I had tasted that freckle too many times to count.
I dropped my drink, and the liquor scattered over the carpet. It had barely sunk into the fabric before I was searing a path into the center of the ballroom, shoulders locked, my fingers balled so tightly into a fist that I thought they might break. Every piece of me, every body part, was on fire. And frankly? I was ready to burn this bitch to the ground.
Thirty feet had turned to twenty and before I could make it to ten, a splash of cold reality doused the flame. I stopped on the dime, to the sight of Griff’s slight smirk and the slow seductive one of the woman beside him. They both smiled
“Well, look what I have here…” Griff gripped the woman at his side. “Looks like I found an old friend. This lovely lady here says she knows you, Foxx. She seems to have known you very well.”
I practically saw red as he thrust her into my face.
Christy Nicholson.
Desperate housewife. And the last person I wanted to see. I've barely glanced at her before turning to Griff.
“So, I see. And it seems that in that amount of time you two have gotten quite friendly.”
My best friend winked. “You know me I'm always… ‘up’ for making new friends.” He rocked back on his heels, grinning.
“You're always ‘up’ for anything. You’ve never been picky.”
He frowned, looking down at Christy who excused herself for a drink. It seemed that Christy Nicholson had grown into the type of woman that had never seen a martini she didn't like. It was the second time in two days that I had seen her, and she was slightly sloshed during both, her breathy, high-pitched voice slurred.
I stared at Griff.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?”
He threw his hands up in the air, clueless. “What? I thought you were into the Betty, the blonde?”
“The only thing I'm going to get into…” I growled. “… is your fucking ass. If you want to bang the boozy blonde, then keep that to yourself. Otherwise, leave me out of it.”
“Ohhhh…” Griff nodded slowly. “I get it. Chasing Veronica down, are you? Well, from what I saw, Veronica was chasing Jughead. You might want to give this one up Archie.”
I came closer to him. “Griff… I've grown up with you. Watched you make it through nearly twenty long years. But if you want to make it to twenty-eight, you’ll shut the fuck up and mind your business with this one.”
He shrugged. “Fine. But if you need me later, don't come calling, alright? I'll be knee-deep in some Betty.” He walked off, swaggering back to the bar where Christy stood. I didn't tell him about Christy's current marriage situation. I didn't care.
All that mattered to me was the brunette I hadn't been able to get out of my mind. But she was nowhere in sight. I stomped towards the center of the amber-lit ballroom, but when I went to split the crowd that had surrounded her and Harrison, the middle of the pack was empty.
I wanted to roar with rage. I was too fucking late. And she… she was gone….
***
KAT
I couldn't remember the last time I felt like this. The rooms were spinning.
I was floating on a cloud I couldn't come down from, and every time I tried to descend my way back to earth, another sip of my drink sent me flying again.
Maybe it was because my stomach was empty. I hadn’t eaten the awful food at the dinner table, and what few bites I managed to make into my mouth, I barely swallowed. The sour taste of potential failure had tainted everything. I was drowning in my own self-pity, and to throw myself a life raft, I let myself cling to the dinghy that was abject drunkenness, praying that it would take me away from the feeling of powerlessness that was overwhelming me
I had put my life into my business, sunk my soul into my small press. Making it in the publishing world was all that had mattered to me for the past five years, and to think that that dream wouldn't come to pass was a prospect I’d pay to avoid.
Luckily I didn't have to. Harrison provided the drinks, and the only tab I'd run up for the evening was the tally of fucks I had to give. For a moment, even if it was fleeting, I was free.
I’d leave and stop thinking of Harrison as a meal ticket and more as a temporary partner in crime, a companion to scare the sorrows away.
We headed into the hallway, passing under the chandeliers with a laugh in our throats and Harrison's flask in my hand. I held onto his Armani-covered arm.
“Can you believe these people?” I snorted. “That woman practically soiled herself when you said hello. You have to buy stock in Pampers. Trust me; you’d make a mint.”
