by K. C. Crowne
“It’s fine!” he shouted. “And pretty fucking petty of you to break up with me in the middle of something like this!”
“Oh, that’s petty? How about nearly getting us killed just to try and prove you’re smarter than me and I don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“You’ve always been like this,” he grumbled, pushing the throttle and getting the speed up faster. “Always so bitchy when the slightest thing doesn’t go your way!”
He had to speak up, raising his voice over the roar of the rain pounding on the deck. The waves grew more violent by the second, the boat listing back and forth.
If he thought he was going to get me into a stupid argument while we were staring death in the face, he had another think coming. One of us had to be the bigger person here.
“Just tell me what to do!” I shouted. “How can I help us get back?”
“Don’t worry about it!” Another one of Josh’s oh-so-charming traits – he was too proud to ask for help. “Just buckle up and stay seated!”
Part of me wanted to chew him out for his pigheadedness. But the jerk had a point in that getting back to shore was more important than any spat between the two of us. Still, I wanted to help. And it frustrated the hell out of me that he wasn’t giving me the chance.
He gunned the throttled and soon we were at full tilt. The boat rocked back and forth as we pushed on, more thunder and more lightning blasting through the air. The sound of the rain against the boat was deafening. Part of me wondered if this was it, if a huge wave was on the verge of pulling us under the water, never to come up.
I was scared. I hated to admit it, but I was scared.
But as we flew through the water, we passed the border of the storm, the sun breaking back through the clouds. We reached the shore just in time to watch the storm we’d been outrunning arrive, the dozens of people hanging out and drinking at the boating club running inside to avoid the rain.
Josh and I did the same, and once we were back in the luxurious interior of the club – his membership paid for by his rich parents, of course – he regarded me with his usual cocky look, adding insult to injury by putting his hand on my hip.
“Close one, huh, babe?” he asked, his expression the self-assurance of a man confident he was about to get what he wanted. “And what the hell was that with it being over?”
I shoved his hand from my hip and cast him a withering glare. “It was exactly what I meant. Screw off, Josh.” I turned and strode away, a small smile of victory on my face in spite of the fear running through me.
I snapped back into the present moment, looking around to see that I’d driven – totally through muscle memory – to Mom’s place. I was already parked and everything. I needed a moment. Josh was in the past and I was happy for it. But that didn’t mean thoughts of him and that day didn’t bring back anger and fear in equal measures.
“Oh,” Mom said once I was inside and seated on the bed across from where she sat. “That sounds exciting.”
“It sounds immature,” I said. “Going on an adventure? What am I, some twenty-two-year-old kid on Tinder? I don’t go on adventures.”
“And why not?”
“Because the last time I went on an adventure with a guy I almost ended up on the ocean floor. And when I came back onto shore, I was single again.”
Mom rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Josh. What a shithead.”
“Mom!” I said, holding back a laugh. Didn’t matter how many times I’d heard it, or how old I was – hearing Mom cuss was always a trip.
“Spoiled little rich brat,” she said. “But you know what? Maybe him coming up against a problem, like that storm, he couldn’t use dad’s money to buy his way out of humbled the kid a little. That, and you kicking his ass to the curb.”
“You’d be wrong about that,” I said. “I internet-stalked him a few years ago and saw that he’d gotten married and divorced. Not sure what happened, but the Facebook comments made it sound like he cheated.”
“Then good riddance. Shame you had to go through what you did to finally tell him off. But at least you dodged a bullet.”
I sighed, the conversation not bringing me any closer to a decision about Patrick.
“Just because Josh was that way,” Mom said, seeming to pick up on my hesitation, “doesn’t mean every guy is like that. And you know what else? You’ll never know unless you give him a chance.”
“But what if he ends up being the exact same kind of guy as Josh? What if I’m doomed to attract this exact kind of guy?”
