Knock Me for a Loop

by Heidi Betts

  The second because it would be proof that she was nervous about what she was about to do—which she would admit to only under threat of death…or having the fat sucked out of her ass with a bendy straw and no anesthesia—and because she suspected her presence was truly needed.

  Not deserved, but needed.

  Her friends had been bugging her for weeks to check in on Zack. To talk to him. To do something in an attempt to draw him out of his apparent funk.

  Oh, they’d been subtle and even creative about it, but the pressure—and hints the size of cruise liners—had been there nonetheless.

  Grace had done a pretty good job of ignoring them, too…until last Wednesday’s Knit Wits meeting, when she’d discovered through Jenna and Ronnie that things had apparently gotten so bad with Zack that even his very best friends, Dylan and Gage, had given up on him. They’d recapped the guys’ last visit, and each detail they’d shared had only made her stomach tighten and her heart sink lower than it had been before.

  What they were saying, the man they were talking about, didn’t sound like her Zack. Or the Zack formerly known as hers, at any rate.

  The man she had been engaged to had always been the life of the party, with a zest for life sometimes hard to keep up with. An injury on the ice—no matter how serious—would barely have made a dent in that level of gusto. He would have followed doctors’ instructions to the letter, plus some, and done whatever was necessary to heal, recover, and bounce back like a jai alai ball.

  Hearing that he wasn’t bouncing back, was sitting around like a slug, stagnating in his own desolation, was just enough to push her feelings about Zack and his post-accident condition from apathetic to concerned. She suspected that was her friends’ goal in being so specific and dogged in their recounting of Dylan and Gage’s confrontation with Zack the week before.

  So here she was. Palms sweating, stomach churning, reluctance pouring through her veins like toxic waste.

  She raised her hand to knock, determined to get in, check on him—maybe kick his butt to get him moving in the right direction, if need be—and get the hell out. But before her knuckles connected with the thick wooden panel, she realized that Zack might still be in bed.

  It was only eight in the morning, and he’d never been much of a morning person to begin with. Plus, if Zack really was as depressed and withdrawn as everyone implied, there was a chance he spent most of his time in bed or asleep.

  Even if he wasn’t, he still had a badly damaged leg—one he hadn’t been going to physical therapy for, the idiot—and was in no shape to rush around answering doors.

  Letting her purse strap fall from her shoulder, she balanced the overstuffed bag on her knee and started digging. She shouldn’t still have a key to Zack’s apartment, but knew she did.

  She’d used it to get in the night she’d discovered his infidelity and wanted to destroy him by destroying everything he owned. After recovering from the initial shock and feeling moderately regretful of her actions, she’d told her friends she flushed the key the same as she’d flushed the engagement ring he’d given her.

  She hadn’t, though. She’d kept it—just in case. After all, one never knew when their ex-fiancé might once again do something stupid or the “woman scorned” rage might rear its ugly head and need to be vented by throwing more of his clothes off the balcony.

  The loose key was, of course, floating around at the very bottom of the oversized bag, beneath her own ring of keys, a pack of gum, container of Tic Tacs, and a couple of wadded-up tissues. And she, of course, located it only after rummaging around for fifteen minutes, searching through every inside and outside pocket, and removing just about every large item first.

  Finally, though, she had it in hand and slipped it into the lock. As she turned it, and simultaneously turned the knob, she caught herself murmuring a short prayer beneath her breath that he hadn’t also flipped the dead bolt or hooked the chain; otherwise she would end up banging on the door to wake him—and possibly a few of his neighbors—after all.

  But just like the Zack she used to know, the current Zack hadn’t bothered to secure his apartment past the automatic lock installed within the doorknob mechanism.

  Stepping inside, she closed the door behind her on a soft click, then turned to take in the silent, shadowed space surrounding her. Large windows lined the far wall, letting muted, early morning light spill halfway across the oaken floorboards, but the rest of the apartment was empty and as dark as it could get at this hour of the day.

