Her Massive Missile (The Fireworks Series) Read online

  Her Massive Missile

  The Fireworks Series

  Amelia Wilde

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  More Flirt Club Reads

  Connect with Amelia

  Also by Amelia Wilde

  Mallory

  Loud, rowdy, and packed to the gills: that’s how I like it at the Stars & Stripes bar on the main drag of my hometown. Tonight of all nights, it should be deafening in here. It’s the Fourth of July. America’s birthday. Biggest day of the year in Milltown. When I was a kid it felt like the whole town was gearing up for my birthday on the fifth of July, like everybody wanted me to ring in the new year with Colorado’s biggest fireworks show. The first week of July has always been a countdown to something special—four, three, two, one, boom!

  Every year except this one.

  I should be flying high. My best friend in the world, one Sophie Langdon, had the craziest wedding known to mankind. That decade of blushes and looks shared between her and Ash Montgomery finally paid off…on the day she was supposed to marry another man. It still seems like something out of a romance novel.

  And who wouldn’t want some romance that? I sure as hell could use some.

  The guy standing next to me at the bar doesn’t notice that I’m ripe for romance. He doesn’t notice anything at all, except something one of his buddies says. I don’t catch the news, only the whoop he lets out. Then, drink thrust high into the air in some kind of celebration, he steps directly onto my left foot.

  “Ouch, shiz,” I hiss into the battered hardwood bartop. A hand on my upper back offers a hint of comfort. Maybe Sophie and Ash have finally detached themselves from one another. You give those two an inch of a booth in the back of the bar, and they’ll take a mile. At least one of them has come over to—

  Nope.

  That’s not a hand on my upper back. It’s an elbow. The guy who crushed my foot five seconds ago is leaning over me to get the bartender’s attention.

  Roxy Harding, best-known redhead in Milltown, is the second person—other than me—to take note of my situation. “Hey, big guy.” She snaps her fingers at the slightly tipsy man using me as an armrest. “Let her up, and then we can talk about drinks.”

  “What?”

  “Let. Her. Up.” From this vantage point, I can’t see beyond the bottom of Roxy’s Stars & Stripes polo shirt, but I can hear her cracking her gum. “Stand up, smarty pants.”

  “What? Oh.” It takes him way too long to lift his elbow off my back. The second I’m free I straighten up like a Jack-in-the-Box.

  “You okay?” Roxy looks me up and down. She served me my first alcoholic drink when I was twenty-one and home from college on summer break—a 7&7 with two celebratory umbrellas leaning against the rim—and a tiny part of me wishes it was a slow November night at the bar so I could shoot the shit with her and ignore the fact that I’m painfully single.

  “I’m good.” I give her a jaunty salute and put a smile on. It is the Fourth of July, after all. There’s no room for moping. I take a step back from the bar. Sophie and Ash are still posted up in their booth. We snagged it early, before the fireworks crowd came in like a tidal wave. Ash sits up against the wall with his arm around my best friend, dark eyes locked on hers like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And she’s not even looking at him. She’s looking across the booth at the third member of our college trio, Emily. And Emily has her eyes on…a cowboy? A cowboy. From the look in her eyes, she’ll take him home tonight.

  My heart twists up like two of those concentration balls gone haywire and my throat tightens. It was so nice of Sophie and Ash to extend their honeymoon to be in Milltown for the Fourth. Coming here for the holiday is a tradition we started in college, when we shared a three-person suite with Emily. A way to stay connected over the break, even if we all took jobs where the rent was cheaper than an off-campus apartment. So, so nice of them. But the way Sophie touches Ash, their hands doing a subtle little dance right there at the table, makes me want to die.

  Just a little.

  While I was looking at them like a lost puppy, somebody filled in my spot at the bar. On the other end of the room a shout goes up—they’re starting!—and suddenly I don’t think I can spend another moment in that booth with my friends. I definitely do not want to talk to all the people who ignored me in high school, like Jared Fry, who’s holding court up against the opppiste wall.

  If only I could crowd-surf.

  Instead I dive in headfirst, my hands cutting a path through the waves of tipsy bodies, and head toward the door. I pat my pockets—phone, check, wallet, check—and swim upstream until my hands meet the slick metal bar on the door. It sticks in any kind of heat, so I lean in with my shoulder and burst out into the only available space on the other side.

  The first firework explodes over Milltown in a crashing cascade of red, white, and blue. Drunken cheers lift on the wind. Born in the USA by the Boss kicks off the show soundtrack on the downtown speakers.

  This is normally my favorite moment of the year.

  My chest aches like it’s missing an essential piece. In the middle of a shouting, swaying crowd in front of the Stars & Stripes, I’m completely alone.

  The easiest way out is to skirt the crowd on the side with the buildings. My bare shoulders scrape against the bricks with every other step. Thank god the crush thins out fast—everybody wants the best view. Three blocks, and I’ve got a raw shoulder, a tender spot on my hip, and freedom.

