Guilty as Charged

by Harlow James

  Chapter 5

  Sydney

  “What?” I blink momentarily, mostly because my eyes are drying out from my contacts, but also to break the staring contest with the bronze-skinned hunk standing in front of me. I swear my mouth started to water at the sight of him, or maybe that’s the indication that I’m about to puke.

  “You’re done. You clearly can’t handle your liquor anymore,” Ally speaks in my ear as my head twists to face her.

  “No shit, Sherlock. When’s the last time I’ve had alcohol like this? Probably our last semester in law school.” I slur my words and then hiccup as my feet get twisted up in each other, my toe getting caught on my other boot. I lose my balance, causing me to fall face first into the rock hard chest of the man with Coke on his pants—which is all my fault.

  “Sydney Matthews,” he mumbles in a deep rasp that strikes a match at the apex of my thighs as his hands move on instinct to prevent me from falling. Holy hell. There are men out there that have voices like that?

  But then it dawns on me. He knows my name? How the hell does this guy know me? We’re almost two hours away from Newberry and an hour and half south of Dallas. If we were slightly closer to home it would make sense for someone to recognize me, but part of the allure of coming here was that it was miles from the invisible lines that mark the boundaries of where I have to uphold the Matthews name. I came here to let loose and not fear being judged or photographed in a drunken state, but it seems the world is much smaller than I thought.

  “I’m sorry,” I cough, brushing my hair from my face as I stand up and try to right myself, my hand snaking to the front of my shirt to make sure my boob isn’t popping out, my skin turning cold the instant his hands leave it. “Do I know you?”

  He chuckles, a laugh that is taunting and degrading. “Of course you don’t recognize me. Why would ‘Perfect Sydney Matthews’ remember anyone who didn’t run in her same circle?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He scoffs and reaches for some napkins on the table, dabbing at the wetness of his pants. Luckily, they’re dark, so the spot isn’t too noticeable. But the flex of his forearm covered in ink with patches of bare skin peeking through as he moves his hands around is definitely noticeable, hypnotizing me as I forget where I am momentarily. I take the next few seconds to watch him as I vaguely hear Ally trying to garner my attention, but I’m too enraptured to care.

  Dark stubble lines his jaw, piercing gold eyes waft back and forth between me and his crotch, the next area my eyes choose to focus on as I try to gauge the outline of his penis. His biceps bulge with each swipe, and the fabric of his shirt that is clinging to every ridge in his abdomen looks so soft that I want to rub my face against it. Not to mention that the backwards ball cap does it for me. It so fucking does.

  Christ, Sydney. What the hell is the matter with you?

  I’m thinking I’d really like to see this guy strip for me, Magic Mike style … is that too much to ask?

  “Getting a good look, Princess?” His words snap me out of my perusal as I shake off the rapture I was under and take in his words.

  “Princess?”

  “Yeah. Or are you a queen now of your high and mighty world?”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You don’t even know me!”

  “Ah, but I do,” he says, bopping me on the nose and then looking to Ally. “You’d better get Miss Perfect out of here before she does more damage.”

  Ally huffs in disgust. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  He laughs again, shakes his head, and then gathers his empty glass from the table. “No one of importance to you, apparently. Who knew that the valedictorian still wouldn’t know how to handle her liquor ten years later? Watch where you’re going for the rest of the night, Sydney,” he tosses at me before sauntering off, giving me a spectacular view of his ass as he walks away from us, leaving me dumbfounded as my eyes cross and suddenly there’s two of him.

  “What an ass,” Ally says and then turns to me. “Do you know him?”

  “Am I supposed to? He sure as hell knew who I was.”

  “Maybe he just knows who you are because of your dad, or he’s a former client of your firm, or something.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But he knew I was valedictorian,” I slur, trying to recall his face from somewhere I would know him from, but he didn’t exactly look like we would have the same acquaintances. I hate to judge a man by his appearance, but the hard and belittling man I just encountered was the epitome of rough around the edges. “Ally,” I say as I turn to her and grip both of her shoulders, holding myself up. “I don’t feel good. I’m reeeeeeeally drunk.”