  The coffee maker in the kitchen wasn’t gurgling with fresh brew. There was no bread in the toaster, crisping to a golden brown. The TV wasn’t on in the living room, and the water wasn’t running in the bathroom.

  It was eerily quiet when she was used to Zack’s place always humming, always being filled with noise. A television or radio playing almost twenty-four hours a day. Friends sprawled on the sofa, eating, drinking, laughing, and more often than not playing armchair referee to one sporting event or another. A foosball battle taking place in one corner of the room, a video game in the other.

  Setting her purse on the credenza just inside the door, she tiptoed through the house, inspecting things as she went along. He’d put a giant, flat-screen television—even bigger than his old one, which had been mammoth—on the wall where she’d stabbed one of his beloved hockey trophies through the plaster. She wondered if he’d bothered to patch the hole first, or just slapped up the expensive new toy and forgotten about it.

  In general, the apartment was clean, which meant Magda was still coming in once or twice a week to pick up after him. But there were still clothes strewn about, still open bags of chips, empty snack wrappers, and dirty dishes littering the place. Enough to let her know he probably hadn’t eaten a fruit or vegetable or anything outside of the junk food family in a good, long while.

  Grace made her way to the bedroom, ignoring the wave of reluctance that swamped her, the tug of regret that pulled at her heart, and the hoard of memories her brain offered to let her relive.

  No, thank you. Memories of other times she’d been in his room, in his bed, were something she definitely did not need. She didn’t even want to think about the last time she’d been there, bawling her eyes out and cursing Zack for being a cheating, lying prick while systematically cutting all of the keepsakes in his professional scrapbooks into teeny, tiny pieces.

  Not her finest moment, but it had felt damn good at the time.

  The bedroom door was slightly ajar, but she didn’t hear any signs of movement, so she pushed it open a little farther. Once again, darkness greeted her.

  The blinds had been pulled to keep out even a hint of daylight, but she could still make out Zack’s tall, broad frame lying diagonally across the bed.

  He was on his stomach, naked but for a pair of plaid flannel boxer shorts, his hair a long, straggling blond mess. The sheets were twisted and bunched around him, but not covering much more than his feet.

  A trickle of attraction, of desire, snaked through her bloodstream, warming her from the inside out and causing a familiar ache to settle low in her belly and between her legs.

  She wasn’t proud of it, but she’d missed him. God, the way they used to heat up those sheets together…It had made atomic bombs and spontaneous combustion look like the fizzling little sparks that came from a cheap plastic lighter when the flint wouldn’t catch.

  Or maybe, she thought, narrowing her eyes and reminding herself of his infidelity, she missed men in general. She hadn’t slept with anyone since breaking up with Zack, so it wasn’t a stretch to realize she probably just needed to get laid. She should find herself some hot, willing stud and ride him like a Kawasaki KX450F at Motorcross. (So some of Zack’s sports fanaticism had sunk in—sue her.)

  Lord knew she’d had opportunities. There were guys at work who flirted with her, dropped hints that they wouldn’t mind going home with her now that she was no longer attached to a professional hockey player who outweighed them by fift
y pounds of pure muscle and would gleefully pummel them into human pancakes if they so much as looked at her cross-eyed. Maybe she should take one of them up on the offer.

  And those weren’t the only men sending out signals. With a face as high-profile as hers—and frankly, a body that rocked, thank you very much—she was the recipient of long, lusty looks just about everywhere she went. She could crook a finger in the middle of Ninth Street and lead a string of drooling males straight into Lake Erie in the dead of winter, if she liked.

  Whether she wanted straight-up, no-strings sex or another ring on her finger with the promise of forever, it wouldn’t take much on her part to get them.

  The problem was that ever since she’d kicked Zack to the curb, she couldn’t seem to work up an interest in either of those things. Indiscriminate, anonymous sex didn’t appeal—as fun as that might be, and as much as it would serve Zack right for cheating on her with God knew how many puck-bunny bimbos.

