RECKLESS - Part 1 (8 page)

Two hours later, I was hanging on the shoulder of some girl I didn’t know at the juke box. We were singing the words to a song I’m pretty sure I’d never heard before. Or maybe I had and just couldn’t remember. Honestly, I was pretty surprised I could remember my name at that point. Either way, we were laughing and giggling as we belted the lyrics at the top of our lungs, completely off-key.

“Alright, time to go home, Andy,” Becca said, stepping up behind me, linking her arm through mine and pulling me away from my new best friend.

I leaned into Becca as she led me to the door. “Aw, but I don’ wanna,” I slurred out, not really sure where she was taking me but also not really caring. The ground was swaying, and my only real concern was putting one foot in front of the other and not falling on my ass… and even that seemed pretty trivial at the moment.

“I know. I know,” she said, patting my arm. “But I gave you a little too much liquid courage, and now I have to figure out how to make sure you make it home safely. I still have to clean up.”

“My new friend can walk me.” I pointed back to the juke box where the girl I’d been singing with stood, or rather leaned against the wall. I could have been wrong, but it looked like she was puking into the nearby trash can.

“Oh honey, I don’t think she could find her way out of a paper bag right now,” Becca shoved a door open with her foot and then ushered me through it. “I’m going to have to find her a way home, too.”

“Pssshht.” Spit flew from my lips as I made the God-awful sound. For some reason, I found that quite humorous. The giggles made it really hard to tell Becca what I had to say next. “I can—I’ll be—I’m fine. I can get home.”

“I don’t know… maybe I should have you wait until I’m done and then we can walk home together.”

“Oooo… but won’t you get in trouble for that?” I asked.
             
             

Becca sighed. “Yeah. I will. I’m not supposed to have anyone inside when I’m counting the night drawer.”

“See? I’ll just take myself.” I forced myself to stand upright, or at least I think I did, and then threw my shoulders back a little. “I can walk. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll walk her home,” a voice I would have recognized anywhere came from behind me. I widened my eyes as the sound sent my heart on a marathon—where it thought it was going, I’ll probably never know.

Oh, dear God. Not now. Of all times, not right now.

“Jace? Oh, thank God,” Becca gave a sigh of relief. “I had no idea what to do with her until I finished closing up. I can’t leave her out here, can’t have her inside, and as you can see, she’s in no shape to walk home by herself. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Nonsense,” I cried out. Even in my own head, my voice sounded horribly shrill and rather slurred. And completely ignored.

I could feel myself being passed from Becca’s soft arms into a set of muscular arms. I was enveloped in the slight hint of metal and citrus. I think I might have inhaled it as I tried to right myself and stand on my own. Unfortunately, I damn near sent myself out onto the sidewalk, and that sent me into another fit of giggles which only made it even more difficult to stand.

“Alright there, firecracker. I’ve got you,” Jace said, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and then pulling me into his firm body.

I wanted to fight a little more—if for no other reason than to stop the tingling sensation trying to take over my body from him being so close to me—but considering I’d almost ate concrete, I figured it was best to let him hold me up, at least for a little while.

“Here,” I heard Becca whisper. “Call me when you get her home safe?”

I didn’t hear Jace respond, but we started walking so I assumed he must have.

“You sure you can walk?” he asked, his arm wrapped around me, hand under my armpit for support. “I can carry you if you need me to.”

I belted out a rather obnoxious laugh. “Right, because I need good old Jace Richardson to go and rescue me again. I’m not helpless, you know.”

He chuckled lightly. I could feel the vibrations of it coursing through my body. God, he was just too close. How was I supposed to walk straight when being this close to him made my knees weak?

“I make your knees weak, huh?” he asked as he stopped my body from toppling into a nearby shrub.

Oh, shit. I’d said that out loud?

I decided to cover it up with some drunken sarcasm. “And nauseous.”

“You need to throw up?” he asked, stopping and bending his body sideways to get a look at me.

I narrowed my blue eyes at his chocolate ones… I think. “Just when I’m around you.”

He laughed again, only this one sounded like it’d come from deep down in his chest. “Wow, now there’s one I haven’t heard yet,” he said, directing us down the sidewalk again.

“Funny,” I quipped. “I’d think you would have. What, with you walking around all hero-like all the time.”

“Only with you, Andrea. Only with you.” He almost sounded sad when he said it, only my hazy brain couldn’t begin to understand why.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

I rolled my head when I’d meant to roll my eyes. “Do you rescue me? It’s not like I
need
rescuing.”

“Well,” he said, shifting my arm up over his shoulder. “Maybe not in the traditional sense. But in the two instances I’ve done it, you have.”

“Only because you cloud my head with all your tattoos, sexy voice, and hard muscles.”

Where did that come from?

Jace cleared his throat. “You’re almost home, Andrea.”

“Home?”

“Yeah, your dorm.”

“I—I don’t think I can make it.” I really didn’t. The ground was starting to crack open beneath my feet, and my eyes felt like they weighed a ton. I wanted nothing more than to lay down on the cold concrete and sleep for the next ten years.

Before I could even protest—not that I would have right then—I was hoisted up off the ground. I felt the sensation of movement as the entire world spun and swayed, but I’d never felt safer than I did right in that moment, wrapped in tattoos, muscles and citrus.

“I thought about you,” I said, laying my head on his chest. “I know I shouldn’t. I didn’t mean to. But you were there with me.”

“Where?” he asked, whispering softly into my hair.

“In my bathtub.”

