Spin It Again (3 page)

He had none of it now, not after seeing her last night, with that bastard.

David glanced at himself in the mirror again and narrowed his eyes. He had to do something. He couldn’t live like this, not without her, and not while knowing she was traipsing all over the city, putting out for some cheap bastard. She was his, damn her!

He loved her, wanted her, needed her, and if he didn’t have her, he knew he’d die from this. This sickness, this hatred of himself, this pain of loving her.

Damn her for not forgiving him!

Damn her for making out with that motherfucker, that horny little bitch!

He conveniently forgot about the dozens of Evie impersonators he’d screwed ten ways to Sunday since the beginning of his downward spiral, because those women didn’t matter. He did what he did out of depression and loss and unbearable pain.

Not to mention, he already knew he was worthless piece of scum.

But Evie was not. David had wanted to wring her neck right there in the club and stick his hand into her pants, see if she was wet for that ugly asshole, just so he could have proof enough to go ahead and kill him.

With renewed vigor and determination, he stormed into the bedroom and pulled out a shoebox from under the bed, yanking off the top. Pulling out the red stuffed toy, the damned spin devil, he glared down at its beady black eyes and squeezed the little shit with his hands as if he could drain the life out of it. “You’re not screwing up my life, you stinking little prick,” he hissed.

There were rustling sounds coming from the bed, and a soft, female “Huh?” He whipped his gaze up to the intruder, his face a mask of rage. “You know where the door is.”

You’ re mine.

Sitting in a crowded spot on the metro as she rode home from work, Evie felt her heart constrict while David’s words played in her head over and over again.

Sadly, Evie couldn’t help but agree—despite how painful the truth was to her.

You’ re mine.

You’ re fucking mine.

She clutched her purse to her chest, suddenly needing to hold on to something while she tried futilely to block his words out of her head.

This past year, all she’d been focused on was surviving. Surviving and living—

without him. She’d held on to that hate, that blissful hate, the only thing that had kept her heart beating for the past year. Hating him. Cursing him. Damning him.

She took it one day at a time, one measly day at a time, never knowing for sure if she’d be able to get through each without bursting into tears or doing something worse.

She felt like a crazy person—fine one moment and struck by a raging, blinding pain the next.

Once, while she’d strolled down the streets of Manhattan with her friend Fiona, she’d caught sight of a lone red rose, like the one David had tied her engagement ring to, sticking out of a newspaper stand. Evie had made some surprisingly sick noises as she yanked it out and destroyed it completely, cutting herself with a thorn in the process. Afterward, feeling a little embarrassed while eyeing the remains of the flower scattered over the sidewalk, she’d dutifully paid for it.

Evie’s problem wasn’t that rose. It was everything, because David was everywhere.

She’d thrown away her bedsheets because it had been impossible to wash out his smell. His closet space was still achingly empty in their bedroom, and she couldn’t seem to buy clothes fast enough to fill the void. He was in every stock news channel she clicked by on TV, in every Meat Loaf song, in every takeout Chinese box and every Twix chocolate bar. His kisses were there in every single kiss she saw, and the way he’d loved her shone in every drawing of a heart, every smile, every couple she saw walking by.

Three years were hard to forget for anyone, but to Evie it hadn’t been just three years—it had been her future too, for she’d dreamed it perfectly, and every piece of it had included him.

It had taken a single night in Florida, a couple of drinks and two naked women to deny her heart of every dream it had nurtured, every hope, every longing. And while her dreams had vanished, every memory of him had grown…every memory from the very first moment she’d met him.

He’d been dining with one of his clients at a fancy Manhattan restaurant, while Evie had been dining with friends. She’d sat at a nearby table and he didn’t take his eyes off her the whole evening. At the dark intensity of his gaze, Evie had felt as if a million butterflies had exploded from their cocoons right inside her stomach. He’d left the restaurant before she and her friends did, and when Fiona ordered the check, the waiter said it had been taken care of by “the gentleman with the black tie”.

