Perv (Filth #1) (16 page)

“
She's here at my house,” I say, without an ounce of the temper boiling inside me. “I'm not going out.”

“
Have fun fucking.”

I'm quiet, because that's so far from what tonight is. Duke lasers in on the dead air between us.

“
You're going to have her naked, right?” he asks. “You're not getting in too deep with this crazy woman, right?”

Crazy and broken are not the same thing. And why I'm defending her or myself in my own mind, I don't know. Back up—why am I skirting my own moral code for her? That's the question.

Duke sighs into the phone and the sound pierces my ear. “Please tell me she's not your girlfriend.”

I haven't had one in at least a decade, but all the signs point to it.

“
For fuck sake, Nate. You know she's bad news for you. She hunted you down to hurt you, and you're falling for it like an idiot.”

I haven't sunk so low to say things are not like that when I've had—when I still have some doubts. I open my mouth and then close it. I sit in the doubts, the unanswered questions, and...there's only one thing I'm certain of—she wants to fuck me and she's conflicted about that urge.

I drag in a deep breath and ask, “What do you know that I don't?”

“
Shit. I don't know. You're probably over there having heart-to-hearts.”

I close my eyes and ask the question that's put a pit in my stomach. “Known associates? Do you have information on them?”

If I'm lucky, Broken Virgin will be one of them. Duke's paralegals would have researched almost every one of her friends, and social media is forever.

“
Sending it, and maybe you can get your head out of your ass.”

He hangs up on me. I'm not mad about it. Duke is the blunt object and I needed something to hit me upside the head. I'm over here like it's a honeymoon with Robyn, and I know something is off. I've known it since she agreed to letting me have ten minutes in a hotel room. I've done my best to ignore that sixth sense when she looked at me with shadows in her eyes.

I know women. I know women and their best friends. They are the best wingman or the nightmare. Broken Virgin should be in my face, my nightmare as I seduce her friend.

My mind drifts back to Robyn's tattoo. The new one. The one she calls a Guardian when Hermes is a cunning fuckface. The taste of her pussy has clouded my judgment from day one. I haven't cared and told myself it doesn't matter.

Now it does, because I can't ignore the obvious.

My phone beeps three times. I inhale and open the email that's going to confirm my gut instinct.

I let her sleep while I work in my home office.

That's a lie. I can't go back in the room where she is and touch her. And when she wakes up I'm breaking up with her. I haven't found the right thing to say. The lies won't work. She knows I love my mother. She knows enough to pick up on the fact I loved my father too. I can go with the commitment angle. That still stands. I can't say we're not in a relationship. We are. Fuck if I know how that happened. Short-lived as its going to be.

I keep working and nothing comes to me. It won't. I'm aware of that. There's nothing logical or soft or even...there's nothing. Just a hollowness eating at my gut as I wait for her to wake up.

Before I'm ready, she's watching me, leaning against the doorjamb. I can't look at her. My gaze wants to take her in. Drink up her glowing skin, her doe-shaped eyes and all the curves that gives me wet dreams even while I'm awake.

But I can't. That need is now a knife.

“
You should go,” I mutter.

Yeah. That's the best I can come up with and at least it's honest.

“
This is a one-eighty.”

She's going to make me spell it out, and I don't want to. I just want her gone. I can move on and so can she. With great patience, I put down my tools and undo the anti-static bracelet. I need more time, so I scrub my face with my hands, and every bone aches. After another tense second, I force myself to look at her. Her mouth is sleep-swollen and the darkness is there in her gaze. Maybe it's always been and I've just sort of wrote it off.

Now I know why the shadows are there.

“
You need to go,” I say. “Lose my number.”

Her head tilts back as the words hit her. I can see the questions on her face. Those questions thicken the air. I'd rather she think I'm being a dickbag and ending things because I've had my fill. The fun affair has turned serious. I want her to believe that's the reason, and then maybe I can too.

Don't make me do this.

