Free Broken Survivor by Jennifer Labelle Page B

baby.” She reached up and locked lips with her boy toy, Ron.
    Holly rolled her eyes. “Hey, E, how’ve you been?”
    “Better now that you’re here.” He tugged her forward, and she wrapped her arms around his midsection. “Hey, Nadia, what’s up?” He tilted his head toward her other friend, and Holly could see that Nadia felt like the third wheel. Jules had her guy and Edgar seemed to take a liking to her, leaving Nadia to stand awkwardly in front of the four of them. But things soon became equal when Edgar reached behind him to grab a buddy. “Have you met, John?”
    “Well, hello.” Nadia smirked at John, and they seemed to hit it off, so much so, that she ditched them eventually for some one-on-one time with him.
    A couple hours later Holly had accomplished her goal and was totally sloshed.
    “What time do you have to be home?” Ed asked as he nibbled on her earlobe, giving her goose bumps.
    “By twelve.” She giggled. “Why?”
    “Well, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you’re late.” He checked his watch and then showed her the time. It was 12:45 a.m . Damn! “Since you’re already in trouble, how about we push our luck a little bit and go for a ride?”
    “Are you drunk? Because I don’t get into cars with people who have been drinking.”
    The side of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile, and he held out his cup. “Smell it, baby, I stopped drinking when we met up. It’s just plain old Pepsi. Check it out.”
    Holly sniffed but didn’t trust her instincts, so she interrupted Jules’s make-out session for a second opinion. “Edgar wants to go for a ride and is trying to assure me he hasn’t been drinking. Smell this for me, would you?”
    Jules grabbed the cup and took a big sip. “It’s clean. He’s good to go.”
    “See?” He looked triumphant. “So how about that ride?”
    “Since when did you get a car?”
    “It’s a loaner.” Ron chuckled. “Can we come with?”
    The cool car she was expecting turned out to be a minivan, which she found amusing. “Is this your mother’s car?”
    Edgar shook his head. “Not quite.”
    “We’ve got dibs on the back.” Ron pulled Jules with him to the backseat.
    “Lucky bastard.” Edgar snickered and then turned to her. “Shall we?”
    They were on their way downtown when the gas light turned on, so they pulled into a gas station to fill up.
    It all happened so fast that Holly needed a minute to register what the hell was going on. One minute they were going for a leisurely drive, and the next she was blinking in shock as blue-and-red lights flashed all around them and they were directed to put their hands up. Police swarmed them with guns drawn, yelling for them to each slowly get out of the van.
    “It’s stolen, are you friggin’ kidding me?” Holly raged. “Of all the stupid things to drag me into. You son of a—”
    Holly’s door opened, and an officer dragged her out and frisked her against the side of the vehicle before she could finish reprimanding her so-called friend. Edgar and Ron were fucking idiots.
    “If Ron thinks he’s going to get away with this, he’s got another thing coming. We are so over!” Jules glared in the direction of the cop car the guys sat in.
    Holly groaned. “This is so embarrassing.” She leaned down so that her hair would block her sight of the few onlookers watching the arrest. Talk about a buzzkill.
    Both guys were charged and shipped off to jail to await their chance to see a judge in court. Luckily, because it was a first offense and the cops determined that the girls weren’t involved other than being along for a joy ride, they let them off with a warning. The hardest part of the whole experience for Holly was the phone call to Charlotte to let her know she’d been arrested and needed to be picked up.
     
    ***
     
    “Are you kidding me? She doesn’t show up when she’s supposed to, gets arrested, makes you pick her up in the middle of the night, and she gets the right