by Shandi Boyes
“Never dare a Garcia, Brodie, because you’ll never win.” Lexi curls her arms around my elbow and bolts toward Jackson’s truck idling at the end of Marcus’s driveway, lugging me behind her. For a woman who weighs ten pounds less than me, she hauls me across the grounds without even breaking into a sweat.
“Cleo, you have five seconds to get back here!” Brodie shouts from the top floor.
When his demand is met with a bout of laughter, he roars, “Goddamn it!”
Lexi increases her pace when Brodie disappears from the window. With how eerily quiet the night is, I can hear the thuds of his steps as he gallops down the stairs. He takes the last steps just as we reach Jackson’s truck. Lexi throws open the door so forcefully, the truck’s hinges squeal in protest.
“Go, go, go,” Lexi requests, squealing when we dive into the roasting hot cab. Lexi wasn’t joking; Jackson has the heat up high.
Jackson’s truck glides down the asphalt at the exact moment Brodie sprints down the platform stairs. “You know he’ll just jump in his car and force Jackson to pull over,” I inform Lexi, my words wheezy from our mad dash.
“Bit hard without these.”
Swinging my eyes from Brodie chasing us on foot, I spot Lexi dangling a set of car keys on her index finger—keys that don’t belong to her.
“And it isn’t like he can just show up to Luke’s, since the venue of his party changed,” she adds on, her smile the largest I’ve seen. “I deleted Luke’s email from our servers too, just in case you were wondering.”
I don’t know whether to hug her or strangle her right now. My exhausted body is welcoming the surge of adrenaline from our risky breakout, but there is still a smidgen of doubt blackening my blood.
Some of my dread dampens when Jackson seizes Lexi’s wrist and drags her across the bench until she is nuzzled under the nook of his arm. After pressing a kiss to her temple, he whispers three little words I’d give anything to hear right now: “I love you.”
The past week has been hard on them. I wouldn't necessarily say it’s been any harder than it has been on Marcus and me, but there is no doubt “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is not a theory they’re interested in testing again anytime soon.
Unsurprisingly, we’ve barely exited Marcus’s street when my cell starts hollering. Surprisingly, the call isn’t from Brodie. It's from Marcus. Taking matters into her own hands, Lexi snatches my cell phone out of my hand, declines Marcus’s call and silences my phone. I eye her curiously when her fingers tap wildly over the screen. The swoosh of a message being sent sounds through my ears, closely followed by Lexi’s phone buzzing, indicating she has received a text message.
She drops my cell into her lap before picking up her phone. I peer over her shoulder, watching her configure a two-sentence email.
If you want to talk to my sister, you’ll have to go through me first. And there is NO chance of that happening until you explain these, dipshit.
Her lips quirk as she attaches the two photos the anonymous messenger sent me earlier tonight. Her message has barely left her inbox when her cell starts ringing. I don’t need to peer at the screen to know it's Marcus. I can feel it deep in my bones.
My brows scrunch when Lexi denies Marcus’s call before returning her cell to her purse. “Never negotiate with terrorists,” she explains to my baffled expression. “How many hours did you spend sniveling in your room tonight waiting for him to return your call?”
Jackson’s gaze strays from the road to me. His worried glance is discreet, but strong enough to make me feel ashamed.
“I wasn’t sniveling,” I lie, loathing the sorrow-filled glances being directed at me.
Lexi arches her brow and glares at me, acting like she didn’t hear a thing I said.
“Around two hours,” I mumble, knowing she’d eventually read the truth from my eyes.
Lexi checks her watch. “So at eighteen minutes past midnight, Chains’ can have his questions answered. Until then, he can suffer in his jocks.”
“He can what?” I ask, confused.
“Suffer in his jocks,” Lexi confirms, grinning. “I heard Cartier say it earlier today. It has a nice ring to it.”
Snubbing my slack-jawed expression, she devotes her attention to Jackson.