  And she was in no hurry to jump into another serious relationship, either. As gun-shy as she was from Zack’s betrayal, she might never again trust a man enough to get within six football fields of walking down the aisle.

  But she wasn’t here to rehash her relationship with Zack or bemoan her nonexistent relationships with other males of the species. She was here to kick a little sense into her jackass ex-fiancé so her friends would get off her back and stop trying to guilt her into caring how he spent his days or whether his knee was healing properly.

  Flipping the wall switch just inside the bedroom door, she stalked across the plush eggshell carpeting and threw open the thick drapes hiding a set of French doors that led to the balcony. Sunlight that was growing brighter with each passing minute streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windowpanes and across the unmoving figure taking up three-fourths of the king-size mattress.

  Okay, that didn’t work quite as well as she’d expected. Used to be the merest hint of daylight would rouse Zack even from the deepest of sleeps. He might wake up growling like a lion, but he always woke up.

  Moving closer to the bed and scanning the area around Zack, Grace noticed for the first time the open prescription bottle on the nightstand. A couple of stray pills rested on the oak tabletop beside a glass with about half an inch of amber liquid at the bottom.

  She lifted the glass to her nose and sniffed, at the same time picking up the pill bottle to read the pharmacy label.

  Nice. Mixing Vicodin with Jack Daniel’s. Things were even worse than she’d thought.

  Returning the loose pills to their bottle, she did a quick search of both nightstands and their drawers, the area surrounding the bed, and the bathroom medicine cabinet to see if she could find any more drugs—prescription or otherwise. Then she took the glass of whiskey and the pill bottle and headed back to the kitchen.

  She pulled her cell phone from her purse, replacing it with the Vicodin, and hit the button to speed-dial Ronnie. Her friend answered on the third ring.

  “I’m here, and you’re right,” Grace said without preamble. “He’s a mess.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ronnie wanted to know. Given the background noises, she was obviously at work.

  “I need the name and number of his orthopedic surgeon so I can call and make an appointment. Do you think Dylan would have that information?”

  Her friend hesitated for a second, but then answered, “I think so. At the very least, he’ll probably remember who was in charge of Zack’s case at the hospital. He could probably even call the team’s coach and find out who Zack is supposed to be seeing about his knee.”

  “Good. Can you take care of that and call me right back? I think he should get in to see somebody today, if I can swing it.”

  “All right.”

  Again, the words were hesitant, and Grace rolled her eyes, tempted to slap her phone closed before Ronnie could start on the concerned friend/Twenty Questions routine.

  “What?” she bit out instead. “Go ahead, whatever it is, just spit it out.”

  “Are you okay? Being there, I mean? How did Zack react when you showed up?”

  “I’m fine. The sooner I can deal with this and be done with it, the better,” she added flatly, “but I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown or throw any more of his belongings off the balcony, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  At least not yet, and unless Zack really pissed her off.

  “And he’s still passed out in bed, so he doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  A couple of seconds passed while her friend seemed to absorb that, then Ronnie said, “If you need anything, promise you’ll let me know. I can be there in ten minutes, tops. Jenna, too …I’m sure she’d be happy to drop by and help you out if you needed it.”

  “If I need backup, you mean?” Grace asked, a hint of humor slipping into her tone and making her smile. “You guys should have thought of that before you started laying on the guilt-trip shit so thick. But I promise to send up smoke signals if I get into trouble, Cagney.”

  Ronnie chuckled. “Roger that, Lacey.”

  Who that left Jenna to be, Grace had no idea, but she hung up with her friend and moved on to the kitchen, where she dumped the last swallow of whiskey down the sink and stuck the glass in the otherwise empty dishwasher. She did a little search-and-destroy mission while she was in there, seeking out other sources of alcohol.

  The open bottle of whiskey she emptied, then tossed in the recycle bin. The beer in the fridge she removed and stuffed to the back of a high cupboard shelf where Zack wouldn’t be able to reach it with his injured leg, even if he tried. First chance she got, she’d pass it off to one of their friends who could put it to good use.

