Smother (11 page)

When I was a kid, I used to complain about everything. About the ketchup coming out of the bottle too slow, having to do chores to earn money, or even my favorite television show that was only on, on Wednesday nights. My mother would tell me certain things are worth waiting for and to have patience. I have lived by that more than ever the last few years. ~ Leo

Why are you here?

Leo, Leo, Leo
played through her brain.

Stupid, stupid, stupid
followed that.

Mick, Leo’s friend, had caught her in the hallway earlier and invited her to his birthday party. She wasn’t going to come, but then the pull to see Leo brought her here anyway. She’d been at Mick’s for twenty minutes and had yet to see him or Leo, so the logical thing for her to do was drink large quantities of alcohol. Reese finished the glass of cranberry juice and vodka and carefully placed the plastic cup on the kitchen counter before she dropped it.

Rock music blasted from speakers overhead and it thundered through her body, making her an instrument as well. It showed her how easily manipulated she was to the power of sound as it made her want to move to its beat. She half-thought Leo would come storming into the apartment for no other reason than to turn the music down, or at least to change it to something dreary.

She wove her way through bodies, not sure who she was looking for, but aware that she would know when she saw him. Someone to distract her. It was always a guy. One single man who looked a certain way, gave her a particular look, or had an air about him. Menace—that’s what it was. The bad boy who didn’t give a damn, who used and abused, who was unapologetic. Where was he in this room of warm bodies?

Reese spotted a broad-shouldered man across the room, caught a glimpse of his profile before he turned away. His jeans were worn thin, but they hugged his legs in ways that made scandalous images come to mind. He was more muscular than she usually went for, but there was something enticing about his bulk. This guy was it—he could be her form of distraction for the night.

Then he moved and she froze as his face came into view. It was Leo. She should have known it would be him. There he was—the guy she wanted the most and could never have. He held a water bottle in his hand, because that was the kind of responsible, boring thing Leo would drink. His head was bent as he talked to a short blond in a red top and tight jean skirt. Reese wanted to explode when she caught the faint outline of a smile on his face. He could smile for anyone but her. He could talk to anyone but her.

Resentment, longing, and hurt came together to make her skin heat up and her stomach swirl. Reese quickly refilled her drink and slammed half of it down, something dark and angry propelling her to the coffee table in the middle of the room.

He never smiled for her.

She’d make sure he never even thought about smiling for her after tonight.

“Hey!” She stepped onto the table and waved her arms around, the deep red liquid of her drink sloshing from the cup in her hand and onto the front of her pink and blue shirt. “Hey! Listen up. I have an announcement to make.” Something told her to stop, that this was going too far, and she pushed that small, easily ignorable voice away.

The music was turned low as eyes locked on her, Leo’s among them. His mouth turned down, told her to quit before she started. Reese glared into his eyes, ignoring the warning. She wanted to make him mad, bring him pain. Hurt him. She wanted him to act like she mattered to him in some way, even if it was negative, even if it was with hate. She needed something, anything, from him.

Reese raised her glass to him with what she knew to be a horrible smile formed to her lips, feeling the wrongness in the twist of it. It was laced with poison. Leo briefly closed his eyes, and when he opened them, there was bleakness etched into his features, as though he was resigned to whatever was about to transpire. As if he knew it would be bad.

She should stop, she knew she should, and yet that dark part of her refused to recede back into the shadows where it lived. She couldn’t stand being ignored by him any longer.

“I want everyone to look at that guy, right there.” Reese pointed at him, watched as his face went expressionless. “That guy . . . is the only guy . . . that doesn’t want to fu—wait, wait—let’s make it technical and proper—have sexual intercourse with me.”

Catcalls and snide remarks abounded, but she didn’t care. She only cared about Leo, and how his lips thinned in anger, and how his light gray eyes darkened to the color of wet stone.

“Look at me.” She struck a pose, jutting out a hip and placing a hand on it. She pursed her lips, aware of his eyes on her, and purposely refusing to meet them. The whoops grew louder. Reese caught the higher, disapproving voices of women among them. That only made her want to lash out more. Fuck them all, and fuck Leo with them.

Reese scanned the crowd and locked eyes with multiple seething women as she went. Her smile deepened when she lifted her gaze. “Men always want me. Why doesn’t he want me? It doesn’t make sense, does it?” She looked at the blond Leo was earlier talking to as she said it, the woman’s upper lip curled in disdain. Reese winked at her before she turned away.

“I want you, baby!” someone crooned and others laughed.

A hand tugged on her leg and she stepped back, wobbling on the table. She smiled cruelly and ruffled up her short hair. “Of course you do.”

Reese met Leo’s eyes, felt the shock of their angry heat all the way into her stomach. She stared back, wanting to look away—never wanting to look anywhere else. “But not Leo. He’s famous,” she continued. “First guy ever to want nothing to do with me. Come on, Leo, take a bow. You deserve it. You’ve shown such restraint, such gentlemanly behavior. You should be applauded.”

She looked around the room. “Right? We should all applaud Leo, or maybe ask him if he’s gay,” she added nastily.

Someone grabbed for her, again tried to pull her from the coffee table, and she resisted, never removing her gaze from Leo. Her jaw was tight, a fire scorched her insides, turning them into ashes. That’s how she felt, like she was nothing but smoke and ashes. Dust. She burned herself time and again—but she’d burn him this once as well.

“He must be gay,” Reese persisted hatefully. The blackness took over, controlled her, made her say things she didn’t mean, pushed her to wound him. She didn’t entirely understand why.
Give me something,
she inwardly pleaded.

Leo looked at her like she was less than anything worthy enough to upset him, and that was what she was desperate to change, and that was what she never could.