I spent the first half of our commute unscrambling everything that has happened thus far today. You’d think my primary focus would be on learning when the photo of Marcus and Keira was taken, but it isn’t. With Lexi’s mention of Cartier, my prime focus has centered around her concern about me expressing my love to Marcus. Is it just a coincidence his withdrawal of contact directly follows my request for him to make love to me?
Cartier has said numerous times the desire to be loved was the conundrum that unraveled her relationship. Can the same be said for Marcus and me? I didn't hold anything back last week when we made love. I expressed everything he meant to me using my body instead of the words I really wanted to say. So maybe that is the cause of his lack of contact? Perhaps he doesn't see our relationship heading in the direction he desires, and this is his way of ending things amicably.
I know it's extreme to think this way, but what other reason could he have for pretending he was in Florida? Although I don’t have proof, my intuition is telling me he’s been in New York the entire time. Unlike Keira, Cartier has no motive to lie about seeing Marcus. She saw him yesterday—in New York, and she spoke as if he has been here the entire time, so I believe her. And Abel seemed just as concerned by Marcus’s lack of contact as I was.
Panicked alarm slams into me when reality dawns. I feel sick— so horribly ill. Is Marcus breaking up with me because he hated vanilla sex? If he is, he doesn’t need to be worried. I enjoyed making love to him—it was beautiful and special—but I love being dominated by him. If I knew my request for him to make love to me would have such an adverse reaction, I would have never asked him to do it. I just wanted a piece of him that no one else had. I wanted to claim him as my own—much like he did by placing his collar around my neck. I never wanted it to end us.
Lifting my eyes from my intertwined fingers, I lock them with Jackson. “Pull over,” I stammer out, my words choked by the bile surging to the base of my throat.
“Pull over,” I demand more assertively when my first request is met with silence.
Seeing the panic on my face, Jackson pulls his truck to the curb. I've barely scampered out of the cab when the coconut chicken I ate at dinner resurfaces in the ghastliest way. It's nowhere near as appetizing the second time around.
Once the heaving racks hammering my body ease, Lexi hands me a wad of tissues from the glove compartment.
“Can I please have my cell?” I plead while wiping a remnant of vomit from my bottom lip.
“Please, Lexi,” I beg when she puts up a silent protest to my request. “Please.”
She huffs before leaning into the cabin of the truck to fish out my cell phone. The shake of my hand is obvious when I accept it and dial Marcus’s number. Although I’m a skittish bag of nerves, my determination remains resilient. This phone call is long overdue.
Marcus answers not even two rings later. “Cleo, where the hell are you? I told you to take Brodie with you. Why did you leave without—”
“Did I break us?” I interrupt, my voice displaying I’m on the verge of tears but mighty pissed off. My eyes are brimming with so much moisture, I’m certain they are moments away from bursting, but the anger roaring through my veins is keeping them at bay.
“I didn’t mean to break us. I like what we did, but if I knew you were going to hate it, I wouldn’t have asked you to do it.” My words are forced out my mouth so fast, they’re nothing more than a blubbering string of nonsense.
A chair scrapes across the ground before the stomps of shoe-covered feet bellow down the line. "Cleo. . . baby, please don't cry." Marcus’s words are jutted like he is pacing. "You haven't done anything wrong. I swear to God, we're okay." His voice is a stark contradiction to the fury
radiating down the phone. He sounds equally panicked and wrathful.
His term of endearment forces a stray tear to topple from my eye, but my broken heart is not crippled enough to stop me seeking answers. “Why are you lying to me, Marcus?”
“I’m not—”
“Stop, Marcus! I know you’re in New York. I know you never went to Florida. I know you’ve seen her. How much more proof do you need?” Anger quickly overtakes my heartache. “If you didn’t want to be with me anymore, you could have just said. You didn’t have to go to such lengths to get rid of me. We don’t have a contract, so you don’t owe me a specific amount of time. You owe me nothing but honesty.”
I hear his hand run over his clipped afro as he curses softly. “Cleo, I need you to stop talking and listen to me.” His demeanor is calm and controlled, an absolute contradiction to the woman he is talking to. I’m shaking so much, my teeth are chattering as if I’m standing in the middle of the arctic, and my shuddering response has nothing to do with the freezing winter temps curling around my body.
