Chapter 14

“Fuck? Fuck is definitely the right word for it because that’s definitely what I am right now.”

“I’m sorry sweetheart,” Riley said, leaning against the house’s side paneling. “When he said you told him, I assumed you told him it was Adonis.”

Tess gripped his arm. “How did he take it?”

“He was a little shocked, but then he laughed it off and said something about makin’ snow angels in hell.”

“What kind of laugh was it? Strained? Forced?”

“Funny?”

“Riley!”

“What? Tis the truth. And then we took a few shots because I felt bad for spillin’ the beans.”

Although the prognosis looked favorable, she still felt sick. Even before Riley had absconded with her outside for a powwow, Tess had known something was wrong.

“Is he still in there?”

“Aye, he is. And probably lookin’ for you by now.”

She knew this day would come, but not so soon. Not before she could come up with a suitable excuse. Not that she needed one, right?

Whatever. She’d own up to her mistake.

Tess remained on lookout for changes in his behavior for the rest of the night. She gauged Cameron’s greeting, from his relaxed posture to the pressure of his lips as he kissed her. It almost seemed as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

To reduce the chances of an awkward encounter with Adonis, she corralled Cameron and a few others to his room for a private game of asshole. The tactic worked and by a quarter past one, Tess was well and truly drunk.

The night had been a success in her book. She managed to keep Cam and Adonis away from one another, she was drunk, she and Jade were back on amiable terms, and she was drunk.

After plugging Lydia’s number into her phone and repeatedly reassuring the girl they’d hang out over winter break, Cameron escorted her back to her dorm. “Why’re you taking me home?” she asked, struggling valiantly to keep her words separate.

“Because you’re drunk.”

“So are you.” She squinted up at him. “I think.”

“Some of us can handle a few drinks.”

“I can handle my drinks,” she declared boldly. “I can’t believe we just spent the entire night listening to your stupid music.”

“What’s wrong with dubstep?”

“What’s right with it?” she sulked.

“Because the howling, screaming crap you listen to is a better alternative.”

Tess would’ve let the comment slide if it wasn’t for his odd, almost brusque tone. So it was bothering him. Even after consuming enough alcohol to fill a knee-length vat, butterflies eddied within her. “I slept with Adonis.”

His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know.”

“Aren’t you mad?”

“Should I be?” He tucked her beneath his arm and started walking again.

Tess tried to interpret his mood. “You’re confusing me.”

“Then that makes two of us.” She wasn’t bombed enough to miss his sarcasm.

Tess shrugged off his arm. “If you’re not upset, why are you being weird?”

He stopped abruptly. “Ok, so maybe I am.” Frustration threaded his words. At least they were getting somewhere. “Why didn’t you tell me it was him?”

“Because you said it didn’t matter!” Cameron plowed an aggravated hand through his hair. “He doesn’t mean anything.” The lie fell from her lips before she could stop it. “It was only a one night stand.” Sort of.

“And that was it?”

At least he’d presented her with the opportunity to come semi-clean. “We may have fooled around once after that. But that was it. He’s still a dick.”

He laughed, but it was a hard, mechanized sound.

“Cam.” Tess went for his hand but he recoiled. Pain arced through her heart.

“Just give me a minute to process this.”

“What’s to process?” she returned, impatience working into her tone. “We had sex. It happens. You should know all about it considering it was you being a man tramp that made me hook up with him in the first place.” Buzzing off of fury instead of booze, Tess whipped out her purse and clawed around for her checkpoint.

“You’re right.” He wheeled her around and pulled her into a loose hug. “I’m sorry.”

The fight left her. She sagged into his embrace both for balance and warmth. “Just for the record, I’m glad this is out in the open. I hate keeping secrets from you.”

His mouth pulled into a shadow of a smile. “Then let’s make a promise. From now on, no more secrets.”

There was just the small matter of Adonis’s trip to the ER.

God, maybe another day. She’d had enough judgment for one night.

_____________________

Lydia poked his jaw. “Hey, why’ve you been so quiet?”

“You just made me walk two miles to Waffle House.”

“But it was so quaint,” she cooed. “And delicious. I don’t know why they don’t have them in the city.” Lydia stared at him when he didn’t answer. “But I think there’s something else on your mind.”

“You’re wrong.”

“And you’re lying.”

Adonis didn’t deny it.

The night had started off well enough for him being sober. For one, he was sick of Lydia fussing over the state of his liver. Two, he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it; that he didn’t need to be smashed in order to have a decent time. And he hadn’t minded it.

That was before he found himself face to face with Tess.

The instant they were alone, all his senses honed in on her. He didn’t know if it was clarity of mind, but he became almost too aware of her: the brilliance of her hazel-green eyes, the shallow dimples that flanked her cheeks, the seam of her lush mouth.

Fucking hell, the girl was turning him inside out.

