Drop Everything Now (12 page)

With his forehead still against mine, Bryan let out a short, ragged laugh, then pressed a soft, lingering kiss to my lips. I wanted to memorize that feeling, one that was intense and tender at the same time, one that was so completely made for me that I wasn’t sure if anything would ever come close again.

Our chests heaved together, the curves of my breasts rising with each gasp of air. Wild thoughts raced through my head. What if everything else was a dream and this was real life? The thought was a shock, mostly because it was so utterly and completely true.

“I’ve never felt anything this real,” I murmured.

“Oh, Andi.”

Bryan let his eyes fall shut for a moment, then pulled out, reaching for a box of tissue to wipe up. He dropped it on the floor and grabbed another, tenderly pressing it between my legs. “Thanks,” I murmured as he tossed that, too, then lifted himself up enough to pull the covers out from underneath us.

“Come here,” he said. I scooted to his side, my own last words ringing in my ears. I pressed my face to his chest and turned my head to kiss him there. My eyes fluttered closed as we lay there tangled up together and our breaths slowed. He squeezed my side possessively, and a purr of satisfaction rumbled in my chest.

“Tell me more,” I murmured. “About you. About Bryan.”

He took a deep breath and kissed my forehead. “When I came to Vegas,” he said, “it was because I had nothing left to lose.” His quiet, measured voice rumbled through his chest and into mine. “I had an amazing scholarship to USC. Football.”

I nodded, letting my fingers trace the lines of his abs.

“The week before the championship, I had an accident. Thrown up in the air by a guy on the other team, landed on my head. Pushed two of my vertebrae together, cracked one, and before I knew it, I was paralyzed from the waist down.”

“Holy shit,” I said, pushing up on one arm to look at him. He tugged me back down and kissed the top of my head.

“I had this girlfriend. She was perfect.
We
were perfect. But then I couldn’t walk. She had plans to go to USC already, and with all my scholarship money gone, I didn’t really fit into her plans anymore. She told me as much. Suddenly, my entire world turned upside-down. Turned out, it was just a temporary thing. Slowly, my spinal fluid built back up, and after some serious recovery time and lots of physical therapy, I was more or less normal. Lost a lot of my muscle memory for all the football shit though, and by then, it was too late to get my scholarship back.”

I nodded again, snaking my arm around his waist and squeezing.

“Things with Chris got real bad at the same time.”

“Your brother,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

Ryder nodded. “He’s only two years older than me, and he’s always been a hothead. Giving our mom shit, drinking, staying out too late. When he decided to go to boot camp, Mom and I were so relieved. We thought it would calm him down, straighten him out a little, but he did a tour in Afghanistan and ended up beating the crap out of one of the other soldiers. They sent him home, saying it was PTSD, but it turns out he’s bipolar, too.”

“What does that mean?”

“Basically, the most intense mood swings on the planet. The depression is really dangerous, but the violent temper when he’s manic is just as scary. He moved back home, and I had just graduated high school with no college plans, so when mom got a secretarial job at a construction company here in Vegas, we both moved with her. Things were booming so much in the housing industry that I decided to train as a realtor. I did a pretty decent job—sold a few houses, made enough to get my own place. Made enough to help Chris out when he was having trouble.”

“Trouble like…?”

“Losing jobs, running into creditors. I even co-signed a loan for him because he had this idea for a business in one of his manic episodes back before we knew what was really going on. His condition made things almost impossible, and my mom couldn’t support him. Half the time because he wouldn’t let her. But I love him. I was only able to pay for most of his shit because I started stripping.”

“What does your mom think about all of it?”

“She doesn’t know the half of it. She thinks I’m helping with groceries and maybe his rent occasionally, but I know the whole story. I take him to his appointments because she’s been moving from job to job and never had the time off. It would break her heart.” His voice broke at that. “So now you know every little trashy truth about my life.” He laughed, even though I knew he didn’t think any of this was funny at all.

After a few moments of basking in the calm sound of Bryan’s breathing, in and out, cradling me, I pressed another kiss into his chest. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I figured if you’re going to make the decision to be with a stripper, you might as well know why I do it. Everything I told you back there was true. I never kiss any of those girls. In some places, the guys get head from the girls they bring up on stage, yeah, but I never let it get that far. No one has ever even touched me. It’s strictly for money. Kat treats me well, and I’m good at it. But I have a plan to get out, just as soon as the real estate market rebounds.”

Already, the stress was building back in his voice.