“You need to trust me. Remember, being trusted is a compliment greater than being loved,” Marcus implores, using the same pleas he made the last time he lied.
"Just like the smallest lie encourages doubt in the biggest truth. A lie, no matter what size, cracks the foundation trust is built on. You lied to me, Marcus. Over and over again," I reply, my tone devastated yet firm.
Suddenly, my spine snaps straight when a male voice says, “I’ve got a trace on her cell. She is on highway 32, half a mile down from off-ramp 12.”
Before I can register my disgust that he tracked my cell, Marcus says, “Stay where you are, Cleo. I’m coming to get you, then I’ll explain everything.” His words are breathless as if he is running.
I push my cell in close to my ear when a faint tune sounds down the line. Although the music isn't overly familiar, I'm confident I've heard it before, I just can't recall exactly where.
Air evicts from my body in a brutal grunt when recollection dawns. The soft, ambient music has me recalling a time when the pleasantry of the tune didn't match the explicit scenes unfolding before my very eyes. Scenes only attendees at an exclusive invitation-only gathering would see. It's the same music that was playing the night I was a guest at a BDSM club in lower Manhattan. It's the music played in Chains.
Lexi gasps when I suddenly question, “Are you at Chains?”
A string of garbled words leave Marcus's mouth. Although I'm certain he is speaking English, I’m only listening for two words: yes or no.
When I fail to hear either of those words, I snarl, "Answer the goddamn question, Marcus! Are you at Chains?!" My voice is so loud a pack of dogs start howling in the distance, startled by my brittle tone.
Marcus waits a beat before he breathes out, “Yes, but—”
The rest of his sentence is lost when my phone slips from my grasp, shattering into a million pieces when it collides with the asphalt. I close my eyes and raise my head to the sky, struggling to hold back the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks at any moment. It's a pointless effort when the cool breeze blowing across my face contrasts against the fat, hot tears sliding down my cheeks.
I count backward from thirty, giving my heart the chance to mourn the end of my relationship before returning my chin to its normal position and fluttering open my eyes.
“I need a drink. . . or fifty,” I instruct Lexi, who is staring at me with worry.
Remaining quiet with sheer alarm tainting her beautiful face, she nods before aiding me back into Jackson's truck. After cocooning my shuddering frame with her tiny body, she signals for Jackson to continue our journey, leaving my shattered cell on the edge of the road looking as mangled as my heart feels.
16
The first two hours of Luke's party flies by. I bounce between guests, acting as if the last six years of my life never happened. But like all alcohol-induced happiness, my wine-inspired social butterfly routine is nipped in the bud even more quickly than it began. For the past hour, I've floundered around, willfully moving from group to group, hoping to feel welcomed in one of the cliques parties like this always attract. Unfortunately, just like my night at Chains, I don't belong here either. It isn't that I don't feel welcome; it’s just no amount of idle chit-chat and warm alcohol can cure debilitating heartache.
Needing some fresh air, I weave through the partygoers bumping and grinding on the makeshift dance floor in the middle of Luke’s parents’ house until I merge onto the wooden deck at the back of their sprawling property. I shake my head in disbelief when I spot a handful of birthday guests swimming in the pool—barren of any clothes. Although the pool is heated, no amount of alcohol-fueled bravery would have me stripping down in front of hundreds of guests for an impromptu swim. I’ve never been overly audacious. That’s why I’m so surprised at how much I loved Marcus’s dominance. I’ve always said I am a strong-willed and determined young lady. Clearly, that isn’t the case. Just my miserable attempt at enjoying the celebration of a dear friend shows how pathetic I’ve become.
Not anymore. This miserable Cleo act ends tonight.
The familiar giggle of Lexi sounds through my ears when I reach the pool room at the back of manicured grounds. Considering Lexi’s laughter came from the direction of the pool, I keep my gaze front and center, not trusting my sister’s wild antics. The last thing I need is to see her in the buff once more.
