“Stop it.” I look at my reflection in the rearview mirror. “You’re a grown ass man who has business to take care of. Stop acting like a juvenile with a hard-on.”
My cheeks heat, partly from annoyance that this reminder needed to be said and partly because I’m embarrassed for the same reason. I tuck a phone number Lance gave me into the binder and look up.
My hand stills. I drop the binder.
The window to the apartment I use as a makeshift office slash crash pad is opened a sliver. I rack my brain, searching for the last time I opened it, and come up empty-handed. Peck helped me install a lock on the inside of the window, and it’s a bitch to undo.
My teeth grinding together, I step out of the car. Grabbing the bamboo rod I keep hidden against the dumpster, I make my way up the steps.
The clouds clear above me. The sun’s rays pelt my back, only adding to the sweat trickling down my spine as I anticipate what I’m about to find.
Nothing up there is worth a damn, but it’s the idea of being defiled, the inherent disrespect, that has me itching to teach someone a lesson. I almost feel sorry for the motherfucker who did this. He’ll be on the receiving end of a lot of pent-up aggression.
With my back against the wall, I make an effort not to give myself away with my heavy breathing as I lean to the side. Peering into the open slot at the bottom, I can only see a part of the kitchen area.
It looks like it always does.
Nothing’s out of place. No mess to indicate a break-in. Nothing but an open window.
My palm rests on the knob, and I attempt to rotate it, but it doesn’t budge. Locked tight.
“What the hell?” I whisper. Digging into my pockets, bamboo rod still in my right hand, I find the keys. They slip into the lock, and the door breaks free.
Sunlight trickles through the doorway, illuminating most of the apartment. Confusion replaces anger as I realize nothing’s been bothered.
I set the rod on the kitchen counter and walk slowly inside, leaving the door open. I walk around the table and next to the sofa. My eyes adjust to the differences in light as I peer toward the futon and desk. As they settle on the bump on the middle of the mattress, I stop.
Sucking in a breath, my chest burning, I think I must be seeing things. I can’t see the person’s face. All I can see is a little foot with a scar across the ankle and a wrist with a tiny tattoo of a wing on the inside. Although I haven’t seen the tattoo before and that bothers me, I know who is in my bed.
Every cell in my body lunges her way. The draw to her, the fight to not jump in bed and pull her up against me, knocks me off balance. I catch myself on the arm of the couch.
I glance around the room, back to the propped open window, and try to make sense of this. Before I can make heads or tails of this situation, she rustles against the sheets. I freeze. Don’t move a damn muscle. Just stand in place and stare at her like some kind of demented asshole.
The blankets are batted away. Her eyes struggle to open as I watch her.
“Oh, shit,” she whispers. Her voice is throaty and full of a sleepy grittiness. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?”
She sits up, grimacing. “You need a better mattress on this thing.”
I slow blink. Twice. “Am I missing something here?”
Her shoulders rise and fall as she fiddles with the hair knotted on the top of her head. It’s falling every which way from the thing she had it up in. Pieces are hanging all around her face and when she blows a lock dangling across her nose, I almost laugh.
“You apparently broke in my apartment, made yourself at home, and now you’re bitching about my mattress?”
“Accurate. You still didn’t tell me why you’re here.”
I throw my hands up and turn away from her. This attitude of hers is infuriating and not because I want to scream at her, but because I want to hold her down and kiss her until she stops talking.
“Peck said you didn’t … whoops,” she says. “Um …”
I whirl around. “Peck?” My brows lift to the ceiling. “Peck had something to do with this?”
“Yeahhh … Kind of?”
“That motherfucker said—”
“Just stop.” She tosses the blankets off her legs but doesn’t get off the bed. “You would’ve let me stay here if I needed a place to stay.”
“So?”
“So what’s it matter if Peck may or may not have helped me get in here last night?”
I take a step toward her but stop myself before I lose the fight with my body and end up on top of her before I realize it. “It matters because I explicitly told him to tell me if he knew …”
The look she gives me stops me from saying anything more.
“Well, I explicitly told him not to tell you,” she says.
It’s not the way her breasts fill out the tight little T-shirt she’s wearing or how the pants fit the curves of her hips that has me all worked up. It’s not even the way her lips form a little bud, still swollen from sleeping on her stomach like she always does.