He didn’t even mind that she possessed the condensed factoids of his life. In fact, he could almost imagine them as friends and not acquaintances bound by guilt and secrecy. After their confessional, Adonis had actually been looking forward to hanging out with her.

But once she caught sight of Cameron, they both disappeared.

He didn’t want to know what they were doing.

He didn’t care. Or that was what he told tell himself.

“I need to pee.”

“What the hell are you doing?” he spluttered as she wedged herself in the narrow gap between two parked cars.

“Copping a squat. What does it look like?”

Apparently she’d forgotten the lessons she’d learned at finishing school about public urination. “That looks like my fucking car! The house is ten feet away!”

Wobbling, she rotated. “Yay! There’s Cam! Help me up.”

Before he could offer a hand, she sprung to her feet and dashed to the porch in her four-inch stilettos. He watched as she took a knee. She clasped a hand to her heart and extended the other. “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo.”

Adonis rolled his eyes. As a forensics science major, drama minor, and all around alcoholic, his half-sister was a disorganized medley of everything. As such, he never knew when she was serious, showcasing her thespian talents, or just intoxicated.

Amused, Cameron leaned over the railing, the neck of his beer bottle rolling between his index and middle finger. “The lavatory ‘tis inside, Lydia.”

Bowing her thanks, she scuttled up the steps and into the house.

“Where’ve you been?” Adonis asked.

An eerie smile spread across his face. “Around.”

“I bet.” On the surface, everything appeared as normal. Adonis knew better. The tension was thick enough to break skulls. “Everything ok?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” He took a swig from the beer.

Adonis stared at him warily. “I think you’ve had enough to drink.”

“That’s a first, coming from you.”

True as it was, the jab stung. “Shows how much you really know about me.”

“Perhaps.” Cameron pitched the empty bottle into the recycling bin at the curb. The sound of shattering glass pierced the night.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem.”

Adonis didn’t believe him. Although there was amicability in his voice and a smile on his face, his eyes were ice blue, appraising, calculating. There was only one reason why. Foreboding trawled through him. “She told you.”

His smile thinned to a razor’s edge. “Not in so many words.”

“Look, it was a one time thing. A mistake.”

“Was it?” He rubbed his jaw. “I guess this is the part where I’d say what-if-I-slept-with-so-and-so, but you don’t give a shit about anyone. And no one gives a shit about you.”

The comment skinned him. “Why are you getting your panties in a twist about this? You two weren’t even going out.”

“Oh fuck off. You knew exactly how I felt and you still went after what was mine.”

Adonis refused to let the guilt stick. “I guess I couldn’t read the handwriting on the package. Write in a bolder marker next time. What’s your fucking deal? She’s just some chick.” The words rang hollow even to his ears.

Expression infuriatingly placid, Cameron’s gaze bored through him. “You know she’s more than that.”

“Whatever. I said it was a mistake. What else do you want from me? Grow a pair and get the fuck over it.” He climbed the porch steps.

“Adonis.”

Hand resting on the screen door’s rusted handle, he paused.

“Stay away from her.”

Rage piped hot through his veins. Adonis counted backwards from ten and reminded himself that this was his friend. That he was drunk and hurting and it would be very bad if his fist accidently broke all of the bones in his face. Adonis swiveled around slowly. “Or what?”

“Why are you fighting me on this?” His pupils thinned to slits. “Don’t tell me you feel something for her.”

Adonis allowed anger to raze the seed of panic. “Hardly. But I think someone is feeling a little insecure. Can’t say I blame you,” he sneered. “I am a tough act to follow.”

Fury dissolved the ice sheathing Cameron’s gaze, but it collapsed just as quickly into tightly controlled coolness. “You’re a piece of shit Adonis.” He approached him. “I know it. You know it. So does everyone else.”

He didn’t want to hear this. “Fuck you.”

“Fucking seems to be the only thing you’re good for because you’re shit at everything else, especially being a friend.” Cameron folded his arms. “Do you even know the definition? Better yet, do you even have any outside of me? And I’m not talking about the coke whores and potheads you toke up with. And before you answer, think of how many would show up at your funeral. I know who’d attend mine. Can you say the same?”

Adonis ground his teeth so hard he could feel his molars cracking.

“I’ll answer for you. You don’t. And that’s because you don’t give a shit about anybody other than yourself. Or the next time you score drugs or ass. Are you surprised that people feel the same about you? To them, you’re nothing but a novelty, a sideshow to keep them entertained until something flashier comes along. Out of everybody we went to school with, how many cared that you overdosed? How many flew across the country to visit you in the hospital?”

“What’s your point,” he snapped.

“My point is you owe me. So stay away from her or lose the last person in your miserable life who gives a shit if you’re breathing or not.”

