Okay (27 page)

"Are you fucking crazy?" My voice is too low, I'm still utterly stunned.

Chelsea drops the ruse at least, and the smile fades from her over-glossed lips. "Cap, you need to hear her out. I know how much you like Rory, but you need to listen to what she did to Lacey's family. Her brother—"

"Her brother is a fucking rapist!" I roar. I'm no longer in shock, no, now I'm enraged. My heart rate skyrockets and my muscles tense, fury rushing through my veins and fuming from my every pore. How could Chelsea
do
this? How could she bring her here?!

That motherfucking bastard's
sister flinches at my words, like she's actually surprised, like it's the first time she's hearing this about her brother. She must be as insane as he is.

"I know what she says," she stutters, her voice shaking. "But she lies, you know? She—"

I step forward, keeping my arms painstakingly at my sides. "What
she says?!
What about what
I fucking
saw?!
Are my eyes lying too?" I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I shouldn't be engaging here. My top priority should be making sure Rory doesn't see this girl. Not telling her off. "You need to leave. Fucking
now
. There is no way I'm letting you walk into this club," I tell her more calmly, but she looks puzzled.

"Cap…" Chelsea whines, but I don't even acknowledge her. I have nothing to say to her. Ever fucking again.

"What you saw?" Lacey repeats, still confused, as if she really has no idea what I'm talking about.

I take another deep breath. "
What I saw
," I confirm carefully. "You know, your piece of garbage brother's hand gripping Rory's throat while she tried to gasp for a breath. His other hand pushing up her skirt, trying to rip off her fucking underwear…" I bite my lip to stop myself from saying worse, because the girl looks like she's about to cry, and for the first time I consider that she isn't in on this whole thing. That she really believed her brother innocent.

"Your brother is a violent rapist," I say slowly. "And if I didn't get to that alley in time, he'd be a murderer, too. Rory's not the liar. And you,
Lacey
," I practically snarl her name, "are a traitor to your own fucking sex, who harassed and tormented Rory, and helped your evil family destroy her reputation. But that was in your pathetic little town. Not here. This is fucking New York, and here, we all know the truth. Except maybe for your delusional roommate. So I suggest you find another city to go to college in. Because here,
you're
the one with the shit reputation. And you need to leave right fucking now."

Because Rory is actually having a good time tonight and seeing this bitch will destroy her night, and God only knows how else it might affect her.

Lacey doesn't respond to my rant, she just stands there frozen, and it takes me a moment to realize her teary gaze is trained over my shoulder.

My heart freezes as I turn to follow her line of sight.

Motherfucking fuck!

Rory stands twenty feet away with Dave, an unlit cigarette dangling from her fingers. She is frozen is fucking shock.

I turn to Chelsea. "God help me if you don't make her fucking disappear in the next two seconds—"

But she does. She grabs Lacey's hand and leads her across the street and they keep walking. I don't wait to see where they're going. I don't fucking care. If I ever set eyes on Chelsea again it will be too fucking soon.

I make my way cautiously over to Rory. Dave's brows are pinched together in consternation, the cherry of his forgotten cigarette burning off and falling to the ground. Rory's mouth gapes open and it doesn't even seem like she's fucking breathing. She stares at the spot of the confrontation, not even glancing at me as I approach, though I know she knows I'm there.

"Rory," I breathe. My hand cups her jaw, my thumb brushing her cheek, but still, she doesn't move a single muscle.

"What the fuck was that, Cap?" Dave mutters, but I just shake my head.

"Go inside Dave. Nothing happened, got it?"

He shakes his head and shrugs, as if blaming me for something, and I suspect they both heard every word I said and he knows at least the gist of what went down. Infuriatingly, he looks to Rory first, asking if she's okay out here, as if I'm someone to protect her from.

And maybe I am. After all, it was me who convinced her to forgive Chelsea, who put her in this position in the first place.
Fuck
, her college fucking roommate… she must have been plotting this since… before even that brunch!
Goddamn it.
There I was, guilting Rory over being a bitch to Chelsea, asking her to cut her a break, and Chelsea was planning
this?

I shove my fingers through my hair in frustration.

"Rory?" Dave asks again when she doesn't respond. My gut churns, terrified that she's going to panic, or that she's actually gone into some kind of literal shock. But then she nods, just once, so subtly we both would have missed it if we weren't watching her vigilantly, and then finally Dave heads back inside.

I grab her hand, pulling her down the block, away from the site of the confrontation, in the opposite direction Chelsea took that witch. Finally Rory shakes her head and blinks, sucking in a gasping breath, but she still doesn't meet my eyes.

"She's gone, baby girl," I assure her.
Shit
, I shouldn't be calling her that, but it just came out. She doesn't react though, doesn't correct me, and we stop under an awning around the corner from the club.

"W-why…" is all she can get out.

"Look, she set it up. Chelsea. That's the roommate she was all excited over."

"H-her
roommate?
" Rory asks shakily, finally meeting my gaze.

God, it fucking guts me to see her hurting like this. "I never should have told you to give her another chance, Rory. She didn't deserve it. She set this up."

"But,
why?
" she asks again.

I want to say I don't know. But I can't lie to her. I step closer to her, brushing my knuckles along her soft jaw. She's so incredibly beautiful, even in distress. "Because she's a crazy, manipulative bitch." I sigh. "Look, she must have been planning this for a while. Maybe ever since your fight. Her apology was bullshit."