I let go of his waist and reached up to stroke my fingers down his jaw. “Can I tell you a secret?” I murmured.

He hooked a finger under my chin, pulling my lips up to meet his. “Sure,” his voice rumbled against them.

“When I was on stage tonight, it was completely and totally out of character. Like, I would never, ever, ever have done anything like that back home. I haven’t even really been with a guy for over a year. I don’t party. I don’t do drinking and bright lights. I’ve never seen a stripper.”

“But?” he asked with a hopeful look in his eye.

“But when I was up there on stage with you, I had never wanted anything more. Ever.”

He chuckled. “Well, yeah, I’m damn good at it.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, not the music or lights or thong or weird dancing.”

“Hey,” he said, pulling me up for a deeper kiss. “It’s not weird. I did that choreography myself.”

I giggled. “Whatever. What I’m saying is that I only saw you and me up there. And I wanted you all to myself. No matter what else was going on.”

The warmest, most exhilarating feeling shot through me as he pulled me in for one more kiss, his tongue tracing my lips slowly, pulling them gently between his teeth. I’d never been in love, but I would have bet my tips from the whole week that this was getting close to it.

Jumping into something feet-first—just another thing that was so not me.

Bryan tucked me back into his side, and I snuggled in, feeling his breaths becoming heavier. “I said it the other night, and I meant it,” he said. “You’re the first thing in my life in a long time that’s been one hundred percent real. I know you don’t know how long you’ll be here, and that’s okay. But promise me you won’t take reality away from me until then, okay?”

“I promise,” I said, as I drifted off into a deep, contented sleep.

Chapter 16

The
next three weeks flew by in a haze of working my butt off—both at the Starr and at schoolwork—visiting Mom after she finally moved to a rehab hospital, and getting my hands on Bryan’s naked body whenever possible.

Jeff the floor manager put me back in the pit often, and I was anxious to prove myself. Under Cara’s tutelage, I’d mastered the art of remembering which orders belonged to whom; the name of each drink and which ones to ask for a double on to get more tips; how to gravitate toward the high tippers and stay away from the low ones (who usually didn’t have enough money to gamble either, so it was a win-win for me); and how to talk to a guy who was being super-creepy. I’d also figured out how to flirt with the high rollers without feeling like I needed to scrub my skin with bleach afterward. I was getting good at this job, and even though it wasn’t a class at school or helping sick kids, I was bringing in more and more money each night.

It felt really good to be able to support myself, to be the only one I answered to for my own financial needs. It cut the tie between me and Mom—she’d always sent me a few hundred dollars whenever she could before this all happened—but it proved that I could do something all on my own without needing help from anyone. That was powerful.

One early morning, Mom and I were playing cards. She got antsy before physical therapy, and I knew from my work in the hospital that repetitive rituals like an easy card game could help her relax and make her feel like she was engaging in meaningful socialization at the same time. Mom had picked right back up on her usual affinity for trash talk, and the sniping jokes and cards flew for a few minutes before I grabbed a whole pile of cards from Mom’s hospital table.

“Bullshit!” I crowed, pushing my fists up into the air.

She threw back her head and laughed—a real, solid, deep-in-the-belly laugh like she used to. It was the sound of Mom not worrying about a single thing. “You know,” she teased, “I’m glad you finally beat me. I was beginning to think that you were the one with memory loss around here.”

“Ha ha, very funny. Save that confidence for tomorrow’s game, Mamá, because you’re going to need it.”

The telltale clomp of Mike’s walking cast announced his arrival at the door. Mom started but then gave him a slow nod and a small smile. “What’s the gossip from PT today?” she asked.

“Oh, you know. Dr. Wilkes is in a tizzy because one of her aides called in sick again.”

“Called in hungover, you mean?” Mom asked with a twitch of a smile.

“From the sound of it,” Mike laughed as he eased into a chair.

“Do you want the remote?” Mom asked him.

“Nah, you can have it. I’m just here to keep you company till therapy. I’ve got a paper to read.”

I studied Mom’s face. Her expression was pleasant, even though it wasn’t relaxed—like it would be when the nurses came in to take her blood pressure. Mike was a reality that she’d decided to accept.

The fact that he’d be the one keeping her company for the next hour was something I had to accept, too, if I wanted to get any homework done before my shift that night. I gathered the cards together, shoved them back into the box, and stood up.

“Leaving already, Andi?” Mom asked, her brow furrowed.

Shit. “Yeah, I have to get some schoolwork done. But I’ll be back tomorrow morning, okay? I promise.”