“
Can I know what changed, at least?” The hurt in her voice pounds into me.

“
Loraine.” I try again to get the name past a whisper, “Loraine Stokes.”

She grabs hold to the doorjamb and her bottom lip trembles. God. How could I have not seen it?

She shakes her head once then again. There's no going back now. This conversation has to happen. “And I know you didn't just remember her name.” The accusation is there but I don't tense at it. “Who told you?”

“
No. I didn't. But now I do, and you need to leave.”

She presses a fist to her middle. I know that stance. She's trying to hold something in. If she lets out the emotion she's caged, it will devour me and everything that's sitting between us.

My mother had that stance after my father's funeral. For close to four days, her voice, her posture never wavered. She was Jackie O strong. Sure, my father had died from a heart attack in his Lazy Boy—no assassination, but my mother had been forced to watch her world shatter.

It wasn't until she'd cleaned the last crumb from the repast that she'd buckled. That silent grief washed over me, making the hairs on my nape stand on end.

Like they are now.

I hate myself for not pushing more, asking intrusive questions, giving a fuck about what made her abnormal enough to want me. I hate her for not shoving the truth down my throat, making me eat that instead. I hate to know she is normal. Had always been until her friend died of cancer.

A woman I'd...I broke Loraine's heart. Guilt is a bitter taste on my tongue.

I push the question out, “Did she go peacefully?”

She glances up and shakes her head. “Now you care?” Her laugh sours the space between us. “Do you know the last thing she said to me before she
accidentally
took too much morphine to ease the pain the cancer gave her?”

There's nothing I can do against the words she's throwing at me. Not the feelings I've stirred up or the grief I've deepened. There never was. Her anger has to burn its way through so I listen. It's the fucking least I can do.

“
Three months of her life wasted,” she says. “Months she couldn't get back. She wished she could see you again and kick you in the balls.” She laughs, it's a broken sound. “Someone who came into my office for a divorce to a dickhead became my best friend. A dickhead she married because no one was you, Nate. Who can live up to you?”

“
What happened?” I ask instead of answering.

“
The cancer came back, and her dying wish was to kick you in the nuts. Then there you were. There you were a few months later, like fate. Looking all...” She balls her hands. “Smug. Still doing the same shit to women. And you don't lie. Somehow that makes it worse.”

Her hands go back to her stomach, and for a few seconds she tries to breathe. Like she's trying to stop talking or to let it go. Then she looks at me. “She would have been so proud of me. Would have laughed her ass off at what I did to you in the club. But no. I fell for it. All of you even when you were being a pig. And five minutes ago you couldn't remember my best friend's name.”

“
No.” She says it again and her eyes tears up. “I should have never let you touch me.”

I'd braced myself for that. Had tightened my jaw because I knew the words, the regret was coming.

I'm tainted. Everything we are is wrong. I'm a lot of things. I've done a lot of things, but this twists my stomach. Digs a hole in me that will never be filled. She's used me to hurt herself. That's a fucking first. Every exchange outside that first one, she's piled on the self-hate.

And I'd laughed in her face every time I made her love it and beg for more. Why the fuck did I ignore the signs? Why the fuck did I give myself a pass, just this once?

And Loraine... Shit. I didn't know I'd hurt her that bad. So much so she'd think about me when she was dying. How do you process that? How do you apologize to someone who's not there and will never be?

My mind takes that moment to go over every word I said, every flippant reply I had about Loraine. Shame sinks in first. No wonder Robyn hates me. I press my palms into my eyes.

I hate me.

A sharp heat blooms in my chest. “Then why the fuck did you let me touch you?”

It's not her I'm angry with, but goddammit—I push out the chair. “Why?” I scream at her and slam my fist into the doorjamb. “Why the fuck are you still even here?”

I don't need to see the tear fall to know I'm the scum of the fucking earth. She wraps her hands around her middle and bows her head. The soft sob cuts through me. “It was supposed to help,” she murmurs.