Leave it to Cam old boy to haul him aboard the this-is-how-your-life-sucks caboose and hit every rut along the way. “If you can’t keep your girl, it’ll be your own fault, not mine.” Adonis slammed past him and into the house.

Whatever happened to bros before hos?

________________

The burn in her calves was excruciating. Ignoring her muscles’ protests, she forced her legs to keep up with the elliptical motions and focused on committing her notes to memory.

Cold, wet plastic rolled down the tendon of her thigh.

She jumped and cleared nearly a foot of air. Punching the stop button, Tess whirled around. Cameron’s crooked grin pacified her anger. “You know, a hello would’ve sufficed.”

“But wouldn’t have been nearly as amusing.” Cameron helped her down from the machine. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, let me just wipe this down.” Tess retrieved a roll of paper towels and disinfectant spray from the sanitization station. She felt his penetrating gaze while cleaning off the machine’s handlebars and bit back a smile at her body’s answering blush.

If she thought that her little secret would forestall any further development in their relationship, she was mistaken. After the other night, they picked up like nothing every happened.

That was a good thing, right?

After recovering their things, they stepped outside of the building. It had begun snowing again. The weightless fluff spiraled in slow, feathery tufts. Against the countryside’s dark backdrop, it looked like static on a channel with bad reception.

On the old school televisions anyway.

Tess lifted her face skywards and inhaled. The icy coldness stung her lungs. “God, it’s so quiet.”

“Finals have got everyone running scared.”

“I know. I can practically taste the fear in the air.” Tess groaned as they came within reach of to the concrete stairs stacked on the incline of a perilous hill. “My legs are killing me. I don’t think I’m going to make it.” Feigning self-immolation, she wilted and pinned a limp hand to her forehead. “You’ll have to go on without me.”

He chuckled and presented her with his back. “Get on.”

Tess needed no further encouragement. His arms hooked beneath her thighs as her arms wound around his neck. Cameron scaled the flight of steps without breaking a sweat. “Where to, Highness?”

“You may take me to your abode, faithful minion,” she commanded gesturing regally. “I want to say good-bye to Riley before he leaves. It’s so not fair the engineering department gives their exams early.”

“Think of it this way: soon we’ll have the entire house to ourselves,” he said, squeezing her calves suggestively.

Tess played with fine, blond hairs riding the valley of his spine. “When is Adonis leaving?”

For once it wasn’t the cold, gusting wind that caused the temperature to suddenly plummet. “I think his last exam’s on Wednesday.”

She wasn’t fooled by his blasé tone. While they’d resolved most of everything, the issue of Adonis persisted like an ingrown hair that would pop up at the most inconvenient times. Though Cameron had reiterated he was over her questionable non-relationship with his other best friend, her gut insisted that the residual resentment existed.

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Just dinner with a few relatives and my parents. Nothing fancy.”

“Mm, relatives. Sounds like a fate worst than death.”

He pinched her calf. “There goes your present.”

She nibbled on his earlobe. “What if I make it up to you?”

“You can try, but it’s not happening.” She blew lightly on the tender area below his lobe and felt a tendril of satisfaction when his grip on her thighs tightened.

“Mm, I beg to differ.” Tess scattered butterfly kisses on his nape.

“If you don’t want me to drop you, I suggest-” He emitted a long, low hiss when she tugged at his skin with her teeth.

Before her smirk could take shape, he deliberately fell sideways into a lofty bank of snow. Tess shrieked as cold wetness soaked through her pants and sweatshirt. “Asshole!”

“Oops, I must have slipped,” Grinning, Cameron stood and held out a hand to assist her.

She glared at it feebly, her own hand curling around a fistful of snow.

Cameron caught the wicked gleam in her eyes a half-second too late. The snowball materialized and hit him below the collarbone. “Oops. Must have slipped.”

A growl vibrated in his chest. Tess rolled off the embankment and crab-walked backward as he scooped up a handful of snow. “W-wait Cam,” she said between giggles, “it’s over. We’re even. Truce?”

A packed snowball hurtled faster than she could follow and lobbed her shoulder. “Truce?” he asked laughingly.

Tess let a snowball speak for her.

They chased one another up the street, darting across yards laden in foot-deep snow and ice, dodging and ducking behind parked cars and bushes to avoid the other’s onslaughts, their antics drawing the snooty disdain of passersby.

When they tumbled to the ground breathless and flushed, it took the last of her energy to drag herself on top of his chest. His ragged breaths slipped past parted, red lips and billowed in translucent puffs. His wet hair was matted and spiked and so unlike his usual coifed style that Tess buried her face in his chest to hide her chuckles.

Cameron smiled up at her lazily. “What?”

She kissed him in lieu of an actual answer. Although her lungs still burned from the exertion spent on their snowball fight, the need for oxygen became secondary.

