Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (162 page)

“I’ve known some people like that,”
Patrick told me. “It gets old after a while.”

“It does,” I agreed. “He was charming
enough for a while to where I kind of forgot how bad he gets when he drinks—or
gets high, or whatever else—when he would sober up for a bit.” I pressed my
lips together, shaking my head. “He’s never been abusive, I guess, but he just
got worse and worse, and more and more out of control, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“It’s a real statement of how strong you
are that you walked away at all,” Patrick told me, giving my hand a squeeze. “I
can’t judge you for having fallen in love with someone who turned out badly.” He
grinned. “That’d be the pot calling the kettle black. Before I met Joanne I
dated this girl for—maybe a year and a half?” Patrick rolled his eyes and shook
his head. “She was probably the person that inspired the phrase hot mess.”

“Oh god, this sounds good,” I said,
starting to relax a little bit.

“She was a hard partier, like you were
saying about Noah,” Patrick told me. He shook his head, grinning sheepishly. “I
have to admit that at the time some of the things she was into—in the bedroom,
you know? They were pretty thrilling and extreme.”

“Careful,” I said, smiling in spite of
myself. “I might start thinking I need to buy you a whip to use on me if I want
to keep you.”

“That seems like something to talk about
maybe a year from now,” Patrick said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m still so out of
practice with regular sex that I can’t even imagine trying anything more
extreme.”

I giggled. “Go on,” I told him.

“She got into drugs; at first it was sort
of experimental for her—wanting to see what her limit was, stuff like that.” He
shrugged. “Then she started doing more and more, and harder stuff—coke, speed…I
think once or twice she tried heroin even.” He shook his head and shuddered. “I
stayed with her as long as I did because she insisted that I was the only thing
holding her together.”

I nodded; Noah had said much the same to
me when we’d been dating, when things had just been starting to go bad. “Seems
like it’s part of the playbook.”

“Definitely,” Patrick agreed. “Anyway, it
kept getting worse and worse, and I just couldn’t make myself stay with her
anymore. It was like someone drowning; if you let them pull you over, it’s just
going to be two people drowning instead of one.”

“I can totally get you there,” I said,
nodding again. I felt a little bit better about what had happened with Noah,
knowing that I wasn’t the only one—and not even the only one in the
relationship—who had a few skeletons in my closet. “And then you met Joanne
after?”

“I did,” Patrick said, smiling slightly.
“You already know how that was, though. And all of that’s in my past—just like
Noah’s in your past.” He squeezed my hand. “Want to head back out into the
party? It’s got to be getting close to midnight.” I took a deep breath and
nodded; I was as ready to confront everyone who’d seen Noah’s crazy display as
I would ever be, and knowing that Patrick was confident in me made it that much
easier.

We went back into the living room, and
wherever Noah was, he wasn’t in the DJ booth anymore. I spotted Evie dancing
with her husband and gave her a wave. She shimmied over to where Patrick and I
were hanging out at the edge of the dance floor. “Noah just left in an Uber,”
she told me. “Dad insisted.”

“I like Dad a lot more than I like Mom
right now,” I admitted to her. Evie laughed and patted Patrick on the back, and
we all went back to dancing.

We had just enough time to dance through
one more song before the DJ announced that it was one minute to midnight.

“Still want to give me that New Year’s
kiss?” Patrick whispered in my ear.

I grinned up him in answer to his
question.

“More than I have all night,” I told him.
My parents pulled up the scene in Times Square on the big flat screen TV
mounted on the wall, and everyone watched the countdown beginning. The DJ cut
the music out and as he started to take up the countdown, I felt myself
tingling all over.

“Ten...nine…eight…seven…”

I looked up at Patrick, getting more and
more excited. This would be the first year in ages that I actually had someone
to kiss at midnight; and even better—I knew that Patrick cared about me, that
he wanted to be with me. I wasn’t just a pity date for him.

“Four...three…two…one! Happy New Year
everybody!”

I didn’t even quite hear the DJ calling
out “Happy New Year,” because as soon as he reached one, Patrick swung me into
his arms and brought his lips down on mine. I could hear the cheering, but it
was no louder than the roar of blood in my ears as Patrick and I kissed for
what felt like a second and an hour at the same time. I melted against him, so
happy, so completely overjoyed for the first time all night, and I didn’t want
to pull away ever.

Finally, though, both Patrick and I ran
out of oxygen. He broke away from me and we both grinned at each other,
catching our breath.

 
“Time to call Landon?”

I frowned in confusion and then
remembered. “Let’s do it,” I said, taking his hand in mine and leading him back
towards the kitchen. Patrick slipped his phone out of his pocket and opened up
his contacts list. I watched him dial out, smiling.

After a minute I saw his face light up.

“Hey buddy! Happy New Year!” he paused,
and I thought Landon must have been talking his ear off, going a mile a minute.
“Let me put you on speaker and you can tell Mack too.” He took his phone away
from his ear and tapped the speaker icon.

“Hi Mack! Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year to you, too!” I grinned at
the phone even though I knew that Landon couldn’t possibly see me. “Are you
having a good time at your grandparents’ house?”

“Yeah! Did Dad kiss you?”

“He did,” I confirmed. “We were talking about
going to brunch tomorrow—does that sound good?”

“What’s brunch?”

“It’s breakfast for lunch,” Patrick
explained. “That way you can sleep in and still have pancakes.”

“Cool! Yeah, yeah let’s do that!”

We talked to Landon for a few more minutes
before his grandmother came on the line, explaining that while she’d given the
boy some coffee milk, she was pretty sure he had only stayed up so late by
sheer force of will. Patrick said goodnight to his son, and I seconded it, and
then we hung up to return to the party.

