I smiled at him. “Well, as long as he has people who love him and will watch over him, I’m good to drop him off.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then we’d have to take him home with us, right?”
“Home?”
I squinted at him. “Yeah. Home.”
He caught his breath.
“Nick?”
“God, it is, isn’t it?”
“What?” He was a little out of it, but I still needed to understand what he meant.
“The house is…home.”
“It is your home, yes.”
His gaze, all that warm, golden, cognac brown, was focused on me. “Not just mine,” he whispered.
“No,” I agreed, “you share it with some wonderful people.”
“You,” he said under his breath.
“For a little while longer, yes,” I agreed. I stepped around him and over to the tub and, as carefully as possible, lifted Conner into my arms.
“Put the towel over his face, cover yours with your jacket, and we’ll go out the back, through the neighbor’s yard, and hopefully not bump into anybody.”
“We will, but if we’re covered up, it should be all right.”
We escaped the bathroom and headed toward the back door. Once outside, we cut across the patio, around the pool, and then skirted the side of the house. There was a narrow pathway between the fences, so we took it and ended up on the next street over, which, miraculously, was empty.
“How did you know where to put the car?” he asked me, amazed.
“Two words—Owen Moss.” I couldn’t help but grin at the thought of how much Nick and I owed him tonight.
It was a long walk to the car, especially carrying what amounted to deadweight, but once there, Conner woke up enough to squeeze into the back seat with Nick. The Shelby wasn’t the best choice for transport, but my main objective earlier had been to reach Nick as quickly as possible, and for that it had been perfect. Besides, once they were both buckled in, they sat close enough to each other that Conner could rest his head on Nick’s shoulder, so it wasn’t all bad. Based on the soft snoring, he’d already crashed again.
“Tell me where I’m going,” I told Nick.
Before we got far, Conner woke up and warned us that he was going to be sick again. It was nice that he did it before I’d hit the freeway and opened up the throttle.
“You guys don’t have to drive me all the way home,” Conner said once he could speak again. “You can just dump me at––”
“No,” Nick was emphatic as his eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “We’re either taking you to your house or ours. You pick.”
It was selfish, but I hoped he chose his own house. Nick and I were just starting to see eye to eye, so I didn’t want someone else there dividing his attention. I wanted it to be just the two of us.
“I wanna go home,” Conner almost cried, and I was thrilled, even though it would eat up the rest of the night.
“Then we’ll take you,” Nick told him, stroking his hair before meeting my gaze again. “It’s not that far,” he told me. “La Jolla is a little more than two hours away.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling off to check Google Maps on my phone. “Gimme the address.”
We didn’t say much to each other on the way there, Nick and Conner talking instead, but Conner directed me once I was heading south on La Jolla Scenic Drive. Even in the dark I could tell I was in a high-end neighborhood. I’d never been to so many multimillion-dollar homes in my life, from Santa Barbara to Malibu, and now La Jolla.
The gate at the end of Conner’s driveway was much older than Nick’s, wrought iron with a giant scrolled W at the center.
“I thought his last name was Fox?” I asked Nick as he stood at the call box, waiting for someone to answer.
“Fox is his stage name,” he explained. “His real name is Wallingford.”
“Hello?” a tired voice answered.
“Jenna?”
“Yes, who—ohmygod, Nicky?”
He waved into the security camera. “Sweetie, I’ve got your brother in my car. Can you let me in?”
She gasped.
“No, no, no,” he said quickly. “He’s okay, just a little drunkish.”
The gate started to open before he’d finished the explanation.
“You swear?” she asked him, her voice small and steeped in worry.
“I promise,” he vowed, crossing his heart for emphasis.
He hopped into the passenger seat, and I drove down the long tree-lined drive. “I bet this is beautiful in the daytime. These trees look ancient.”
“Yeah, it’s close to four acres,” Nick told me, “and the house itself is gorgeous. I wish you could see it, but I don’t want to stay over. I just want to go home.”
“Me too,” I said, smiling at the thought.
When I pulled up in front of the house, Nick got out and greeted the three people who came running from inside. There were two women in robes and Conner’s dad, who looked exactly like an older, more distinguished version of his son, even in pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He was the only one who didn’t stop to hug Nick. Instead, he came straight to the car to check on his son.