TANGLED

by Simone Elise

  It swallowed her, dropping down below her knees.

  She pulled her hair out and smiled at me. “It smells like you.” She pushed up the sleeves.

  “Good or bad thing?”

  Her smile got wider, and I wasn’t sure if it was one of her real smiles or not.

  “Great thing,” she said. I wasn’t expecting that. And she then did something else I wasn’t expecting—she slipped her hand in mine.

  I was always the one to touch her. She never touched me. Her eyes ran up me until they locked with mine. She looked like she wasn’t sure if she had crossed a line or not.

  I couldn’t stop the smile and it was automatic to link our hands. I heard her exhale slowly, like she had been holding on to her breath, while she waited for my decision on whether she had crossed a line or not.

  When it came to Soph, there wasn’t any boundaries or rules she could break. Well, not when it came to me anyway. My normal rules when it came to women didn’t apply to her. I glanced behind me as she followed through the house, looking at the ground.

  Maybe my normal rules didn’t apply to her because she was a friend?

  Was that the reason? Something in my gut told me there was another reason. I was either too stupid to see it, or I was right about the friendship thing

  “So what were you doing before you took pity on me and came home?” Soph asked, munching on her toast.

  She was eating. Thank fuck for that. Now I was just going to make sure she kept doing it. She was used to her pattern of not eating for days and exercising intensely. I was going to have to break that habit. How do you go about making someone eat? I couldn’t force the food down her throat. She wouldn’t eat anything loaded in carbs, which told me she was watching what she ate.

  “Earth to Josh.” She clicked her fingers in my face.

  Right, she asked a question. “What did you ask?”

  She rolled her eyes and swallowed her toast before answering. “You really aren’t listening to me are you? You know you can go to bed. It is late.”

  “Nah. My mind was just somewhere else. What did you ask?” I turned on the bar stool to face her.

  “What were you doing before you came here after taking pity on me?” She turned on her bar stool to face me too, forgetting about her food.

  “You keep eating and I’ll tell you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve eaten half a piece!”

  “And I want you to have both pieces.” I nodded towards the food. “Keep eating.”

  She sighed and picked up a piece of toast. “You are forcing me to eat.”

  Yes I was.

  She took a bite. “Ok, tell me what you were doing.” She turned back to face me, her toast in hand.

  What could I say? I couldn’t really tell her what I was doing. I hated lying to her, but I didn’t see another option.

  “At a friends,” I lied, and I hoped she didn’t press me on it.

  She arched her eyebrows and slowly chewed a piece of toast, and I knew by her expression I was in trouble.

  “So we lie to each other now?” she said, looking at me unimpressed. She also did something I didn’t want her doing, and that was stop eating.

  I sighed. “I was with my friends.”

  She looked at me a bit harder. “Uhuh. You are leaving parts out…” She chewed her bottom lip and glanced down at her toast, then looked me back in the eye. “But that’s ok. You don’t have to tell me everything.”

  That had me wanting to groan. I did want to be honest with her. I did want to tell her where I was and who I was with. But I couldn’t, and it was for her own good.

  “What did you do tonight?” I tried to change the subject. I guess I shouldn’t expect her to be honest with me when I couldn’t be honest with her.

  I think that thought ran through her head too as she looked at me. Yeah, she was weighing up if she was going to tell me or not.

  “I was…” She sighed and put her toast down. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  No. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her what I had been doing tonight. I doubt anything she could have done would surprise me. “Try me. And keep eating.”

  She groaned and then took the tiniest bite she could take and swallowed sharply. “Promise you won’t judge?”

  Hell, I should be saying that to her. “You know I won’t.” That was the truth. I would never judge anything she did. But I would help encourage her to make better decisions.

  “I was stripping.”

  “You were fucking what!”

  “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” She took another bite of the toast, not seeming one bit fussed by my reaction.

  I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t wrap my head around what she just said. “You were like… stripping at a club or something?” The words just fell out. I couldn’t, no, I wouldn’t believe that she was doing that. She was too far above that. Surely she had more respect for herself?

  No man deserved to be able to see her naked. It should be a sin. In fact, I’m sure it is. It was sinful to take in her perfect body, her well-shaped breasts, and the way her body had this perfect curve.

  “Wasn’t like it was in front of men.” She decided to now only add that detail. “God, wipe that look off your face!” She pushed my shoulder.

  “So it wasn’t at a club? You aren’t becoming a stripper or anything?” I think I was still panicking.

  She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it is for a job bartending and dancing. But it’s not like I’ll be stripping.”

  “You aren’t fucking doing it.” Nope. Never. Ever. Happening.

  “Why?”

  I scoffed. She wanted to know why I wouldn’t let her dance and strip and fall into that side of life. “Because I said so,” I replied firmly. “You aren’t doing it. If you need money, I’ll help you.”

  “I don’t need money! God, I have like three credit cards and a bank account in the thousands.”

  “Well, if you aren’t doing it for the money? Why do it?”

  She looked down at her feet and then slowly lifted her head. “You ever wanted to do something risky to see if you can do it?”

