Hooked

by Christine Manzari

  “Why did you punch him?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m sure it matters to him.”

  He was quiet.

  “You’re not going to tell me why?”

  Huck shook his head. I wasn’t used to him keeping secrets from me and pushing me away. But since I was guilty of the same thing, I couldn’t really complain or force him to tell me what was going on.

  “Come with me,” he begged.

  I looked over my shoulder at the party where several people were still watching us. “Huck, I can’t. Everyone is watching. If we disappear together—” I didn’t finish the thought, but he knew what I meant. We’d become Monday’s topic of gossip in the office.

  A look of hurt passed over his face briefly before it was replaced with anger. “I’ll be back. I just need some time to cool down,” he finally said.

  I nodded as I watched him take off down the hall without a backward glance. I wanted to follow him and demand that he tell me what had happened between him and Trace, but I could still feel the stares of people watching us. As far as everyone knew, we were coworkers, nothing more. And so, fueled by my own self-preservation, I watched him walk away.

  I knew immediately I’d let him down.

  — HUCK —

  28. CONFRONTATION

  I couldn’t get out of the party fast enough. Seeing Trace there after all these months, I realized the pain of betrayal could still tear me wide open. And the fact that Cat chose to stay behind was just confirmation that she still wasn’t ready to choose me. I couldn’t really blame her, but it didn’t make me feel any less shitty. Trace was a bitter reminder that the woman I thought I loved chose a fling with my brother over a future with me. The truth about Cat’s choice was just as cruel, though. She was choosing her career over me.

  I stomped through the hallway, desperate to get somewhere that I could be alone. When I entered the foyer, I almost ran headlong into the only other person that hadn’t had the opportunity to emotionally rip me apart tonight. But there she was, sheathed in a red dress, looking as beautiful as the day I first met her.

  “Will.” My name was a breathy recognition.

  Seeing her for the first time since she told me she had cheated on me was painful. I staggered backward as if I’d been hit with a sledge hammer. “What are you doing here, Bridget?”

  “I heard you were home. I came here to talk to you.” She stepped toward me, her gaze a mixture of hope and fear.

  “It’s too late.”

  She grabbed for my arm. “It’s not too late. You never gave me a chance to apologize, to make things right.”

  I yanked my arm out of her grasp. “That’s because you can never make it right, Bridget.”

  Her eyes were full of the threat of unshed tears. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

  I thought of Cat and Trace and all of the other co-workers and family in the next room. I was reminded of the kind of drama Bridget could cause if I didn’t get her out of here.

  “Fine, we’ll talk,” I said, grabbing her elbow and leading her down the hall. “But then you leave, got it?”

  She nodded, but I saw the sliver of a triumphant smile slide across her red lips.

  — CAT —

  29. BURN

  I went back into the party, realizing I was probably making a huge mistake. I knew if the situation were reversed, Huck would’ve followed me, and not cared what people thought about us. But I didn’t have the luxury of not caring. Not yet. Not when I hadn’t made up my mind about what I was going to do about my career. Not when I didn’t know what I was going to do about Huck in the long run. I knew I had to make a decision one way or another. At some point, I was going to have to make a commitment to either follow my career or my heart. It was a huge decision, and it was complicated no matter which way I chose. If I chose my career, I’d have to give up Huck. If I chose Huck, I’d have to give up my career . . . and the right to my heart. Giving him that kind of power over me by trusting him was terrifying.

  Even though I was pretty sure what I wanted to do, I wasn’t ready to take the final step in that direction. I was still scared.

  Without Huck to help me escape from unwanted conversations, I soon found myself sipping a water at a small table in the corner, watching interactions from afar. It didn’t take long, however, for the seat next to me to be filled. I looked over to see Huck’s brother, Trace, holding a beer in one hand while pressing a napkin to his lip.

  “Where did my brother go?”

  “Not sure. He said he needed to cool off.”

  “I’m Trace,” he said. “Did I say that before he knocked my ass to the floor?”

  I nodded. “You managed that much.”

  “Are you Huck’s girlfriend?”

  “I’m Cat,” I said instead of answering the question.

  “Why am I supposed to stay away from you?”

  “You tell me.” I probably shouldn’t have pried, but since Huck wasn’t willing to tell me why he was mad at his brother, I couldn’t help my curiosity. Besides, Trace was the one that brought the subject up.

  “Probably because I accidentally stole his girlfriend.”

  “I guess you deserved that then,” I said, nodding to his busted face.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “How exactly do you accidentally steal someone’s girlfriend? You just tripped and unintentionally stuck your dick in her?”

  Trace’s loud bark of laughter caused several people to look our way.

  “Damn, I hope you’re not his girlfriend, because I would love to take you out,” he said.

  “You’re not really my type.”

  His eyes flicked to my tattoos, leisurely making their way across my chest and up to my lips. “I’d have to disagree with that.”

  “I’ve met enough of your kind to learn my lesson,” I retorted.

  “What kind is that?”

  I looked from his ratty jeans to his black Pocket Pistols t-shirt, finally landing on his bleach-tipped, spiked hair.

  “I’ve dated enough skate rats in my day.”

