Apparently, he loved the Renaissance and Medieval era and was also a big Game of Thrones and Spartacus fan…just like me. With our MPA meet ups and Renaissance class, we had no choice but to bump into each other more than once a day.
“You have to stop with that terrible accent,” I laughed.
He chuckled, and then continued with his medieval voice. “What is it? Do you not like my voice, my lady?”
I sputtered a laugh, pushing the door open and dropping my tote bag in the empty chair. Morgan wasn’t around. Probably still in class. “You’re a mess.”
“You going to MPA tonight?” he asked walking into the room and shrugging out of his coat.
“Yeah, but I need a nap first. Woke up early to go for a jog with Morgan at the gym. Classes have me beat. It’s still at the basketball gym, right?” I asked, shrugging out of my jacket too.
“Yep, basketball gym. Six on the dot.” He walked toward one of the inspirational posters on the wall. Morgan had lots of posters taped to the walls, but the one he was looking at was one of my favorites. “Live your life and don’t be a dick,” Brody read out loud. “That one’s new,” he mused, wiggling his brows.
“Yeah. It’s one of my favorite ones.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “How do you keep getting past Henley anyway? She really doesn’t like guys coming into our building.”
“Oh, I didn’t. She caught me. With my dashing smile and big brown eyes, I got a pass. She told me I couldn’t stay past curfew, and that I only get a pass because she likes you.”
“Well, lucky for you!”
He was quiet a moment as I opened my laptop and wiped the keyboard with the pads of my fingers. I glanced up when he started coming my way. He sat on the edge of my bed with me, smiling again.
“What?” I asked nervously, tucking my hair behind my ear. His eyes dropped to my lips and I immediately snatched my gaze away, focusing on the screen of my laptop instead.
“I knew you were gonna do that. Why do you always do that?” he questioned, and I peered up.
“Do what?”
“Look away when I look at your mouth.”
I shrugged, pretending it was no big deal. “I don’t know. Nervous habit I guess.” I huffed a laugh.
“After two months of hanging out, I still make you that nervous? To the point you’re afraid to let me kiss you?”
“Well, it’s not like we hang out every single hour of the day,” I teased.
“We could, if someone didn’t always have an excuse to not meet up.” He pressed back on the palms of his hands and his chest looked buffer beneath the white T-shirt. The shirt hugged his torso, not doing a damn thing to hide his impeccable chest, abs, and biceps. His head turned, eyes pinned on me. “I would like to kiss you one day, you know?”
I bit a smile but said nothing.
“If I stole one from you right now, would that upset you?”
I drew my lips in and smashed them together. Because I said nothing, he probably assumed it was safe to go in for the kill. He leaned forward and placed a kiss on top of my shoulder. His lips were soft. Smooth. He also smelled really nice. Tilting his chin, he brought his face closer to mine. So close I could feel him breathing.
Just as he was about to guide his lips to touch mine, I dropped my head, running my thumbnail over my cuticle and focusing more on that.
He dropped his head too, letting out a low, throaty chuckle. Pushing away, he stood from the bed and blew a sigh. “Man,” he laughed dryly, but it hardly held any humor. “So many mixed signals.” I looked up and could tell his frustrations were getting to him. I understood, trust me, I did, but…I wasn’t ready for it yet.
Two months of hanging out often, some mild flirting, and teasing, and not one kiss from me. Not one move. Only hugs and long, heated stares. I had to hand it to him, he had more patience in his left pinky than I did in my entire body. I don’t know why he still wanted to hang out with me after so many failed attempts of trying to kiss me. Maybe he liked the chase.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I’m just…it’s a long story. I don’t like talking about it.”
He looked at me, slightly confused, slightly intrigued as he sat again. “Did something bad happen before me to make you so hesitant?”
“Something bad like what?”
“Like…bad-bad. Things that can happen to girls that they can’t fight off, you know?”
“What?” I gasped, closing the lid of my laptop. “You mean like rape? No—God, no!”
“Okay—phew! Sorry if that offended you! You’re just really shut off, Kandy. I feel like you’re into me, but afraid to take it up a notch for some reason and I figured that could probably be a reason why, but I didn’t want to ask and end up scaring you off. I’m not rushing you or anything, but I’m curious why you are so guarded. It’s clear to me that something is holding you back.”
I lifted a hand in the air and dropped it like it was dead weight, unsure what to tell him.
“You know you don’t have to be scared to talk to me. I’m pretty good at keeping things quiet, you know?”
“I know…but it’s a lot. Talking about it will only take me back to it and I’m trying to get past it.”
“No, no. I get that. You don’t have to. No pressure.” He dropped his gaze to my lap and then rose to a stand. “There’s going to be a party at our house tonight after the MPA meeting. I know you aren’t big on parties but it’s my birthday, so I’d really like you to come.”
“What?” I slid off the bed. “Oh my gosh! I knew it was your birthday but didn’t know there would be a party! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have gotten you a gift or something from the gift shop!”
