Shredded (12 page)

When he finally does speak, it’s just one word. And though I should have been expecting it, I’m not, and I don’t have an answer—at least not one I want to share with him.

“Why?”

I don’t answer.

“Ophelia?”

I shrug, still refusing to look at him. I figure eventually he’ll let it go and just walk away. It’s what he’s known for, after all. It’s sure as hell what I’d do if I was in his place.

But it turns out Z’s got more sticking power than most people give him credit for, because he’s not budging. In fact, when I look at him out of the corner of my eye, he’s practically grown roots.

“I don’t know, okay?” I finally tell him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Bullshit.” He spits the word out.

“Excuse me?” Now I do turn to look at him.

“That’s bullshit. You’re a smart, savvy woman, Ophelia. I’ve only known you a little over twenty-four hours and already I’ve figured out that you don’t do anything without a
reason.”

“Maybe I just wanted to sleep with you.”

“Yeah. Because we both saw how well that worked out,” he says with a snort. “Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”

“Why don’t you just let it go?”

“Because I never let anything go.” He pushes off from the counter, slowly closes the distance between us. “And because I can see that whatever’s going on in your head is eating at you.”

I start to laugh it off, to tell him how ridiculous he’s being, except he chooses that moment to skim his fingers gently down my face.

I jerk at the caress, pull back. He follows me, his eyes filled with a compassion I never thought to see from him. It hits me like a blow, sends me into a tailspin of emotion and agitation that I don’t know how to recover from. I can deal with derision. With hate. With anger. Even with indifference. But with compassion? From someone as broken as Z? I don’t have a clue how to deal with that.

So I do the only thing I can do. I lash out, using the truth like a club. “You really want to know why I was going to sleep with you?” I ask him, my voice a particularly nasty blend of bitch-meets-asshole.

To Z’s credit, he doesn’t back down, doesn’t turn away, even though it’s obvious now that he won’t like the answer. “Yeah. I do.”

“Fine. Whatever. The truth is, I invited you in, I decided to sleep with you because I knew you wouldn’t give up. I knew you’d keep coming around, bugging me, for the next week, and I just couldn’t deal with your shit. So I decided, screw it. The best way to make sure I never have to see you again is to fuck you. Once you get what you want you’ll be out the door so fast you’ll leave skid marks on the linoleum.”

For long seconds he doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. I don’t even think he breathes. Then, just when I don’t think I can take it anymore—when the silence stretches between us like a piece of barbed wire pulled past its limit—he says, “You were going to have sex with me to get rid of me.”

I toss my hair, look him straight in the eye. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Yeah. I guess it does, doesn’t it.”

He doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he bends down, picks up his boots from where he’d kicked them earlier during our mad rush to nakedness, and walks straight out the door without another word. No
Fuck you
. No
Go to hell
. No
Have a nice life
. Nothing but the sound of the door closing behind him as he heads for the stairwell.

It’s exactly what I wanted him to do, exactly what I
needed
him to do. Which is why it
makes no sense when I sink to the floor and cry for the first time in eleven long, hell-filled months.

Chapter 9

Z

“You planning on getting up sometime soon?” The question is delivered with a kick to my bed hard enough to move the thing half a foot across the floor.

I ignore both, choosing to operate under the assumption that if I play dead long enough, Luc will just go away. It worked with both Cam and Ash yesterday, so I see no reason to change things up now.

Except Luc’s the stubborn one—he always has been. It’s why he’s a ranked snowboarder when his riding has always been more about not giving up than it’s ever been about natural talent. It’s also why I’m not surprised when he reaches a hand out and shakes me roughly. Once, twice, then a third time, so hard that my teeth actually rattle together.

Pain explodes behind my eyes, and I want to tell him to get the fuck away from me. But interaction of any kind will just encourage him—we’ve been down this road enough for me to know the rules—so I grit my teeth and imagine what I’ll do to him if I ever manage to drag myself out of this bed. Which I’m not planning on doing anytime soon, but still. It passes the time.

After what feels like an eternity, I hear footsteps walking away from the bed, and I finally let myself relax, just a little. Three down, zero to go. It should be at least a day before any of them comes back and tries to drag me out of bed again. Which means I have all day to drink myself into an alcohol-induced coma.

Figuring I should probably get started, I crack my eyes open—just in time to see Luc throw the drapes open on the wall across from my bed. Light floods the huge room, blinding me and kicking the pain in my head up about a million degrees.

“Luc, you fucking asshole. Close the damn curtains!” I grab a pillow and fire it across the room at him, then immediately regret it because now I’ve got nothing to hide my head under.

“So you
are
alive. We were beginning to wonder.”

Desperate now, I burrow deeper into the covers so that I can pull the comforter over my head. But not before I flip him off.

“Nice,” he says, right before he starts beating on the glass door like it’s a fucking drum set.

I throw the covers back, start to climb out of bed. The pain’s worth it if I actually get to strangle the motherfucker—

“Stop, stop. Please!”

Luc and I both freeze at the unexpected sound of a female voice coming from my bed. Before I can do more than sink back into bed, a head covered in long red curls peeks out from under the covers.

“You son of a bitch!” Luc launches himself at me, and I’m so horrified I don’t even bother to try to defend myself.

Don’t let me have slept with Cam last night
.

Don’t let me have slept with Cam last night
.

Please, please, please, by all that is holy, please don’t let me have slept with Cam last night
.

“God, you guys are loud. Isn’t anyone allowed to sleep in around here?” As her whole face finally manages to make its way out from under the covers—making her voice a lot less muffled than it had been—I nearly collapse in relief.

Not Cam. Some girl whose name I don’t know and whom I don’t remember at all. But not Cam. At the moment I’m inclined to be thankful for small blessings.