Her friends, in all their excitement, had immediately declared themselves in love with him. When they strode out onto the sidewalk Evie saw him, leaning against a car, looking so incredibly gorgeous. He straightened when he saw her, a slow smile spreading his lips. She knew then, as certain as she felt the melting in her bones, that he’d been waiting for her.

He walked her home that evening, and for the first time in her life Evie could finally put a face to the man of her dreams. David’s face. Because she knew, without a doubt, that it was him.

She remembered the first “I love you” only a few months after they’d met, when he’d taken a long flight to Spain where he was scheduled to close a deal with one of his clients. Before he’d left, they made hot, reckless love in his apartment and he gently promised to be back in three days. On the third morning Evie woke up to the phone ringing, and when she answered, he’d been calling her from the plane on his way back to Manhattan.

“Did I wake you?” he’d asked, the sound of the jet engines humming softly in the background.

She’d sat up on the bed and swallowed several times, trying to sound like she’d been awake. “No. Yes…” Then she’d laughed, realizing she’d blown it.

“I’m in love with you, Evie,” he’d said, his voice solemn and so dear to her.

Evie had known it for some time, for he’d shown her in a million ways. In the way he looked at her, the way he shielded her from the rain, the way he made love to her and the way his voice changed when he said her name. But hearing him say the words, especially when she was so madly in love with him herself, had been about the closest thing to heaven she’d ever experienced.

That and, of course, the day he’d proposed.

He’d just moved in with her and they’d had a silly fight over his dressing habits.

Evie found it really annoying that he could be so organized at work and so damned sloppy at home. She was always picking up after him and she’d told him repeatedly that she was not his personal maid. That day, she swore to herself she wouldn’t touch his things. Let him see if he appreciated living like a pig when he realized if he didn’t pick his shit up, then nobody else would either.

When she got home from work he was already there, his feet propped up on the coffee table as he calmly flipped through a magazine. Evie still wasn’t talking to him, and though she noticed a long-stemmed rose lying on the floor, she made a point not to pick it up.

When she walked past it several times, he finally dropped the magazine and looked up at her, clearly annoyed. “Aren’t you going to pick that up?” he’d angrily asked.

“No,” Evie said stubbornly, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Pick it up, Evie,” he gritted out.

“I said no. I’m not your maid.”

“Dammit.” He stormed across the living room and grabbed it. “Here,” he said, thrusting the flower toward her. “You were supposed to pick it up.”

“Ha, you wish! I told you, David, I’ m not your maid!” He lifted the rose to her eye level and she saw something glinting from the stem.

“But will you be my wife, Evie?”

That night, he’d made sweet, lazy love to her. He’d spoken soft, sweet words in her ear, promised he would love her, always love her, forever.

He’d lied.

And how it hurt to be mocked by her memories, to wonder if she’d made them all up, for the David she knew would have never done something like this to her. Every second of every day he was in her heart, in her mind, and it was worse than any other torture she could imagine.

Sometimes she would remember him smiling and playful, like he’d always been.

More times than she wished, she remembered him as he’d been that afternoon, that horrible afternoon when they’d broken up, when he’d looked haggard and pained and haunted.

During the past year, the past horrible, nightmare of a year, Evie had experienced a tornado of emotions—hate, need, want and longing. And always this sick, distressing, painful love. She’d rather hate him. Hate was less cruel to her soul.

He’d been unfaithful…

Evie had been experiencing abundant, vivid nightmares about him, about him with those women, fucking and yelling and groaning while Evie had been at their apartment, watching a romantic comedy—thinking of him and wistfully planning their upcoming wedding. She’d called his hotel room every half-hour or so that night, needing to hear his voice before she went to sleep. She should have known there was something wrong when he didn’t call her. She should have known there was something wrong with her.

Evie had been experiencing her share of sick, poisoning thoughts, some suggesting that maybe this had all been her fault. More times than not they made her wonder what in the world had been wrong with her.

Had she been no fun in bed? Had she been too boring, too shy? She remembered plenty of times when David had wanted to deviate, when he’d gotten a devilish glint in his eye and proposed something naughty. Evie would laugh and dismiss his comments, convinced he was teasing—surely he didn’t mean it when he said he wanted to watch her masturbate while she watched porn on TV. Did he?