He waved it off. “It’s no big deal. Just another year older,” he laughed. “The guys tried to make it a surprise thing, but one of them got drunk the other night and started blabbing about it. Not so much a surprise anymore.” He took a step forward, grabbing my hand and reeling me toward him. My chest was pressed to his, and his mouth was close to mine again as he asked, “You won’t let me party alone, will you?”
My teeth sank into my bottom lip. “I’m not a big party girl, but since it’s your birthday, I’ll show for you. And also because I feel bad that I don’t have a gift for you.”
He smirked. “Having you there is the only gift I need.”
“Then I’ll be there.”
“Good.” Releasing me, he stepped away and gripped the doorknob, twisting it and opening the door.
“Tell your friends they’re welcome to party too. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.” He winked and walked out the room. When he was no longer in sight, I sat on the bed again, huffing.
I wasn’t trying to lead Brody on. It wasn’t my intentions. He would ask to hang out or study and I’d say yes. He was fun to hang with, and his presence took my mind off reality, but he felt things for me that I didn’t feel for him. He liked me a lot, I could tell, but I didn’t like him enough. Not enough to move on.
I don’t know. I guess after being with Cane, I didn’t want to share my lips with anyone else. Deep in my heart, I still belonged to him. I didn’t want to move on, no matter how much I kept telling myself to try. I had this part of me that was hopeful and burned bright with yearning. It was a part of me that knew one day I’d see Cane again. That maybe one day, we would be together, happy and blissfully content.
It was wishful thinking. We’d met in the wrong lifetime. Our paths had crossed, but we weren’t destined to be.
At the end of the day, I was better off with someone like Brody. Someone who wasn’t so…complicated.
Chapter Nineteen
CANE
If the world didn’t know who I was, and I could still get away with the things I used to do, Kelly would have been taken care of a long time ago. Unfortunately, she talked me up too much—made it seem like we were this happy couple when really I hated everything about her.
I’d had enough. My sister had had enough.
At first, I had her
shut out. I told security not to let her through or anywhere near my home. It lasted for about a month, then she started making threats—said she’d go to my sponsors and other important partners of mine to tell them that I’d built my company on lies and dirty money. It would only be a matter of time before an investigation happened, and even though I’d covered most of my tracks, there was still an open line that had yet to be taken care of, and if authorities discovered it, my life and career would be over.
She was hanging what she knew about me over my head, trying to treat me like some dog that would be lost without her, but that was where she was wrong. I wasn’t a dog and I had no fucking owner. I was a fucking wolf, an alpha in fact, and you could only cry wolf so many times before the wolf finally took action and demolished you and everything you cared about.
There was a knock on the door as I ate lunch with Lora. Lora got up from her chair to get it, but came right back with a fierce scowl.
When she and Lora first met, it didn’t go well. Kelly was annoyed by the fact that there was another woman in the house. When I told her Lora was my sister, she got annoyed that I hadn’t informed her my sister was in town. Like it was any of her fucking business.
Lora had one conversation with Kelly and had settled it. In Lora’s words, she “didn’t like her uppity bullshit.” What made things worse was that I told her how Kelly was trying to use what she knew about my mother, Buck, and my past as bait. That made her truly despise everything about her.
Kelly stepped into the kitchen, her hair pulled up into a ponytail and her lips stained with a pink gloss. “Hi, Cane,” she said, coming to my side to rub my shoulder. My jaw clenched as I placed my fork down.
“What have I told you about showing up at my house without telling me first?”
She smiled down at me, but it was tight. She picked her head up to look at Lora who was finishing off her salad and completely disregarding her presence. “Your sister has no manners. I hope you know that,” she muttered.
Lora scoffed, but kept chewing, staring down at her meal. I knew if she’d looked up and saw the look of disgust on Kelly’s face, she would have flipped and punched her right in the face. She was holding off for my sake. She didn’t want to make things worse than they already were.
I picked up my plate, purposely bumping her out of the way to put it in the sink. “What do you want?” I turned to face her.
“It’s been two weeks since I last saw you, Quinton. You just got back in town. How was the meeting in Chicago?” She took the seat I was just in and Lora finally picked her head up to glare at Kelly. She finished the bite of salad in her mouth and then snatched up her plate, walking past me to get to the sink and then heading out of the kitchen.
“Annoying bitch,” Lora muttered under her breath on the way out.
Kelly frowned at her back, then pushed out of her chair. “Okay, you need to get her under control right now, Quinton! She has no respect whatsoever!”
I cocked my head, folding my arms. “Unfortunately, my sister says and does whatever the hell she wants. And unlike Kandy, she’s not so easy to fool or manipulate with your fake bullshit and girly shopping trips.”
She took a step toward me, narrowing her eyes. “How dare you say her name around me,” she hissed.
I shrugged, picking up my keys from the counter. “I have to run to the office. Things to do. Deals to close.” I walked by her, but didn’t get far. She caught my wrist and yanked on it. I glared down at her, challenging her heated glared.
“Tread carefully, Cane,” she warned, her voice eerily calm. “I would hate to see you drowning in this cold, cold world.”
