Chasing Rhodes (Rock Falls #1) (10 page)

I
F IT WEREN’T
for the fact that I called to find out if he’d shown up to work on Sunday morning, I wouldn’t have even known if he was alive. The night he didn’t show for dinner, my imagination quickly got the better of me. At first, I was convinced that he’d wrapped his truck around a tree in the bad weather, but no one had mentioned anything, and like I said before, it’s a small town. Tragedy would spread fast. From there, it quickly went to him in bed with a busty blonde from the bar.
The bastard probably went out to get a drink with his buddies from work and took some cheap, plastic bimbo home to screw.
He hadn’t ever given me reason to believe he’d cheat on me, but to be honest, that seemed like an easier thing to wrap my head around than him just blowing me off without saying so much as a word, especially after our night on the lake.
What kind of coward leaves someone without even having the balls to tell them? Fucking bullshit.

I feel sorry for anyone who crossed my path that week. To say I was bitchy would be putting it mildly. I considered driving to his house to tear him a new asshole more than once, but the girls talked me down off the ledge. Jami even dragged me out running on Sunday when he noticed that I was lacking more pep in my step that usual. He fired questions at me until I told him what had happened. That time, I was the one holding someone back from breaking down his door.

I really don’t know how something could go from being so amazing to a complete clusterfuck almost instantly. Things with Jackson had gotten bad, but they’d gotten bad slowly, over time. Not overnight. I felt gutted and rejected. I didn’t sleep, I barely ate, and I was running solely off my anger. There was also a part of me that missed him so much it hurt, but I kept that part buried down as deep as I could push it. They say you can never love someone as much as you can miss them, and if I let myself feel that, it would cripple me.

It’s Monday night. Exactly one week and one day since ‘The Blow Off.’ Beth went out, although she wouldn’t tell us where, so Lennon and I order pizza and watch a movie. It suits me just fine because Beth seems to be on ‘Team Greyson.’ She’s come up with every excuse in the book for his behavior, and I am tired of hearing them. Lennon is always on ‘Team Hannah.’ She is all about ‘fuck love’ these days, even more so than usual. If I had to guess, it would be because Jami has a new girlfriend, but we have come to an agreement. She doesn’t ask me about Greyson and I don’t ask her about Jami. We say, “Fuck ‘em,” together and watch Alice kill some zombies in
Resident Evil
.

We go to bed relatively early considering it is a Monday night and we both have to work the next day. It takes me forever to fall asleep. My mind is replaying the week before ‘The Blow Off’ over and over again, as it has every night since then, looking for some sort of explanation as to how this could have happened. I finally manage to drift off to sleep around eleven, but I am startled awake less than two hours later.

What the hell is that noise?
I sit up in the blackness of my room, listening closely. There it is again–slam, slam, slam.
What the fuck?
I creep slowly out of bed and open my door. I look across the hallway to see Lennon doing the same, clutching a lacrosse stick in her hands. I note immediately that Beth’s door is open and she isn’t inside.
Maybe she is making the noise?

We tiptoe into the living room and stop. The house is quiet again and we hover here in silence waiting to see if it will start again. My heart is pumping a thousand beats a minute, and Lennon and I are holding hands.
Of all the nights for this shit to happen, it has to be the night we watched a scary zombie movie. Come on. That’s just cruel.
The noise seems to have stopped, and we turn to make our way back into our rooms. We get no more than a few feet when it starts again. Louder this time. It’s coming from the front door. The closeness of the sound catches us off guard and we scream.

You know how, in horror movies, the people always split up or go towards the scary sound?
Yeah, well, that is not fucking happening here
.
No way, Jose, was I ending up on the receiving end of some ‘It puts the lotion on the skin’ bullshit
.

We stand in the middle of the living room, frozen in place. “Maybe we should call the cops,” Lennon says, her skin as pale as a ghost. I nod my head and we make our way into the kitchen.

We have a house phone in there and it’s closer than retreating back to our bedrooms. I pick up the phone, click the button, and wait to hear a dial tone before I start to enter… 9 – 1… But I stop dead when a voice comes through the door.

“Hannah. Please. Open the door.” Slam, slam, slam.
Greyson.

I hang up the phone and make my way towards the front door when Lennon grabs me by the elbow.

“He sounds drunk, Han. Maybe you shouldn’t open the door.” She’s just looking out for me, but the painful way my heart constricted when I heard his voice had me going for the door anyway.

I slide open the deadbolt and turn the handle. Standing there, bracing himself on the edges of my doorframe was Greyson. His fist is still hovering in the air. He must have been bashing it against the door because it is bloody and red.
Jesus Christ.
He looks like shit and he smells like whiskey. I quickly poke my head out the door and am relieved when I don’t see Bagheera anywhere.
At least he didn’t drive here. Thank God.
I let myself feel a moment of pity for the broken man in front of me when I remember who got screwed here and put some steel in my backbone.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Greyson? It’s the middle of the night.”

“I wanted to see you,” he slurs. His drunk eyes are roaming up and down my body, taking in my boy shorts and cotton tank top. Cold air is coming through the door, and just being this close to him has my nipples pebbling. There is no doubt that he notices.

“Well, you didn’t want to see me or even so much as answer a goddamn text all week. So I don’t really give a shit if you want to see me,.” I snap and start to close the door.

He shoves his foot inside the door and effectively stops me from slamming it in his face. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says, reaching for me.

I swat his hand away and cross my arms over my chest. “Don’t sweetheart me, asshole. I didn’t know if you were alive or fucking dead. What kind of coward ends things with someone without even giving them the courtesy of a, ‘Hey, I’m done fucking, you now. We’re done!’” I’m shouting now, my chest heaving with anger.

