I sat up, fists bunching. No. I thumped the bed. No, no way. Keep it simple. Keep it about sex. That’s all I can offer her. I wanted to scream in frustration—at what could have been, if I’d been a different person.
My phone rang. Darrell.
“Uh huh?”
“You’re breathing heavy,” Darrell said. “Are you at the gym?”
I took a deep breath. “No. Clarissa’s place.”
“Should I call back? The two of you aren’t—”
“We were. Natasha and her just left.”
“What?”
I almost laughed at that. Clarissa and Natasha together…now there was a thought. “Chill, you idiot. Natasha walked in on us. Clarissa’s gone to the kitchen to explain.”
“Explain?”
I ran a hand over my face. “There was spanking.”
I heard him sigh. “How did she look?”
I grinned. “Fantastic. Smokin’ hot bod. We started out up against the wall—”
“Natasha! How did Natasha look? Did she look upset?”
“I didn’t get a good look at her.” I frowned. “Why?”
Darrell sighed. “We had a fight.”
“Oh. You want me to go see?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold up,” I told him. “I’ll go make a sandwich.”
I put the phone down on the bed and ambled through to the kitchen. I briefly thought about putting my t-shirt back on, but, hell, Natasha was a grown woman—she’d seen it all before, right?
In the kitchen, I kissed Clarissa on the back of the head. They both shut up as soon as I appeared—not a good sign. I snuck glances at them as I slapped some cold meat and mustard on bread. Clarissa looked worried. Natasha looked broken-hearted.
I tried to drag Clarissa back to the bedroom so I could ask her what Natasha had said, but she waved me away—probably assuming I just wanted sex. I went back to her room and picked up the phone.
“How did she look?” asked Darrell immediately.
“There’s definitely somethin’ wrong with her, man. They shut up when I came in. What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.” I heard Darrell sigh. “Something. I’m not sure.”
I shook my head, a tight ball of anger swelling in my chest. Here I was, wanting things to go beyond sex with Clarissa, and I couldn’t, for her sake. I had to keep it casual, which would probably doom it eventually. Darrell was a goddamn millionaire, reliable and open and sweet and all that shit women love. He was free to do whatever he wanted, but he was messing it up. “You’re crazy, man. First girl you really like in years and you fight with her?”
“I’ve dated other girls.” He sounded defensive.
“But you haven’t liked them.”
There was a pause while he thought about that. “Okay, I’m an idiot,” he said.
“I already knew that. What’d you fight about?”
“Just some stuff in her past. I wanted to know, and she didn’t want to tell me.”
“Oh.” Now I understood. “You mean: she had a secret and you were being you.”
“What does that mean?” He sounded annoyed…and a little worried.
“Obsessive and a pain in the ass,” I told him.
I could almost hear him gaping. “I’m not obsessive. I’m…thorough.”
“Which is awesome when you’re working but not good with fragile chicks.”
Another pause. “I didn’t know she was fragile,” he said. “Natasha’s fragile?”
“Everybody’s fragile, man.”
“Even you?”
I lay back on the bed. No, of course I wasn’t fragile. Not Neil. Not the biker, big and strong and silent. I’m just fine out there on my own, thank you kindly. Out there on my own…forever. “Maybe not me,” I told him, making sure it sounded like a joke. “Everybody else.”
He sighed. “Okay, okay. Stay out of her past. What else?”
“Call her,” I told him.
Chapter 12
Clarissa
Natasha filled me in on what had happened on their date. How Darrell had stood her up because he’d been too caught up in his work. How some creepy guy in the bar had tried to feel her up, and she’d run to the restrooms and almost cut. How Darrell had arrived and stopped her, taken her back to his mansion and fed her champagne and pizza and eventually made love to her on the table.
The high point, of him finding her scars and not caring. When she’d believed that he somehow knew about her cutting and accepted it—accepted her, for who she was.
And then the low point. The next morning, when she realized that Darrell thought she’d been abused—that her foster father had been the one who cut her. Now she felt guilty, not just for the cutting but for his misplaced kindness. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t misplaced—that she deserved kindness and love, that she deserved a man like Darrell. But I knew that whatever I said just thudded uselessly against the dark wall she’d built around herself. I knew about the cutting, but I still didn’t know her reason for doing it and, until someone finally convinced her to share it, I knew she wouldn’t be able to start letting go of it.
She slunk back to her room in despair, and I heard her get onto the exercise bike. My heart was breaking for her, but there was nothing more I could do, for now. It sounded like she and Darrell were over, and I had mixed feelings about that. I’d thought from the start that it was all happening too fast, but she’d been so happy with him…. The guy still made me mad, sometimes—what kind of guy gets so immersed in his work that he forgets a date?!—but now that I saw her without him, I realized how good he’d been for her.
I sighed and padded back to my room to check on Neil. Just as I got there, I heard him on the phone.
It sounded as if he was talking to Darrell. Asking what they’d fought about. Angry at Darrell for messing things up with the first girl he’d cared about.
I froze there in the corridor, amazed. Was this really Neil talking? Gruff, monosyllabic Neil?!