  Trace’s eyebrow quirked up. “Well, lucky for you, I’m not a skate rat. Not anymore, anyway. I snowboard. I’m sponsored by Burton,” he stated proudly.

  “Congratulations, I guess.”

  “You guess? You didn’t see me in the X Games?” Trace boasted. He was clearly used to being recognized.

  “I don’t watch the Winter X Games, only Summer.”

  “What sport?” he asked, unbothered by the fact that I was completely unimpressed that he was a successful athlete. Truth was, I actually was impressed. Sort of. I just wasn’t going to let his ego know.

  “Skateboarding,” I told him. “I grew up with Piper DeNazzi.”

  “She won gold last year.”

  “I know that.”

  Trace looked at me with his eyes narrowed. “Do you skateboard?”

  “Of course. Piper and I were best friends,” I answered.

  “Holy shit.” He slapped the top of the table before leaning in toward me. “How long are you going to be around? I’m going up to Woodward this weekend with some friends. You have to come. I gotta see what you can do.”

  I’d heard of Woodward. It was one of those facilities where adventure seekers—bikers, skateboarders, inline skaters—could go to work on tricks and let off steam. I knew a lot of Olympic athletes in extreme sports worked out there sometimes. At any other time, I would be ecstatic to go, but I was here with Huck. And it appeared he hated his brother. No chance I could accept.

  “I can’t this weekend,” I said. “But back to what we were talking about earlier. Huck’s girlfriend that you stole?”

  “Accidentally,” he reminded me.

  “Right.”

  He shrugged. “He was dating this girl, Bridget Burns. Only I didn’t know he was dating her. And he wasn’t just dating her, they were living together.” He paused. “And they were engaged.”

  “Wo
w, you really are an asshole.” I tried to crush down the jealousy rising at the thought of Huck not only living with another girl, but that she was also his fiancée.

  “I didn’t know,” he said defensively. “She was a client, and they met through work. When he introduced her to me, he never mentioned that they were a couple. He introduced her as a client.”

  “And you just decided to sleep with her?”

  “She recognized me from television,” he explained. “She started flirting with me. And she was gorgeous,” he added, as if that made his stupidity okay. “I met up with her later that week and then almost every day after that. Until Huck found out.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing. I never got a chance to talk to him. I didn’t even know he and Bridget were together until she came to me crying and admitted it. By that time, he’d moved out of their place and had gone clear across the country to get away from her. And me. And the backlash at work from the rumors.”

  Oh my God. “To California?”

  Trace nodded. “Yeah. He found out about us and moved a few weeks later.”

  Holy shit. Was I the rebound? Huck had been in a serious relationship, engaged to be exact, and then I slept with him weeks later. I started to feel sick to my stomach. Barely half an hour ago I was considering changing my whole life for him. And now I was discovering that I was the rebound chick. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have cared, but that was before my heart got stupid and decided to carve out a spot for the guy I tried so hard not to fall for.

  I had to talk to Huck. This was the exact reason why I didn’t let myself get close, why I couldn’t trust people. How could Huck be serious about me when he probably hadn’t even healed from the rejection and betrayal of his fiancée and brother? Had I really been considering throwing my entire career away just because I was attracted to him? What a fucking idiot I was.

  I stood up. “I have to go to the ladies room,” I said. “Nice talking to you, Trace.” My voice was confident and strong, but inside I was a quivering mess of confusion.

  “What about this weekend? Want to go to Woodward?”

  “I don’t think so, but thanks for the offer.” I waved and then hurried from the table, leaving the party to go look for Huck.

  I searched all the rooms on the first floor only to find that Huck was nowhere to be found. I didn’t have any better luck on the second floor either. Returning to the first floor by way of a second staircase in the back of the house, I found a set of stairs going down to the basement. The lights were on so I went down.

  The first room I found was a huge game room, but the only people there were Huck’s nephews, and they were too busy playing video games to notice me. I walked down the hallway until I heard voices. One of them was Huck’s. The other was a woman’s, and she was crying. I paused outside the doorway.

  “Will, baby. It was a mistake, a horrible mistake. I’ve been trying to tell you that for months.”

  Will baby? No. Please no.

  “I don’t care, Bridget. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters, I love you.” The girl was crying so hard she was hiccupping.

  I knew it was an awful thing to do, to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help myself. This was Huck, the guy that had fucked me against the horse stall in his parent’s backyard yesterday. This was the guy who could destroy my career. If he was talking to a girl that loved him, then I had a vested interest in the interaction. I peered around the edge of the door, careful not to be noticed. The girl had long, blonde hair and was dressed in a drop-dead gorgeous red gown. She was beautiful, despite her tear-streaked face. I assumed she was the infamous Bridget Burns.

  “Did you come with him tonight?” Huck’s voice was harsh, and I could hear the pain in his words, feel it like a knife ripping into me. If he was still jealous over her, then what did that mean for me?

  “No, of course not. I came here for you. He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  “You were living with me, Bridget. We lived together for six fucking months. We were engaged, and then you just went off and fucked my brother.” Every time Huck’s voice broke on a word, I felt my heart crack a little bit more.

