Fixation (Magnetic Desires Book 3) (10 page)

Leo

I didn't know what was different about tonight. Every damn time I saw her she pissed me off. Maybe it was getting rid of the painting, or maybe it was that I had two weeks to use her up however I wanted that let the anger settle. It helped that she didn't start with that famous line of dialogue, 'we need to talk'.

Sitting at the bar with her, drinking and finding common ground in our memories before she left, made me nostalgic. What we'd had… it had been goddamn fucking perfect. Not that it mattered. It was over now and the two weeks I'd promised her would end fast. I thumped cash onto the bar and caught Oz's eye, before taking her hand. "You want to get some food?"

Gazing at me with wide eyes, she bit her lip, and then with a nod jumped down from her stool. "Really?"

"This doesn't mean anything. I'm in a good enough mood right now to fulfil our little deal."

"Okay. I need to make a phone call." Searching out her phone, she wandered away from me to make the call.

What kind of grown ass woman had to call someone before they went to dinner? A knot settled in my gut, a bristle of anger flaring under my skin at the thought of her and that guy she'd been hanging around with at Drake's engagement party. Dropping her phone back in her bag, she came back to me.

"Let me make one thing clear if you want to keep this thing going. I will not share."

"It was my sister. You remember her, right?" She frowned and shifted her weight.

"Yeah." Why the hell had my head jumped to her fucking with someone else? Probably because I couldn't put anything past her.
Because I want her all to myself.
Pushing that notion down, I clenched and released my fists a couple of times as I followed her out of the bar, trying to compartmentalize the anger she seemed to draw from me so easily. For a few minutes there, we'd been… what? Our old selves? Two people without a chasm of lies between us?

"So where do you want to go? I haven't been out in Reverence."

My palm on the small of her back I ushered her down the street toward a little hole in the wall diner that served a mean burger and fries. "You eat meat, right?"

"Yeah." When she nodded her ponytail bounced, and I wrapped my fist around it to pull her against me and shove my tongue in her mouth. Fingers clenched in my shirt, she pressed against me, standing on tiptoe. Tongue against tongue, she gave as good as she got. How had something so right gone so very wrong?

I pushed her from me, both hands locked on her elbows. "I forgot you were a man eater."

Pain scuttled her face with a wince, and she turned and yanked away from me. "Maybe we should do this another time."

I blew out a breath and linked her arm through mine. "I've been angry for a long time, Lola. I can't just turn it off."

"I know, but—"

"But we made a deal. I promise, at least for tonight, I'll keep it in check."

***

She stumbled over the rise at the back door and giggled. "So this is your place?"

"Yeah." Clutching the whisky bottle, I took another swig, but it didn't stop her infectious chuckle from taking me back to when we were happy. Before she'd destroyed it all.

The nerve in my throat jumped. Swallowing, I pushed down on the flare of anger and the inevitable rockslide in my gut. Bringing her home might not have been the best decision, but she'd vetoed going back to hers, and unless I wanted to take her in the alley behind the diner, I'd had no choice.

Dragging a cigarette from the pack, I turned the CD player on and wandered out into the backyard to light up.

"Stars are bright tonight." Face turned up to the sky, she took in the luminescent lights.

"Not as bright as they were over the ocean." Now why the hell did I have to go and bring up the past?

"That was the best two weeks of my life."

Thumping the bottle down on the table, I stubbed out my cigarette and slipped a hand around her waist to pull her into me. Gazes locked, I scraped a knuckle from her jaw to her ear, pushing loose strands of hair behind the lobe and leaned as close as I could without kissing her. "Why do you need to keep talking about the past?"

A twangy folk song pumped through the outside speakers, rolling over us, almost as if we were back in time, on the boat, where she was mine. The small of her back filled my palm, and her hands crept to my shoulders as we swayed.  "Because back then… you used to have faith in me."

For the second time tonight, she'd said the same thing. The past was where I trusted her. But what had she left me with? She'd run, hadn't she, taken off without a backward glance. Could I forget what she'd done and trust her again?

Those bright eyes of hers peered up at me from under thick eyelashes and my heart thumped in my ears. Her lips grazed mine, stalling my breath in my throat as they teased me, making me believe I could. Would it always be this way with her? Letting go of my anger let her in more than I was willing to deal with. "I think you should go."

"What?" Her eyes widened as our dance ended.

I cleared my throat. "You need to go."

"But—"

"I'll call you a cab." I snatched my hands to my sides, clenching my fists to keep them from reaching for her, and stalked inside before she could get any further under my skin.

Ten minutes later, I bundled her into the back of a cab and sent her on her way. It was best not to let her in. Hadn't she already caused me enough pain? Shaking my head, I shut off the lights and headed to bed. I wouldn't let her make a fool of me again.

Leo

You used to have faith in me.
Her silken voice filled my ears and circled my mind like a buzzard.
You used to have faith in me.

Pushing away from the laptop, I glanced at the time. Another day wasted on thinking about her. But the nostalgia from the night before persisted, lending weight to her words. Even after she disappeared, I'd trusted she'd come back; had waited for her. When had that changed? There’d never been a definitive answer for her disappearance. No theory the private investigator I’d hired could come up with. What if I’d been wrong?

Jumping up, I tossed a few things into my camera bag and hoisted it onto my shoulder. There was only so long I could wait for the girl who was never going to come back to me.

Only she had.

I turned the lights off as I made my way out of the gallery. All she wanted was for me to hear her out. Could I have been wrong? I had to know. If there was any part of our past that wasn’t a lie, I… Could I forgive her? Hell, I didn’t want to let her go. I knew that much for sure.

You used to have faith in me.
I rubbed at my ear as if that was going to get the words out of my mind, or the compulsion they created for me to find her, right now, and hear her out.

