Ride: Hearts Wild Series

Please don’t try to find me, okay? I just need some time.

Quinn

Zoe blinked. This couldn’t be real. It wasn’t happening.

After all the progress they’d made, after everything they’d been through, Quinn was leaving her. Again.

She picked up her phone and dialed each of the bridesmaids, asking them to stop at Quinn’s school, her apartment, or any place she normally went in town. When she stepped from the chapel, it was to find that Quinn’s car had already gone, and somehow, nobody had seen a bride driving away from what now felt like the scene of a crime.

Sucking in her cheeks, she prepared herself to tell everyone inside—including the groom—what had happened. And then?

Then she was going to use Quinn’s phone to find the person responsible for all this and make him fix it.

One

Silently, Zoe cursed her sister for choosing what had to be the world’s least-practical heels for her bridesmaids. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought Quinn had chosen them as a joke or some weird way of getting back at her for an unknown offense. After all, the bright-pink sequined monstrosities were more suited for a Tampa strip club than a formal wedding. But then, it was Quinn who’d picked them.

Gritting her teeth, Zoe struggled to operate the pedals of her car and then finally resolved to kick the shoes off altogether on the final stretch of her journey. It’d be better, easier, to make it where she was going without the heels sinking in the dirt or tripping her on the gravel.

Then at last, she was there. A cloud of dust swam over the metal framework of the building, and huge yellow machines were pushing and pulling the earth to make room for whatever suburban convenience they were building. In front of her, a huge sign read “Construction Zone. Hard Hat Only. No Trespassing.”

“Fat chance.” She practically spat the words, then she threw open the door of her sedan and marched toward the chain-link gate, making sure to hold her train of taffeta fabric aloft as she stepped over the mounds of orange-brown dirt.

When she walked through the opening, a man rushed toward her, waving his hands frantically as if to stop her from proceeding. Rather than listening to whatever it was he was saying, she plucked the hard hat from his head and sat it on top of her nest of elaborate curls. He made to grab her arm, but she sprinted away, careful to avoid the little pockets of workers all around her.

These were not the men she wanted. No, the man she was looking for would be taller than the rest, likely with a stupid, smug grin on his face. Knowing him, he wouldn’t be working half as hard as these guys seemed to be, either.

“Ian!” She started shouting, but she could hardly hear her own voice above the roar of the machinery. As she continued on, she felt a little tug at the edge of her dress and looked down to find the taffeta gown stuck to an errant piece of wood, a nail tearing the shimmery, sheer fabric.

“Frick,” she mumbled, but then pulled on the dress until it ripped before shouting again, “Ian!”

Then, there he was.

Whether it was because she’d been calling for him or because nearly every guy on the construction site had stopped what they were doing to get a load of the bridesmaid stomping through the dirt, she had no idea, but she didn’t much care either way.

The second she saw him, the rage that had been building low in her gut since she’d read her sister’s note came surging up, up, up, practically ready to explode out of her.

She wanted to run at him, to claw at his stupid face, but that would do nothing to fix the situation she was in. Instead, she had to walk toward him calmly and pretend like she was not, in fact, shaking with rage.

Based on his expression, though, she had to guess she wasn’t doing a very good job. His thick, dark eyebrows were pulled together over his hazel eyes, and without saying a word, he handed his water bottle off to the man standing next to him before making his way toward her.

“Zoe, you can’t be here,” he said.

Inside, she knew the right thing to do was to be calm. She picture flowing, calm oceans, smiling babies, piles of doughnuts she could eat without gaining a pound. She even tried to close her eyes and meditate.

But none of it worked.

Instead, she said in short, clipped words, “Do not tell me where I can and can’t be.”

Ian had the nerve to blink at her, the sheer audacity to act like she was the one who had to be answering for her actions right now.

“But I’m serious. It’s not safe,” he said.

“I don’t care.” Zoe shook her head, trying to put her priorities back in order. She should have expected this, anticipated that seeing Ian would rattle her to her core. After all, it was always like this with him, ever since they’d first met and he’d gone out of his way to make her life a living hell.

“Maybe you should—” he started, but she cut him off.

“Have you seen my sister?”