  Yes. But I was a hopeless case. I was a wipe off. No one was expecting anything of me or my life. She wasn’t a wipe off. Her life was just beginning. Her life wasn’t being framed by bad decisions in her past like mine was.

  I knew what she was talking about. But I couldn’t let her do what she wanted to do just to get some life experience that could cost her the perfect life she deserved.

  “Soph, you are better than all that. You don’t need to know if you can face that type of life when it isn’t where your life is heading.” I tried to speak clearly to her. “Hell, you’re heading to early acceptance to a university of your choice and you can have any man you want. Why throw that away for some cash you don’t need in a job that is degrading?”

  She looked at me torn, like there was something she was keeping to herself. I didn’t think, fuck, maybe I should have, but I found myself pushing up my jumper so my hand was on her bare knee.

  “You not sure what you want to study?” I took a stab in the dark.

  She looked down at my hand and chewed her bottom lip again, and again. I found myself just acting and not thinking, and I pried the lip from her grasp with my fingers.

  “What’s up, Soph?” I asked gently and leaned in closer to her. My hand was still close to her face. I didn’t stop myself as I tucked her hair behind her ear. “Come on, it can’t be that bad?”

  She looked me in the eye and I saw something she normally kept hidden: emptiness.

  “Dad and Mum are forcing me into the medical field. It’s been expected since I was ten. It’s what I’ve worked towards. The offers are rolling in and I’ve stopped answering my phone and stopped opening the letters.” She swallowed sharply, and again emptiness was in her eyes.

  “What changed? Is it Kyle? Has he made you stop
wanting your career?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe it is part his fault, but it’s mainly mine. I realized something and realizing that made me see…”

  “See what?”

  She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  She kept saying that. “Come on, Soph, just tell me. I can help.” I didn’t know how I was going to; I wasn’t smart like her. I’d never had a heart to heart with someone. Or helped someone make a decision.

  Fuck, no one came to me for advice, unless you include my club brothers. And I didn’t see helping out a brother the same as helping Soph out.

  Her eyes glanced down and then back up. “No one can help me.”

  Why would she think that? “Well, at least tell me what you realized?” I was going to work away around her closed answers. Get her to open up.

  She stopped looking me in the eye and fiddled with the sleeve of my hoodie. She finally sighed. “Being a doctor means you care for others. It also means you feel for others.” She was looking me in the eye, but I had never seen her so distant. “I can’t look after myself and… I don’t feel anything anymore.” She dropped her toast on the plate. “How can I go into a field where I don’t have two of the essential skills?”

  Kyle. It was all Kyle’s fucking fault. I had never wanted to hurt my brother more. How stupid was he? How could he do this to the most perfect woman? How could he not see what I saw? And if he did see what I saw, how the hell did he let her go?

  He hadn’t just broken her heart; he had destroyed who she was. I was seeing that now. She had been hiding it well, but I was starting to see what Soph was hiding from everyone. My Soph—the Soph I knew for years—was loving, carefree, happy and cared for everyone. And now, well, she was sitting here saying she couldn’t even look after herself. Hell! She was saying she didn’t feel anything for anyone anymore.

  The girl that would go out of her way to help others! I found myself unable to say anything. I couldn’t accept the fact that my Soph was saying something like that. That the girl I knew was gone completely.

  “Yeah, see, there isn’t much to say to that, is there?” she said dimly, sounding like a broken woman. Her eyes were glued to her lap. “Thanks for dinner, Josh. I’ll, um…” She looked up and again what I saw I hated seeing in her eyes. She finally gave me a fake smile, like everything was ok and her world wasn’t falling away. “Night, Josh.” She pushed away from me.

  I stood up and stopped her. “You aren’t heartless, Soph. You’re just going through a hard time.” That was it, right? She would snap out of this… cause I didn’t want to believe that Kyle had destroyed her completely. I didn’t know much about feelings, or what happens when you break up with someone. So I didn’t know what she was going through. But I was hoping, for her sake, that her old self would come back. It had to. The Soph I knew couldn’t just be… gone.

  She was looking down at our feet. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I am who I am. The one good thing about it is I didn’t feel heartbroken when I told Bax to stay away from me.”

  I frowned. “You told him to leave you alone?” Was there a chance her brain was still working though her world was falling apart?

  Her hazel eyes looked up and that dim, barely even considered to be a smile was on her face. “Yeah. At least for a week.”

  I thought it was too good to be true. She hadn’t wiped him out of her life altogether. He didn’t deserve a second of her time. “You can do better than him.” I didn’t stop myself when I reached out for her, grabbing her hips and pulling her towards me. “You know that, right?”

  I just had to touch her. It was like… if I touched her, she would feel something and come back , not be so cold or distance. I wanted her to feel again. I wanted her to laugh again and the thing I wanted the most, the very most, was for her to be herself again.

  Her hazel eyes were still looking in mine, and while I knew she heard what I said, she was keeping her answer to herself.

  “Soph, did you hear me? You can do better than Bax.” My hands spread on her hips. “You deserve better, you know that right?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t deserve better, Josh. That’s where you are wrong.”