  It’s six blocks back to my parents’ house, where I’m staying for the weekend, and not a single part of me is afraid to walk home in the dark. Well…a single part of me might be a little jumpy, but I wouldn’t call it real fear. Jordana Bolton got robbed at the bank yesterday, which isn’t typical Milltown. It’s hardly dark, anyway, with splashes of purple and gold illuminating the sidewalk beneath my feet.

  The echoing booms roll over Milltown like thunder, the waves of sound ricocheting off the corners of buildings and throwing themselves against one another like teenagers at a mosh pit. My calves ache as I start up the hill. I go past the Milltown Bakery, a children’s clothing store, and Dottie’s Ice Cream Parlor. After the alley I’ll be home free in the residential neighborhoods.

  I watch my reflection in the window Dottie’s, flickering in and out like I’m in the middle of a lightning storm.

  Something moves in the alley.

  Hairs rise on the back of my neck, setting off a cascade of goose bumps that unfurls like a flag down my back. It’s probably a dog. Must be a dog, right? Or somebody cutting across the main road.

  No—not just one somebody. Two. And then a third.

  And all of them tall and muscled and men.

  Precisely none of them are the most harmless of all the men in Milltown. God, I’d give anything to encounter Dick Freeman in his red-white-and-blue penis pouch. They really tried this year to get him to wear shorts, but the old hippie has been downtown all day in a town-mandated pouch. I’d rather see his ass dart across the road in front of me right now than this…gang.

  The first one turns, sees me, and smiles, his teeth painted red by the fireworks. “Caught one,” he says with a smirk that chills me down to my patriotic-themed toenails.

  I open my mouth on instinct, every muscle frozen.

  A round of screamers soars into the sky, coming back to earth with an
ear-splitting shriek.

  Chris

  I came back to Milltown for some peace and quiet. Would you believe that? Who comes back to town on the second of July expecting a snoozefest?

  Me. I’m your man. I got taken in by all the memories of this place from high school, which was one long stretch of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That’s also how lots of people describe deployment. I’d take the boredom any day.

  At least, that’s what I tell myself.

  I put myself right in the middle of as much boredom as I could find, and I’ve lasted…almost forty-eight hours.

  The Stars & Stripes is loud, with hometown bros posturing for all the women who’ve come in front out of town, but none of it sparks any interest. I recognize a bunch of the people in here—Jared Fry, who was the quarterback of the football team my sophomore and junior year. He came here with Paul Miller, who was a running back. The two of them were a dream team. Not my dream team, because nobody in their right mind would have put me on anything but the chess team based on how I looked: tall and lanky with discount glasses. Chess would have been a mistake, too. I’ve always sucked at chess.

  I put my empty beer glass on the counter and dig for my wallet. The bartender, Roxy, sweeps by. She’s the only one who seems to know I’m tucked in this corner, snug against the wall. “Calling it a night?”

  “Sure am.” I put a twenty on the counter and slide it across to her.

  “But the fireworks haven’t—” As if on cue, the first one explodes over the town square. I’m not much for fireworks these days. There’s a folding chair and a firepit at my uncle’s place that seems like a safer bet. Roxy takes the twenty and gives me a salute.

  I’m halfway to the door when I hear my name. And I’ll be damned—it’s Jared Fry.

  “Is that you, man?” He’s got a booming voice now, loud enough to carry over the ruckus of the bar layered in with the fireworks. “I told you it was him.” He gives Paul a nudge hard enough to make him stumble.

  “You were right,” Paul says when he recovers. He sticks his hand out for me to shake, and I take it. This whole thing is fucking weird. Are we that old now that we shake hands when we meet in a bar. “Hey, man. How’s it been?”

  I laugh out loud. I can count on one hand the number of times Paul and Jared spoke to me back in school. “Swore I’d never come back.”

  Jared claps me on the shoulder. “Dude, we said the same thing. Where did you buy?”

  “Buy?”

  “Yeah. Where are you living now? I’m out by the baseball fields, and Paul just bought a place behind Dottie’s.”

  “New York City,” I tell him, because it’s the truth. I spend most of my time working as a systems analyst, which is what the Army trained me to be after they were finished making me into a grunt. Once I got out I got a job through a company called Heroes on the Homefront. I’ll never forget the woman I met with, but not for any bullshit romantic reasons. Her name was Summer, and she was the first person to look at me like I hadn’t just been rolled off an Army conveyor belt.

  “Just visiting, then?” Jared’s eyebrows raise, and then his eyes flick down the length of me. “Good for you, man. Good for you.”

  It’s like he can’t figure me out. He and Paul are roughly the same shape and size that they’ve always been, but Paul’s sporting a bit of a gut and by the flush in Jared’s cheeks he’s probably lost his touch at handling the ball.

  They both live here.

  I never considered that a possibility. I can’t consider it one now—not with my job in the city. My life is there, too.

  The fireworks get louder and the crowd presses in. “Good to see you,” I say, and then I put my hand out to shake because that’s what we do now. Farewell, former football players. So we met again. Or…for the first time.

  God, high school is bullshit.

  I make my way through downtown, dodging drunk guys in button-down shirts and more than one woman in a tie-die bikini top for a shirt. My uncle’s house is up the hill, three blocks past the alley.