Mom shook her head. “Stop talking about your story like it’s already been written. And baby, you can’t deal with uncertainty by just hiding out from love for the rest of your life.”
“I’m not hiding out, I’m playing it cautious.”
“You’re throwing yourself into your work and trying to pretend you don’t want love just like everyone else. You keep this up, you’re going to end up alone.”
“Worse things than that,” I said. “And besides, you’re alone here and you’re happy.”
Mom let out a wild cackle, as if I’d just said the most ridiculous thing imaginable. “You think I’m alone?”
“I mean, you’ve got friends. But it’s not like you’re dating anyone.”
“Tell that to Frankie. And Charlie. But, ah, don’t tell them both at the same time. They kind of don’t know about each other.”
A shocked laugh flew out of my mouth. “Mom, I know you can’t see me right now, but my jaw was on the floor.”
Mom laughed. “Then pick it up and put yourself back out there. Love’s not going to come get you out of your apartment. You want it, you have to be bold, put yourself out there.” She raised a finger toward me. “And not be scared when it finally shows up.”
Chapter 11
PATRICK
My Nikes pounded on the treadmill as I ran hard, sweat beading on my forehead and my legs sore and tired in the best way possible. The view from Finn and Kenna’s home gym didn’t hurt matters at all. From where I ran, I could see out over the sweep of the nearby valley, the white rolling and endless, the stars twinkling above.
But nature wasn’t on my mind. Lola was.
“So,” Finn interrupted the silence, “what’s the story?”
He set down the forty-kilogram barbell he’d been using for his curls, then dropped into a seat on the nearest bench.
I raised a finger, my eyes on the digital clock on the treadmill as I pushed closer and closer to thirty minutes. My lungs burned, sweat stung my eyes. When the timer rolled over, I hit stop. The whirring of the treadmill slowed and slowed, and I grabbed onto the safety bars to give myself a moment to catch my breath.
Not to mention a moment to think about his question.
“There’s no story,” I said. “We’ve got plans tomorrow, and she was hesitant when I mentioned I wanted to take her out for an adventure. I swear, the woman’s beautiful and smart and everything else. But she’s crazy guarded.”
Finn glanced away for a moment in thought before picking up his bottle of Gatorade and holding it against his head. “She’s a doctor – you ever dated one before?”
“Plenty of traveling nurses. But not sure if dated is the right word…”
He held up his hands. “Say no more. But high-performin’ doctors like her…they’re a different breed. I don’t know Lola well enough to tell you exactly what’s goin’ on in her head. But I can say she’s as driven as they come. She busts her arse at her Pitt office, and whatever free time she has left she spends at the free clinic.”
I hopped off the treadmill and grabbed my bottle of water. My heart was still racing from the run, my blood pumping hard in my veins.
“That explains her text today.” Finn cocked his head to the side in curiosity. “I sent her a simple ‘good morning,’ and she said the same right back.”
He scrunched his forehead in confusion, as if he thought he’d missed something. “And?”
“And that’s
it. She said good morning but nothin’ else.”
“Maybe she’s just not big on textin’. Kenna’s the same way. And besides, you really want a textin’ chatterbox blowin’ up your phone all damn day?”
“No, it’s not that. More like I was hopin’ to put her mind at ease about our date tomorrow. No doubt she’s worried about it. I’d hoped she’d, you know, open up a bit, tell me what was on her mind.”
He nodded in understanding. “Well, guess she’s not the type to share that kind of info. Maybe she’ll let you in a bit tomorrow when you see her.”
Finn followed his words with a look of confusion – or sly understanding.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothin’.” He got up and grabbed his towel, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Just thinkin’ about how strange it is to hear you talkin’ about a woman like this.”
I stepped over to the towel rack and grabbed one of my own, wiping the sweat from my face and arms and chest. “What’re you goin’ on about?”
“Namely, that you’re talkin’ about one woman. I remember the last time you were in town you had three lasses goin’ on at once. And you barely mentioned ‘em. And that’s how you’ve always been since we were wee lads.”