“Everybody’s fragile, man,” I heard Neil say. I pressed myself against the wall, shocked. Was he really talking about feelings and emotions? This man who’d wanted to keep our relationship just about sex?
I could feel my heart suddenly pounding in my chest. I wanted more. It was the first time I’d really, fully admitted it to myself. I wanted more. And all along, I’d been hoping that maybe, deep down inside, there was some softer, gentler side to Neil that he kept hidden away. Now I knew it existed…but in a way that only made it worse. If he was capable of feeling—of love, maybe—but didn’t want that with me…what did that say about me?
I heard him end the call, waited a few seconds so it didn’t look as if I’d been standing out there listening and then went in. He was lying on the bed, still stripped to the waist. As I came in, he turned onto his side to face me, the broad curves of his pecs and those rippling abs tempting me. I wanted to leap on him. Instead, I closed the door and forced myself to sit down, cross-legged on the floor.
“What the hell is with your friend?” I asked. “Nat’s really upset.”
I was hoping, praying that I’d get to see some of the Neil I’d just overheard. But when he spoke, he was back to his old self—gruff and arrogant, all man. “He’ll call her,” he said with a shrug. Not mentioning that he’d just been on the phone imploring Darrell to do just that. Why was he so ashamed to admit that he had feelings? Why couldn’t he just open up?
I sat there staring at the floor for a moment. He patted the bed next to him, but I shook my head. He sighed and rolled over onto his back. “What?” he asked, staring at the ceiling.
“I don’t know if I want to do this,” I told him.
“You were into it enough before Nat came home….”
“No—”
He rolled to face me again. “You were damn near climbing that wall when I had the vibe on you—”
“Shut up—”
“And when I was spanking you, you were just about ready to—”
I could feel my face getting hot. “I didn’t mean that! I meant this whole thing. This relationship. I’m not sure I can just—I’m not sure it can just be about sex.”
I saw something cross his face. Frustration, which I expected. But something else, too. Pain. “I told you,” he said, his voice strained, “that’s all I got.”
I knelt up, moving closer to the bed. “I don’t believe that.”
“Girl, you’re seein’ somethin’ that ain’t there.”
I could feel his anger rising, and this wasn’t the same sort of anger I’d felt in the kitchen that time, the sort that led to kissing. This was the other sort, dark and jagged and raw, dredged up from deep inside him. The sort of anger he fought to control. I knew it was dangerous…but maybe it was the only way to get a glimpse of what was going on inside him.
“Why won’t you explain it to me?” I moved even closer, looking up at him, our faces inches apart, now. “Just talk to me! I know that there’s more to you than this!”
He swung his legs around so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed facing me and gave a low growl of frustration. When he spoke again, his voice was rough with pain. “Why? Why do you think that? There isn’t, okay? What you see is what you damn well get.”
My eyes felt hot. Oh shit. I never cried.
He stared up at the ceiling for a second and took a couple of deep breaths. When he looked back down at me, his eyes were softer, his voice gentler. His huge hand came down to brush my cheek, and I could feel wetness under his fingertips. “Clarissa…I’m not that guy. You want someone to wake you up by droppin’ rose petals on you? Walk you up the aisle one day? I’m not him.” He looked at me steadily. “You’re just confused, ‘cause you’re findin’ out what you are.”
I looked down at the floor. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was that simple—he was just offering sex, and that was all I really wanted, but I was feeling so guilty about it that I was trying to pretend there was something more there. “I just want to know you,” I said forlornly.
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
“I don’t even know where you live! Can’t we go to your place, one time?”
“I live in Boston.”
It was both an explanation and a no at the same time. My jaw dropped open. Boston?! It made sense, now that I knew he was still at MIT, but I’d just assumed he was traveling there a few days a week and living here in NY. In a way, it didn’t make all that much difference—Boston wasn’t that far away. But in another, it made all the difference in the world. Now I knew why he showed up so infrequently, even when he wasn’t “out of town on business.” He was just visiting me in New York—hell, he’d only been visiting Darrell that day we met. He was a stranger here, and we’d met through pure chance. It shouldn’t have been a big deal but, somehow, it made what we had seem even more fragile.
And what did we have? Every time I looked at him on the bed, a dark, pulsing energy snaked through me. I couldn’t deny how he made me feel—no one had ever made me feel that way before and it was so strong it was frightening. And there was something else, too. Something deeper that I couldn’t give a name to, the first tiny shoots of what might grow into something great.
Then the common-sense part of my brain—the one that had carried me through my entire life so far—kicked in. This whole thing was ridiculous. He clearly wasn’t right for me. He was lying there telling me that he’d never be able to give me what I wanted—besides which, we were from two different worlds, opposites in just about every way. Even if I did get him to offer more than just sex, what sort of future did we really have—a ballerina and a biker?
I was enjoying the sex—hell, I was loving the sex. But every time we did more, with the knowledge that sex was all it was ever going to be, I felt guiltier. Eventually, I knew, the guilt would overpower the lust and then it would all come crashing down. The sooner I ended this, the less it would hurt.