  That taken care of, she headed back to the bedroom. No tiptoeing this time. This time, she wanted him to hear her.

  But apparently it was going to take more than her heavy footsteps to wake him from whatever drug- and booze-induced stupor he was in. A marching band and foghorn blast, maybe.

  “Hey,” she said, leaning over and poking him in the bare shoulder.

  God, he had a nice back. All smooth and broad, with skin just begging to be stroked and occasionally scratched.

  Her brows knit and her mouth turned down in a frown. Down, girl! she chastised herself. No thinking sexy thoughts about the bad man. She was here to whip him into shape, not whip herself into a frenzy of unrequited lust.

  “Hey! Sleeping Beauty!” she called, more loudly this time.

  Good Lord, was he even alive? she wondered crossly. He was clearly breathing, even letting out a snuffled snore from time to time.

  Hmm. All right, time for the Nurse Betty routine.

  Canting herself sideways over the bed again, she lifted one of his eyelids to study his pupil.

  “Hey, Zack!” she tried in a near-shout.

  Seriously, how he couldn’t be plugging his ears or pulling a pillow over his head by now, she’d never know.

  He gave a sudden short snort, startling her into dropping his eyelid and jumping back.

  “Whata hellif gona?”

  Which she took to mean, What the hell is going on?

  “Don’t wake up on my account,” she told him blithely. “This is the first time you’ve ever brought me true pleasure in the bedroom.”

  He quirked a light blond brow—or tried to, at least.

  “Grace?”

  It sounded like he had a mouthful of sawdust, but she understood him well enough to make out her own name.

  “The one and only,” she replied brightly.

  “Grace,” he breathed on a sigh. “You came back.”

  Row 6

  Whoa. Note to self, Zack thought, while his brain pounded out a reggae beat inside his skull, no more mixing pain pills with alcohol.

  It was the first time he’d ever done that, and only after spending the better part of the night praying for sleep to come.

  His knee had hurt like a bitch all day, the Vicodin the doctor had prescribed not making a dent in the
steady ache and sharp stabs of pain. He’d taken twice the recommended dose in half the recommended time period, but even that hadn’t helped. So he’d resorted to a couple swallows from an old bottle of Jack he had left over from a long-ago bachelor party.

  It had apparently done the trick, but now he was thinking it had done it a little too well. His knee still hurt—but then, didn’t it always?—and he was suffering the mother of all hangovers for his trouble.

  Oh, but that wasn’t the best part.

  No-ho, of course not. Because fate or karma or Jesus Christ Superstar—whatever the hell was out there fucking with his life like a Tinkertoy—couldn’t be happy with making him feel like just ordinary crap. He had to pass through the Seven Levels of Crap-related Crap first. So far, he felt as though he’d waded through about twenty feet of sewer water, a football field of knee-high cow patties, and a landfill full of dirty baby diapers.

  But that still left four more delightful levels of abject misery, one of which apparently included saying something truly humiliating in front of the woman who’d kicked him into the shit pool to begin with.

  God in heaven, he hoped he hadn’t said it aloud. Please, God, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, and Bob’s Big Boy, let that sad, pathetic, embarrassing You came back have been only in his head. A bad dream wrapping up what had started as a half-decent fantasy, and not something that had actually passed his lips to be heard by the one person who would take great joy in holding it over his head and rubbing his nose in it for the rest of his natural life.

  There was a chance—prosciutto thin though it might be—that the unintentional utterance had only been in his head.

  You came back. What the fuck could he have been thinking?

  Dropping his head until his chin touched his chest, he let the pulsing heat of the shower drum the nape of his neck and slide down his back.

  A noise from the other side of the closed bathroom door jarred him from his lingering lethargy, and he sat up straighter, reaching for the soap. He hadn’t bathed in a while, and was sure he smelled none too fresh, so he spent a little extra time sudsing up.