___________________

Riley looked up when the wet couple stumbled into the house, stomping snow from their shoes and shaking partially dissolved flurries from their clothes and hair. They looked dizzily happy, their cheeks glowing from their activities and the cold as each helped the other out of their sopping garments. “Where’ve you two been?”

“Working out.” Kicking off her rain boots, Tess raced toward him. Riley made face as she vaulted into his lap, her sodden clothing rapidly sinking through his thin cotton shirt and plaid pajama pants. “Do you have to leave so soon?”

He played with her damp ponytail. “Aye, I do. I have to go back home and take care of a few things.”

“Jersey City home or Ireland home”?”

“Ireland home. Haven’t been in nearly two years. I’m overdue for a visit.”

Tess reluctantly conceded. “Well, call us when you get back so we can hang before classes start.”

“I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, why don’t you change clothes? You’re freezin’,” Riley remarked rubbing her hands together with his.

As if Riley and Cameron occupied the same wavelength, her boyfriend walked into the den, a change of clothes wadded under his arm. “I couldn’t find any of your things so mine will have to do.”

Tess rose to accept the bundle. “Thanks. Be back soon.” She pressed a kiss to his lips and skipped off to the bathroom. After relishing in a shower made a thousand times more incredible by their high-pressured showerhead, Tess toweled off and changed into Cameron’s clothes.

“Hey, it’s the hot chick.”

Tess stopped outside the bathroom, startled by Adonis’s cokehead friend from Halloween night. “I do have a name,” she said, turning off the bathroom light.

His grin broadened. “I remember your name, Tess. It’d be rude of me to forget such a babe.”

“And you are?”

“Declan. Deck.”

“Right. So what’re you doing here? More partying?”

“Not at all.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’re about to go study and shit at my place.”

“You’re about to go study?”

“Hey, math majors have finals too. So,” Deck drew out the word and rocked back on his heels with a lopsided grin, “it’s a shame about you and Adonis not working out.”

“Yeah, there’s a real tragedy,” she said wryly.

“Aw, bitterness doesn’t become a girl as babelicious as you. There are other fish in the sea.” He coughed as a not so subtle hint.

“Why would I be bitter?”

His smoky eyes clouded. “Because he moved on. But that means you’re up for grabs, right?”

Before she could correct him, the attic steps creaked under the weight of feet. Feminine laughter resonated down the narrow passageway.

A nameless emotion looped and knotted her innards into a morbid rendition of a cat’s paw as the pair descended.

Another blast from Halloween past emerged. The horny, leg-humping brunette who’d been all over him that night was tucked under his arm.

In spite of the shower’s vestigial warmth, the black ice that rimed his arctic stare made her blood run cold. “Katie, you two go on ahead.”

Confused, the brunette glanced between them before sliding out from under his arm. “We’ll wait downstairs.” She snagged Deck’s sleeve and, with a few insistent tugs, towed him away.

His dark eyes rolled down her body, the crass inspection flinging her pulse into hyperdrive. She cleared her throat. “So, where’ve you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

She held her breath as he advanced, breaching her personal bubble. “Whose fault is that?” he crooned.

Something was wrong with this set up. Tess backed up until her heel clipped the baseboard. “Are you all right?”

“Now that you mention it, I am having a hard time with something.” Moving swiftly, he braced either arm alongside her head, caging her against the wall. “Maybe you can help me with it.” His lips twisted into a perverted smirk.

Panic surged through her veins. Her eyes darted to the stairs. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What does it look like?” Her neck hairs rustled under his breath. “What do you say, Tessandra?”

She jumped as something warm and wet slid up the crest of her ear. “I’d say you’ve lost your fucking mind. Get off of me.” Tess shoved him away. Surprisingly, he withdrew. “What’s your problem?”

Dark humor engaged his eyes. “I’ll give you points for persistence, but let’s end this already. You’ve been parading that sweet little ass around here for weeks, all but begging me fuck you again.”

Where the hell was this coming from? “Are you high?”

“Does it make a difference? Stoned or sober, we both know I’m more than capable of performing. Now Cam on the other hand…” He let the sentence dangle sneeringly.

Anger smoldered between her ribs. “Is that what this is about? A pissing match?”

“You know there’d be no competition.”

Ire faded to forbearance. Something had gone down between them. Far be it from her to get involved. “Fine, have your dick measuring contest, but leave me out of it. So much for us making progress,” she muttered.

“Progress in what?” His smile thinned. “We aren’t friends. We were never friends. I fucked you to prove a point. Now I just want to fuck you for the hell of it. But if you want to keep pretending you’re not interested, I’m not waiting around.”

He knocked into her as he rejoined to his friends.

Paralysis kept her rooted long after his departure.

They’d been doing so well. Whatever had gone down between him and Cameron must have been nasty for him to revert back to his old self.

As much as she wanted to help him, she was done being his chew toy. If he wanted to drive everyone who wanted to help him away, he could have at it.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-16