  “I know,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I loved you,” he said. “And you betrayed me.”

  “Will, you have to forgive me. Please.” The girl threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I still want to be with you, can’t you see that? I still have my ring,” she said, holding up her hand. “We can go back to the way things were,” she pleaded.

  Huck looked down at her as she hung onto him, and I kept hoping he’d push her away. He didn’t. He just stared into her eyes as if trying to discover the truth in them. Suddenly, she was smashing her lips against his. Huck didn’t pull away, and I could see his arms moving to go around her.

  I whipped myself back around the corner and stumbled down the hall, a bubble of panic and disgust rising in my chest. I hurried up the stairs as if I could run from what I’d just seen—Huck’s lips on another woman’s, a woman who was still wearing his engagement ring. A woman he loved. He never told me he loved me. I probably would have freaked if he had, but the fact remained that she was his love and I was nothing more than a rebound. A stupid rebound that almost made an equally stupid mistake. I had been considering giving up my career. For a guy.

  Cate Maverick would never do anything like that. What had I become?

  That’s what I got for letting someone get too close. I had to remember that people couldn’t be trusted. I had to remember that trusting someone only ended in pain.

  I found my way up to the top of the stairs, passing through the kitchen. There were several bottles of liquor on the countertop waiting for the bartender to come back in and retrieve them. I grabbed the first one I could get my hands on before pushing my way through the back door and into the frigid air. I wasn’t sure where I was planning on going when I went out the door, but I eventually found myself in the stable with a bottle of tequila, no jacket, and a pain in my chest that I was afraid might be the shattering of my idiotic heart.

  I grabbed the horse blanket off the wall, cocooned myself inside it, and crashed into the corner before unscrewing the top off the tequila. I took my first sip, and it burned my throat so badly that I thought it might destroy me then and there. But then I decided I didn’t care if it annihilated me as long as it took away the pain and embarrassment.

  I don’t know how long I sat there with the bottle, but after what I knew amounted to several shots worth of liquor, I could feel my vision going blurry. My tolerance was for shit, but I finally understood my father a little better. I only hoped this bottle could help me forget as easily as his bottles helped him. I sure as hell didn’t want to remember how stupid I was. I’d always worried that I might be tarnished like my father, that I might carry that addictive trait that would turn me into a raging alcoholic if I drank. That’s why I never drank. I couldn’t trust my father, and I was afraid if given access to the tools of his destruction, I wouldn’t be able to trust myself either. But for once, I didn’t care what might happen. I didn’t care how badly the liquor burned, I just wanted the hurt and shame to go away.

  — HUCK —

  30. MISSING

  Seeing Bridget in my house was a shock, especially after the disastrous run-in with my brother. I probably should have insisted that she leave immediately, but since I’d never really confronted her about what she’d done, I figured it was best to get it all out of my system. I was ready to move on. I had moved on. Cat was what I wanted, and it was time to get Bridget out of my life for good. I had to get her to stop calling and emailing me, and the best way to do it was to tell her once and for all, in person, that it was over.

  I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I took her downstairs. She told me she was sorry. She begged me to take her back. She cried. But I felt nothing for her. While I’d been thinking about marrying her, she’d been thinking about ge
tting into my brother’s pants.

  Let her cry. I didn’t care anymore.

  Desperate, she kissed me and I was so shocked, it took me a moment to push her away.

  “Bridget, that’s not going to work this time. We’re done. It’s over.” I pulled the back of my hand across my mouth, wiping away the harlot red lipstick she just marked me with. I wished I could wipe away the memories of her unfaithfulness, too.

  “No,” she sobbed. “Give me another chance. Let me prove that I deserve you.”

  “You made your choice and I’ve moved on. You should, too.”

  Bridget dropped to the floor, folding in on herself like a broken lawn chair. How had I ever thought I could marry this girl? She wasn’t funny. She wasn’t strong. She wasn’t intelligent. She wasn’t anything but a pretty face and right now, she wasn’t even that. But then, measuring her up to Cat for all of those things wasn’t really fair to Bridget, because Cat was in a whole other league.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing Bridget’s arm and hauling her to her feet, feeling sorry for her. “I’ll get a car to take you home.”

  As I led Bridget up the stairs, I had to admit that seeing her again was actually just what I needed to clear my head after my outburst with Trace. I should probably thank my brother and ex-fiancée. If they hadn’t betrayed me, I never would have moved to California, and I never would have met Cat. It was actually refreshing to realize that in a way, I was grateful for what they’d done.

  I suddenly found myself feeling a little more generous toward Bridget. “I’ll make sure you get home safely,” I told her gently, putting my arm around her waist to help her walk up the stairs. “This is the way it was supposed to work out. We’ll both be happier this way.”

  “I’ll never be happy without you,” she cried, burying her face in my shirt.

  “You will, trust me.”

  ***

  I made sure Bridget was buckled safely into my rental car as I made the short drive to our old condo to take her home. The last thing I wanted was for someone, especially Cat, to see Bridget there. My interaction with Trace had been bad enough, I wanted to avoid more drama.