“Good,” Mom said with a sparkle in her eye. “Because you promised me a shoulder rub and never delivered.”

“Nuh-uh,” I said, picking up on her mistake. “I promised you one if you beat me at cards. And you didn’t.”

“Not yet, querida. But tomorrow, I will.”

Mike chuckled from his seat.

“Bye, Mike,” I said after I leaned down to kiss Mom’s cheek.

When I looked over toward him, he caught my eye. “Thank you, Andi,” he said. I swore I heard a catch in his voice—one that matched the pang in my heart at having to leave Mom for another day.

The only problem with the later shifts I had picked up with more and more frequency over the next two weeks—usually 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.—was that I barely got to see Mom or Bryan. Mom because her therapy sessions typically went from noon to two o’clock. By the time I dragged my ass out of bed, it was usually 10:00. If I wanted the time to catch up on reading, quizzes, and papers—which I was never really caught up on—I was so exhausted that it was tough to get over to the hospital. Still, I made it four to five times a week, when I would either bring lunch or, if I had enough time, cook it in the microwave there. Mom and I would watch a morning talk show together—her favorite one where the host did everything from cooking lessons to crazy interviews to teaching new dance moves.

It was kind of amazing to see the sense of humor at the core of Mom’s personality, actually. She cracked up at all the same things she used to and, as the days went on, even began making some of the same comments on commercials. “Now who in their right mind would want that?” or “Now, see, that’s something we could use.”

By the end of her third week on the regular hospital recovery floor, she’d even started to direct some of her comments to Mike, who faithfully floated around her room, tidying up when he could and interacting whenever Mom spoke to him. Every time I walked in, I checked to see if they were acting anything close to normal—talking and laughing quietly or holding hands. They never were.

So even though my final semester of college was reaching its halfway point and my earnings were barely managing to keep up with my expenses, I knew I couldn’t go. Mom needed me. I was the only person here she loved, the only one she really even knew.

Besides, even though all the school shit was stressful, working at the Starr wasn’t half bad. They paid me on time every week, and I never had a customer complaint unless it was some drunk asshole bitching to Jeff that I wouldn’t sleep with him. Every time the staff caught wind of that happening, though—it was surprisingly gossipy, just like a big, nosy family—Bryan would show up at the edge of my station during his breaks, hands behind his back, just watching the guys on the floor.

His message was obvious enough: Leave my girl alone. A lot of girls would have found it maddeningly possessive and protective, but I had never realized just how much of that I craved before I met him. I’d never felt like I belonged to anyone, like someone was standing guard over me, and the way that Bryan did it, I really, really liked it. I wasn’t at home here in Vegas, not really—I wasn’t even in familiar territory—but hell if someone didn’t have my back. Someone so sexy, I could barely stand it.

If my libido hadn’t ever gotten a good enough workout in the previous three and a half years of college life, it sure as hell was now. Any time Bryan did his protective hands-off-that-lady thing outside my station, I’d reward him on my break by tugging him back into one of the empty rooms and pushing him against a wall for a quickie. Then, of course, there was the handful of times—seven or eight, maybe -– that Bryan happened to have the same night off as I did, or he surprised me at 3 a.m. with frantic door knocking and gentle kisses that turned into something much steamier, and much better -– something that made only getting four hours of sleep well worth it.

Every time I thought about sex with Bryan, my mouth watered, thinking of the feel of his strong hands gripping and tugging me in exactly the way that made me feel best—like I was precious and irresistible and his alone. The practiced way he moved his tongue over my skin, adding nips and sucks in all the right places and combinations to drive me absolutely wild, and the way he loved making me come, whether or not he was coming, too. I even loved the afterglow. We’d stay awake for hours, idly teasing each other, sometimes going for another round but almost always talking about what we wanted to do with our lives, sharing stories about our families, trading the little facts that made up who we were—our favorite things, our pet peeves, what we wanted the most out of life ten years from now, our biggest fears. I’d had girlfriends, but they were mainly from the hospital and almost all our bonding was over patients or stress from classes. Snuggled up against Bryan with only a sheet to cover us, I felt like this was the most open about myself that I’d ever been, and it felt really good.

For those short weeks, it was like his sole mission was to make my life in Vegas as amazing as humanly possible. I wasn’t complaining one bit.