Stowing my bag in a saddlebag, I climbed on my bike. Taking her home last night hadn't felt as much like a mistake as I'd expected. Dancing in my backyard had been...how it had been before she left.

Her studio was just around the corner. Surely, I could spare a few minutes to hear her out. It didn't have to mean anything. Bright light broke the shadows outside the front window.  

Two minutes, just long enough for her to tell me why she ran. That was all. I could do that without losing my temper. There she was, those tiny shorts and sports bra, her blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail that swung against her shoulders. Even in workout clothes, she always looked glamorous, drawing me in effortlessly.  Her hands flew in front of her as she talked to someone outside the view the window afforded.

Guiding the bike into a parking spot, I slid off and strode toward them. He stepped into view and I froze. The same guy she'd been with at my brother's engagement party. Tossing his palms to the sky, it was obvious from his excessive gesturing and the scowl he wore that they were arguing. I took a step forward. It was my fucking job to argue with her, not his. Except, they weren't arguing anymore, for he'd grabbed her arm and yanked her into him, his mouth on hers, her arms climbing to wrap around his neck, her leg sliding up his thigh.

My foot tapped the ground at the same rate as the homicidal tick starting below my left eye.
Lying fucking bitch.

Hands flexed, I imagined wrapping them around her neck. I could almost feel her warm skin in my palms. Heat surged through me, frying my brain, and sweat broke out on my forehead.

I fantasized about throttling her for fooling me, even only for a second.
Fucking idiot, hadn't the first time been enough?
The tang of blood filled my mouth as I ripped a hole in the inside of my cheek with my teeth. Every muscle bunched, I wanted to storm in there and... what?

As my mind cleared, I found myself already on the bike weaving through traffic. How the hell had that happened? Calmer now, the anger sizzled beneath the surface, a sharp edge on a clear mind. It was time to end this.

Jumping off the bike, I threw the door open and stormed into the kitchen, opening one cupboard after another in search of the bottle of whisky I always kept on hand.

"Shit." I growled. The last of my whiskey sat on the table outside, the lid still off from where I left it last night. Bugs floated in the amber liquid. I tossed the bottle in the trashcan. The plastic on my pack of cigarettes crinkled as I shuffled one out, before dropping the pack on the table. Sticking it between my lips, I lit up and dragged the smoke into my lungs. Without whisky to dull the edge of my anger, I focused on her in the window. Her hands all over him as she responded to his kiss the way she'd responded to me.
Fucking con artist.
 Smoke curled into the air in front of me as the cigarette paper burned to ash with a hiss.  Every one said smoking would kill you, but Lola was giving me a damn aneurism.

Scratching at my neck, I tried to ease the prickling itch that came with the residual anger and butted out the cigarette in the tin ashtray. Dragging another out, I held the lighter to the end. It was time to end this thing. To let her know I knew her game. By the time I was done with her, she'd wish she never met me.

Shoving the cigarette back in the pack, I went inside and snagged juice from the fridge, drinking it straight from the carton. The tension I held inside was getting worse, but this wasn’t the type of thing you could blow away with the smoke. Deep seated in my chest, it burned and built each time my mind dragged me back to Lola. I shoved the carton back in the fridge.

Stalking through to the bedroom, I shed my shirt before heading to the shower. With a jerk of my wrist, hot water hissed, steam quickly filling the bathroom, and I slammed the door shut, giving my undivided attention to my image in the mirror.

With my fingers, I traced out the enso that covered my left pectoral and peaked at my shoulder, the circle not yet complete. I was older, harder, and wiser than I had been when I got that tattoo, but not enough that I'd been able to completely shut out the woman who could destroy me. Travelling my hand across to the tombstone on my right pectoral, I covered the name of a girl I shouldn't have been involved with spread beneath it; a reminder not to get involved with women who could destroy me. Lola should have been different, but yet again, I teetered on the edge of destruction, because of a woman. Gritting my teeth, I let the green-eyed monster over my brother finding a girl who made him a better man mix with my anger. Betrayal was the only thing I found in the arms of a woman.

Finally, I traced out her name, smack bang in the middle, letting my fingers bring the word to life in my mind. Some people would say that to tattoo her name on my body after she disappeared was stupidity. That it was nothing but a reminder of what she had done to me. So many things in my life were a reminder of her. I kept them to keep me from making the same mistake again. Her name on my skin was more than that. The dark ink across my chest was a lock I kept on my heart. A reminder that it was inaccessible to anyone, because though she had proved herself unworthy, she kept that part of me all these years. Tonight I would take it back.

Steam finally obscured my vision and I stepped into the shower. Each time she’d come to me, anger and desire had clouded my vision. But no longer would she have that effect on me. Enough was enough. Tonight she'd proven me right. She was rotten to the core, and I was done with her. When she told me her lies, it had to be on my terms. I wanted her to feel the pain she’d caused me, still caused me even now. Shutting off the water, I grabbed a towel and dried off.

I didn’t know if anything she’d told me was the truth but I remembered how she’d flinched and trembled as she told me about her life before we met. Back then, I'd wanted to protect her. Now I would use it to make her feel shame at what she had done.

I’d make her dance for me the way she used to for other men. Pull her seedy past into the present, and make her feel the gritty dirtiness of shameful memories and pretend that while she told me her lies for one second she had some real emotion over destroying what we had.

My blood pumped through me as I dressed, energy creeping beneath my skin. The night was still young, and waiting for the moment I got to make her hurt as much as she’d hurt me was agony. I was going to tear her lies apart and reveal the truth at the rotten core of her deception tonight. My gut twisted. She was still so far under my skin that even knowing she wasn't the girl I wanted, the fallout of ending her hold on me would stay with me for a long time to come.