“I don't know about that,” he chuckled, hanging his head humbly. “A couple of guys back there might've crapped themselves looking at you. That one guy could've caught a family of flies with that open mouth, and the other nearly drooled on my fucking shoes. They were a mess.”
I giggled feeling artificially giddy. “well what a pair we make. The publisher and the publish-ee. Those New York dickheads were fools to let you go. If you were my client, I’d hold onto you for dear life.”
His eyes flashed. “is that so?”
“Of course,” I said, staring into the swirling skylights. “Your book is going to be huge. I mean, you're huge. Everything is going to be huge, and anyone that doesn't want to be a part of that doesn't know diddly.”
I stumbled on my heel, reaching out for Harrison. His finger slid along the silk at my side, and as he sought to steady my stance, I felt the flickering of a sense of fear, some small warning signal that was slowly working its way into the back of my thoughts. I didn't know whether to brush it aside.
Harrison was too busy helping me to catch on to my feelings. “Here,” he muttered. “Let's fix that heel.”
My walk began to turn into a sway. The isolated hallway outside of the ballrooms felt smaller and smaller, and suddenly I didn't recognize the corners in which we were heading. The rooms had shrunk.
How had we wound up in the stairwell?
I found myself sitting. My head was leaned against the cold tile of a white-washed wall, and suddenly the flickering that had been in my head was slowly working its way between my legs. A feathering touch had found its way under the skirt of my dress, and I swatted it away, jumping when I realized that it was Harrison's hands.
I pushed him off. At least, I tried to.
He was leaning over me, hovering. “Come on,” he whispered, rasping. “I know you want it. You said I was going to be huge. I want to show you how huge I can be.” His hot breath was heavy against my neck. Somehow, in the span of one minute, Harrison had shrugged out of his jacket, removed his shoes. His collar was unbuttoned, and he was rubbing his body against the length of mine. I could feel his unwanted heat, his heavy knuckles… and the brushings of a hard-on.
I slapped at his chest, but the movement fell slow. Way too slow.
Fuck. Had I drunk that much? Sure, I was taking healthy swigs, but I wasn’t a lightweight by any means. I knew my limits. With Elena for a sister and a best friend in Laney, those two had made sure I’d found them.
But Harrison's bourbon had pushed me way beyond them. I feel dizzy—drugged. Had I seen Harrison take a sip of his own lethal mixture? I wasn't sure that I had, and that niggling signal of fear became a full-on fire alarm. I beat on Harrison's chest, trying to break his concentration, but his focus was unwavering. His palms were everywhere. All over me. And the helping hand he had provided earlier was rough and invasive.
I started to bring my knee right towards his nuts, but the motion was glacial and he blocked it. A scream started to form in my throat, and before I could let it loose, I looked up to find Harrison hanging from the ceiling. Or rather hanging from someone's hand.
Five fingers were wrapped around his opened collar, hoisting him high into the air. The hand threw him against the wall with a bone-breaking crunch, and when I glanced upwards, I found that the face associated with the hand was none other than Ethan’s. His countenance was full of rage. Chocolate-colored eyes be
neath a set of thick golden brows were dark and stormy, and the storm was centered around Harrison’s head, which was now bleeding from the hairline.
Harrison held out his palms. “Wait a second,” he said. “Just h-hold on now, alright?” He pointed in my direction. “She came on to me. Whatever I did, she wanted. Now, don't make this more than it is. This is all just one big misunderstanding.”
He cowered under the thunderous stalk that was Ethan’s walk. It was like the beginning of a hurricane—slow-moving and deadly. Ethan circled his prey.
“I get it. It's never your fault because they all want it, right? Women are somehow just waiting to be fucked… at least in your opinion they are. Let me make something clear here, Harry. The only person here who’s getting fucked… is you. Now, take your beating like a champ, champ.” He rolled up his sleeves. “I’d hate to see a grown man cry…”
And then he let him have it. A fast fist connected with Harrison’s cheekbone, and the scumbag’s head went flying sideways. His face barely moved before Ethan was slamming a knee to his solar plexus, doubling the douche bag at the waist as he landed on the staircase below, his body crumbling on the steps. He let out a groan that sounded more like a gurgle, and Ethan reached for him to reveal a mouth full of blood.
