by Melissa Blue
That incident led him to being hospitalized for a month where he'd walked around like a goddamn zombie in a mental hospital. They medicated him, only gave him sporks as safe eating utensils and clothes that he couldn't use to harm himself.
For the next three months he lost his train of thought, would sometimes forget how to process math like he used to. Took six months to feel like himself again. That's not even mentioning the fucking therapy where he had to talk about his parents disinterest in him and their adoration of Grady. Where he had to learn about the late onset of bipolar, the rarity of it, and warning signs of another hypomanic spiral, and put backup plans in place.
Worse, how he sometimes couldn't differentiate his personality from bipolar symptoms—moody, easily annoyed, obsessive to the point of irrational, ego the size of Mt. Everest...Yeah. That was him on a normal day.
Start there?
Fuck, no.
He had meds that kept him mentally steady more often than not. A brother and friends who kept him anchored. Despite his inner bitching, he'd rather have a Sophie-sized problem. Being bipolar was not going to define him, and it sure as fuck wouldn't take center stage of his every moment.
Wade lifted and rolled one shoulder. “Like I said, Sophie's a woman who lied to me.”
His friend's gaze roved over his face. He gave a slight nod of acknowledgment. They weren't going to talk about his mental disorder—not today. “But she's not a lover.”
“Dr. Scott wants me to do some publicity for the observatory,” Wade explained. “She's the publicist.”
Understanding filled Oliver's gaze. He'd lived through his fair share of look at the smart monkey speak. His parents were therapists who often processed emotions and words before giving a genuine response. Oliver learned quickly to express himself for adoration. It might have fucked him up.
Oliver asked, “You can't get out of it? And...no offense, why did they pick you?”
Wade laughed at the honesty. “I'm a genius and ruggedly handsome. Why wouldn't they choose me?”
“Thank you for proving my question has merit.” But Oliver laughed too.
He rolled the bottle between his hands. “I can waylay the process by scaring off the publicist.”
Oliver tipped some beer into his mouth then chuckled. “Your life is richer, all right.” He pointed the glass at him. “And your focus on making Sophie pay has nothing to do with Ashley?”
Wade gripped his bottle. “Porter's sister has nothing to do with this. And this is why no one likes talking to you. All I want to do is drink my beer in peace, and you want to talk about my feelings.”
Oliver shrugged. “If you just admit you're heartbroken...”
Was he? Porter's sister had been off-limits to the Goon Squad. Wade couldn't imagine his life without his friends. They were stand-up guys, loyal and great, but if he had a little sister...Yeah, he'd probably be as pigheaded as Porter about the whole thing. Okay. He'd likely be more pigheaded than Porter could have ever imagined. So he'd respected his friend's wishes and didn't cross a line with Ashley.
She was outspoken, independent, loving, funny, beautiful, a gamer, smart and sexy...Just a few things he'd noticed after knowing her for eons. Of course he'd loved her. He'd have to be dead not to. And if Porter had ever given Wade his blessing, things would have turned out exactly the same.
Wade had always known, deep in his gut, Ashley only held affection for him. The fact she chose Victor in the end proved as much.
Did it hurt knowing a woman he pined for likely only ever saw him as her brother's friend? Probably didn't even objectify him once in her own mind. Did that leave a sour taste in his mouth? Leave his heart aching for someone, something he never could or would have?
Wade finished his beer instead of trying to search for that answer. “I bet a hundred bucks I can get Sophie to quit by the end of the week.”
“No bet.” Still Oliver dug around in his pocket for his wallet. “But I think we should start a pool on how long it takes Grady to realize what's really wrong with Eva.”
A smile threatened to break through. “Make it three hundred and I'm in. My brother is dense.”
Oliver's wry chuckle made Wade's smile widen. His friend added, “You call Victor, and I'll call Porter.”
“Meddling bastard,” Wade muttered. Oliver may have been nice but he was sly and wily as fuck.
“You could just admit how you felt about Ashley.” Oliver's brows climbed up like the words were innocent.
Once again his phone saved him. This time Sophie had sent a text. His stomach tightened with anticipation.
I love the way Mark Twain looks in this episode.
A laugh burst out. Sophie was a horrible liar, but committed to her cause one hundred percent.
“And she makes you laugh,” Oliver murmured before turning his attention to his phone. “Porter, we're doing another group bet.”
She did make him laugh. That much Wade could say about Sophie. Tomorrow he was going to make her life a living hell though. He almost felt bad about it until she texted him Allons-y!
That was like saying she enjoyed watching Luke Skywalker on Star Trek. She had to pay.
CHAPTER
2-1 (mod7)
Sophie found Wade sprawled on a hill outside the observatory watching the sky. Her feet signaled another aching pang. Sweat dripped out of every pore because she'd walked the observatory from one end and back, then the college campus, then had even gone to his apartment. She hated to imagine what her hair looked like. Her flatiron could barely combat the naturally coiled curls on a warm, dry day.
In the fading sunlight he appeared so content on the blanket. His eyes closed, his hands a makeshift pillow clasped behind his head. She'd think he was asleep if not for the shit-eating grin.