Even though I was doing all my schoolwork and visiting mom and earning money—everything I was supposed to be doing—being with Bryan was what I wanted to be doing. Something I did just for myself. Something that made me feel treasured and excited and passionate, instead of just dutiful. I lived for those late nights and those twenty minutes stolen away from the day. They were when I felt most alive—like, instead of plodding through life, I was having a little fun on the way.

One morning I woke up, blissfully tangled in Bryan’s sheets and Bryan’s scent. I patted down the bedding around me while trying to crack my eyes open. My quads were sore as I flexed them, and a memory of the night before flashed through my mind. I let out a satisfied, “mmmm,” and did a quarter turn in the bed, pressing my face into the soft fabric.

“Bryan?” I called, hoping he’d hear my half-muffled voice.

I hated the reason I was in Vegas, but I definitely loved affecting a guy in the way I affected Bryan and letting go enough for him to affect me in the same way. Now if only I could transplant his delicious ass back to Philly.

Philly.
In all the craziness of the weeks before—between the hospital, my shift, the strip club, and my night with Bryan—I’d barely checked my email. I slowly forced my legs out from under the sheets and smiled at the exhaustion in my muscles. I found a button-down shirt of Bryan’s hanging on the handle of the closet and drew it around me, hoping he didn’t mind but somehow knowing that he really wouldn’t. I heard the water in the bathroom running as I fumbled through my duffel bag and found my phone, almost completely dead.

But when I clicked it on and scrolled through my emails, I had to sit down again. I swore, running my hand through my incredible messy and matted hair.

“Shit!” I said, this time louder, as I stared down at the emails from not one, but two of my professors.

In my last semester, I’d had to take a couple gen-ed classes, not uncommon for a student who was fairly certain of her major from the get-go. I’d loaded up on all the classes I knew I would love and, more importantly, knew I had the time to fully immerse in before the full force of internships hit. But doing that meant taking a handful of GECs during my last couple semesters. I had one geology class and one communications class left on my requirements sheet, and I’d shuttled them into my final semester—this semester.

One email was titled, “Class attendance and participation grade,” and the other was titled, “Participation 50% of your grade.” That was from the communications professor, and I opened it first.

Dear Miss Herrera:

My records show that, thus far, you have missed all but one of our class sessions. Given that this is a communications class, your participation, and thus, your attendance, comprises a majority of your class score. Disability Services has contacted me about your particular situation of needing to care for an ailing parent, but unfortunately, your situation does not strictly fall under a disability and is thus not protected by the provisions of that office. If you miss more than three additional class sessions, regardless of reason, you will receive either a failing grade or an incomplete for the class.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t evaluate your communication abilities without actually seeing you in my class.

I wish you all the best of luck with your current situation.

Professor Tolbert

I lifted a shaking hand up to my mouth. I couldn’t start my fellowship without a college degree. I simply couldn’t.

Bryan came strolling out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. I looked up at him and tried to push a smile onto my face.

“I hope it’s not weird,” he said, “but I really love seeing you in my shirt.”

A few minutes ago, that would have made me break into a grin and throw him down on the bed, but now I couldn’t even hide how upset I was.

His face melted into a frown. He was so beautiful, but I was so, so wrecked. “Hey, what’s up? What’s the matter?”

“What do you mean?” I asked shakily. Nope. I wasn’t hiding it. So instead I just swallowed hard and looked at the wall.
Do not cry at his place. Do not cry after the most incredible sex of your life.

He looked at my phone, which I still held loosely between my fingers. “Oh, shit. Is it your mom?”

Another wave of guilt hit. I hadn’t even thought about Mom at all. There were too many important things warring for attention in my brain, and Bryan was one of them. I wished I could use him to drown out all the rest, but it looked like that particular bit of fun was over.

“No,” I sighed. “It’s school. If I don’t get back in two weeks and get completely perfect grades, then I can’t graduate.”

“And if you can’t graduate?”

“I lose my fellowship. It starts in August, and it’s only for college grads. I have no freaking idea what to do.” So much for not crying. The tears started dripping down my face, a leak in the dam I’d so carefully held in place in front of Bryan all these weeks. Yeah, I’d told him how stressed I was about my mom, even cried a little. I’d never completely lost it, though, and now I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to to stop myself from doing just that.

Bryan sat beside me and blew out a long breath, like he was just as upset about this whole thing as I was. “Your professors sound awesome. Start there. Maybe call your advisor and see if she has any suggestions.”

I looked at him with that half-eye-rolling expression that said he was ridiculous. “I already did. Dr. Sullivan is helping me take care of stuff in her department from here, but the other professors can do whatever they want.”