Chapter 96 KNOX

Chapter 96 KNOX
I’d made it about ten feet from the club entrance, Juniper still slung over my shoulder like a very vocal, very drunk sack of flour, when she suddenly went suspiciously still.

“Knoxy.”

“What?”

“Put me down.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Knox—emergency. Put me down. Right now. Or I’m gonna throw up on your ass and I refuse—I refuse—to destroy something that beautiful. It does not deserve tonight’s dinner. Your ass is in the splash zone. Move it. Save it. Save the ass.”

Fuck!

I stopped so fast I nearly dropped her. “Nope. No. Absolutely not happening. Not the ass. Any surface but the ass.”

I set her on her feet immediately, both hands locked on her waist as she swayed like a badly assembled inflatable tube man at a used car lot.

“If you’re gonna throw up, you do it on the ground. Like a civilized menace. Somewhere with dignity. Somewhere that isn’t me.”

She blinked at me, deeply offended. “I would never throw up on you, Knoxy. That’s rude.” She patted her stomach with great ceremony, like she was consulting a tiny internal board of directors.

“Also I changed my mind. False alarm. The building has been evacuated. All clear.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m strategically sure.” She held up three fingers, frowned, and corrected down to one. “Seventy percent. Maybe sixty. Don’t quiz me under pressure.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“It’s my best offer.”

Then, just like that, the entire vomit crisis vanished from her mind. Her eyes went wide and weirdly focused on something over my shoulder.

“Knoxy.” She grabbed my sleeve. “I see somethin’.”

The giddy drunk haze was still there, but underneath it was a sudden, alarming sense of purpose. That alone made me keep both hands on her waist.

“What did you—”

She was already pointing, wobbling with the effort of fully extending her arm. “Her.”

I followed the direction of her finger and found Tracy, twenty feet away, heels clicking across the parking lot toward her car, Jade and Sandra trailing a few steps behind her like she'd summoned an entourage purely out of habit.

“Speckles, no.”

“Speckles yes.” She rolled up imaginary sleeves—an actual physical gesture, both hands cuffing invisible fabric at her wrists with real focus—and squared her shoulders like she was preparing for battle.

“That woman has said some things tonight. Some disrespectful things. I have a duty.”

“You said that about the dancing too.”

“I have many duties. I’m very in demand.” She started forward, and her first step was almost convincing, right up until her heel caught the curb and she pitched sideways.

I caught her before she hit the pavement, and she straightened immediately, entirely undeterred, like the stumble had simply been a tactical pause.

“Speckles—”

“No, I need to tell her somethin’.” She pointed again, this time closer to actually hitting Tracy with the gesture since we’d drifted several feet closer without my permission.

“Hey! Hey! Tracy!”

Tracy turned, eyebrows already halfway up her forehead at the sight of Juniper weaving toward her like a very determined, very unsteady ship.

“You,” Juniper announced, jabbing a finger in Tracy’s general direction and missing her by a solid two feet of actual space,

“are a menace. A menace, Tracy. You know that? You cornered me in a bathroom and said mean things about me, and about—” she paused, swaying, apparently losing the thread of her own accusation, before recovering with real conviction,

“—about several other things I can’t fully remember right now, but they were bad. Very bad things.”

Tracy’s mouth curled into something sharp. “Is she drunk?”

“I'm not drunk. I am articulate,” Juniper corrected, with the dignity of someone who had just, in fact, forgotten a noun mid-sentence.
“There’s a difference.”

I moved in fast, one arm sliding around her waist, trying to physically redirect her back toward the car before whatever was building in her head actually came out of her mouth.

“Okay, that’s enough—”

“No, wait, I’m not done.” She pushed weakly against my arm, entirely ineffective, and kept her focus locked on Tracy with wobbly, determined intensity.

“You think you know Knox. You think you know what we are. But you don’t know anything, Tracy, because this—” she gestured vaguely between herself and me, nearly overbalancing in the process,

“—this is real. This is the realest thing. Ask anyone. Ask the three girls from the bathroom. They said the dip was cinematic.”

My stomach dropped slightly. “Speckles—”

“And you know what else is real?” She was building momentum now, entirely unstoppable, jabbing a finger toward Tracy again.