“Busy,” I said. “Too much goin’ on with work to have a full dance card.”
He chuckled as if he didn’t believe me for a second. “That, or you really like Lola.”
I scoffed. “Don’t psychoanalyze’ me, brother. She’s caught my attention and I want to see her again. Simple as that.”
He clapped his hand on my shoulder as he stepped by me, making his way over to the water fountain to top off his bottle.
“Likin’ a woman’s nothin’ to be ashamed about. It’s what got me to where I am, after all.”
“Well, that’s all well and good for you. But I’m not exactly thinkin’ about marriage and kids.”
He turned and leaned against the wall. “Listen, don’t read too much into what I’m sayin’. All I’m tryin’ to get across is that it’s good to see you interested in a woman because you like her on more than just a physical level.”
“Now, that’s not true. Every woman I’m with it’s because there’s somethin’ special about her.”
“Sure, sure. But there’s obviously somethin’ more goin’ on here. Somethin’ I haven’t seen since—”
“Alright, don’t go sayin’ she-who-will-not-be-named.”
He laughed. “Come on now – she’s not Voldemort.”
“Just as bad, if you ask me.”
“Fay. You can say her name. Hell, it’ll be good for you to do it.”
I shook my head. “The less I think about her, the better. Last time I date some spoiled, wanna-be model.”
I didn’t want to talk about her. But now that the subject had been broached, the urge to vent rose in me. “I swear, how the hell did I ever fall for that woman? Obnoxious, arrogant, spoiled to the core. One of those women who thinks that because she’s beautiful she can get whatever she wants.”
“Hate to say I told you so, brother, but, well, I told you so,” he said, chuckling. “I spotted her as a gold-digger from day one. And when you told me about the little fit she threw in Zurich because you didn’t buy her the twenty-thousand-dollar tennis bracelet she wanted…I knew that it was only a matter of time.”
“And you wanna know what the worst about it was?”
“Hm – when she took your credit card and went on a weekend trip to Prague without tellin’ you?”
“No. But that was pretty damn bad, too. The worst part was that I knew she was trouble. Deep down, I knew it.”
“Then why’d you get so close to her?”
“Because I wanted to believe I was wrong. In my own weird way, I was giving her a fair shot, tryin’ not to get hung up on how she seemed. I wanted to believe there was somethin’ more than what was on the surface.”
He chuckled. “And how did that work out for you?”
“You want me to rehash that whole thing?”
“Truth be told, you kinda dropped off the radar when that went down.”
“That’s because dropping off the radar was what my lawyer told me to do.”
“Lawyer?”
“Shite, I really kept you out of the loop, didn’t I?
He scrunched his forehead. “Something tells me this would be better over whiskey. Meet me in the study in twenty?”
“Deal.”
It was after nine; we’d both decided to get in a pre-bed workout. Finn went to the master bedroom shower, and I took a quick rinse in one of the guest baths. Twenty minutes later we were in his huge study, the room packed with tall bookshelves filled with medical texts, a fire in the fireplace. Arched windows looked out onto the snow-swept back stretch of their land.
“So,” he said, once we were both seated with tall glasses of whiskey. “You got a lawyer involved?”
“Hell, where to begin?” I mumbled, sipping whiskey before talking. “Fay had been getting worse and worse, expectin’ me to just give her money so she could go on whatever shopping spree she wanted to take a flight to whatever place caught her fancy. And that was fine – at first.”
“At first,” he said, understanding.
“She started askin’ to go on trips all the time. I had to tell her that I needed to work, that money for extravagances like those didn’t just fall out of the damn sky. And she’d pout when I told her no.”
“Probably not the type of woman used to people telling her that word.”
“Oh, no doubt about it,” I scoffed. “Finally, after months of things gettin’ tense between us, she tried another tactic. She came to me and said she needed me to pay for a girlfriend of hers’ bachelorette party. When I told her it was out of the damn question, she told me it was too late.”