It’s the fire in her eyes. The challenge she’s tossing my way. The fierce way she doesn’t give two shits about what I say or do. She’s going to do what she wants either way, and that pricks at something deep inside my soul that I’ve never been able to pinpoint. Or stop.
Damn her.
“You know what?” I say, narrowing my eyes. “It’s time we get something straight.”
“I agree.”
Much to my surprise, a reaction I try desperately to hide, she leaps off the bed. Tugging her shirt down over the top of her pants, she props a hand on her hip. Her eyes narrow, still puffy from sleep.
“You got something you want to say?” I ask.
“Oh. Are we going to pretend like you’re suddenly going to start listening to me?”
“I was going to, but you’re running out of time. Better talk quick.”
“You’re such an asshole, Machlan.”
I scratch my chin. “I know. That’s why I find it so interesting that you keep coming around.”
She rolls her eyes and goes back to trying to tame her gorgeous, wild hair again. “It’s a coincidence.”
I yank a chair away from the table and twirl it around. Sitting in it backward with arms draped over the back, I look at her. “There are no coincidences, sweetheart.”
The last word gets her. Her eyes light up. If I were closer, I’d guarantee you can see the jade flecks.
“Especially if you consider you walked into Crave knowing there was an excellent chance I’d be there since it’s my bar, then broke into my apartment.”
“You own the only bar in town, and I’ve stayed in this apartment more times than I can count—”
“What’s that have to do with anything?” I fire back.
Her chest rises and falls with the force of her breathing. “The fact of the matter is that you weren’t supposed to be here.” Her arms cross over her chest, her nose tipped up in some hoity-toity gesture.
Fuck that.
I go out of my way to stay out of her life. I kill myself every morning and night when I walk by her robe that hangs on the hook on the back of my bathroom door. It’s the worst kind of torture to know I could drive to Vigo and see her and probably hold her if I tried hard enough.
But I don’t do that. I don’t do any of it. Even though I think about it every day, I let her live her life without me. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s the result of the choices we made, and I have to step aside. I might be an asshole, but I’m not evil.
My eyes narrow. “I don’t give a damn if I was supposed to be here or not. It’s my fucking apartment.”
“Fine. Get out of here and I’ll get my stuff together and go.”
“Oh no,” I say, standing. Grabbing the chair, I fling it behind me. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“You start running your mouth and distract me and make me forget what I was going to say. I have a point, and I haven’t made it yet.”
“Then you better make it.”
She grins a cocky, I-got-you kind of smile. If she only knew.
“I can’t with you,” I say, shaking my head.
Her grin fades. Her eyes drop too. “I think we’ve already established that.”
Our eyes lock together over the thirty-year-old carpet. The exchange says more than her lips ever could and, quite frankly, more than I could ever hear her say out loud.
The wind is knocked out of my lungs at the emotion in her eyes. “That’s not what I meant to say.”
“No. But I’m glad you did.” She shakes her head as if the motion will rid her of thoughts of me. “Anyway, back to the point at hand. Don’t even think about bringing this up to Peck.”
“I’ll do whatever the hell I want.” I grab a can of chew out of my back pocket and flip it between my fingers. The rhythm sets a mood I think we both find some comfort in.
“Peck was helping me last night,” she says over the sound of my thumb hitting the can. “Cross and Kallie were all kinds of loud, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I figured I’d be in and out before you even knew it.”
“He still should’ve called me. What would’ve happened if I’d come in here guns blazing? Then whose fault is it?”
“Mine. It would’ve started with my bad choice.” She gulps. “I’ve had to endure consequences of bad decisions before.”
As we stand across from each other, close enough to touch if we tried but far enough away to remember all the reasons why we can’t, I just want to hit something. Hard. Destroy something worse than I’ve destroyed her. Feel the pain on my knuckles, the shots of fire that radiate up my arms when I nail something as hard as I can. Anything to distract me from the hurt bubbling up inside me.
I hate that I can’t reach for her. I despise that it will always be this way between us. Our wounds are like the black eye that never quite heals, leaving traces of purple in the corner that you can see if you look at it in just the right light.