Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (60 page)

“Have you seen Noah lately?” Mackenzie
stepped back to look up into my face, frowning in concern.

“I don’t think I have,” I admitted. “Why?”

“No particular reason,” Mackenzie said,
though she still looked worried. “I’m just a little concerned…he was starting
to get pretty drunk the last time I saw him, and he’s a hot mess when that
happens.”

The DJ announced that he was taking a
break and let the system continue onto the next song, and I forgot about
Mackenzie’s ex once more, happy just to dance with her and be close to her. I
was moving in to kiss her again when a loud thump broke through the song
playing on the system. “How’s everybody doing tonight?” Mack stiffened in my
arms and pulled back, looking over her shoulder. I turned to look in the same
direction and saw Noah standing in the DJ booth, microphone in hand. “Dwayne
and me go way back,” he said, his words slurring a little bit. “So he said I
could take over while he gets a smoke break before the ball drop.”

“Oh god,” Mackenzie said, burying her face
against my chest. “He’s going to be a total ass.”

“So since I’m in charge for the next ten
minutes, I thought I’d pull up a real blast from the past—how does that sound?”
Some of the others on the dance floor cheered, and Noah looked supremely
pleased with himself. “All right then! Y’all might know that Mack and I used to
be together. This is the first song we were listening to when I took her
cherry.” Mackenzie gasped and pulled away from me, her face going white.

I heard Li’l Jon, “Get Low” start to play
and Mackenzie went even paler, and then her face went red from the roots of her
hair to the collar of her dress, and I saw the tears starting in her eyes.

“Patrick…” I shook my head.

“He’s drunk,” I told her.

“No—you have to listen to me. I
never—this—he’s…” I knew that in a moment she’d dissolve into tears; my heart
ached for the embarrassment I knew she was going through.

“He’s being an asshole because you aren’t
going to be going home with him,” I told her. “I know you, Mack. I know how you
feel about me.” I smiled into her eyes.

“I’m so humiliated,” she said, shaking her
head again.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I
hugged her quickly.

“Yeah, I think I do,” she said. I grabbed
her hand and led her off of the dance floor and into the kitchen, closing the
door behind us.

“He’s being an asshole, and everyone knows
it,” I told her. “I’m sure no one believes that you actually lost your
virginity to that song.” Mackenzie smiled slightly, starting to regain her
composure.

“I guess.”

I hugged her tightly. “I just wish my mom
had never invited him.”

“Well, with any luck, they’re kicking him
out and putting him in a cab right now after that bullshit,” I suggested.

“I hope so,” she said. I kissed her and
hugged her and for a while we just hung out in the kitchen, away from the chaos
in the living room and any further embarrassment at the hands of her ex.

Chapter Nine - Mackenzie

I had known that Noah was getting drunk
when I’d left him in the kitchen to go back to Patrick; but I’d been having
such a good time that I had totally forgotten he was even at the party. I saw
him a few times while Patrick and I were dancing, but I didn’t even care—even
when I realized he was only getting drunker.

It shouldn’t have shocked me at all that
Noah would pull something like what he had.

“It was actually part of why he and I broke
up,” I explained to Patrick while we sat in the kitchen, sipping some of the
non-alcoholic punch Mom and Dad had put out to help everyone pace themselves
through the night. “At first I thought he was great—confident, and he could
party all night and keep going the next day. I guess when I was in college it
seemed great.”

“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.”