I inhale deeply when the scent of Luke's aftershave he wore in college lingers into my nose. Back in the day, this used to be Luke's bedroom. He wanted privacy, and supposedly a detached dwelling mere feet from the principal residence was the perfect solution for his predicament. I feel a rush of heat creep across my cheeks when I recall some of the events that took place in this room. This is the very room I lost my virginity in. It was a highly awkward and stumbling time. Thank god Luke was also a virgin, so he was just as ill-informed on the probability of orgasming during sex as I was. He never once voiced a concern that I didn't climax during sex, because he didn't know I was supposed to.
My pupils widen when my trip down memory lane is interrupted by the man I was thinking about. Luke walks out of a steam-filled bathroom with nothing but a thin towel wrapped around his drenched hips.
Allowing the alcohol lacing my veins to get the better of me, my eyes drink in his carved body, veined arms, and glistening pecs unashamed—not once, but twice!
“Cleo,” Luke greets, shocked when he spots me standing at the side of his bed, obsessively ogling him.
“Hey.” I cringe, loathing my lack of elegance. “Sorry. I was just seeking a place of solitude. It’s getting a little rowdy out there.”
Luke smiles a grin that makes him look younger than his twenty-six years. “It is. It reminds me a lot of our high school parties. Although I don’t recall the pool being quite that cold.”
When he peers out to the pool, I follow the direction of his gaze. As I suspected, Lexi is in the pool. Thank god my eyesight is poor enough I can’t tell if she is naked or not. Not that I can see either way since her tiny body is swamped by Jackson’s large frame.
“She is very much like you,” Luke laughs when he spots Lexi sucking face with Jackson.
I fiddle with the hem of my dress to stop myself from rolling my eyes like a fifth grader. “Only ten times wilder.”
My eyes snap to Luke when he throws his head back and chuckles. "You keep telling yourself that, Cleo, then maybe one day people might believe it."
"I wasn't that bad, was I?" My eyes widen in shock when my voice comes out all throaty as if I'm a little sex kitten purring at his heel, begging for him to stroke my back.
I’m not the only one who noticed the change in my vocals. Luke’s eyes blaze with excitement as his towel fails to conceal his impressively stiff manhood. I bite on the inside of my cheek, vainly trying to hold the snippet of modesty I have left as I divert my eyes away from his erect cock.
“Oh shit,” Luke grumbles as he snags a pai
r of jeans off a rumpled bed to yank them up his thighs. “I swear to God, Cleo, if you blush, you’re not leaving this room with your virtue intact.”
I giggle as heat blooms across the shallow blackness in my chest. “You can’t use the same line years later, Luke. It’s just tacky.”
Luke’s laughter warms my chest even more, soothing some of the nicks Marcus’s betrayal caused. “Why not? You’re acting like you’ve never seen my cock. We both know you sure as hell have.”
"It's different now." I twist my head to the side to ensure he is dressed before shifting on my feet to face him. He is clothed. Well, if you consider wearing a pair of jeans commando as dressed, he is. "You were only a boy back then, so things could have changed."
I’m disgusted with myself when my eyes drop to the zipper of his jeans as I chew on my bottom lip. Marcus’s betrayal hurt, but two wrongs never make a right.
Pretending I wasn’t just eyeballing him with suggestion, I pick up a throw cushion scattered on the floor and peg it at Luke’s head when he grabs his crotch and asks, "Did you want to check?"
“You’re disgusting,” I mumble, faking annoyance. I’m not annoyed. It's great bantering with him again. I feel like I’ve flashed back to my teen years. I’m just peeved at myself. I’m acting like a harlot with no morals.
Sensing my thoughts have veered toward the negative, Luke says, “And you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.” He wraps his arms around my waist before drawing me into his bare wet torso. “I’ll lasso the moon if you want me to.”
“If you do, I’ll throw it straight back, because out of all the stars in the sky, none will shine brighter than you,” I quote my half of our shared declaration from our two-year courtship.
Luke smiles, appreciating that I remembered the saying he created. “So what’s all this about?” His worried gaze dances between mine. “I’ve never seen your eyes so lifeless, Cleo, not even after. . .”