Scorched (The Frenemy Series Book 4)

by Kate Benson

  “It isn’t,” he admits, raising his hand in mock-surrender at my buzzed wrath. “I swear,” he smirks again, yet this time, his expression is more believable. “I mean, if I’m honest, walking in on your live action Monday night soap opera actually makes me feel a little better about some of my own shit, but it isn’t because I’m finding pleasure in your pain.”

  “What part of my misery making you feel better?” I gape. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I thought you turned me down that first day because you were being a snob,” he confesses, the words slipping from his lips so rapidly, they manage to take both of us by a bit of a surprise. He swallows hard and it’s obvious, he hadn’t meant to say them at all. “Look, if I’d known you’d just been rolling around with this asshole, it probably would’ve saved us both a lot of headaches.”

  “And why is that?” I ask, leaning back, drink in hand.

  “Because now it’s clear that I’m not the problem, you just have a taste for shit,” he laughs, this time without restraint. “And you know… if you like that? Well, it’s no wonder you said no to someone who looks like me.”

  “Someone who looks like you,” I shake my head. “That’s stupid. It obviously had nothing to do with that, Mason. I mean, you’ve seen yourself, right?” I ask, not even catching on to my own blurted confession until his lips quirk up slightly on either side. I recover quickly, ignoring the heat in my cheeks. “Is that why you’ve had a stick up your ass for two years?”

  “You were pretty fuckin’ harsh about it,” he chuckles, his hazel eyes still refusing to meet mine. “And then you came in there, guns blazing, and everyone thought you were great,” he shrugs. “Kind of pissed me off, if I’m honest.”

  “I was just doing my job, Mason,” I offer, forcing his doubtful gaze to mine as I shake away my embarrassment. Before he can interject again, I cut him off. “Just so you’re aware, the only reason I even moved there and ruined your life,” I continue sarcastically. “Is because of this idiot,” I gesture toward the bar. “If you want to be pissed off at someone because of my attitude, he’s your man.”

  “You can’t blame an entire personality trait on one random person, Alex.”

  “I can do whatever the hell I want,” I argue, tossing my shot back. I glance back at him as I lick the excess from my lip and don’t miss the way his eyes dip slightly to watch before they come back to mine. He starts to shake his head in disagreement before I let out of low sigh. “We broke up literally ten seconds before I picked up the job at Walt’s. My interest level in any relationship outside of the one I have with my goldfish was nonexistent. It had nothing to do with you or anyone else. Well, except him. Because he sucks.”

  “Fair enough,” he admits with a shrug. “And I know I’m not the belle of the ball, but I’m better than that guy, at least.”

  “Ha, ha. You’re hilarious,” I drone out, shaking my head, but unable to keep from smirking behind my glass. “And by the way, it’s completely unfair to judge a person’s entire dating history based off one run-in at a hotel bar. You so easily forget that I’ve seen some of the skanks you hit on at work. You’re certainly not swimming in an ocean of tens over there yourself.”

  “Yeah, I am pretty fuckin’ funny,” he allows, pulling a snort from me this time. “And you’re right. No one’s got a perfect track record, but that guy just screams douchebaggery,” he snorts. “Besides, it’s good that this happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now we can be friends.”

  “Oh, is that a fact?” I ask, amusement tainting my features when he nods. “Aside from tonight, you’ve been terrible to me ever since I walked into that bar, Mason. What if I don’t want to be your friend?”

  “You’ve been just as awful and why wouldn’t you want to be my friend?” he asks, indifferent. “You just said it yourself. I’m hilarious.”

  Oh, my God, I think to myself as I stifle an eye roll.

  “So, that’s all it takes, huh? You just needed me to admit out loud that you’re better looking than the last guy I dated to not be a massive pain in my ass?”

  “So, it is true?”

  “What?”

  “That you think I’m good looking?”

  “What are you talking about? Where the hell did you get that from?”

  “From you.”

  “I never said that. You said that.”