His eyes shine with sadness and I have to look away from him so I don’t lose my strength. This is so not going to be fixed with a drunken apology. I deserve more than that. At the very least, I deserve a goddamn explanation.

He moves closer to me, and with the deep breaths I’m taking, my breasts are grazing his chest. I still won’t look at him. He puts a finger under my chin, lifting it and I close my eyes. I won’t stand a chance if I see that look in his eyes again. I can already feel my anger dissipating just from being able to smell him, from having him so close. It’s impossible to deny it now. I missed him so much it hurt—and like any addiction, when it’s right in front of you, it’s a hell of a lot harder to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Keeping my eyes closed, I push him with the palms of my hands. “You need to go, Greyson. I can’t do this. I don’t know what happened and I don’t care. I can’t do complicated again.” I start to pull away from him when he drops to his knees in front of me, wrapping his arms around my waist. It all happens so fast that I don’t have time to move and he starts to speak.

“I’m just like him, Hannah.” His body is starting to shake, and I can’t tell if he’s crying because his face is buried in my shirt. I don’t say anything because I want him to continue and I’m afraid he’ll stop if I start talking. “I’m a terrible person. I’ll break you. I’ll break you just like he broke her. I tried to walk away. I tried to walk away after the night at the lake, after I realized I’m in love with you.”

He loves me.
I can’t stop my heart from doing that stupid pitter-patter thing it does around him, but I try to remember that he’s drunk and probably won’t remember saying it.

There’s no mistaking it now. His broad shoulders are heaving as he sobs into my stomach. My resolve cracks. I lower my hands, stroking his head.

“It almost killed me. I can’t be without you. I’m selfish, and I need you. Please, Hannah.” He’s begging me, and although I’m not really sure what it is he’s begging me for, I know that, whatever it is, I will give it to him. I don’t have a choice.

Maybe I’m a weak person, and maybe I should have made him leave. But the fact is that I love him, and being away from him has almost killed me too. I reach down and cup his face in my hands, turning it up so he can look me in the eyes. My heart breaks at seeing his handsome face so lost. We are going to talk about this is the morning, when he’s sober. But for now, I think he just needs to hold me, and I can give him that.

I wipe his tears with the pads of my thumbs. “Let’s go to bed,” I say.

He stands, slowly unwrapping himself from my body. I take his hand and lead him down the hall. I help him undress and get him into bed before running back out to lock the front door and turn off the lights. He looks like he’s already passed out when I come back to the room, so I crawl into bed on the opposite side, my back to him and close my eyes. I’m startled when his arm reaches around my waist and draws me back into his chest.

I can feel his stubble on my neck, and when he speaks, it’s so quiet that I could have easily missed it. “I’m home, Hannah. I came home to you.”

I have to bite back the tears threatening to spill over, and although he won’t remember, I whisper back, saying it for the first time out loud, “I love you.”

I
WAKE UP
early and sneak out of bed to call work. I reschedule all the appointments I had for today and cancel the rest. Greyson and I are going to talk about what happened, whether he likes it or not. I’m not giving him an excuse to put it off.
Not a chance in hell.
After finishing my phone calls, I climb back into bed. It is still early and I am going to need my energy for however this conversation plays out.

When I wake a few hours later, I’m pressed back up against his chest, his arm around my waist. He must have pulled me to him in his sleep again. I slowly spin around in his arms, startled to find that he is awake.

“Good morning,” he says sheepishly. No Hannah. No sweetheart. Just good morning.

My stomach instantly drops. It was just because he was drunk. Self-preservation instincts kick in and I start to pull away before he tightens his hold on me.

“Where are you going?”

“To the bathroom,” I lie, looking away from him.

“You’re lying to me,” he says.

No shit, Sherlock.
I’m about to bolt and everything about my body language confirms that.

“I remember everything from last night,” he admits.

I stall in my attempt to get away. I never expected him to remember any of what happened last night. I expected that he’d been too drunk.

He puts a finger under my chin and lifts my gaze to meet his. “And I meant every word of it, Hannah. I love you. I’m not good for you, but I love you and I’m too selfish not to have you.”

I know that there’s still so much for us to talk about, still so many balls up in the air, but my heart melts at his words. “I love you too, Greyson.”

He puts his forehead to mine and whispers, “Like coming home, sweetheart.”

“Like coming home,” I whisper back to him before he takes my lips in a deep and hungry kiss.

My body comes alive under his touch. My skin is on fire instantly. I was too angry to get myself off in the last week, and I had more than one dirty dream about him that all ended with me getting no relief. I was wound tight with sexual tension.

His hand runs down my back, grabbing a handful of my ass as he rolls onto his back, taking me with him. My legs are on either side of his hips, straddling him. The only things separating us are my thin boy shorts and his black boxer briefs. I grab the hem of my shirt, pulling it over my head and palming my tits. He groans, reaching up to grab me by the back of the neck, dragging my lips to his again. There is nothing slow or soft in our kiss. It’s demanding and punishing. I bite his bottom lip between by teeth and he growls, bucking his hips of the bed. The friction feels amazing, and I start to ride him with our clothes still on.

“Fuck, Hannah,” he says before slamming me onto my back. He moves to stand, hooking his fingers in the sides of my shorts, sliding them down and off my legs. “I can’t go slow, sweetheart. I need that pussy. I’ve missed it too much to go slow.” He pulls down his briefs and starts to slowly pump his hand over his cock. I whimper at the sight of him, my knees falling to the sides. “That’s a good girl, Hannah. Show me that perfect cunt,” he says, biting his lip.

I spread my legs wider, loving the look of pure lust in his eyes. He’s trying to harness it but I want him to snap.

“Touch yourself,” he demands. I obey immediately, running my hand down my stomach and over my wet folds. “Mmm. Just like that.” He groans, stroking his length harder.