by Zoey Derrick
“Why even let her in at all?”
“Because she’s brought us a lot of business, including Vy.” He smiles and leaves me standing there. I turn back to see Becca nursing that blue cup like it’s a lifeline and I realize that girl has some serious issues. But Tristan wasn’t kidding, she’s got guys lining up to talk to her. I was one of them a short time ago. She is absolutely gorgeous, but good looks and crazy go hand in hand. I do gorgeous, not crazy.
Chapter 13
Ireland
“Peter Pan” - Kelsea Ballerini
The entire cab ride home is complete torture.
All I can think about is that fucking kiss.
Jesus, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
I cannot believe I caved with him so easily. I can’t possibly see how I can come back from that. How can I go back to hating him, being mad at him or even ignoring him after something like that? I let him consume me, heart, body and soul, if only for the briefest of moments. Now that I’ve crossed that line, even though I didn’t mean to, how am I supposed to go back to being oblivious to him?
His scent, his touch, his lips, his tongue, his taste…my head swims.
Getting home, that’s the goal. Get home, get the clothes off, take a shower, wipe his scent off me and forget it ever happened.
Who the fuck am I kidding?
God, his erection between us. There is no denying that kissing me had him hard. Despite the attempt, I know damn well his hard-on between us had nothing to do with Becca and everything to do with me. Even after I kneed him, he was still hard.
Maybe after all these years he still wants me.
Or he wants to see if he can bed you one more time for shits and giggles.
My subconscious is a real bitch sometimes.
I brush my teeth, twice. I still taste him on my tongue.
I shower, throw my clothes in the washer. I still smell him.
My body hums with a need unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.
What am I going to do?
I can’t give into him, not like this. I need answers to all my questions. I have to know what happened that night. I can’t possibly give into him again, not until I have my answers. Those answers hold the key to unlocking a languishing, dark part of me and if I don’t get those answers, how can I possibly trust him again? How can I possibly find it in my heart to forgive him? Can I get those answers and walk away from him? Satisfied that what happened between us wasn’t in vain? Or will those answers shatter the walls around my heart? Break free from the loss I feel because of him? I don’t know, yet.
What I do know is Dyson Cole has a hard-on for me.
I put forth extra effort to get to bed and get the lights turned off before Becca comes home. I’m hoping that if she thinks I’m either not home or I’m sleeping, she’ll leave me alone about what happened tonight. I listen to her talking to someone and the panic rises from my stomach. Jesus, she better not have brought him home with her. I will never forgive her for that. Or Dyson for that matter.
Fuck, my curiosity gets the better of me and I climb out of bed and carefully open my door so I don’t make any noise that will alert her to the fact I’m home and awake. The guy she’s with finally says something and relief floods through me. It’s most definitely not Dyson’s voice. I can’t stop my annoyed eye roll. He better be fucking gorgeous because that voice is obnoxious as fuck. I may not date guys, but even I have higher standards than that.
I quietly close my door. Once I’m satisfied they didn’t hear me, I crawl back into bed.
I don’t understand how she does it, but Becca has always been able to sleep with men she doesn’t know. Usually on the first date, usually drunk, and usually someone whose name she doesn’t remember in the morning. I’ve never understood how she can do that, but it’s obvious she and I are wired differently. For me, sex and love are synonymous. But then again, my one partner hardly makes me an expert, especially considering he left me after telling me it was about time he got between my legs. At least I know to prepare myself for morning. She’s a bitch. Between the hangover she’ll no doubt have and the typical Becca style walk of shame, she’s a bear.
Becca is predicable in a way that means one of two things is going to happen. One, she’ll be pissed because the dude fucks her and leaves without spending the night. Or two, she’ll be pissed because they’re not leaving in the morning. In a way, I get it, but at the same time, make up your fucking mind, would you? This is how she’s been as long as I’ve known her.
I make her sound like a complete and total slut and that’s not true. She’s not a ‘different guy every night’ kind of girl, just a ‘different guy every time I go out’ kind of girl. She goes out because she’s horny, wants to get laid or get drunk. All of which lead to her getting drunk and laid. Sometimes not in that order.
I was delighted when we moved out of the dorms and into an apartment during our junior year, at least then I didn’t have to sleep with headphones on and facing the wall when she brought men home with her. She had her own room.
Thinking about Becca and her bevy of men brings my thoughts back to my lack of men and right back to Dyson. My lips still prickle from his kiss, his taste lingers on my tongue and his scent is still in my nose. God, I will never be rid of him.
Until I looked at him and saw that panty melting smile on his face, walking away wasn’t that hard to do. He was still the prick in the barn, but that look, it said everything that words couldn’t. His erection between the two of us said even more. He still wants me.
The wetness between my legs tells me that he’s not the only one.
Flicking him off was on instinct. A survival tactic. I didn’t want him to think he’d won already and when he busted up laughing, I knew it didn’t work. Fucker.
