Up In Flames (20 page)

Winding out of Derrick’s embrace, I leapt up onto the closest table. I knocked over a couple beers and my feet grazed the head of one of the guys scattered around it, but no one seemed to mind.

In fact, when I started to move to the beat of the music, people started cheering. My body moved in ways it had never moved before, in ways I’d never known it could move—bending, flexing, and shaking like I was trying to make up for eighteen years’ worth of inhibitions.

One song ended, and another one was about to, and I still hadn’t stopped shaking my stuff up on some rickety table in some dive bar, but I was long past caring about what I was doing and where I was doing it. All I felt was this heady sense of freedom and I was chasing that feeling wherever it led me.

I vaguely remembered Derrick handing me yet another tall glass of clear liquid at the start of the third song I’d spent up on the table and, by the end of it, I was no longer dancing. I was teetering. Lucky for me, when I fell over, Derrick was there to catch me.

The entire bar exploded into a roar of hollering and clapping at the conclusion of my fully clothed rendition of a strip club quality dance.

“Shit, Elle,” Derrick said, righting me before guiding me back onto the dance floor. “Now that you’re off that table, I sure wouldn’t mind you moving against me like that.”

The entire room was a blur. Derrick’s voice sounded like an echo in my ears. I was drunk, long past it.

Keeping my arm firmly locked around Derrick’s back, I nudged him. “Only if you say please.”

“Please?” Derrick said, his voice low as he stopped in front of me. “Pretty please, Elle?”

“O—kay,” I said, draping both arms around his neck. It was difficult. Every limb felt like I’d lost most of my control of it.

This time, when Derrick’s arms wrapped around me, his hands slid around my backside. His hands dug into my butt before he thrust up against me. I was drunk, but there was no mistaking the bulge in his pants I felt pressed against me. “Later on it will be your turn to beg, you know.” His hips flinched against me. “You’ll be screaming my name and begging me before I’m done with you tonight.”

My breath caught in my lungs. Derrick was a friend. A friend who was crossing a line and I knew that had everything to do with the amount of alcohol he’d had and the amount I’d had.

I pushed him away.

It didn’t work.

 “The only thing I’ll be begging you for is to let me go,” I said, shoving him again. Derrick only held me tighter.

“No one would have to know, Elle,” he said just outside my ear. “Logan would never have to know I was the first one to fuck his virgin wife.”

It didn’t matter how much I had to drink, I could never get drunk enough to wind up with Derrick between my legs. Not in this lifetime or the next.

“The only virgin you’ll be screwing tonight is your left hand,” I hissed, shoving his chest. The alcohol hadn’t only made me dizzy, it had made me feisty. “Let me go!” I pushed him again.

Nothing. He only laughed, and what was worse, no one around us knew what was going on. No one realized I could really have used a helping hand about now.

Derrick laughed. “I’m not letting you go until I get you naked and horizontal.”

So Derrick might have been a friend before, but he certainly wouldn’t be after tonight. Alcohol or not, I could never forget the things he’d said.

Suddenly, a finger tapped Derrick’s shoulders.

“Change of plans,” a familiar voice said, sounding like murder was on his mind.

Derrick glanced back, huffed, and replied, “Get lost, man. Find your own chick.”

“I’m giving you one chance to let her go and step away.” Cole came around the side of us, and if I thought his eyes were dark at the bowling alley, that was nothing in comparison to the color they were now.

Derrick’s grip strengthened. “Get lost.”

Cole’s mouth turned up as his fists balled. “Bad call.”

Cole threw his first punch before Derrick knew what was coming. That powerful fist to the jaw was enough to loosen Derrick’s grip on me.

“Let her go,” Cole seethed, shoving his way in between Derrick and me.

“What the hell, man?” Derrick shouted as he reached for his jaw.

Cole’s other arm drove towards Derrick and landed square in the hollow of his cheek. “And step away.”

If Derrick hadn’t expected the first, he certainly didn’t expect the second. The punch sent him back into the crowd before he stumbled to the floor.

My breathing had picked up, watching this whole testosterone fused ordeal, but the alcohol numbed me of any other response. That was, until Cole turned around and his anxious eyes fell on me. Those eyes managed to illicit the same kinds of responses as when I was sober.