  “I can see that, Princess,” she teases.

  “Don’t fucking call me that,” I spit as she grabs me around the waist and walks me to the nearest restroom, our feet dragging underneath us. Collin is somewhere with his buddies in this honky tonk, but I can’t even begin to worry about that right now. We were headed in the direction of the restrooms anyway before I collided with the next star of the latest Magic Mike movie.

  “Oh! I love when you cuss. That’s how I know you’re three sheets to the wind.”

  “How am I supposed to have a one-night stand and ask a guy to do dirty things to me when I can’t even see straight?” I ask as we collide with another group of girls, waiting in line to pee. Good thing my bladder is numb from all of the alcohol so the urge to relieve myself doesn’t sting as bad.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen tonight,” Ally says, soothing her fingers down my face and wiping under my eyes. I’m sure I’m just the definition of the hot-mess-express right now, but I’m too drunk to care. This was the goal of the evening—throw caution to the wind and have fun—and I think we accomplished that until I killed my buzz slightly by running into Mr. Coke Pants, a nickname only I can give him since it was my fault his pants got wet in the first place.

  “But how am I gonna practice talking dirty? How am I gonna tell a guy what I want him to do to me?” I whine as a bonified cowboy comes walking past us, looking back as he overhears me. His steps falter as his lips curl up while his eyes move up and down my body.

  “You can practice on me, sugar,” he says in that southern drawl that should come with a warning label. But right now, all it’s doing for me is putting me to sleep.

  “Get outta here!” Ally swats him away as she holds me up. “You’ll get another chance, Sydney. Your time isn’t running out.”

  “But yes it is, Al. My dad is trying to force Andrew on me and the more romance novels I read, the more I feel I’m destined to end up alone. Why can’t fictional men be real?” I think I’m crying, but my cheeks are so numb, it’s hard to tell if tears are sliding down them.

  “Shit. You’re breaking down on me, Sydney. It’s gonna be okay, babe,” Ally soothes as she pulls me in for a hug, and the next thing I know, everything goes black.

  ***

  The sound of a leaf blower outside wakes me up, my eyes peeling apart from the mascara that clumped together when my face plopped into the pillow. As I blink a few times and take in my surroundings, I realize I’m on a bed that is not my own. Lavender walls and white bedding throw me off balance, my mind reeling as I wonder how the hell I got where I am until a tiny voice alerts me to my surroundings.

  “Auntie Sydney!” Taryn shouts as she busts through the door of the room I’m in, a room I should be familiar with since it’s the guestroom at my best friend’s house. I guess that recollection just solidifies how long it’s been since I’ve had to sleep in said room.

  “Taryn, sweetie … please don’t yell.” I cringe as Ally follows her inside holding two steaming cups of coffee. The heat swirls over the lips of the cups and my nose wakes up to the smell. But then my stomach quickly churns and threatens to revolt.

  “Ugh.” I groan, throwing my head back on the pillow and curling up into a ball, holding my gut as the threat to puke becomes real.

  “How are you feeling, Princess?
” she mocks, as she sets my cup of coffee on the nightstand and sits down on the bed next to me. “Taryn, go tell your daddy to start the French toast.”

  “Oh! Can I have lots of whipped cream on mine, Mommy?” she squeals, making me squeeze my eyes shut and throw my pillow over my ears to drown out the sound.

  “Yes. But stop screaming, please.” I hear the patter of Taryn’s footsteps down the hardwood of the hallway before Ally adjusts her seat on the mattress. “Do you want to claw your eyes out?” she teases on a slight chuckle.

  “Why on earth did you let me drink that much? And why aren’t you as hungover as I am right now?”

  “Because it’s almost eleven and I made sure to drink water in between each drink last night. You act like I don’t know how to handle my alcohol,” she scoffs.

  “Why didn’t you make me do that?” I ask as I remove the pillow from my face and shoot her a death glare.