And I can't touch her. I can't comfort her. I do that, and I’ll make it worse. I brace my arms on the door's frame and watch her shatter. She releases whatever pent-up grief she has between us, and this time I know it's a ghost. It's a best friend. A friend who killed herself. A woman I helped break along the way. Doesn't matter if I meant to or not.

And I can't do a goddamn thing. If I wrap Robyn in my arms until the crying passes I'll still be the man her best friend hated with her dying breath. I haven't changed, not a bit. I pursued Robyn with the intent to fuck and fuck her good.

I was fooling myself into thinking I had the power to fuck revenge away. I damn sure don't have it for grief. Or self-loathing. Or whatever she hoped to get out of her system by laying down with me.

One day maybe I can see Robyn has made her own bed right along with me. She jumped into that motherfucker without a parachute. Or without checking to make sure it wasn't a bed of thorns, but right now she's the shattered pieces I helped break. The weight of the grief pouring out of her will have to lift first before I can ever forgive myself.

“
Fucking you was supposed to help,” she rasps. “Remind myself that I was alive, because being angry at you made me...feel. I would focus on that instead of—I–My life would stop revolving around her death. I'd have sex. It would be fun and meaningless.” Her voice caught on another soft sob. “But I miss her so much.”

My throat tightens. I'm not equipped for this. I can only tell her time helps, but every now and again, the loss of my father slams into me. I don't buckle under it anymore. But that advice is useless. The memory of my father isn't tainted.

I take out my phone. “What's the redhe—” I stop. I close my eyes and try, for once in my life, to be a decent human being. “What's Samantha's number? She can pick you up.”

She uses the sleeves of her sweater to wipe at her face. “She'll just tell me I told you so.”

She has no one but me, and I'm the last person she needs right now. I turn my back to her and call a cab. Truth be told I can't look at her. Her face is splotchy from tears. Her hair is more of a mess after sleep. And I want to touch her. Curl into her and hold her. I made her mine. Then she told me everything we were is ugly, twisted. If not for grief, we would have never crossed paths.

My hand clenches around the phone and I bite out instructions to the driver. The dispatcher tells me to hold on, and I'm forced to listen to elevator music.

And think.

We're done now. We should have been after she walked away from me in the club, but I had to have her. I had to push for more. Ignore the fucking neon lights that she was coming into my bed broken. Not for fun. Or adventure. Or whatever lies she told herself. She came into my bed with perfectly good reasons for not being there.

I didn't care. It's always about what I want.
Nate. Nate. Motherfucking Nate.
I wanted to fuck Loraine and I was willing to wait. I wanted to fuck Robyn, and I was willing to ignore everything—my gut instincts, my principles...how much she must have felt disgust at me and herself whenever I touched her. It was never anger but disgust.

Fucking the pervert.

The dispatcher comes back on the line and I answer all the questions to set up a pick up. I end the call. Her anger is normal. I fucked over her friend. Loraine will never get the chance to wash the taste of me out of her mouth.

Robyn's disgust at me is...normal.

I throw my phone on the desk. I refuse to turn around. I can hear her sharp intake of breath as though she's going to speak and then there's the sound of her movement—away from me. My front door opens. Closes.

I shove a hand through my hair. Debate with myself. Call myself all kinds of stupid, and then I follow her outside.

She's pulled her knees up to her chin as she waits at the bottom of my steps for the cab. Her shoulders pull up as though she's bracing herself for my touch, the sound of my voice. I lean against the door, because she was never supposed to be mine.

The wait feels like an eternity. I say everything I need to say in the silence.

Why didn't you just tell me?

Why did you let things get this far?

We can't take this back.

I would die for my friends so I know.
I know
. How could you let me touch you?

I'm so sorry.

The answers to my questions won't change anything. Nor would the apology—too little, too late. So I wait with her for the cab without touching her, without a word, because I'm not going to make this worse. Wanting her, needing each other, it’s punishment for the both of us.