Luc must figure it out at the same time I do, because he comes to a screeching halt a couple of feet from my bed.

“Who’s this?” he asks as he looks down at the redhead, who I have to admit would be pretty cute if she didn’t have enough mascara smeared under her eyes to make her resemble a raccoon.

“I have no idea.”

“Nice,” he says again, rolling. “How much fucking weed did you smoke last night, anyway?”

“A lot,” says the girl next to me, shoving her hair out of her eyes as she sits up. What she doesn’t do is keep the sheet tucked around herself, and since she’s naked, Luc and I get treated to a view of a pretty spectacular peacock tattoo—not to mention a fairly nice pair of breasts. “I’m Stacy. Z and I met at Brewer’s last night. He taught me how to do body shots.”

“I bet he did.”

I close my eyes and fight the urge to bury my head in my hands. I have no idea who this girl is or how she got into my bed, though it sounds like a shitload of tequila shots might be responsible for both.

Goddamnit.

“Hey,” she says, squinting up at Luc. “Aren’t you Lucas Bradford?”

“I am.” He eyes her warily.

“Awesome! I get to meet Z Michaels and Lucas Bradford all in the same twenty-four hours. How cool is that?”

“Pretty cool,” Luc mutters.

“I know, right?”

Okay, so this girl is either still drunk or incredibly stupid, because she’s not catching any of the shade Luc is throwing her way. Which is kind of amusing considering he’s not exactly being subtle. It’d probably be completely hilarious if my head didn’t feel like it was being slowly, torturously ripped off my body.

“Do you think we can close the damn drapes?” I ask for the second time.

“That depends,” Luc answers.

“Do you want to climb in?” Stacy asks, pushing the covers aside and scooting closer to me so that Luc could climb in next to her. “I’ve always wanted to have a threesome.”

“All right, then.” I roll out of bed on the other side. “Sorry, Stacy, but I think it’s probably time for you to get going.”

“Already?” She pouts in what I’m sure she thinks is an attractive manner.

“Yeah, already.” I grab my jeans and search through the pockets for my wallet. When I find it, I pull out forty bucks and hand it to her. “Call a cab to come get you.”

“But we haven’t even done it yet! After we got back here last night you just weren’t into it, so you promised we could do it this morning.”

Oh, thank God
. I close my eyes against the sun and the relief that swamps me. I don’t know why it seems like a big deal when I’ve done it hundreds of times before, but I am suddenly, intensely grateful that I didn’t spend last night fucking this girl who I actually
can not stand
in the light of day.

“That’s not going to happen,” I tell her after a second. “You should take the money.” At first it doesn’t look like she’s going to, but after Luc turns down her offer of a quickie, she grabs the cash and reaches for her phone.

I start toward the bathroom with a vague plan of being violently, disgustingly ill.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Luc demands, getting in my way. “This is your mess.”

“I’m going to puke. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”

He snarls his disgust, but he lets me pass as he heads over to the bed to help Stacy find a cab company.

It’s just one more reason he’s been my best friend since kindergarten.

After a shower that makes me feel at least partially human, I drag myself out of the bathroom to find that all traces of Stacy’s existence have been wiped out of my bedroom. Her clothes are gone, and so are her shoes, her purse, everything—including her.

I breathe a cautious sigh of relief. Though I don’t know she’s gone for sure, with any luck she’ll have left the premises sometime during my twenty-minute puke fest or half-hour shower.

On the nightstand next to the bed is a cup of black coffee and two painkillers. I take them both, so desperate for the relief that I don’t even care that I’ve probably scalded my throat for life.

I drag my jeans on and think about walking downstairs, maybe getting some breakfast. But just the idea takes more effort than I’m capable of, so I lie back down in bed and stare at the ceiling. Except now that I’m awake and mostly sober, I can smell her in my sheets, a combination of tequila, pot, jasmine, and something else that turns my stomach all over again.

Suddenly I can’t take it for one second longer. I bound to my feet and rip the black sheets off my bed. I take the pillowcases off, the comforter, everything, and kick them into a ball near the door. Then I sink back down on the edge of the bed and just sit there, my head in my hands.

That’s how Luc finds me a few minutes later. “Rough morning?” he asks in a voice that isn’t exactly sympathetic.

“You have no idea.”

“Oh, you might be surprised. Come on. I made breakfast.” He turns and walks back out the door, and for long seconds I think about not following him. About staying right where I am. But what the fuck good will that do? The drapes are open, the covers are gone, and I’m wide awake and sober—which, if I’m being honest, totally sucks.

When I get downstairs, there are two huge bowls of cereal on the table along with a gallon of milk. Breakfast. Right.

“Is Stacy gone?” I ask, walking to the coffeepot and pouring another cup. It’s shaping up to be a five-cup morning.

“Yeah. No thanks to you. That chick was like a fucking octopus.” He shoves a bite of Cheerios into his mouth. “Every time I thought I had her under control, she’d grow another arm and grope me somewhere else. I’m pretty sure by the time I got her out of here she’d violated me in ways that are illegal in twenty-seven different countries.”

“Sorry about that,” I say with a wince. Now that I think about it, I’m feeling pretty damn violated myself. What the fuck was I thinking, getting so drunk that I brought home some woman I don’t even recognize? Sleeping with a stranger is one thing. Doing it when I’m too wasted to even know what I’m doing is totally another. And bringing her back to my house—letting her spend the night in bed with me when I don’t actually
sleep
with anyone, ever—is totally fucking nuts.

Just thinking about her in bed with me makes me a little crazy, which only makes the pressure inside me worse. Like it’s been fucking building and building since the moment I walked out of Ophelia’s apartment and—