  “I did. But you told me you were on a mission to get fucked up and there was no stopping you.”

  “Well, mission accomplished.” I groan. “How did we get home? The last thing I remember was standing in line for the bathroom.”

  Ally smacks her lips together. “Ah, yes. Well, you passed out on me in line. I had to call Collin to help me carry you to the Uber that took us all home. You snored the entire way here, which Brandon found very sexy, by the way,” she jokes, referencing Collin’s friend. “But then as soon as we pulled in the driveway, you launched up out of your seat and scrambled to open the door before puking all over my driveway. Thank God you didn’t do it in the car, otherwise the drive would have been even more expensive.”

  “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Ally.”

  She waves her hand nonchalantly. “No biggie. Collin hosed off the sidewalk before he came inside, otherwise someone from the H.O.A. would have had a field day this morning banging on our door.”

  “Well, I think it’s safe to say I had a good time. I just wish I weren’t suffering from the aftermath right now.” I roll over and attempt to sit up before reaching for the cup of coffee, blowing on the liquid before taking a sip, still scorching the tip of my tongue.

  “Do you remember everything that happened though?” She eyes me over the rim of her cup, studying my face as I try to decide why she’s being so cryptic.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, on the drive home I couldn’t help but stew on that guy you bumped into and spilled his Coke in his lap.” She laughs, but her brow is furrowed. “And the more I kept thinking about it and his comment about you being valedictorian of our class, the more I got to thinking …”

  Visions of the man in question pop into my brain like a highlight reel, complete with a montage of all the attributes I admired about him last night. The guy was the essence of dark and mysterious with an edge of bad boy, the complete opposite of the type of guy I’m normally drawn to, or rather should I say, the type of man that is chosen for me.

  Ally reaches on the other side of her, picking up our high school yearbook from senior year. “I wonder if we went to school with him?”

  “Seriously?” I mock, pulling the book from her hands as my head pounds. My fingers find my temple as she stands and reaches for something on the nightstand. I look to see her holding a glass of water and two aspirin. “Thank you,” I say, throwing the pills in my mouth and then washing them down quickly, returning the glass to the table and picking my coffee cup back up.

  “I got you. Now, humor me. Let’s see if we can find him.” We adjust our seats in the bed, both of us leaning against the headboard as we flip through the pages, scrolling back through memories of a time that seems like another lifetime ago.

  Prom, football games, pep rallies—photos that captured awkward teenage years and social circles that unfortunately followed many of us into adulthood. Many of the faces of people I knew back then have long since moved on from Newberry, Texas, only a few choosing to remain in the town we call home. Most of those people who I thought were the most important people in my life back then don’t even function as a blip on my radar anymore, except when my family is involved in something around town and I have to smile and play nice.

  “Cheer Captain, Sydney Matthews, leads the Varsity Squad to a first place trophy at nationals,” Ally says in a high-pitched whine, poking fun at the caption of a picture of the group of girls that I lead, but ultimately hated. The bickering, the gossip, the pressure to be the best, the waste of time caring about what they thought of me is all I see in that photo.

  “Prom Queen, Sydney Matthews, and Prom King, Blake Marks.” Ally points to the next page, focusing on the moment I was crowned prom queen. But all I remember that night was wondering what would happen if I came home without that crown, how my mother would look at me with disappointment for not earning the ‘honor’ her and my father deemed I deserved. Now that crown sits in a box, collecting dust, serving no purpose except as a reminder of the persona I was expected to uphold.

  “Oh my God, look at us!” Ally shifts the pages ahead where the headshots are lined up for the senior class, her picture just a few down from mine. Ally’s maiden name was Nelson, so we were always next to each other for anything alphabetically.

  “Dear lord. Why didn’t you tell me that I wore too much black eyeliner?” I wince, studying my picture and how different I looked then, even though I still feel like I’m eighteen some days—living up the same standards, pressured by the same morals, afraid to truly go after what I want.

  “Um, hello? Mine’s not that much better,” she says through a laugh. “But hey, let’s see if we can find that guy? He had to have gone to school with us.”