“Speckles, car.”

“The fact that he doesn’t look at you anymore. He looks at me. Because I’m his fa—”

I felt my soul leave my body.
Then she pointed at me as though I might provide the missing word.

“He’s my…”she paused, swaying, and for one horrible second I genuinely didn’t know which word was about to come out of her mouth.

“Boyfriend!” I supplied quickly.

“Right—boyfriend! And I’m his girlfriend. Real. Actual. Girlfriend. Not fake. Definitely not—fake. Not fake at all.” She turned to look at me, eyes wide and earnest. “Right, Knoxy?”

Then she tried to wink.
It was less a wink and more a full-face blink that somehow still managed to look proud of itself.

“I heard you,” Tracy said slowly.
Juniper nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Good.” Then she leaned in a little, nearly overbalancing, and jabbed a finger somewhere in Tracy’s general direction.

“And stay away from him. Like… far. Far away. Different-zip-code. Different continent away. If I see you near him again I’m gonna— I’m gonna do something. Something very serious. I haven’t decided what yet. But it’s coming. Consider yourself warned.”

I tightened my arm around her waist. “We’re going home.”

“But I haven’t finished explaining our relationship.”

“You’ve explained enough.” I cut in loudly, sweeping her fully off her feet before she could finish that sentence, one arm under her knees, the other around her back.

She yelped, delighted, immediately forgetting her own train of thought entirely as I turned and started walking fast toward the car.

“Knoxy! I wasn’t finished! I had a whole speech!”

“The speech is over.”

“It was a good speech.”

“It was heading somewhere very bad.”

Behind us, I heard Tracy say something to Jade, low and confused, but I didn’t stick around to catch it—mostly because getting Juniper into the car and several hundred feet away from anyone who might parse her sentences too closely felt like the current top priority.

I reached the car and set her down against the passenger door, holding her steady with one hand while I fumbled the door open with the other.

“In,” I said.

“I don’t wanna.”

“In, Speckles.”

“You’re bossy.” She climbed in anyway, with the exaggerated care of someone navigating a genuinely complex obstacle course, and collapsed into the seat with a satisfied sigh, like she’d just completed a marathon.

I leaned across her to grab the seatbelt, and she watched me do it with the kind of intense, unfocused fascination she’d apparently been directing at everything all night.

“You’re very close,” she informed me.

“I’m putting your seatbelt on.”

“You’re very close and you smell nice. Distracting, honestly. I’m tryin’ to be mad about the kidnappin’ and you’re bein’ all—” she gestured vaguely at my entire face,

“—close and nice-smellin’. It’s not fair. It’s a strategy. You’re usin’ strategy against me.”

I clicked the belt into place, deliberately not looking at her while I did it, because looking at her right now felt like a genuinely bad idea for my continued functioning as a rational human being.

“No strategy. Just a seatbelt.”

“Everything you do is strategy. You’re very strategic. It’s one of your most annoyin’ qualities.” She reached out and patted my cheek, missing slightly and catching more jaw than cheek.

“But also one of your cutest. Which is also very annoyin’. You’re annoyingly cute. It’s a whole thing with you.”

I pulled back, rounding the car to the driver’s side, and by the time I climbed in she’d already gone soft and unfocused again, head tipped against the window, watching me with a small, private smile.

“You’re so cute,” she said again, like the observation deserved repeating,

“for someone who just carried me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes in front of an entire nightclub. That’s very rude behavior. From a very cute person. It’s confusin’. I don’t know how to feel about you.”

“You don’t have to figure it out tonight.”

“I’m gonna figure it out anyway. I’m very determined girl.” She nodded firmly, entirely convinced of this claim, then immediately undercut it by hiccupping.

“See. Determined.”

I started the engine, glancing over at her once—flushed, disheveled, grinning at me like I’d personally hung the moon and then also mildly wronged her—and felt something settle low and warm in my chest that had nothing to do with amusement anymore.

“Get some water in you,” I said, pulling out of the lot. “You’re going to feel like death tomorrow.”

“Worth it,” she said, already closing her eyes, smile still firmly in place. “Best kidnappin’ of my life.”