  “No, I just said I thought you were a snob,” he shrugs, his eyes lifted slightly in admirable arrogance. “You’re the one who said I was better looking.”

  “What?” I reply, stuttering slightly over my words as my glass halts at my lips, eyes narrowed. “I never said that.”

  “Twice in ten minutes, sugar,” he corrects me. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you said it,” he says with a cocky wink. “After all, what are friends for?”

  mason

  “That’s ridiculous!” she argues, her eyebrows shooting up dramatically as she swings her arm out slightly. An empty glass tips over onto its side, startling her slightly before she resumes her accusatory statement. “You can’t use that!”

  “Why the hell not? It’s as valid as anything else.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she shakes her head. “A bucket list has to have grown up things on it.”

  “Bullshit,” I counter, throwing my shot back and tossing the empty glass onto the table beside the collection of others. “And even if that wasn’t some crap rule you just pulled out of your ass, who’s to say that’s not a grownup thing?”

  “Everyone!” she replies immediately, earning a look. “Dude, I just said I wanted to go to Paris and your response was ‘Thriller Flash Mob,’” she deadpans. “Totally not in the same realm of goals.”

  “You’re just jealous that you didn’t think of that shit first,” I shrug. “You probably don’t even know how to dance the whole thing.”

  “First of all, that’s a crock,” she raises her finger, making me snort. “Second, you couldn’t handle how good I am at that dance.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I kill that dance,” she continues, her voice shooting up in offense.

  “Prove it.”

  “What?”

  “I said prove it!” I repeat the words, sweeping my arm toward the empty patch of floor a few feet to my right, inadvertently knocking over a glass or two of my own. “You think you’re such hot shit, prove it. I want you to show me and this entire bar that you’ve got what it takes to out-Thriller Mason King.”

  “You’re an idiot,” she rolls her eyes. “Even if I wasn’t completely wasted, the bar is empty, and I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. Least of all a guy who thinks any flash mob trumps a once in a lifetime trip to motherfucking Paris.”

  “Then I reject your argument,” I say coolly, tossing my last shot back before I gesture for Douche McGee to bring us another round. “And furthermore, I take back what I said before. You are a snob. A chicken shit snob at that.”

  “Oh, what the hell do I care if you think I’m a snob?” she snorts, tipping back her last shot before she waves her arm toward the bar, beckoning her ex and glancing back over at me. “And I’m not a chicken shit. You’re just mad because your bucket list is bullshit, bro.”

  Her words are enough to have us both howling loudly against the rounded corner of the booth, and I find myself pleasantly surprised with how the night has turned out. I’d thought for sure this would be the worst, most pain in the ass week of my life when we walked into that lobby tonight. The thought of spending my vacation with the same woman who’d been barking orders at me from Walt’s office was as low on my bucket list as they come, but when I walked down here, that’s not the same girl I saw. The girl across from me now is human, she’s funny. She’s not the asshole that makes my life hell, she’s – dare I say it – kind of giving me one of the best nights I’ve had in months.

  Not that I’d ever tell her that.

  Regardless of the temporary truce we
’d made when we wound up down here together, that we’d play nice for the wedding and be friends, don’t get it twisted. I’m not dumb enough to think that’s going to translate into an actual friendship once we get back home.

  I can make my peace with that.

  Hell, as long as I get through this week without having a breakdown, I can make my peace with a lot.

  Movement from my left pulls me away from my wayward thoughts and I find her lifting onto her knees in the center of the booth, her hand grasping onto the edge of the table.

  “Yo!” she calls out, smacking the wooden top hard enough to splash herself with the remnants of our spilled whiskey. “What’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I ask, smirking at her theatrics. “Sit your drunk ass down.”

  “I’m not-” she starts, but her hand begins to slip against the wet tabletop, making her slid forward fast enough that she barely catches herself before she face-plants into the seat. “Shut up.”

  “Dude,” I laugh, bordering hysterics as I watch her slide back and forth for a moment. “You look so dumb!”