When he came towards me and wrapped both arms around me before tucking me close and guiding me through the crowd, I wasn’t quite sure if I was now dreaming.

“Cole?” I reached out and touched his face. He felt real enough.

“Elle.” He sounded real enough, too.

“What are you doing here?” I couldn’t quite remember what I was doing here, but I was pretty sure it had had something to do with him.

“Protecting too-innocent-for-their-own-damn-good girls from guys who would have no qualms taking advantage of that innocence,” he replied tightly.

“I can handle Derrick Davenport all on my own, thank you very much.” I didn’t like knowing he was here because I was like a responsibility to him.

“Fine,” he said, shoving a guy away who drunkenly stumbled in front of us. “I’m here to hold your hair back while you puke your guts out.”

“I’ve got a ponytail holder for that,” I grumbled.

Cole groaned as we approached the bar. “Why are you so damn difficult?”

I huffed. “Why are you?”

“I wasn’t until you came into my life,” he replied, waving at Biggie.

“Good thing I’m not in your life any more then,” I snapped back, reaching for my head. It already hurt. That was not a good sign for tomorrow morning.

“Then why am I here right now with you?”

Even if I had an answer for that, I wouldn’t have been able to give it right then because Biggie stopped in front of us, clutching my purse. “It’s a good thing you left this thing on the bar before you started table dancing.” Cole grimaced at the words table and dancing while Biggie looked down on me in such a way he could have been my dad right then.

“Why’s that?” I said, grabbing for my purse, but my depth perception was drunk like the rest of me and all I did was fall forward. Cole caught me and, after righting me, clutched me tighter. So tight the only part of my body I’d be able to move would be my legs. “Did you need to borrow some chapstick?”

Biggie shook his head. “No. I needed to call someone who wasn’t your dad who I could trust to get you out of here before that other shithead tried to.”

“So why did you call this shithead?” Nice. I didn’t only drink like a sailor, I cursed like one.

Biggie held my phone up before dropping it back into my purse. “This shithead’s phone number was the first number that showed up under your missed calls. That showed up about a dozen times. I figured if a guy was calling a girl that many times in one night, he must care a hell of a lot for her.”

Cole had called me tonight? Multiple times? After weeks of ignoring me, why was he suddenly blowing up my phone? Then a nearly naked redhead and a weight room flashed to mind. I squirmed against Cole, but got nowhere.

“Then when this guy answered . . .” Biggie and Cole exchanged a look. “Well, I knew you’d be in good hands.”

“Unlikely,” I mumbled as the room took a very violent spin.

“See you around, Biggie,” Cole said, taking my purse from him and moving for the exit. “Thanks for the call. You did the right thing.”

“I hope so,” Biggie said, watching the two of us with a hint of nostalgia and sadness on his face. “It was nice meeting you, Elle, but I don’t want to ever see your face in my bar again. Or I will call your dad next time. You got it?”

I figured after tonight, I’d never drink another drop of alcohol, let alone step into this place. I answered him with a thumbs-up before Cole led me through the crowd.

The minute we were outside, I took in gulps of the cool night air. It cleared my mind just barely and made it easier to believe I wasn’t about to vomit in the next instant, but then a wave of tiredness overcame me and the exhaustion made my head loll onto Cole’s shoulders and my feet wouldn’t cooperate.

“Shit, Elle. How much did you have to drink?” Cole sighed before shifting around me and before I knew how I’d wound up there, I was in his arms being carried across the parking lot.

I hated the way every part of me melted into him. I’d come here as an escape from Cole and I was leaving here wrapped up in his arms. In the same arms he’d held that other girl close with tonight.

My stomach churned and I came dangerously close to heaving.

“Obviously not enough,” I said, adjusting myself so I could get down.

“Oh, I think you had more than enough,” he said, cinching his arms tighter.

“You’re here and I’m not drunk enough to not remember who you are anymore,” I said, the words like venom. “I clearly didn’t drink enough.”

Cole stopped outside of the passenger side door of my Jeep. “So there’s not only a wild girl you like to keep hidden inside, there’s a mean one, too.” He set me down and started rifling through my purse, no doubt looking for the keys.