“Are you? Are you into men, Leo? Is that why you don’t want me? That has to be it, right? Why else wouldn’t you want me? What’s wrong with me?” The question was meant to be a demand, but came out choked. What wasn’t wrong with her?

Leo stared at her for forever and then he turned away. Her knees went weak without the power of his gaze to hold her up—he was the puppet master and she the wooden doll attached to him with strings. And when he left the house, all the life went with him.

Reese watched the door long after he walked through it. Tears ran down her face and she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything, except that he was gone.

Hands grabbed her, pulled her down, and she let them.

It was interesting how quickly the spectacle was forgotten. The music was turned back up, laughter and conversation in place once more, and she stood there, cold and alone.

The party scene had lost its appeal.

Avoiding any eyes that happened to be turned her way, Reese walked out of Mick’s apartment.

She was losing it.

Each time she sank into the darkness, it was harder to find her way out. It would be so easy to blame Leo, but it was all her—an endless cycle of hurt and be hurt to end the hurt only to hurt. He was just the necessary substance needed to activate the breakdown. She fought to keep him out and instead let him in.

Leo found her on the living room floor with a bottle beside her. She knew it was him before she completely focused on him—no normal human being was that tall, that muscled, and still that graceful.

Reese turned her eyes to the window and raised the bottle of vodka to her lips, letting it burn her throat and chest. It warmed her, but all she felt was cold. “Go away.”

“Didn’t come to work today.”

“Fuck work.”

“If you don’t come to work, you don’t get paid.”

“Don’t care.”

She felt him kneel beside her and his body heat scorched her. The scent of sandalwood surrounded her as a band of muscle shot out in front of her and he yanked the bottle from her hand. She grabbed for it just as he moved his hand away, and Reese pitched forward. She landed half on him and shoved him the rest of the way down, satisfaction swimming through her inebriated brain as his head
thunked
against the floor.

Glaring down at him, she spat, “You don’t get to do this.”

“Do what?”

“You don’t get to come in and out of my life, push and pull at me, stay away, and then show up whenever you feel like it. You don’t get to tell me to live my life and be responsible, and then try to dictate what I do, and who I do it with. It’s not fair.”

“You smell like booze,” he told her as he effectively maneuvered them both to sitting positions so that they no longer touched.

“I don’t care!”

“And you’re drunk too.”

Anger scalded her face. “What is it with you and saying the most obvious things? I also smoke, fuck a lot of men, and enjoy saying fuck just as much.”

Leo’s jaw tightened and he wordlessly got to his feet, walking out of the living room and into the kitchen. When she heard the sound of liquid meeting sink, Reese scrambled to her feet and tried to run for the bottle of alcohol, but she stumbled instead and banged her knee against a corner of the wall. Cursing, she hobbled into the small kitchen.

“You’re wasting it!” Reese reached around him, but he moved to the side, only righting the bottle once it was empty. “You’re an asshole,” she told him.

He shrugged. “Take a shower and get to the shop. Got an appointment in forty minutes and I can’t babysit you all day.”

“I don’t want you to babysit me!”

Leo lifted an eyebrow.

“Get out.” Reese’s voice shook.

“I’ll go when you go.”

Crossing her arms, she said, “I’m not going. You can fire me. I don’t fucking care. Just get out.” She did care. Reese cared too much, and that was why she acted the way she did around him.

Shrugging again, he moved for her, grabbed her around the waist, and tossed her over his broad shoulder before she could protest. Amid screeches and pounding on his back, Leo took her to the bathroom, dropped her into the tub, and turned cold water on her. She inhaled sharply at the shocking sting of it, instantly shivering. The curses became louder and more vulgar as she sat under the spray of water.

“Ready to work now?”

“Fuck you!” He aimed the spout directly at her face and she sputtered as water tried to drown her. Reese moved to her knees and crawled to the other end of the tub, though that didn’t help much. “Turn it off!”

“Are you coming to work today?”

“Yes, damn it!
Yes.
” The absence of water was immediate, and the trembling of her limbs turned incontrollable. She looked up at him, feeling beat down in a way she never had before, and she hated him for it, for him to be the one to take her bravado away and see her at her most vulnerable.

That blank expression customary to his features lifted minutely, a softening of his eyes the only indication he had a heart. Without speaking, he left, and she blinked at the heat of tears mingling with the water dripping down her face. Crouched on her knees, she hung her head, shudders sweeping through her as pain tightened her throat. She couldn’t do this anymore. She held her face, closed her eyes, and tried to breathe. When she heard the return of his heavy footsteps, her pulse picked up.

Reese looked up to see a towel near her face, and beyond it, Leo stood watching her with his secretive eyes. She averted her face to wipe the tears away with her forearm and stood on weak legs. She grabbed the towel from him and covered her face with it.

“Go away,” she whispered.

He did, and again an ache went through her heart at the thought of him leaving, but all he did was go into her bedroom. When she realized that’s where he’d gone, she dropped the towel and sprinted after him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded when she found him rifling through her underwear drawer.

“You need dry clothes.”

Reese snatched a sock from his hand and shoved him away from the dresser. “I can find my own clothes, thanks.”

Leo stayed near the bed. She could feel his eyes on her like the imprint of redemption never to be hers, merely close enough to endlessly tease her. He was only nine years older than her, but it felt like decades as far understanding life went.

“You can leave now,” Reese told him when the tension became too thick.

His nearness made her nervous. She didn’t like him so close, and especially in her bedroom. She invited men into her bed, they didn’t stand in her room of their own volition and do nothing. That wasn’t how it worked. She felt exposed—her soul bared for him to analyze.