“Trust me, the one who should be afraid of drowning is you, Kelly.” I turned to face her, squaring my shoulders, my upper lip peeling back. “You know things about me, but I’ve been you studying too. And trust me when I tell you, I know things about you that I would love to blast to the media. Imagine what your clients would think if they found out what I know about you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? What could you have possibly found out?”
“I found out you were a patient at Polly Heights, not a visitor.”
She blinked rapidly, swaying on her heels a little. “Who told you that?” she demanded in a whisper.
“You spied on me, fucked a few things up. It was only fair that I did the same.”
“So what?” she snapped. “It doesn’t change the fact that I can let the world know who you really are. If I go down, I won’t be going alone. I’ll drag you right down with me, Quinton, I swear to God.”
I tightened my grip around my keys, smirking as I took a step back. She was afraid. Good. That was the plan. “I suggest you tread carefully, sweetheart. I mean, I would hate for your clients and your friends to find out a lovely, perfect woman like yourself had to be checked in for something terrible. Imagine how many people would drop you? Pity you. Yeah, you’d hate that, wouldn’t you?” I grinned as she breathed unevenly through her nostrils. “But, for now, let’s make things simple. We’ll hold the secrets we know about one another and start by giving each other some space.” I grimaced, pointing a finger in her face. “Don’t show up at my house anymore. Don’t fuck with my sister or Derek and Mindy. Don’t even mention Kandy’s fucking name. You have something to say, you fucking text or call me. You may not get an answer, but at least you get to do something.”
She glared for a short moment, then a faint smile snaked over her lips. “You won’t get rid of me. I will ruin everything you have ever loved before you even get the chance to do that.”
I sighed, making my way out of the kitchen. “See your way out,” I told her, and walked out of the house.
When I got in the car, I sent Lora a text and told her to keep a close eye on Kelly while she was still there. She would snoop—it was what she did best, after all. But Lora didn’t bite her tongue. Not much. If Kelly looked like she was up to no good she would call her out on it. The one thing Kelly hated most was being embarrassed.
I had plans to get Kelly out of my life. I didn’t know how to go about it exactly without tainting my reputation, but I was going to make something happen.
It’d been two months of this ridiculousness. It had to stop. She was fucking with my livelihood. Right now, I had her on a short leash.
I’d hired a private investigator to look into her. I knew she was hiding something, and when he told me that she’d been checked into Polly Heights, it’d truly surprised me. All this time I thought she was a visitor when really, she was a patient.
When I put two and two together, though, it made sense. She was there almost every single day. I saw her often, but never thought much of it. She bumped into me, we grabbed coffee, got to know one another, and I never saw her show up at Polly Heights again after that. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.
I should have known there was something up with her. A sane person wouldn’t have just stopped showing up for a relative, no matter how busy they were. She was a liar, a manipulative bitch, and I was going to get down to the bottom of who she was and burn her to the ground. Even if the flames were to catch onto me too, I would be prepared.
After all, what was the point of life without playing with a little fire?
Chapter Twenty
KANDY
If I thought the high school parties I attended were wild, they weren’t anything in comparison to college parties.
There were kegs in every corner of the two-story house, bottles of all kinds of liquor on the tables, and empty cups scattered on the floor. The music pulsed so hard I could feel it through my shoes.
We’d gotten to the party thirty minutes late because I couldn’t decide which outfit to wear. Gina insisted that I wear something hot and drool-worthy, mainly because she didn’t want to be the only one wearing a risqué outfit. I’d dressed in one of the shortest black dresses I could find, with fishnet tights and a pair of chunky-heeled maroon Doc Martens. I was slowly but surely regret
ting the decision of my attire with every tug and pull to cover my ass.
The room was dark, but I looked around anyway, searching for Brody. I didn’t see him anywhere. All of the partiers were practically wasted. Several of them flitted about with plastic cups in hand, others with beer bottles. There was a section in the living room for dancing, and it was packed with bodies. Strobe lights flickered and bounced off the walls, highlighting a few of the partygoers. The room was hot in comparison to the chill outside, so hot that my dress was starting to stick to me in certain places.
“Let’s have some shots, loosen you gals up a little!” Gina shouted over the music.
Morgan and I nodded and Gina led the way to the kitchen. One countertop was set up with bottles of liquor. There was a cooler by the patio door, where a tall guy dug through the ice to pull out a Corona.
Gina got right to work, whipping cups out and picking up bottles like she’d done this routine plenty of times. She had a bottle of Jose Cuervo in hand and poured what she considered a shot into the cups, then smiled as she turned, handing one to each of us.
“Here’s to a fun night!” she yelled over the music.
“Hell yes!” Morgan yelled, raising her cup in the air to bump Gina’s.
I smiled, raising my cup too. “And to many more!”
We chugged our shots back and I winced as the burn rushed down my throat. Doing shots was going to take some getting used to. I’d done them with Frankie and I literally hated them. I’d rather have a mixed drink than a pure shot any day.
Just as I’d placed my cup down on the marble counter, a hand touched my waist and I peered over my shoulder, meeting familiar whiskey eyes.
“Hey! You made it!” Brody exclaimed.
I twisted around in his arms, smiling up at him. “I told you I would come!”
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