Mr. Hollywood had lost a tooth. Maybe a couple of them.
He was angry—that was clear enough. He mumbled around his mess of a mouth, half-dazed, and as he staggered to his feet, clumsy and awkward, Ethan simply waited, calmer than the eye of a tornado ready to strike. His tux was barely intact, the tie undone. I hadn’t noticed that he had thrown his jacket aside earlier when he had gone for Harrison, and the heavy garment lay beside me on the stairs, smelling of him, a coffee-flavored aroma that felt so familiar—even more so than before. He’d always been more sophisticated than the others around—more in control.
Even then, nine years back, a sense of power and wealth came off his body in actual waves, and though he tried desperately to hide it, it showed in the way he walked, the way he talked—the way he fucked. He once ripped through my clothes as if money—and, clearly, lace, were no barrier, and when I touched the fabric of his expensive jacket as I sat on the steps, I realized that it felt hot… as if his skin were on fire. His eyes certainly were.
Lava-like and earthy, they seared a hole into Harrison’s skull with the power of a hundred exploding suns, and I remembered a time when they held a different type of fire—a blaze that my foggy mind was too fuzzy to remember right. I stared at the showdown, feeling myself sink into an abyss.
I could barely keep my eyes up. A darkness inside was pulling me down deep.
But the sound of skin-to-skin contact shook me upright. Harrison lunged for Ethan in the tiny space on the stairwell landing. He overextended his body, trapping himself right into a headlock as Ethan wrapped him up tight, holding his neck into a crushing vice.
Harrison strained within his restraints, making little leeway as Ethan gripped him. He swung Harrison’s body into the wall for a second time, and this time when Harrison stood, Ethan pummeled him, knocking a fist against his jaw, planting another one into the bastard’s abdomen in a move that took the wind from the fucker’s lungs, causing him to suck for breaths. The sound was sickening and oddly satisfying.
The slightly smaller man tried to grab for Ethan, but the broader, stronger Ethan simply stepped away, avoiding his swipes. He struck forward for the finishing blow and as he landed an elbow to the back of Harrison’s neck, bringing the struggling stranger to his knees, he gave him one last little push that crumbled the megastar to the floor. With no final statements or fanfare, the six foot-three wall of flesh and bone walked over the heap that used to be a person and grabbed my hand, half-carrying me to my wobbly, swollen feet.
The next thing I felt were strong arms beneath me, holding me in the air. They swept me into their safety, and I settled into their unsettling warmth. I breathed a sigh that was foreign to my own ears, and before I could finally close my eyes, I felt a kiss—soft and subtle, just above my brow, stamping solidly on my furrowed forehead.
But the touch was gone just as quickly as it appeared. It was the first time I remembered feeling safe since the rescue from the fire… and it was the last thing I remembered that night…
Only Yesterday
All time exists. That is the truth.... If the future did not exist now, how could we journey toward it? If the past does not exist still, how could we leave it behind?
- Gene Wolfe
KAT
The next morning I felt like a train had hit me… and dragged me for forty feet when it was done.
My head was pounding. My limbs felt numb. A sickening feeling had settled in my stomach, and nausea had me running to the bathroom more times than I cared to admit, making me empty out what little contents had made their way into my belly from the night before.
I had definitely been drugged.
The knowledge of what had almost happened to me made the illness even worse. Before I could head back into the conference, I dialed Laney on her room line. The moment she arrived, pajama clad and worried, I filled her in on everything—well, everything that had to do with my rescue and not the way I was feeling about Ethan. I kept those little tidbits to myself.
Laney balked when I finished.
She sat straight. “Wow,” she gaped. “It's like something out of those stupid little action films you love.”
“I'd like to think of it more as a horror show.”
“Well, that, too. But I wish I could've been there. I would've chewed that fucker up and spit him out. Lucky for him Ethan was there. I honestly would've tried to kill the bastard.”