And then, as we sat there in silence, I heard Nat through the wall. She’d stopped pedaling and she was talking—to Darrell. Her voice was full of pain, but I could hear the hope there, too.
If the two of them could figure things out, even with all of Nat’s issues, shouldn’t I at least give this a chance? Maybe, if we stayed together, I could get him to show me the real him.
It was worth a shot.
I climbed onto the bed alongside Neil and he put his arm around me. I nestled in closer and he pulled his arm a little tighter. It felt good, like he wanted to protect me. But it couldn’t be that, right? He wanted one thing and one thing only—he’d openly admitted that.
We drifted off to sleep like that—snuggled up close, but as distant as ever.
***
The next morning, he was gone. It wasn’t the fact he didn’t leave a note that hurt me. It was that, for the sort of thing we had going, that was normal, and nothing to be upset about. He was just sticking to the rules, keeping it about sex.
Nat filled me in on her phone call with Darrell. They’d patched things up and she’d agreed to go to some garden party at his place that afternoon.
“Please?” she asked, her eyes huge. “Just come along in case things don’t go well. I think this is make or break—you know?”
My heart melted. I did know—all too well. “Sure,” I told her. I’d probably be the lone singleton there, of course, but what the hell.
Unless….
I called Neil. He took a while to answer and, when he did, I could hear traffic rushing past. He was riding, I realized, and had pulled over to take the call. “Yeah?”
I bit my lip and told him about the party.
“Seriously?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “You think I’d fit in at one of Darrell’s parties? It’s dudes in jackets and twigs in dresses.”
“I think you’d look pretty amazing in a jacket,” I told him. I was sitting on my bed, and my free hand was playing with the edge of the comforter, nervously twisting it between my fingers. If he agreed to go, didn’t that mean something? Didn’t that mean he was willing to change, a little, for me? “I could help you find something to wear, if—”
“I got somethin’ to wear,” he growled. “I just don’t wear it here.”
Here? I frowned. Where was it that Neil went, when he went out of town on business? And what was he doing, that he needed to put on smart clothes?
He went quiet, as if he’d slipped up. Then, “I don’t know. It ain’t really my thing—you know?”
“Yes. Sorry.” I heard the tightness in my voice and fought to control it. “It’s fine. No problem. Just an idea. I’ll catch you another time.” And I hung up.
Catch you another time. That was what I had to look forward to. Booty calls and casual meets and never anything more than sex. What the hell was I doing?
Chapter 13
Clarissa
A few hours later, we were standing outside our apartment, watching the cab we’d called crawl towards us through slow-moving traffic. Natasha looked amazing—I’d lent her a sundress that looked better on her, with her slightly bigger boobs, than it ever did on me. I’d gone for a light, floaty thing that showed off a little leg but was otherwise—hopefully—demure enough for a garden party.
The cab finally pulled up and we got into the back seat. “Just the two of you?” the cabbie asked.
“Yep,” I said bravely. “Let’s go.”
At that moment, there was a heavy thud on the roof. Neil kept his hand there long enough to make sure that the cabbie had seen him, and then squatted down to look in through the rear window. “Room for one more?” he asked in a rumble.
He was wearing what looked to be an expensive fawn blazer that set off his long blond hair. He’d swapped his black jeans for smart blue ones the color of a summer night sky, and his biker boots for shining black shoes. I have a good eye for clothes, and his outfit must have cost at least a thousand bucks.
In answer, I opened the door for him. As he squeezed onto the seat next to me, his eyes never left m
e for a second. He looked troubled…and proud. I leaned close and softly kissed his cheek.
“Thank you,” I said seriously and he nodded.
He’d stepped out onto a tightrope. Now I had to try to take the next step towards him, without sending both of us plunging to our doom.
***
The party was everything you’d expect from a millionaire. A string quartet, waiters with trays of champagne, canapés and guests with a lot of money. I hung around Clarissa and Neil long enough to check they were okay, then slowly moved Neil away. I wanted us to have some time alone together.
Moving through the crowd with his arm around my waist sent a little flutter through me. For the first time, it was like we were on a date—like we were actually a couple. With his size and presence, he cruised through the other guests like an icebreaker.
A woman suddenly put her hand on Neil’s arm. “Neil! How glorious to see you at one of these things.” Her voice dripped syrupy poison. I had an immediate aversion to her, and not just because she was touching him. It was instinctual, like shying away from a black widow.
“Carol,” said Neil. Just one word, but it was encased in a tomb of ice.
My mind was whirling. Was she an ex? She didn’t look like one of the society girls circling Darrell—too old, although she was impeccably dressed. And her accent was upper-class British. When Neil made no move to introduce me, I stepped forward. “Hi,” I said. “Clarissa.”
She air-kissed me, full of fake delight. “He’s so rude,” she said, glancing at Neil. “Don’t you think?”
She’d neatly trapped me. I had to side with her and poke fun at Neil, or side with Neil and annoy her. Easy choice. I pulled myself closer to Neil. “Only around people he doesn’t like.”
Carol’s smile tightened, while Neil’s arm muscles relaxed just a little under my grip. We were a team.
Losing My Balance (Fenbrook Academy #1.5) Page 8