  She couldn’t be serious. “You deserve a relationship. Not one-night stands.”

  “But that’s all I want. I made it very clear to Bax that that was all I was capable of. I don’t do love. I don’t do feelings. I don’t do relationships. He knew all that, and what does he do? He wants more.” She clenched her fists at her side. “I thought every guy wanted a girl to sleep with whenever and have her happy, hell, even supportive of him seeing other girls.”

  She was right, most guys would love that. It would be their dream come true. What Soph wasn’t factoring in was… well, her. When you got a taste of Soph, you didn’t want anyone else but her. Bax wanted to lay claim on her before anyone else did. Because he knew, like I knew, she could do better than him.

  She would have billionaires begging for her attention. Men that wanted for nothing their whole life, even they would want her. And wouldn’t give up until she was theirs. But it didn’t matter what you promised her, what you could give her, she wasn’t interested because in her head she wasn’t worth a second thought. In her head she wasn’t worth anything.

  Someone had to make her realize she was worthy. Someone had to make her feel again. Someone had to get her to risk her heart again.

  But I knew I wasn’t capable of helping her with any of those things. Just wasn’t in me. I wasn’t that type of person. I was the type of person to use my fists instead of my words.

  But I could still try and be her friend.

  Her phone buzzed on the kitchen island and she was more interested in staring up at me than getting it.

  For some reason, my grip on her tightened. I didn’t want her leaving.

  When the phone stopped ringing, it started again right away. She sighed and looked at it. A small groan left her lips.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, and she unclenched her fist and picked it up.

  “I told him earlier to leave me alone.” She looked down at the phone. “Again he just ignores what I want.”

  Bax. It had to be him. “You going to answer?” I knew what Bax wanted. He wanted her. Not just for sex. But he actually wanted her as his. It only took him a few weeks of being with her for him to see what I saw. She was priceless and deserved a life better than what he or I could give her. But him being the selfish bastard he is, he was going to claim her regardless of whether she deserved better or not.

  “He will be drunk and just want sex and I’m not interested after the stunt he pulled.” She blocked his call and then turned her phone off. “He can speak to my voicemail.”

  I smiled. I was proud of her. She might not think she deserved better, but all hope wasn’t lost.

  “You going to sleep?” she asked, and her hands ran down my arms as my hands still clung to her hips.

  “Aren’t you?” I pulled her in closer. Friends touched, right? cause I had to touch her. Couldn’t explain… It was like a need—a desperate need to touch her. I’d never felt like this for a woman before. Never wanted to touch a woman as badly as I wanted to touch her.

  It was even the small touches I wanted. Like when we were in the supermarket I had to have my hand on her lower back as she decided on whether she wanted whole meal or white bread. Then when her hands didn’t have something in them, I had to have one hand locked on hers.

  She didn’t seem to mind either. She didn’t pull away. She didn’t even flinch when I wrapped an arm around her and pulled to my side. She didn’t care either when we were at the cash register and I wrapped both arms around her waist like she was mine and pulled her back to my chest.

  Anyone could make the mistake thinking we were together. But we weren’t. We were just friends. Friends did that type of crap.

  “What are you thinking right now?” She ran two fingers down my jaw, looking puzzled up at me.

 
I wasn’t telling her what I was thinking. If I did, she would think I was mad. Having an obsession with touching her—she would think the worst.

  “Nothing. You going to bed or not?”

  She grinned, and I think it was a real one. “Nope.” She shook her head. “I’m watching reruns of The Young Ones. They are on the BBC from two am to 4 four am.”

  I groaned. “The music in that show is terrible, Soph. How can you still be obsessed with it?

  “But the comedy is priceless.” She suddenly seemed hesitant. “Um, are you interested in joining me?”

  She was asking me to join her? I could tell by the she stopped running her finger down my jaw and looked like she was holding her breath that she was nervous.

  “Your room or mine?” I smiled at her.

  She inhaled sharply. “Mine because my electric blanket is on.” She started to back away, her hands gripping my arms and gently getting me to follow.

  She didn’t have to convince me to follow. I let go of her and then I spun her around, wrapping my arms around her waist.

  “You still cold?” I asked, walking behind her. God, she was tiny.

  “Not as cold as I was. Not with your hoodie.” She pulled her hands into the sleeves as we walked up the stairs.

  We came to a stop at her door and she twisted the doorknob. Then she stepped out of my arms, he arm searching for the light switch.

  Chapter Seventeen

  JOSH

  The light came on.

  Her hand went out for me, and I grabbed it just as she balanced on one foot to take her heel off. She sighed with relief as she removed the other.

  “God, you have no idea how amazing that feels.” She kept holding my hand. “Now I just need to get out this lingerie.”

  My expression dropped, and she let go of my hand and took my hoodie off.

  “What did you say?” I asked, not believing she had just said what I thought had escaped her lips.

  She titled her head. “I’ve got to take the lingerie off. It was for the job interview. You know, you have to dress up to strip.”