But now she feared she should have perhaps listened, been less afraid, less inhibited. Maybe if she’d been more open this never would have happened.

Did all women who had unfaithful partners feel this way? Was it fair that she should think she was partly to blame?

She wished she hadn’t encouraged him to take that trip to Florida. He should have stayed in New York with her—where he belonged. But David had always glowed whenever he talked about his college friends and he’d been so tired from work, while Evie had been so busy with the wedding preparations. She thought it would be good for him. A well-deserved vacation.

The night before he left he’d made love to her against the wall, with his jeans at his ankles and his hips pushing forward and back, forward and back as he slid his cock—

that lovely, perfect specimen—inside her. She’d wrapped her ankles around his waist and moaned feverishly while she begged and whimpered, “Yes, oooh yes, baby, more, more…”

“You make me so hot,” he’d whispered while dragging his lips all over her face, kissing every inch of it. “So hot, so crazy.”

It had been the last time Evie had had sex. The last time she’d held David in her arms, felt him inside her. David. Her David. Just to think of his cock inside another woman, while Evie waited for him at home…

It was every woman’s nightmare…and it had happened to her.

She’d cried and cried and cried some more. Oceans of tears. Not even the girl-talk therapy her friends offered helped alleviate her pain. She’d had dozens of discussions with her closest friends, the sole topic being whether Evie had brought this on herself.

Nobody thought she had—except Evie.

Throughout the last year and with a vengeance to rival a massive world war, Evie had dated every available man within her vicinity. Her friends had been shocked—this was very unlike her—including Fiona who, over coffee, had asked, “What are you trying to prove, going out with all these guys?”

“Nothing, I just don’t feel like staying cooped up in my apartment,” Evie had said as casually as she could manage.

Fiona had looked at her with pity as she’d squeezed Evie’s hand in hers. “Evie, if David screwed up, he screwed up. It had nothing to do with you.” Deep down, Evie didn’t believe that. If he loved her like she’d once thought he did, why did he screw around on her? Why would he look for loving somewhere else, if not for the fact that he wasn’t satisfied with Evie?

It must have had something to do with her.

Last night, when she’d been futilely trying to prove to herself that she could be just as hot, just as adventurous as the next woman, fondling a stranger that had flirted with her at the club, she’d never expected David would storm in out of the blue—tumbling drunk, with two bombshells following him like poodles.

Looking at him, she’d sought that hate, that comforting red-hot feeling, and found she couldn’t hold on to it, couldn’t even summon it. Just a look at those steely brown eyes and all she’d felt was pain, fresh and burning and new. Just standing there, so near, he’d torn her scar open. Evie could almost hear it as it tore, could almost hear the blood gushing inside her. Burning. Poisoning her insides with more pain, more love, more hate.

You’ re mine.

You’ re fucking mine.

He could have taken her then and there, made love to her in that club full of people, mad, drunken, crazy love, and Evie wouldn’t have protested. A wild, desperate urge to feel him, an urge to know he still loved her, wanted her, wanted her more than those women, clenched tightly inside her womb. Her sex had flooded with need, an aching, painful need for him. Only him. Evie wanted no one else.

When he’d left, aided by one of the blondes—whose hair Evie had wanted to pull out by the roots—she’d felt desperate.

For a crazy moment, the shortest of seconds, she’d wanted to run after him and beg him to come back to her, beg him to love her like he used to, to make love to her and take her to heaven and make this horrible, wretched pain go away.

The next minute, Evie felt sick. Really sick. She’d felt dizzy and out of breath and she had to rush to the ladies’ room to vomit.

She stayed there for the rest of the evening.

*

You’ re mine.

It was still running through Evie’s head when she reached her apartment. She shoved the door open and pushed it closed as she strode inside. Then she halted, suddenly confused when she didn’t hear it slam shut behind her. Whirling on her heel, her breath caught in her throat.