We were just in time to hear the New
Year’s resolutions; I thought the one that said, “Giving my son the love and
attention he deserves,” might have been Patrick’s, since it didn’t sound like
anything that any of the other guys at the party would have said. One look at
him confirmed it—and he looked at me when mine was read.

The party started to wind down, and
Patrick and I managed to dance for a little while longer before we had to
excuse ourselves for the night; it was almost one, and we hoped that the roads
would mostly be clear. Mom and Dad insisted that if we wanted to, we could stay
the night in my bedroom—but I wanted to be alone, really alone, with Patrick
for the first night of the New Year. I told my mom that we would talk about
what had happened with Noah in a day or two, gave my siblings and my brother a
kiss, and then I walked out with Patrick, more than ready to make good on the
idea of spending the rest of the night making love.

“When do we want to go to brunch?” I asked
him.

“As late as humanly possible,” Patrick
replied. “I want to have sex from the minute we get home until we can’t stay up
a minute longer.”

“I like that plan.”

Chapter Ten – Patrick

I had taken a glass of champagne after my
midnight kiss with Mackenzie, but that was the only alcohol I’d had in hours.
By the time we got into the car and headed out onto the road back into the
city, I was well under the limit. I would never in a million years have risked
Mackenzie’s life or mine by driving drunk.

“All in all that wasn’t a bad party,” I
said as the heater started to kick in. I turned onto the highway; there were a
few cars on the road—one or two of them seemed to be weaving a bit, and I
avoided them, speeding up just enough to get past them.

“Apart from the bullshit with Noah,” Mack
said, making a face.

“Ah it was a hiccup. Most of the people at
that party were at least as drunk as him, so they’re not going to remember it.
Everyone else will just remember that he was an asshole.” I reached out and
gave Mack’s hand a squeeze. “And I’ll remember that you kissed me at midnight,
and that you drove me absolutely crazy with the dancing.”

“Did I?”

I glanced at Mack to see her grinning,
totally satisfied with herself.

“Then it was a good party after all.”

“Oh yeah—if we’re apart from each other
for more than a couple of days, I am going to take a suspiciously long shower
and think about you bumping and grinding to me while “California Love” plays,”
I told her. Mackenzie laughed, shaking her head.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said,
grinning a little bit.

“Not even a little,” I agreed. “I mean,
you’re looking even more amazing than usual, and I’ve spent all night wishing I
could get you alone—really alone, not just in the kitchen.”

“You know,” Mackenzie said, “one year—I
think it was maybe three years ago—I walked in on my sister full-on making out
with her husband in there.”

“Is that why people kept occasionally
peeking in on us?”

I laughed. “I thought they were just
worried that you were upset.”

“No, I think they were hoping they’d catch
us being scandalous,” Mackenzie said. I changed the subject then, and we talked
about where we wanted to go to brunch the next morning, or if we’d rather do it
at home. Mack’s mom had had handed her a bottle of champagne—unopened—on the way
out, with a wink.

“What was that wink from your mom about,
by the way? I forgot to ask you.”

Mackenzie laughed. “Okay—don’t freak out
on me. Apparently she conceived my brother John on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s
Day, drunk on champagne. So I guess she figured it would be the joke of the
year if I went the same way.”

I grinned. “No getting knocked up
tonight,” I said. “If we’re going to have a kid together, I want to have at
least some planning behind it.”

“You—I didn’t really have kids on my
mind,” Mackenzie said, blushing. I took a quick breath to settle my nerves; I’d
been thinking about more than just having sex with Mack when we got back home.
I’d been thinking about my bet with Landon, and whether or not it was time—now
that the deadline was on me—to tell Mack about it.

“I’m not thinking of kids in particular,”
I said, giving Mack’s hand a squeeze. “But there’s something I want to talk to
you about.”

“That sounds like it will either be great
or awful,” Mack said. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, tell me
what it is.”

“I made a bet with Landon, right about the
time we first met,” I told Mack. “It wasn’t—I didn’t make it because of meeting
you, but it was around the same time.”

“What was the bet?” Mack looked at me
intently.

“That I couldn’t find him a new mom by New
Year’s Day.”

“What?”

I glanced at Mack, hoping that she didn’t
look too appalled. “It was a silly bet,” I said, shrugging. “The wager was that
if I couldn’t find him a new mom, I had to buy him a second Christmas-worth of
gifts—his entire list, all over again.”

Mack stared at me a moment longer and then
started to laugh, shaking her head. “That is a silly bet for sure,” she told
me. “So I guess this is the deadline, since it’s New Year’s Day as of about an
hour and a half ago.”

“It is,” I said, nodding. I hesitated for
a moment. “I’m not going to propose to you right now, by the way,” I glanced at
her and tried to smile. “But I was thinking that if—if you wanted to be part of
my life, and Landon’s, that would make me happy. I’m glad to buy him another
round of Christmas presents.”

“I think—I think it would be crazy to go
so far as to get engaged,” Mack said. “But…after everything so far, I think…I
think I’m ready to at least commit to being part of your and Landon’s life.”

I pulled over onto the shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she asked, startled.

Instead of answering, I put the car in
park and leaned over to kiss Mack. I couldn’t help myself—and I couldn’t
possibly wait any longer. I kissed her until we were both panting, and then
broke away.

“Landon is going to get double-double
presents,” I told Mack, grinning. “We’ll do a whole Christmas morning thing,
the three of us, in two weeks.”

“That’ll be beautiful,” Mack said,
smiling. I took a deep breath and took the car out of park; I had to get her
back to my place as fast as possible.

Epilogue:
New Year’s Eve, One Year Later

“Everyone’s taking their seats,” Amie said
behind me. “They’re going into the chapel from the lobby right now.”