“A list?” Clover asks, suddenly appearing near us, as he passes one of the two drinks he’s holding to Ollie.

“Joel Spielberg or Spolger in fifth grade, I freed the poor bees he had in his garage after tying him to a chair. He went into anaphylactic shock.”

“It wasJosephSpringer,” Ollie interrupts me. “I forgot, why did you almost kill him?”