  Four people are there at the space where the alley lets out, and my heart pulls backward through my chest. It’s some guy and his girlfriend, and two other guys who…

  Wait.

  He’s standing close—too close—which is why I made the mistake of assuming they’re together. But she moves her head to the side and I catch a glimpse of his face.

  It’s not a guy and his girlfriend at all. Or if it is, this is a bad situation. The other two flank him like a man of his size could possibly need protection from a woman of her size. A woman of an oddly familiar size and shape. I can’t quite place it, but something about the curve of her shoulders…

  She turns backward, risking a glance back toward town, and every inch of my skin bursts into a heat that rolls into an open flame.

  It’s Mallory Whitford.

  High school was four years of boredom punctuated by moments of terror…and moments of unbelievable exhilaration. Most of those moments when Mallory Whitford looked at me with those big brown eyes of hers.

  And when she talked to me?

  The entire planet would stop on its axis and wait for my stupid, lovesick brain to catch up.

  Her mouth forms a perfect O when she sees me, eyes going wide and bright in a silvery blue flash from the fireworks. She’s afraid. She must think I’m one of them—one last man to block her exit.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  Whatever’s going on here is about to end…and it’s going to end on my terms.

  Mallory

  Oh, I’m screwed. I’m so screwed. I’m so screwed that I’ve never been this screwed before in my life and I might never be again. And not in a good way.

  The boom and crash from the fireworks ricochets down the alley and my heart follows the zigzag path, throwing itself against my ribs so hard I think it might fly off and slap one of them in the face. That would be so fucking disgusting that it just might work—it might take one of them out. But there are four. Three of them are twenty feet ahead of me at the mouth of the alley, one of them is behind me, backlit by the fireworks, and all of them big and brawny. I can’t even appreciate the muscles on the fourth guy, the guy behind me, because he’s the trap that’s been sprung from every direction. Traffic zooms by on my left, slamming on the breaks to make a hard turn before the packed town square. They’re not looking. That’s my only escape route, which means there’s no escape route.

  Fuck.

  I never thought my life would come to this. In Milltown, of all places. I had a few dicey encounters in college—shadowy figures lurking near the river trail, that kind of thing—but never once did I feel this gut churning fear, like fingers of ice with a vise grip around my stomach. In my wildest imagination, I had the vague idea that if this happened to me, I’d flee like a gazelle, my gym-and-running strengthened legs carrying me to immediate safety.

  Another volley of fireworks bursts overhead. Start, I think. Think of it like a local 5k, only the prize is escaping these horrible men.

  I don’t start. I don’t take a step. I swivel around like a Barbie with its legs glued to the floor. In front of me, behind me—there’s no good place to run. And what if I choose the wrong moment? Sprinting out into Main Street during an anarchic time like during a fireworks show also seems likely to result in my demise.

  “Aww, look at her.” The ringleader sneers the words over the echo of the last boom and the next crack of the fireworks getting shot into the sky. “Go get her, boys. She’s going to make a hell of an aftershow.”

  I swivel my head uselessly behind me, even though I will not be anybody’s aftershow. Since my legs have abandoned ship I’ll have to wait until they’re at close range, and then remember all the self-defense tips I’ve ever learned at the perfect moment. The eyes. I’ll go for the eyes. And the groin. What the hell did she say during the talent show scene in Miss Congeniality? Something about singing. And I can’t remember what the S stands for. God, the one useful thing
I learn from a movie, and it deserts me in my moment of need.

  The sidewalk behind me is empty.

  It’s empty.

  I’ve been so focused on my last-ditch plan to play Frogger with the fireworks-distracted traffic that I didn’t notice the fourth man’s disappearance.

  The tiny hairs on the back of my neck fly upward like frozen spikes, bile searing my throat. Where is he? Where is he? I spin in a full, stupid circle. My arm brushes something and a scream carves itself into the air. It’s swallowed up by a set of screamers in the sky and I spit out a hysterical laugh afterward, then gulp it back. This is no time for laughter.

  Another crash, another boom, and I spin like a top, right back around to witness…

  A miracle.

  The fourth guy, the one I saw silhouetted against the red and purple sparkle bursts of the fireworks, is in midair.

  I mean, he’s actually in midair, hovering in the empty space above the man who is, incredibly, still sneering at me.

  Mystery Man succumbs to the pull of gravity with his fist cocked ever so slightly, coming down on the smirking asshole, and then he is no longer smirking.

  In fact, he’s no longer upright.

  He’s splayed out on the sidewalk, Mystery standing over him like something out of a comic book. Only this is not a comic book. This is real life, as real as it’s ever been, even if it makes no sense for Milltown.

  “Get up,” he shouts down at him, but the guy on the ground only curls up and twists inward. I have the strangest urge to call him a roly-poly, only that would be the lamest possible thing to say in this moment.

  It’s too early to be relieved.

  It’s way too early.

  Mystery raises his head and stalks toward the other two. Another boom covers what I can only assume to be the sound of him cracking his knuckles. I can’t actually see his knuckles, but anybody walking into a fight outnumbered with that set of his shoulders is completely cracking his knuckles.