Barely containing the urge to kick him, she said, “You bastard.”
Apparently she couldn't control her rage and remain professional at the same time, but she dared anyone to deal with Wade for more than five minutes and not curse the air blue.
“Miss Lake.” His deep timbre rumbled through her.
She stiffened her back against the reaction to his voice. Fuck attraction, she wanted to do violence.
He said, his tone lazy, “I've been waiting for you all day.”
“Out here, the whole damn time?” Her voice came out calm, not shrill. She'd thank God for that later, but until then she had to fight down the urge to flick him in the forehead.
“Had a picnic, took a nap, read a Robert B. Parker novel.” He sighed and stretched before crossing his ankles. He kept his eyes closed like he might drift off for another nap. As they talked. “What did you do with your day?”
She tended to like her clients. Even the ones who kept her up and made the same thoughtless decisions over and over again that she had to fix. Wade was working his way up her very short list of clients she wanted to skewer.
She bent and took off one shoe then the other. Gripping the heels, she talked herself out of pelting him with both of them. But how angry could she be? Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this was payback for lying. How did he figure out she hadn't watched a single show? Maybe the better question was why was this was his form of punishment? He could have easily gone ahead with her plans and acted an ass until she popped Xanax like Tic-Tacs. A disappearing act said something about him.
She straightened. Or maybe about her. She hated wasting time. It was money lost or energy spent doing something else productive. The smart thing to do was to sit in his office until he showed his face, and she'd tried that from eight to ten in the morning. Waiting left her restless, and he could be hanging out with his friends, he could be at home...The longer he let her stew in the silence in his office, the more she realized Cal had been right.
He's pegged you
Gooseflesh feathered over her skin. She'd been so cocky, believing after the call and text yesterday things between them had settled. There wouldn't be any more arguments, and if she saw one on the
horizon, all she had to do was look up the TV show on Wikipedia to remind him she was holding up her end of the bargain. Well...the appearance of holding up her end of the bargain. He'd seen through it, through her.
Fear tightened the muscles in her throat, and she shouldn't have even felt that emotion. He was a client doing his best to grate on her nerves—not the first and definitely wouldn't be the last. If she told herself enough times he wasn't different, he wouldn't be. She didn't want to imagine what could happen if she let her guard down with him—a man who one-upped her in the simplest way possible. A man who'd met her less than twenty-four hours ago and seemed to know exactly what would drive her mad.
She swallowed, cautious now. “What I did with my day is moot. We could have made plans to get you outfitted for a couple of suits. Or even professional, yet casual clothes.”
Finally he opened his eyes. So blue, so angry. “I like what I'm wearing. It's comfortable. If I get cold, I can throw on my lab coat.”
He wanted to look like a beach bum on TV? She'd die first. Calm, so very calm, she sat on the edge of the blanket beside him. He sat up, propped his feet on the soft material and stared at her dead-on. There was more than anger in his gaze now. She didn't want to name the emotion, but she inhaled deeply to catch his scent.
Why did her stomach have to tighten? Her heart race? From the way he inched toward her, Wade suffered from the same problem. That push and pull simmered beneath the obvious disagreement between them.
They both had to ignore it.
He caught himself and inched back into his space. “Your job is to change everything about me so I can be cannibalized in the media.” His words seared through her. “Take all the education I've worked hard to achieve and turn it into a sound bite. Doesn't that bother you?”
He wasn't the first client to throw that at her, but he was the first to make her face heat with shame. Wade hadn't asked for this marketing campaign to bolster his career. Sophie and his boss had decided because he looked handsome enough, had the right credentials and backstory, he'd be a good sacrifice to the media. They could have picked anyone else, someone a lot more willing. But her job wasn't to feel sorry for his plight.
“What I want to do is take all your glorious education and condense it into something an average person will understand. Maybe even a child. You'll look right into a camera and tell him he is made out of the same stuff stars are made of. Those simple elements make him a part of the universe. He is not small but bigger than he'd ever imagined.”
“Smooth,” he accused. “If anything would get me to behave that last line is it, but when's the last time you looked up?”
Out of instinct she glanced at the sky. The sun had set enough she could see a handful of stars just fine in the pinks and oranges coloring the last minutes of daylight.
His sigh, sounding full of frustration, brought her attention back to him, “Since about seven this morning you could see Mars without a telescope. Given it looks like a star, a bright one, but it's 600 light years away. All you had to do was tilt your head back to see it. While you were doing all that running around trying to find me, how often did you look up?”
There was the poetic side of him she'd discovered in his publications. Despite the anger still simmering in her gut, a smile tugged at her mouth. “You're a dreamer, which makes you a different kind of asshole.”
He laughed. “And still you're trying to handle me. Will you just give up?”
“My job isn't to give up.” She dropped her shoes between them. “Because now I'm thinking you should do that at every stop. Point out whatever phenomenon is going on in the night's sky and remind people to stop and look up.”
She'd expected a bitter, defeated laugh but Wade tilted his head and murmured, “You're broken.”