  “I hate you,” she giggles, trying to right herself but failing miserably. “Help me before he comes over here and cuts us off, stupid.”

  “What? And put a stop to watching you do this?” I ask, pulling another snort from us both, but reaching for her when she slips even closer, only inches from me now. “Not a chance in hell.”

  “You’re the worst,” she insists, her words coming out garbled and sloshy as she grips my shoulder for support. “It really pisses me off that you can put in literally no effort and still be so devastatingly hot.”

  The admission catches me off guard and I’m so hammered myself, I’m pretty sure I heard it all wrong, imagined it into some kind of tequila-bred fantasy.

  Her eyes fall on mine and her hot breath sweeps over me, the taste of it doing something to me deep. I’m locked in, lowkey hypnotized by the electricity between us when I hear footsteps coming toward our booth.

  “He’s coming over here,” I whisper, but she doesn’t waver. Hell, neither do I. “Do you know what you want?”

  “Mhmm,” she nods, eyes holding mine as she melts closer to my front, sending my cock into overdrive. I instinctually slide my palm around the back of her thigh and squeeze, pulling a low whimper from her chest. “But I don’t think I can have it.”

  “I think we both know that’s bullshit,” I husk against her lips, making her pant. “You can have just about anything you want, Lexi.”

  “Don’t call me Lexi,” she shakes her head.

  Before I can respond, she releases her unsteady grip on the booth and her lips are on mine.

  chapter thirteen

  mason

  “Oh, my God,” I groan, immediately closing my eyes to alleviate the sting that comes with daylight. My arm slaps out into nothing in an effort to grab hold of my phone, still blaring from the edge of the nightstand. “Shit,” I croak out, finally hitting the button that will put a stop to the noisy intrusion before I launch it to the foot of the bed and bury my head in my hands, releasing another tortured groan from the pit of my stomach. “Oh, sweet Lord,” I pant, sweat already beading over my brow enough to make the sheets a nuisance, yet the movement that comes with pushing them away is still too risky, so I resist. I’m on the verge of dozing back off, daylight be damned, when the sound of the hotel phone begins blaring through my room, sending me into another fit of agonized profanity. “What?”

  “Good morning, Mr. King,” the much too cheery male receptionist says mechanically into the line. I want to punch him. “This is Dwayne at the front desk completing your wake-up call. It’s nine fifteen, sir.”

  “Dwayne,” I whine, the pillow I’m still resting my face into making my voice sound as if I’d swallowed a bag of marbles, not the whiskey I can still taste on my breath. “Help me.”

  “Excuse me?” he asks, his jovial voice stuttering just slightly with my words. “I’m sorry, Mr. King. Did you say … are you in any danger?”

  I consider lying. I consider creating a false health condition that would force Dwayne to make his way up to my room with water and pain medication and about ten other things in hand, keeping me from moving an inch. I consider many things, but none of them include leaving this bed yet. In fact, none of them even include lucid thought, which is made more apparent by the deafening silence that follows his serious question.

  “Mr. King?” he starts, his voice still unsure. “Do you need someone to come up?”

  “It’s okay, Dwayne,” I manage, hating the taste of lie almost as much as my breath and I release a long, low sigh of exhaustion. “Don’t come up here. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  A brief pause follows before finally, Dwayne seems to grasp the situation.

  “Understood, sir,” he offers, his voice back to its previous polite tone, albeit blessedly quieter given the circumstances. I decide immediately that I’ll be writing Dwayne the best damn review he’s ever seen… as soon as I’m fit to write, think or talk again. “If you need anything.”

  “You’re a good man, Dwayne,” I whisper, cutting him off. “My only friend.”

  Dear God. Am I still drunk?

  “Yes, sir,” he says, hanging up and leaving to die in peace.

  After ten minutes of evaluating my life choices, I’m finally brave enough to try creaking my eyelids open once more. The light coming through the slits is immediately regretted, but I power through, steadying myself when I eventually sit myself up.

