Hooked #3 (The Hooked Romance Series - Book 3)

HOOKED
#3

Book
3

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

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CHAPTER
ONE

Days passed, and I hardly saw the sun. The October
days were growing shorter, and I could feel the cold emanating from the lake
through the glass of my windows. I placed my fingers on the cold and leaned
into it, as if it was a fresh breath of air.

Since the destruction of my beautiful building, my
mother had called several times wondering about me.
About my
dance studio.
About how I was making it.
But I
hadn’t answered. My insides felt crumpled, hopeless.
I
watched my phone buzz and buzz and buzz each time until it shook itself from
the table and onto the clattering wooden floor.

Mel called as well. I remembered the joy I had felt
at her apartment, such a sense of family for the first time in my life. She had
grown up with Drew; she was his aunt, although because of their parents’ age
differences, they had grown up together. It was so insane to think about; that
this woman I had known for two years had always had Drew in the back of her
mind—as if he were waiting for me.

Mel’s messages were anxious, worried. She didn’t
know what was going on, and she certainly didn’t know Drew had been the one to
swoop the dance studio out from underneath us. It had been our only solace from
the surrounding world, the only place we could actually dance—be ourselves—in
the wake of all that had come before. I had failed as a dancer, and she had
given up, gotten married, and had a baby. She had done so many, many decent
things in her life. Why wasn’t she allowed a single pleasure?

“Molly? Molly? You need to call me back, okay. I
don’t know where you disappeared to. I had such a wonderful time with you last
week, but Drew’s telling me you won’t talk to him. I can’t understand it. Did
we do something wrong? Please let me know if there’s anything I can do, Mol. I
want you guys to work. You are the best girl that Drew’s ever brought home, and
I mean that seriously.”

I rolled my eyes listening to the message. So even
Mel knew about Drew’s womanizing? I sighed, tossing the phone to the couch,
serious about not calling her back. Perhaps I could start over on my own,
without strings attached to Drew. I reached toward my coat hanging on the coat
rack. Boomer, to my left, meowed at me, confused about my strange off-kilter
attitude the past few days. I had forgotten to feed him the day before, leaving
him to jump on my head and rustle my hair in the morning.

I pushed my hands through my jacket, thinking about
Mel and Drew once more. I was sure they hadn’t been talking this entire time;
or had they? I chewed on the side of my mouth, considering. Perhaps Mel had
known the entire time that Drew was in the city, that Drew was the one I’d been
seeing. Perhaps she’d known the entire time that Drew was planning to buy the
dance studio? My heart leaped in my chest; I felt like I was bungee jumping
once more. The city around me felt dark and dismal, churning with a sense of
foreboding. Was anyone here my friend?

I couldn’t mope anymore, and I couldn’t consider
such thoughts. I shook my head back and forth, trying to cleanse it. If Mel had
known, then screw it. It had all happened; it was done. I couldn’t roll over
now; not yet. If I went back to Indianapolis because Drew had taken all I had
ever known, I would ultimately show Drew I was weak—that I couldn’t handle his
prowess, his money. I cleared my throat and stomped to the doorway, thinking
about his sleeping form just a few doors down.
His incredible
body, his furrowed eyebrows.
I shuddered. I would go into the world and
find a new dance studio. I couldn’t mope anymore; this was the world I was
meant to have. And screw Drew for letting him take it away from me—if only
momentarily.

I ripped into the cold Wicker Park morning, looking
at my watch for a moment to discover that it was only nine in the morning.
Rush hour.
People swarmed around me, dressed in business
attire and huffing with a sense of seriousness. My eyes were wide as I pushed
through them, exerting my stance in their world. I parsed through the Wicker
Park streets, knocking on my leasing agents’ doors. “You have a moment?” I
asked the secretary each time with my smile gleaming, my teeth white. They
always had exactly one moment, and I always asked them detailed information
about their properties and their rents. I wrote everything down in a notebook
and nodded with a sense of importance as I placed the information on the pad.
“Thank you for your time,” I murmured after each conversation before scurrying
out into the world, my heart beating fast and my brain knowing that I could
never—ever—afford whichever place I’d just been offered.

After a rough morning, I decided to march back to my
apartment and take a hot shower. I thought of the tea bags in the corner, the
leftover cinnamon roll from a previous morning. I could have a nice early
afternoon with myself, regroup. Catch up on some moping time. I deserved it,
after all. I grabbed my keys and flung through my apartment door, inhaling the
unique, personal smell of my apartment. Boomer meowed at me with a bit of
resentment, and I held him close, allowing him to lick my salty finger.

I placed a kettle on the stove and walked aimlessly,
side-to-side, peering down at my notepad. I tapped my pen against my lip,
considering rents and loans. I didn’t know much about that world. In my head,
my first instinct was to ask Drew about it. Surely, he knew all about loans,
about the unique process behind the dark shades of the bank. But then, I
remembered to hate him. I shuddered deep in my stomach.