“Too late?”
“Too late – as in she’d made all the bookings and if I didn’t pay, she’d be on the hook for all kinds of cancellation penalties.”
“That’s a damn ballsy tactic. What’d you do?”
“I told her I wasn’t havin’ any of it and that if she was so keen on spendin’ someone else’s money to go on some Vegas trip, she’d have to find some other sucker to bankroll it.”
Finn let out a slow whistle before taking a long swig of whiskey. “Let me guess – she didn’t take it well.”
“To put it mildly. I woke up the next mornin’ to all kinds of social media nonsense, her puttin’ me on blast for all her friends, tellin’ them I was controlling and emotionally abusive, that she’d been traumatized by what I’d put her through.”
He let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “Hell of a way to describe not gettin’ what she wanted.”
“Brother, it was a fuckin’ mess. And this shit was no joke – my name is my business. If the first thing that came up on Google when a client wanted to work with me was all that…”
I trailed off, and he nodded. “Fuckin’ hell. What happened?”
“I didn’t even talk to her. I lawyered up immediately, had them send her a very strongly worded letter letting her know about the finer points of libel and slander. Since she didn’t have a leg to stand on, she put up another post later in the day backing away from her comments. But that shit never goes away, you know? Plenty of people out there think I’m some big prick who used his money to silence her.”
“But you’re in the clear, right?”
“As much as I can be. Nothin’ close to what she’d been talkin’ about actually happened, and she was at least smart enough to understand that anymore smearin’ of my good name would mean I’d take her to court. But like I said – a fuckin’ mess.”
“Damn. No wonder you dropped off the radar for a good long while.”
“Brother, all I wanted to do was focus on my work – nothin’ about datin’ or anything like that.”
“Understandable.”
I glanced down at my glass; I’d polished it off while telling my story. Over a year had passed since the end
of our relationship, but just thinking about that morning when I’d logged onto Instagram and found out what she’d said about me…it was enough to make me sick to my stomach all over again.
Finn poured me another finger of whiskey.
“But now you’re back at it,” he said with a sly smile, giving me a nudge with his elbow. “Lola’s got you all starry-eyed.”
“I like her, is all,” I mumbled. “And if there’s one thing I learned from the mess with Fay it was this – trust my damn gut. My gut told me Fay was bad news, and I ignored it.”
“And what does it say with Lola.”
I allowed a half-smile to form on my lips. “It says she’s a good woman. Smart and beautiful and bold and independent. But I don’t need my gut to tell me she’s got walls up that she doesn’t take down for just anyone. And she’s someone worth gettin’ to know.”
He smiled, pleased. “Good luck, brother. There’s someone out there for everyone, and you’ll find her eventually.”
“Now, now,” I said. “Let’s not start sendin’ out wedding invitations just yet. For all I know she won’t even want to go on this little trip I got in mind.”
“Sure she will. Everyone likes an adventure. If nothin’ else, she’ll want to go out of curiosity.”
I tossed back the rest of my drink and got up. “Alright – better get to bed now if I don’t wanna wake up with a headache. See you tomorrow, brother.”
He bid me good night and I was on my way. The moment I was alone, Lola appeared in my mind again. God, I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. When I got back to the guest house, I couldn’t stop thinking about her in very specific ways.
I stripped down, turned off the lights, and slipped under the covers. The bit of whiskey had warmed me, made me feel happy and pleasant. And when I reached down to clasp my cock, I realized I was already half-hard.
I closed my eyes, taking myself back to the night we’d slept together.
In my mind’s eye, she and I were naked again, our lips locked onto each other’s as we kissed deeply, passionately. I imagined putting my hands all over her body, feeling the softness of her hips and the round, fullness of her breasts. I imagined teasing her nipples, the sensitive skin going hard against my touch.