  I nod and then flip back to the beginning of the alphabet as Ally and me both hunch over the book and study each guy’s picture, dragging my finger along each row as we narrow down the search. Finally we arrive back on the page with both Ally and myself, pausing between our photos as a scrawny face in the middle of ours looks eerily familiar.

  “Is that him?” I squint and pull the book closer to my face, tilting my head to the side as I try to picture the man from last night, my drunken memory playing tricks on me as I decide if it’s the same guy.

  “I think so. Javier … Montes,” she reads the name to the left of the row, making sure it correlates with the picture in order.

  “Javier Montes,” I whisper, letting the sound of his name roll off my tongue and hit my ears, wondering why the exotic slur of the letters heats up my body.

  “The boy definitely grew up if that was him,” Ally drawls. “Do you remember him?”

  My head shifts back and forth in admission. “No. I don’t.”

  “But he definitely knew who you were.”

  “Well, a lot of people did,” I counter.

  “Yeah, you were quite the popular bitch.”

  “Hey! You were friends with me.” I shove into her body, causing her to fall over and almost out of the bed.

  “Keep that up and you’re going to have one less friend,” she fires back.

  “You can’t live without me,” I joke as I wrap my arm around her pulling her in for a hug. “But promise me that you’ll never let me drink like that again,” I grumble as my stomach rolls, desperately in need of some greasy food to soak up the bile rising in my throat.

  “Ha. Okay, famous last words.” She stands from the bed, reaches for her cup, and then walks toward the door. “Come on. Breakfast will be ready soon and it’s only a matter of time before Taryn comes barreling back in here.”

  “I’ll be out there in a second,” I say, realizing I haven’t peed yet and I have no idea what my appearance looks like. Slowly as not to upset my equilibrium anymore, I throw my legs over the side of the bed and stand at a snail’s pace, gaining my footing before grabbing my coffee cup as well. As I turn back to face the bed, my eyes land on Javier’s photo, the sour taste of his reaction to me eating me up inside along with the acid in my stomach. Obviously, the guy had a problem with me, for what reason I’m not sure.
>
  But I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably never see him again.

  Chapter 6

  Javier

  “So tell me why I had to hear from my husband that you ran into Sydney Matthews at The Jameson on Saturday?” If it weren’t for the smack of her gum, I wouldn’t have been prepared for acquisition. I turn around in the chair at the front desk of Elite Gym and glare up at my sister from my seat.

  Folding my arms over my chest, I arch my brow at her. “Technically, she ran into me.”

  Images of seeing Sydney drunk and disorderly flash in my mind for a second until I push them away. I’ll never admit to what seeing her all grown up did to me because that would mean that I actually give a shit that I saw her.

  Which I don’t.

  “Semantics. So, what did the most popular girl in school say when she wet your pants?” My sister’s grin is a mile wide as she eats up the fact that my run in with the prom queen wasn’t smooth sailing.

  “She attempted to apologize I believe, but she was pretty wasted. Of course, I don’t know that she truly meant it anyway.”

  “Sydney Matthews? Drunk? I’d have to see it to believe it.” The tap of her fingernails on the top of the counter starts to grate on my nerves.

  “Can you stop that, please?”

  “Jeez, grump. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

  “Just a long day,” I reply, not wanting to reveal that I actually woke up with a raging hard-on as Sydney visited me in my sleep. The girl was everything I hated about people from the other side of our town growing up—privileged, pristine, perfect—so I don’t understand why seeing her the other night is stirring up past feelings of inadequacy, or why I can’t shake the image of her shapely body from my subconscious. The girl never knew I existed in high school, and to be quite honest, I didn’t care.

  But her long dark hair and smooth white skin that had been gently kissed by the sun made my fingers itch with the desire to touch her, and the confusion in her aqua eyes when I called her by name gave me a playful high I haven’t felt in years. She was curvier than I remember her being ten years ago too—a girl that clearly developed into a woman during that period of time.