I grimaced. “I think Ethan almost did…”
Laney nodded once, appearing grim. “Good. Serves that asshole right. To think that he could get away with doing that…” She shuddered staring at the ground. “I'm sure he's gotten away with it before.”
I peeled myself away from the bathroom floor. “If not, then he definitely got bolder this time. Bastards like him only get progressively worse. He might think twice about it next go-around. That is… if he ever recovers from sucking his food through a straw. Ethan messed him up pretty good.”
Laney looked over at me. “Makes you think, huh?”
“Makes you think what?”
“About what Ethan is really doing here?” She fingered the fringes of her red hair. “We haven't heard from him in almost a decade. Last time I saw him, he was a suburban-Tupac circa the Death Row era. Now he's here? Cleaned up? Sophisticated?” She shook her head. “Seems to me he came here for someone. Someone who has made a name for herself. Someone who recently showed up in a few national newspapers with their fire story…”
I stood feeling nauseous again. “Nunh unh. No way. I don’t believe it…” Though maybe a bit of me did. What had brought Ethan back?
And would I be absolutely insane to believe that the real reason actually was me?
The thought made my stomach tight. Tendrils of a feeling I hadn’t explored in eons reached for me from the past, and I tried to push them aside, mentally slapping myself for letting them take hold. It wasn’t above me to forgive but I certainly couldn't forget.
Ethan Riske may not have been as big of a bastard as Harrison Kennedy… but he was still a bastard. He broke my heart in the most brutal of ways, and the naïve-hearted teenager I’d been had hardened into a half bitter adult. Even I could admit that.
Was the bitterness warranted? Of course. Harrison Kennedy has cemented that fact. But a piece of me longed for the idyllic dreamer I’d been—the one that had almost believed that maybe first loves could last forever, that you could soak yourself in your dream job by day… and sink your body into the arms of a beautiful man every night.
That dream now seemed as far-fetched as Harrison Kennedy re-growing a tooth.
I put the conversation with Laney on the back burner, brushed my teeth and showered. By midday, I almost felt like a real person. Actually m
anaged to make it to one of the last publishing panels before nightfall crept in.
On the last day of the summit, the scene was silent and serene. Most people were retiring from the amenities of the resort for the night, packing their belongings and preparing to head back to whatever reality awaited them at home.
Me? For some reason, I wanted to spend a few more hours in my fucked up fantasy—away from fires and firings, competitive CEOs and the chat rooms that contained them. I still hadn't forgotten Brendon Foxx… but the mysterious executive wasn't exactly on my list of things to do.
I needed to walk by myself tonight—gather my scattered thoughts. I left Laney alone with a couple of talkative female agents and a cute waiter. Still in the day’s white blouse and black pencil skirt, I contemplated wading in the shallow area of one of the resort’s many darkened pools when I decided to literally test the waters instead. Dim lights on the far end of the pool beckoned me as I breathed in the smell of cool chlorine and water. The waves of the nearby lake on the resort relaxed every muscle in my body, and as I sat by the edge of the cold, wet, blue glow, I removed my high-heeled shoes to stick my bare feet inside.
Leaning back luxuriously, raising my face to the sky, I planted the heels of my hands on the concrete surface beneath me. I lost myself in the soothing noise from the quiet splashes.
Until the splashes got louder.
Something broke the surface of the chlorinated water, and I almost stumbled backwards, attempting to stand to my feet. By the time I got to them, he was already climbing out the slowly lapping surface.
He was soaking wet head to toe. Tight blue trunks hugged the muscular thighs that were now walking towards me, and as the man from the water slid the black cap on his head back, I noticed the gold that lay beneath. The strands of dark blond hair were slick and pushed backwards off his face. A pair of dark goggles covered half of his deepening scowl and as he pushed the frames above his brow, I had to squint to make out the features of the soaking stranger’s face.
Riske and Revenge: A Second Chance, Enemies Romance (Revenge series Book 1) Page 13