I wavered in place. I really had had too much to drink. “It’s not mean if it’s the truth.”

Cole’s jaw set as he heaved the door open. “Fine. You hate me. I get it,” he said in a voice so controlled I knew he felt anything but in control. “Now would you just get in the damn car already?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, stepping away from him. It was more of a stagger. “So stop wasting your time. Go get back in your car and get back to what you were . . .
doing
.”

Cole lunged at me. Ringing his hands around my wrists, he pulled me back to the Jeep and pressed me firmly up against it. Throwing my wrists above my head, he held them tight as his body pressed into mine. I wriggled against his grip, but gave up after it was clear Cole’s grip was unbreakable. His eyes blazed into mine, with unmistakable anger and . . . desire.

That was probably the alcohol speaking.

“Let’s not pretend that I couldn’t get you to do whatever I asked of you,” he hissed, shoving harder against me when I tried breaking free again. The impact and firmness of his body against mine brought a sound to the surface from me. “Let’s not pretend that, even though you might hate me, you wouldn’t let me do anything to you I wanted.” His head dropped to my neck, and the next thing I felt was his mouth warming the skin at the base of it. His mouth never touched me, just his warm breath, and even with that small intimacy, my eyes closed, my head rolled back, and I moaned again.

I wanted to cry. I couldn’t control my body around him. I couldn’t control my mind much better. I was totally and irreversibly out of control when I was in Cole’s presence. I was going . . . up in flames at just the thought of his touch.

“You might hate me, Elle,” he said roughly. “But your body doesn’t.”

Leaning back, his body left mine, but his hands stayed glued to my wrists.

“If I let you go, are you going to get in the car or am I going to have to make you? Because really, I’m kind of hoping you don’t go willingly.”

“It won’t be willingly, but if it means you taking your filthy hands off of me, then I’ll get in the car myself.”

Cole smirked at me as he slowly removed his hands. “And here I’d been under the impression that you couldn’t get enough of my filthy hands all over you.”

Twisting away from him, I crawled into the Jeep. In my drunken state, it was a formidable obstacle.

“You’ve been under a lot of wrong impressions,” I snapped, regretting the words instantly. I regretted them even more when I saw the smirk fall right off Cole’s face.

“I know,” he said quietly before shutting the door behind me.

This night had been fated to be doomed. That should have been clear when Mrs. Matthews said the words potluck, smokejumper camp, and pretty please in the same sentence. Stumbling on Cole, the woman he’d just got it on with, my mom’s old flame, downing so many drinks they started to taste like water, Derrick Davenport’s hands all over me, and now this. Hurting Cole with my false words.

It was time to put this day to rest.

When Cole leapt into the driver’s seat, he was stone-faced. The pit in my stomach grew. “Where do you want me to take you?” he asked, his voice just as stone cold.

“Um . . .”

Where could I go? There was no way I could show up this late at night, rip-roaring drunk, at home. Nothing good would come of that. I couldn’t go to the Matthews’ because that would be even worse than showing up at home. Dani was gone on some camping trip this weekend. Grandma M’s was the only option, but I didn’t want to bring her into this mess. I didn’t want her to have to keep my secrets for me.

I had nowhere to go. When I wasn’t maintaining that veneer of perfection everyone expected, I had no one to lean on. When I made a mistake and needed someone to fall back on, I had nobody. Everyone in my life, save for a couple, loved the idea of Elle Montgomery. Not the real me—not the warts and all version.

How a revelation of this magnitude was able to break through the haze of alcohol, I don’t know, but it felt like the most depressing thought I’d ever had.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, staring down into my lap. “There’s nowhere really.” I hated being this transparent with Cole, he’d already seen so much vulnerability from me that had clearly not impressed him, but there was no one else.

I felt Cole’s eyes on me for a long time. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing or looking for, but at least a minute must have gone by before he sighed. “Okay. You can stay at the camp,” he said, and then something unexpected happened. Cole’s hand rested on mine for a moment before his fingers wove through mine. “I’ll take care of you and then we’ll figure out what to do tomorrow morning when you’re not up to your ears in cheap vodka.”