Trying to get Dyson off my mind, I return to the new book I started earlier. This one is a sweeter romance, but if it didn’t tell the story of me and Dyson, I might not have been so interested in it. Then again, books like these always have a happily ever after and right now? That isn’t in the cards for me and Dyson. How could I possibly take him back after what he did to me?
I doze off before my brain becomes too muddled with the idea of finding it within myself to forgive him just yet.
“What the hell happened to you last night?”
I jump three feet into the air when Becca barges into my room, the door slamming against the wall. “I was sleeping, wench,” I groan, not ready to wake up.
“It’s damn near noon.” She bounces onto my bed, sending me off the bed slightly then back down. I grab the covers and pull them over my head.
“Good. I didn’t want to see your boy toy from last night.” She doesn’t say anything. “What was his name?”
She doesn’t answer and I peek under my covers to look at her, and she shrugs. Her eyes are sad. “You know you shouldn’t do this to yourself,” I admonish her.
“I know, but you ditched me and…” she sighs, “I don’t know. It just kind of happened.”
I snort. “Blu is twenty-five minutes from here, it doesn’t just happen.”
“Speaking of which, I have to go get my car.”
I roll my eyes are her. “You let him drive you home?”
She laughs. “Sure, I was pretty tipsy anyway.” She pulls the comforter down farther, effectively forcing me to look at her. “What the hell got into you last night?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Because talking about it means I have to tell her everything and I don’t want to do that. Not in the slightest.
“Spill it, woman.”
“The dude was being a dick to me earlier in the night. I figured I should save you from yourself. I threw your drink on him and took my knee to his balls for other reasons.” I give her a pointed look, as if I was trying to protect her from another douche and she seems pacified, for now.
She bursts out laughing. “What about your drink? Why’d you have to waste mine?”
I laugh
with her. She would totally point out it was her drink and not mine. “I needed the liquid courage, so I slammed mine. Yours was collateral damage.”
We banter back and forth for a while before we’re interrupted when the door buzzer goes off. “I’ll get it.” She bounds off toward the front door and I climb my way out of bed assuming it’s Mr. One Night Stand forgetting something.
I go to the bathroom and debate on taking a shower again. Last night I did what I could to remove him from my nose, but failed. I need to wash my hair and take a real shower.
I strip out of my clothes and I’m standing there naked waiting for the water to warm up when Becca barges in. I roll my eyes at her because closed doors don’t stop her, at least when it comes to me. I only closed the door all the way because I thought it was her one-night boyfriend at the door.
“Apparently Mr. Piña Colada likes having drinks tossed on him.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” There is no way Dyson knows where I live, is there?
I grab my robe from behind the door and turn the water off. She’s given me the impression Dyson is standing there waiting for me and panic rises as I take in my barely-there robe. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
When I walk around the corner into the kitchen, I’m not prepared for what I see. I’d expected Dyson, not a huge bouquet of yellow roses sitting on the counter next to my mother’s.
“Open it, open it.” Becca jumps up and down.
“No.” I walk back toward my bathroom. I need a shower and some fucking coffee if I’m going to have to deal with Dyson Cole today.
“You can’t ignore them forever,” she yells at me as I close the bathroom door.
“Watch me,” I mumble to myself. Sliding the robe from my shoulders, the silkiness of the fabric sends goosebumps down my arms and my nipples harden. “Dammit,” I grumble as the visual of Dyson kissing me last night plays through my mind. The feel of his erection against my stomach, the need and desire I felt burns hot in my veins.
I lock the door and climb into the shower.
I’ve always been well-endowed in the chest. Even after losing all that weight in high school, the one thing that never went away were my tits. Though their double D size makes tits a loose representation of the term. No, they are boobs. Big, voluptuous boobs. With equally large nipples atop them. If there is one thing I am thankful for with my body it’s that I have porn star quality tits without surgery to achieve them.
The curves of my chest are matched by the curves of my hips and the bubble of an ass I have to go along with everything else. I thought for sure losing all that weight would tone them down, but running and exercising only made them more pronounced.
Thinking about my body reminds me it’s been more than two weeks since I’ve gone to the gym. I shrug it off. I’ll get there, eventually.
While in the shower it takes every ounce of strength I have not to slide my fingers through my sex, and find the release I so desperately seem to need. I don’t know why I stop myself, but I do.
Once I’m out of the shower, Becca pounces all over me to open the damn card. Finally, once I’ve got my hair pulled back into a pony tail, my favorite Nirvana t-shirt on with a pair of jeans, I go into the kitchen to make myself some coffee. Becca managed to disappear and I look at the clock, it’s just after one. “You working today?” I shout toward her room.
“Unfortunately,” she replies.
Thank god, I don’t need her prying further about the card. I reach for it, hoping like hell I can read it and throw it away before she comes back out.
Just as I’m about to lift the flap of the envelope, she comes out of her room. “About time.”
“Why didn’t you just open it and look yourself?” I ask her. “You’re not exactly the ‘keep your nose out of other people’s business’ type.”
She blushes bright red.
