Escaped Artist (Untamed #3) by Victoria Green, Jinsey Reese Page A

he’s been in touch,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “We don’t know if it’s really him yet.”
    My head pounded. “Sure we do, Dash. My mom doesn’t have that many admirers from Rykers.”
    “At least we know he’s still incarcerated, right?” I was pretty sure Dash had meant that to sound reassuring. Except his words had the opposite effect.
    “Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “For now.”
    Ree had warned me that her father had the power to reduce my dad’s sentence. She had also told me what she’d said to the reporters back in the Galerie Yves Robert. The message she’d had for her parents. If the mayor saw me as the reason she was dissing Harvard and the McKinley name… shit.
    “Maybe it’s nothing,” Dash said.
    Where the hell did his optimism come from? Did it have something to do with the fact that Dash had never crossed our father the way that I had? That fucker had never had it as bad for anyone as he’d had it for me. His name on my birth certificate was like a target on my back.
    “Maybe I need to go back home,” I said, placing my head in my hands.
    “When I got out of rehab,” Dash said, quietly, “I had someone who helped me through it all, and I never would have made it to sobriety without her. But if she hadn’t been there for me at that time…”
    His voice trailed off and I lifted my head to look at him. He had this far-off look in his eyes—a painful mixture of sweetness and sorrow on his face.
    I immediately knew what I needed to do, what I wanted to do.
    For the moment, I needed to put this out of my mind and focus on Ree. Right now, there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to help her win this fight. I had to do everything in my power to ensure her happiness. That also meant not telling her about my parents. If she got even one whiff of the potential threat—especially if it was brought on by her father—it could send her running for the pills again.
    I would just have to take things one day at a time and trust that everything would work out. For once.
    Having lived in the middle of a shitstorm for so long, I’d taken the relative quiet of the last few years to be a deserved respite. Having Ree in my life had to be my reward for all the hurt I’d survived growing up.
    I just had to hope this wasn’t the calm before the real storm.

fourteen

    “R eady?” Dare squeezed my hand and smiled as we stood on the doorstep of Dash’s place.
    Yeah, the former scene of my worst walk of shame ever. Talk about your first test straight out of rehab. My heart was pounding, my palms sweating, and I felt like I couldn’t get any oxygen into my lungs.
    I started shaking my head. “I don’t know about this, Dare.”
    The people inside were foreign to me. Not to mention, the last time they’d seen me had not been my most shining moment, to say the least. I had a vague recollection of insulting some girl with blue hair before realizing Dare was there, and then hanging my head as Dash had walked me out. Sure, the eldest Wilde had been incredibly kind, but he had to think the worst of me. Anyone would.
    God, I wished I had some pills to settle my nerves.
    Shit.
    I couldn’t think like that. I had to be able to do it on my own, to live life without help. I’d already faced much worse in my past. I had to be able to handle this with my head held high.
    “Ree.” Dare’s lips were pressed against my ear, his warm breath shivering me. “They’re not going to judge you. Some of them have been where you are—Dash has, for one.” I pulled back from him so I could see his eyes. Dash had been in rehab? Somehow, I could breathe a little easier knowing that. “They don’t know you. You have a clean slate with them. I promise you have nothing to worry about.”
    I nodded, took a breath, and then tried to smile.
    “Think about them like they’re your new therapy group,” he said. “Out of one rehab program and into—”
    “No man’s land?” I said, a