The anger sparked again. For a moment they'd had an uneasy truce, but once again he'd decided to lash out. Or is it because his words hit close to home? She shook her head at the question. No. She didn't have the time to be broken. “Because I don't spend my time running from responsibilities and daydreaming about...dark matter?”
He placed his hand beside hers. The heat of him brushed against her. His gaze fell to the space that separated them. A muscle twitched in his jaw before he pulled away. “Because everything is an 'in' to you. Nothing is sacred. It's all fodder. How long did you watch the TV show? Ten minutes? Twenty? All before you decided I was dumb enough to buy a few excited summaries you likely looked up online.”
She'd underestimated him. Probably even the power of her bare legs, because this Wade wasn't the man she'd toyed with the day before. Yesterday's Wade had buckled with a few strategically placed words and smart timing.
Sophie refused to go down without a fight. “A pretty girl goes down to a basement to check out a suspicious noise. I made it five minutes in.” No point in hiding the truth. Some part of her hoped that confession would stop him.
He scoffed with so much disgust she leaned back. “You could have just said that. I haven't met a single person who liked that show from the very first episode. Not an American. And you, definitely, wouldn't like the first season.”
She balled her hands. What did he mean by that? And why did it send a stab right through her heart? “This was a test and I failed?”
Wade sputtered. “A test? You're still searching for some gotcha?”
No. She was praying for one. He'd get to the end of his speech and cave, like every client. He'd realize she'd stop at nothing, deny herself everything to get the job done. Then he'd know, believe he was in good hands. He would be her client and nothing else.
He couldn't be anything else.
“Wade...”
His brows furrowed. “You're still talking. Why?” he snapped. “You know what, I don't care. Let me make this clear.”
Wade leaned forward in case that preamble wasn't enough to get his point across. “You had to get your 'in' even if you had to lie to get it. You are broken beyond repair, and that's coming from someone who knows. Yet you think you can fix me then parade me on TV?”
A shaky breath escaped her mouth. She'd stalked out to the hill after the security had spilled the beans that this was where Wade liked to go to think. She hadn't considered what she'd find. He seemed so harmless. She hadn't expected him to rip away a few layers of her tough skin.
If she'd taken a single moment to do any personal prep to face a pissed off astrophysicist, Sophie might have answered with her usual professionalism. “Fuck you, Wade.”
“And I would think...” There was the gravelly tone in his voice that abraded her skin, “...you wouldn't do that with clients anymore.”
She gasped, but of course he'd know about Angelo and would use that after he'd thrown down his coup de grace. Now she knew Wade didn't fight fair, he fought to win. Sophie grabbed her shoes. Her fingers fumbled over the heels.
“If the observatory goes under because your pride was more important—”
“I won't let it. No need for you to deliver a parting shot. Just go.” He flicked his wrist in the direction she could likely fuck off and die, as if his words weren't enough to get that sentiment across.
Dismissed. And what could she say in response? She'd pushed him into a corner and he went on attack. He knew about Angelo, her greatest shame. And still staring him down she could see the attraction reflecting back in his eyes.
She shivered. When would she learn? “Screw you,” was the best she could come up with.
His voice pitched low. “And you'd love it.”
Probably would and that was only half the problem. She put her shoes back on and left Wade on the hill. She left a few pieces of her pride too, but she'd be damned to admit that to him.
*****
Wade's desk shook from the weight of someone leaning on it, hard. He glanced up, his vision blurry for a moment, but he knew that blob. He pushed up his glasses to stare at his brother. Hard lines etched around Grady's mouth. Yeah. He knew that tense expression—a mixture of anger and wor
ry. He hated seeing those emotions and knowing he was the reason for them.
Grady asked, “What date is it?”
“Uh.” His brain blanked. Shit. He'd lost track of time. After a quick pat down of his lab coat and jeans, he could add his phone to things he'd lost. He scrubbed a hand over his face. His stubble had turned into a beard.
Something dark twisted in his gut. He couldn't answer his brother's question. Wade couldn't even remember the last time he'd paid attention. For only a second did fear dig into his stomach. Had his pills failed him? Would he need to find new ones? Some that would dull his brain just to keep him anchored.
He pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose and breathed. If he had enough of his mind to worry, he wasn't spiraling into an abyss. But to be sure, he opened a drawer on his desk, checked the date on his pills and counted. He hadn't missed a dose. A small bit of relief rushed through him.
“How many days has it been for you?” Wade asked.
The question seemed to deflate Grady's shoulders. “I haven't heard from you in four days. Whenever I tried to do a check-in, you either weren't at home or here at work.”
He threw the pill bottle back into his desk. “I wasn't paying attention.”
Couldn't really. After his talk with Sophie, losing himself in work sounded ideal. He wouldn't feel the pinch of guilt. He'd do almost anything to forget the sheen of tears he'd seen in Sophie's eyes after he mentioned her ex's name. Angelo “Thorn” Williams was a grade-A bastard and Wade had uttered the name to hurt her more. Aggression was another sign of a hypomanic episode, and he all but told Sophie to eat shit and die. But, nope. That choice to be a douchebag was all him.
Maybe when Oliver had refused his bet, Wade should have taken that as a social cue to not be a dick to Sophie.