“I fucking knew it. So, Miss Snoopy Pants, what does it say?”
She scrunches up her nose. “I have no idea. It didn’t make any sense to me.”
I cock my head at her and pull the card from the envelope. There is no name on the card, just one simple line:
Say my name.
Bastard. “Huh,” I huff and shake my head.
“Care to explain?” Becca asks me.
“Nope.” Not in the slightest.
“You’re no fucking fun. I tell you everything.”
I glare at her. “And some things are far too embarrassing to say out loud,” I snap at her.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Look at you, you’re fucking gorgeous.”
I snort. “I didn’t always look like this.”
It’s her turn to give me a quizzical look. “You’ve looked like this as long as I’ve known you.”
“Come on,” I tell her and head for my room. I haven’t bothered to open my yearbook in years. It got to be too painful to look at.
After Dyson left town, we’d already taken the school photos that would appear in the yearbook so I made mom get me one just so I could have one more photo of him. Though I didn’t tell her that. In fact, I never told her about what happened between Dyson and me. She just knew whenever Dusty mentioned Dyson’s name, I’d leave the room.
I open up the yearbook and flip to my freshmen class. It was small, only fifty-six people in it, so it isn’t hard to find me.
“Holy shit.” She looks from the picture to me and back a few times. “There is no way that’s you,” she tells me in disbelief.
“Oh, it is.” I pull out a picture I’d stuck inside the book. It was the picture that was my daily motivation for a long time. It’s a full body shot, with clothes on, I had mom take for me so I had a visual of what I used to be and I show it to Becca.
“Well, look at you, I would have never guessed.”
I laugh, “Where in the hell did you think the hips and ass came from?”
Becca laughs, “I would have never guessed. You eat anything and you don’t think twice about it.”
“Yeah, but I also spend way too much time in the gym burning it off.”
Becca had to leave for work after our talk and I stand in the kitchen staring at the damn yellow roses Dyson sent me. I concoct a plan sure to make him crazy.
Chapter 14
DYSON
“Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” - Sophie B. Hawkins
The rest of the weekend passes in a blur. I was busy dealing with some issues in New York. I need to get up there and take care of them before they get too far out of hand, but I’m avoiding it like the plague it is and I couldn’t figure out why until this morning. I’m holding out, waiting for Shelly to tell me when she’s starting. Then I can make my plans so that I’m back before she starts working downstairs.
It’s nearly ten on Monday morning and, I’m up to my elbows in spreadsheets, numbers, statistics and a few branding ideas for our new product line and I have a meeting in forty minutes. I’m trying to get through some of this shit before the meeting.
The clock on my desk chimes, indicating it’s ten and the door to my office swings open. The glass is clear so I have no problem seeing Andy walking in. But what he’s carrying has me thrown for a loop.
“What the hell is that?” I ask as I get a better look at the narrow black vase in his hand and the single black rose sitting in it. It looks half dead.
“This was delivered about five minutes ago with the express direction to wait until ten to bring them in,” Andy says as he sets it on my desk and I reach for the card, shoo-ing him out of my office so I can open it in peace.
What I see on the card has me laughing out loud.
Asshat.
No sender necessary. I know exactly where these came from. My laughter draws Andy’s attention and I’m sure I look like I’ve lost my mind. Who knows, maybe I have. This girl makes me fucking bat shit crazy.
I contemplate my own plan. If this is going where I think it’s going, I’m going to fight back.
I place an order f
or her own bouquet of roses with my own little reply back to her.
Let the war of the roses begin.
Ireland
The door buzzer goes off. I catch the time on the microwave before opening the door. It’s eleven o’clock on Monday morning. As I reach the door, my heart starts pounding in my chest. He obviously knows where I live. What’s going to stop him from showing up here? Fuck, I don’t need him here, not right now, not until, at the very least, my little game is over.
I open the door and standing on the other side is a rather short gal holding up a vase with a single white rose inside the crystal clear container.
I thank her for the delivery, she turns to leave and I close the door, bringing the rose to my nose and I smell its fragrance. I smile and pluck the card off the stick. I set the vase on the counter and I open the card.
Say. My. Name.
“Never.”
DYSON
My meeting lasted longer than I’d expected so it’s just after noon when I return to my office. Walking inside I see two more vases sitting on my desk next to the first one Andy brought in and I chuckle to myself.
I walk over to my desk and pull the card out of the one closest to the first vase. The rose is in better shape than the first one, but not a whole lot better.
I open the card:
Prickweed.
What the hell does that even mean? It still makes me laugh.
I open the next one. This one is attached to a slightly lighter black rose, but it is just a bud, not the fully opened bloom like the first two. Hmm, wonder if the florist is running out of dead black roses.
Cocky Bastard.
I’m glad I caught on to her game earlier in the day because I’d already planned one to be delivered at noon, then one and so on. I want to be angry with her, between the drink and kneeing me in the nuts, then leaving me standing there in front of the bar, but I can’t find it in me to do anything beyond smiling.