I watch Rory take it all in, probably processing every false word, every fake smile Chelsea threw her way these past weeks. I watch her brows pinch together as she silently figures out how Chelsea must have sought Lacey out on Facebook, how the two of them must have plotted this confrontation. How they must have planned for a much more dramatic confrontation, one in which I believed Lacey's story, and in which they accused Rory of the same old bullshit. I can't imagine what Chelsea must think of me to believe that I would have listened to a word of it. If I wasn't so outraged for Rory, I would be insulted.

"She… she's going to FIT?"

My fingers find their way through her loose hair, stroking it gently in an attempt at comfort. "I guess," I murmur. I doubt my threat about her reputation will be enough to get her to change her college plans. She doesn't come across as very intelligent, but she must know that New York is a big enough town that my word won't go as far as her family's did down in her small town.

"Look, Ror, this isn't Linton, okay?" I remind her. She looks up at me, still looking so lost, so helpless, but there isn't a single tear in her eyes. She's too strong for that. "She won't bother you again. And if she does? You're the one with friends who have your back here. Not her. She has no one but Chelsea, and Chelsea just lost most of her own friends, I promise you that."

Rory stares up at me, chewing the inside of her cheek, but she says nothing.

"I'm sorry I asked you to forgive her.
God
, and I'm sorry I just ranted your private business out in the middle of the street—"

She starts shaking her head fervently and it cuts me off. "No, Sam. Just no."

I blink at her, my brow furrowed in confusion.

"You don't get to apologize for defending me. Again. For anything. Just…
no
."

I sigh, my arms wrapping around her of their own accord and pulling her tightly to my chest. She doesn't hesitate; she slides her arms around my waist and grips me just as tightly. She doesn't cry, she just lets me hold her, clinging to me as if I'm some kind of rock for her, and it's all I've ever wanted to be.

Minutes pass like that and neither of us says a word until she pulls away.

"Do you want to go back inside? You were having such a good time…" I ask her.

She shrugs. "I was," she admits. "But I just… Honestly, Sam? I just want to go home. It's already late and I… I don't want to put on a mask and force smiles. I'm okay, really. I just… she just jarred me, you know?"

I nod. "I know. She jarred me too, Ror. I recognized her the second I saw her, even though I'd never seen her before. She looks just like him."

I realize my mistake as Rory's gaze flees from mine the moment I bring up
that
motherfucking bastard
. I'm so goddamn stupid sometimes.

"Let me take you home," I plead.  

"You should stay," she whispers.

It's like Miami all over again. It's like every time she's upset and won't accept my help all over again. "I don't want to stay, Ror." I tell her the truth. "I just want to fucking take you home. Will you let me do that? Please. You make me feel so helpless."

Her eyes go wide. "I make you feel helpless?"

I nod. "I'm not asking for you. I'm asking for me. Let me take you home." No more bullshit, no more holding back. Whatever she decides on Monday, I'm not playing any more games.

I realize of course that seeing Lacey probably didn't help my chances. If she ended it in Miami because she couldn't handle everything, then even if she might have been coming around, this incident may have set her right back to that place where she realizes she has enough on her plate without a boyfriend with issues of his own. But I try not to think about it for now.

"Okay," she says, and I exhale the breath I hadn't even realized I'd been holding.

"I'll text Tuck, make up an excuse." I take her hand and start leading her to the corner to catch a cab.

Her footsteps falter. "They'll think… they're all gonna think we left to go… you know, hook up," she murmurs, blushing softly. It's beautiful. Everything about her is beautiful.

I want to set her at ease, but she's right of course. "They probably are," I admit. The truth is I don't mind letting them think that. Reminding them that even if we're not together, Rory's still taken. "I could say you're sick or something. But people will think what they think. I—" I push my hand through my hair again. I hate the thought of making her uncomfortable.

Her fingers clasp around my bicep. "It's okay," she says. "I guess it doesn't really matter what anyone thinks. Anyway, they could say worse things about me than that I'm hookin' up with
the
Cap," she teases.

God, this girl is amazing. She's fucking teasing me right now. I think maybe the Forbes girl pissed me off more than she did her. I didn't think a smile would mark my lips right now for anything, but here it is, and I let it lift my spirits as I take her hand and lead her into a cab.

She lets me comfort her, and even though I know we're just friends, with my arm around her and her head resting on my shoulder, I let myself pretend she's mine again. It's a beautiful kind of torture.

We get back uptown pretty quickly thanks to the late hour, and we're in my car heading through the Midtown Tunnel by one a.m.

Rory tunes the radio to a classic rock station, and neither of us says much for the duration of the ride. There's nothing to say. Or there's too much to say.

The last real conversation we had she was asking me to give us another shot, and though I was sure—
am
sure—that it was a reaction to my abhorrent decision to push her away, and then my flirting with that girl right in front of her the night before, I can't help but wonder if maybe it was real. If maybe it
is
real.

But I meant it when I said that she needed to be completely sure about what she wants before we can even consider a relationship again. We have too much to lose. It was an incredible realization. That even as I felt as if life couldn't get any worse, that it could. That we could hurt each other even more. That she could utterly destroy me.

Would I take the chance? Hell yes I would. But only if she meant it. Only if she was sure. Because if I'm going to risk losing our friendship—which is exactly what another breakup could mean—then it's going to be for a real shot at the something more I'd thought we had in Miami.

So I told her to take until Monday. And here we are, on Saturday night, in some kind of limbo of hope and fear. But I'll take it, because I'm pretty damn sure that Monday will bring with it a hell full of renewed heartbreak and disappointment.

We reach her house too quickly and neither of us moves when I pull up in front of it. I'm not ready to let her go. I'm still shaken from the way the night turned, and though Rory is being her badass, tough-girl self, the way she fidgets with the threads from the rip in her jeans and the subtle tremor of her fingers gives her away.