  “Deep breaths,” I whisper, the low and uneven command coming through like a chant before the wave of nausea passes. I lean forward, resting my face into the heels of my hands and blow out a long, deep breath to get myself to my feet. “You got this, bro.”

  I lie my way to the dresser, somehow managing to dig a bottle of aspirin out of my bag and toss it haphazardly into my mouth. I feel my way to the bathroom door and push through, catching my foot on the frame and letting out a loud grunt of pain.

  “Sonofabitch!” I hiss, reaching to soothe the blinding pain running up into my shin and pausing almost instantly. The last twelve hours filter through my brain, most of it admittedly muddied, and I come up empty handed as I spin slowly to look at the disheveled bedding before the sensation of something stabbing against the pad of my bare foot pulls my gaze lower, making my eyebrows crinkle in confusion. I bend to lift the shiny intrusion, inspecting the dainty, silver hoop earring as I internally scratch my head. “Where the hell did this come from?”

  alex

  When I was a kid, I used to bite my nails down to the quick when I got anxious. My mom would always get on to me, tell me what a filthy habit it was, but it wasn’t until health class freshman year that the scolding actually took.

  As I chew on the end of my thumbnail, I can’t help but wonder what my mother would say about the filthy habit whose room I snuck out of this morning.

  What the fuck was I thinking?

  The short answer is that I wasn’t.

  I was drunk – no, I was somewhere far beyond drunk. I was borderline comatose by the time we stumbled into that room last night, only moments after my ex cut us off and chased us out of the hotel bar while we mocked him, begging him not to get his mustache in a tizzy.

  The vague memory of us saying we were going to polish off the bottle of emergency whiskey he’d stashed in his bag was one of the last I can recall before the infamous walk of shame I’d orchestrated just a little over an hour and a half ago. Sure, there were flashes of the evening burnt forever in my mind, moments that continued to pop in, cementing my common sense’s retreat from the night before. However, as embarrassing as all of those thoughts are, the only thing that makes them worse is knowing that today, I’d have to face him.

  I can think of nothing more embarrassing than that.

  “Oh, my God, Alex,” I whisper to myself, nursing my coffee and pulling my phone out of my purse, pulling
up the search bar. “Just call a cab. Maybe you still have time to get the hell out of here before-”

  “Dude, what the hell happened to you?” he demands. “One second, we’re drinking down here and having fun for once and the next, I look up and you’re yelling about equal rights for women in the lobby like a lunatic.”

  His voice breaks through the second part of the world’s worst escape plan ever. Despite the fact that my ass is sweating, I brave a glance over at him.

  He looks like death. With the flu. Somehow wearing an uglier shirt than he was yesterday.

  This plaid wearing idiot has seen your nipples, Alex.

  And then you let him put his dick in your mouth.

  In a bathroom next to an ice machine.

  And then you passed out in his hotel room.

  And ran away like a loser this morning, stupidly thinking you’d be able to hide next to a plate of stale bran muffins in the freaking lobby.

  This is definitely more embarrassing.

  “Um,” I whisper, my hand moving toward my temples of their own accord as I lean onto my knees, reviewing every life choice that could have possibly gotten me here. “Wait, what?”

  “Yeah, no shit,” he groans, falling into the seat across from me, stale muffin in hand. “I think that guy spiked our drinks, dude,” he continues, shaking his head. “Rat Bastian,” he mumbles, smirking painfully at his own attempt at cleverness before taking a bite out of the bland pastry. A split second later, he makes a face, holding back a slight gag and tosses it into the trashcan behind him. “That was not good.”

  I try desperately to gain some composure, get my shit together before he looks back over at me, but it’s no use. By the time his hazel eyes fall back on mine, I’ve still got nothing of substance to say back.

  Everything in my mind is screaming. I’m about to retreat, make a run for it and call that cab to take me to Evie’s. Even knowing it will only help me avoid him for ten minutes at best, that ten minutes might give me a chance to calm the hell down and grant myself a reprieve from the flashes still haunting me from last night.