The pot of water was finished, and I poured it
earnestly into my teacup, allowing the tea
to
steep
for a moment. I had been in contact with a few of my dance students in the
recent days, trying to feel out whether or not they’d be interested in more
dance classes. Only a few of them—mostly the all-too-serious high school girls,
had continued on with other dancers throughout the park. “But the expenses,
Molly,” their mothers told me over the phone. “You tell me if you ever get back
up and running.” They seemed to assure me like they would assure their own
daughters; they would keep me in business if they could.

I sipped at the tea, feeling the aroma from the
herbs emanate over my face. I inhaled, exhaled, allowing my eyes to dip closed.
A quick nap, perhaps, before I exerted myself into that world once more?

Suddenly, there was a tremendous bang on the door.
My heart jumped into my throat, and I nearly spilled the tea down my dress. I set
it on the counter and looked toward Boomer with furrowed eyebrows, as if to
complain.

My soft feet led me toward the door and I peered
through the peephole. There, on the other side of the wooden slate, stood Drew.
Tall, stoic; with that hint of a smile peppered on his lips.
My heart was pounding faster and faster in my chest, and I felt a strange
passion in my body, a tingling in my breasts. Something sexual stirred in me. I
cleared my throat and pulled at the handle.

He stood in his pleasing grey suit. His hands hung
at his sides, and his chin was high in the air. “Hello, Molly,” he nearly
whispered, gazing at my eyes, at my cheeks, at my breasts.

I felt so strange, as if I were being assessed at a
county fair. Why had he come here? I kept my eyes closed, remembering how he’d
looked in that hard hat next to my building, pausing before destroying the
eternity of my dreams.
 

“Molly. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I wanted to come
by here because—” He paused and slapped the back of his neck nervously, gliding
his hands over the sweat that brimmed over his skin. “You were the only thing
that made me smile, you know? I thought we really started to have something
here.”

My stomach was completely empty. I could feel its
sides scraping up against each other in my body. I longed for him to leave, to
leave me in my squalor. I could figure everything out myself. I wanted to spit
at him. I could do this all on my own, if only he’d just leave me the hell
alone.

A pause occurred between us, our eyes meeting in the
center of our heated bodies.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked. His
voice had lowered an octave; he had broken out of his sentimentality; he had
leaned toward a sense of hostility, a sense of regret.

I didn’t open my lips, choosing only to look at him
with my large, orb-like eyes. I couldn’t speak. I felt like if I did, the world
would crack open. I had to get back to my work; I had to find my own place for
Molly Says Dance. I couldn’t rely on my sexual passions, the feeling in my gut
that this man before me was so much more—so much more!

I couldn’t rely on anyone.

“You really aren’t going to say anything?” Drew
sputtered. He was growing angry. I assumed he wasn’t used to begin ignored. “I
come down here, soak up all my confidence to do it, and you won’t even talk to
me? You know you’re really putting me through the ringer here. Come on, Mol.
Just one word.
One syllable, even. Just give me something to
go off of, so I can move forward. So I can try to make amends.”

There was no making amends, I wanted to tell him.
There was nothing. I shook my head simply, as if I were speaking with a child
who hadn’t gotten his way. He nearly stomped his foot. I could feel the anger
brimming in him; it was about to burst.

Until, finally, he turned on his heel and walked
away down the hall. I watched as his neck curved down, leaving his back a bit
crooked, a bit aged. The shadow of his body lurked across the wall. I stood in
the doorway, watching him until he entered the apartment he shared with
Marty—that dismal apartment in which we had fucked on nearly every surface,
feeling the tremors of our bodies in such a way that made me squirm.

It couldn’t be so anymore. Not anymore.

I backed up into my apartment as well, feeling safe
in the shell of my own smell, of the herbal tea. I crashed into the dining room
chair and leaned my chin on my knuckles, allowing myself to pause at the
strangeness of the situation. I, a poor nothing, was ignoring the most
beautiful, the most brilliant man in all of Chicago. And yet, in so many ways,
I couldn’t care.

Thirty minutes passed before I heard another knock
on the door. Frowning, I looked down at my empty tea cup and prepared myself
for another Drew altercation. Would I speak this time? I bit my lip and peered
through the peephole. This time, I didn’t see the tidy smirk of a businessman;
instead, I saw the beautiful, timid smile of Mel—my beautiful dance assistant
who hadn’t given up on me. My stomach stirred as I remembered, however; perhaps
she had known all along that this would happen. Perhaps she had been the root
of the problem.

No one could be trusted.

I pulled open the door, biting my lip mid-smile. Mel
flung her long, ballerina arms around me and held me close to her chest. “My
darling, Molly,” she murmured. I felt myself pour into a fit of tears. “Please.
Please. Don’t cry.” She pulled her fingers over my hair, allowing me to fall
into sadness, into comfort. I felt the morning’s strain pull at my chest.