I thought I felt his arms stiffen around me, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too tired to ask. So I rested my cheek on his chest and let the sound of his beating heart lull me off to sleep.

I awoke the next morning to an earthquake… or so I initially thought. But when I opened my eyes in a panic, I found Becca, shaking me, my bed, anything that might stir me out of my alcohol-induced coma.

“Andy, you awake?” she asked, her made-up face just inches from mine.

I pulled my pillow over my eyes and groaned. “I am now. What is it?”

“Uh, you have psych in twenty minutes,” she said, trying to yank the pillow from my fingers.

I held onto the pillow for dear life, trying to hide from the light and the ice pick scraping at my brain… but only until the weight of her words sunk in. “Oh, shit!”

“Yeah, oh shit. Get moving, chick.” Becca picked up a shirt from off the floor and tossed at my face before making her way toward the door.

“You’re not waiting for me?”

She pulled the door open and then turned back to look at me, shaking her head. “I need coffee. You kept me up half the night with your drunken snoring. Besides, I’m not sticking around for the train wreck.”

“Train wreck?” I asked, pulling the shirt she’d tossed at me over my head.

“You haven’t even tried moving yet, and that’s bound to be interesting,” she said with a smirk. “I’d feel sorry for you, but you were carried home by a god, so I don’t.”

I threw my pillow at her as she ducked out the door but it hit the door instead and then fell to the ground with a thud.

Oh, dear God, she was right. My head felt like it’d been pureed in a blender. And I was down to just fifteen minutes to get to class.

I brushed my teeth, yanked my unbrushed hair into a messy bun at the top of my head and threw on a pair of yoga pants—probably not clean—and shoes. With six minutes left to spare, I snagged my books and my purse and then bolted out the door.

The light outside was practically blinding, and an hour of listening to Professor Parker drone on was like listening to nails on a chalkboard, but I made it through without throwing up on anyone. Now all I had left to do was go home and sleep off the rest of my god-awful hangover.

I was just passing the coffee shop when my phone rang. Dread thick in my veins, I completely ignored the ringing and continued making my way to the dorms. I was certain it would be Sean, and I wasn’t exactly up for talking to him just yet—not after the fantasy orgasm I’d had the night before. And that wasn’t to mention being carried home by the object of my fantasies just hours later. Or my drunken confession.

But ignoring my phone was apparently futile because, just seconds after the ringing ceased, it started up again. I had to do something, say something—Sean knew my schedule just as well as I did and he knew I’d just finished psych class—so I fished my phone out of my purse.

“Marcus,” I said out loud, sighing in relief when I caught sight of the name displayed on my caller ID. Unfortunately, the relief only lasted for about a fraction of a second.

The column was due in the next day, and I hadn’t even touched it.

I hesitated a few more moments, hoping maybe Marcus would give up if I failed to answer a second time. No such luck. My phone started ringing as soon as it clicked over to voice mail. I was going to have to answer… I could only hope he wasn’t asking for the feature early.

“Hey, Marcus,” I said, hoping I sounded casual.

“Jesus, Andrea,” he sighed into the phone. “Way to give your editor a heart attack.”

“Sorry?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you since last night.”

That was news to me. “Oh, um—sorry,” I said. “I spent the night out with Becca. I must have missed your calls.”

“Well, I need that feature on my desk tomorrow morning,” he said. “I know I usually let you bring your work in later in the day, but since this is your first entertainment piece, I wanted to go over it with you really quick.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a little numb. He
was
asking for it early.

“That’s not a problem, is it?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned, and maybe even a little panicked.

Of course, I had my own form of panic going on at the other end of the line. How the hell I was supposed to write the feature after everything that had happened over the past week? And in less than twenty-four hours?

“Andrea?”

“Oh—sorry. No, no. Not a problem at all,” I lied, my throat suddenly parched. “I’ll be there, first thing in the morning.”

Marcus sighed in relief. “Wonderful,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

Seconds later, the line went dead in my ear.

I was so screwed. So very, very screwed.

But, I supposed things couldn’t get any worse, right?

Boy, had I been wrong.

Becca had been kind enough to give me space to nurse my hangover and write. Unfortunately, that also meant I’d been left alone with my wretched, treacherous thoughts. They taunted me as I went over our interviews, reminded me of how Jace had ripped out my soul the night of the concert, only to hand it back to me in little pieces. I tried to reassemble the stolen shards, but they’d been dirtied by his calloused fingers and they no longer fit in the same places as before.

The worst part was… I actually liked them better that way.

Those places where he’d etched his fingerprints felt more alive and whole than they had in their previously clean and unmarked state. This wasn’t just a crush. This wasn’t just a bad case of the groupie fever. I was starting to actually feel something for Jace Richardson.

But how could you I love one man and want another?

How could I, the girl who’d planned her life out since the day she was born, let something so catastrophic derail my course. More importantly, what in the hell was I going to do about it?

I couldn’t just ignore him; not when he kept putting himself in my path. That much was obvious.

I couldn’t quit school and go home, not after stomping and throwing a hissy-fit over Sean’s demands.

And honestly, I didn’t want to leave. I’d worked too damn hard to have my entire career go down the drain—and for what? A lust-interest that would likely die down just days after graduation?

No, I would stick this through. I would write this damn column and I would never speak of Jace Richardson again. I would move on with my life, and ten years down the road, he’d be nothing and no one to me, not even a memory I thought of in passing. I’d have my career, my husband, my white picket fence, and my two-point-five children.

But first, I needed a cup of coffee.