Shredded - Wolff Tracy - Страница 38

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“I got it,” he finally says. He’s bitter, resentful, but smart enough to know I’m not joking.

I let him go, but at the same time I give him a little shove that sends him careening against the sink behind him. Water sloshes onto the counters, drips onto the cabinets, the floors, his apron. There’s a big wet spot over his pelvis now, one that makes it look like he wet himself.

Harvey grabs the counter to stop himself from actually falling into the sink, just as a couple of busboys turn the corner with huge trays of dishes. “Hey,” one of them says when they catch sight of the look on Harvey’s face. “Everything okay back here?”

“I don’t know.” I look at him questioningly. “Everything okay, Harvey?”

He glares at me, and for a second I think I’m going to have to deliver a more forceful warning. But finally he nods, tugging at his collar all the while. I can see the red marks the tight fabric left there, know that they’ll be turning to bruises before much longer. He’ll have a nice black-and-blue circle around his neck, kind of like the ring of bruises Ophelia has around her upper arms.

Just the reminder has me wanting to pound him some more. This asshole really did get off way too easy.

“Everything’s fine,” he says in a raspy voice. “Z was just checking on me after my fall.” He gestures to the bruises on his face and arms. So that’s what he told people went down. Better than telling them he attacked the new girl, I guess.

Fucking coward.

I shoot an insolent smile at the busboys, who still seem uneasy with my presence. Then I give Harvey a two-fingered wave that’s as much threat as it is promise. “I’ll see you around, Harvey.”

“No, you won’t,” he says snidely, a lot braver now that he’s got backup. “You’ll be too busy treating women right—fucking them, using them, and then dropping them—to have time for me. Or Ophelia. Isn’t that how it works with you, Z?”

For long seconds all I can think about is launching myself at him and wiping that smug look off his face once and for all. A few missing teeth ought to do the trick. But we’ve started attracting a crowd—three waitresses and a chef’s assistant have joined the busboys—and I don’t want to give Harvey the satisfaction of watching my ass get hauled to jail if I start a fight in the lodge’s kitchen. Even if it would totally be worth it.

Besides, there’s more than one way to make my point. And, more important, to protect Ophelia.

I move forward, get in his face one more time. None of the chickenshit busboys try to stop me—big surprise—and I’m close enough to see it register on Harvey.

Close enough that I can smell the panic on him.

More than close enough that he knows I’m not going to walk away from this. From Ophelia and what he tried to do to her.

“Hurt her again—touch her again—and you’ll find out exactly how it works. Because the next time you go near her, I’ll chop your dick off and feed it to you. Then there won’t be a woman alive who has to worry about you trying to rape her ever again.”

I make sure the last sentence is loud enough to carry through the kitchen. Then, as the whispers start up all around us, I turn and walk away.

Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

I wake up to the sound of my alarm blaring. I wait for a second, cuddled deep into the blankets, hoping Z will turn it off.

No such luck.

Finally I reach for it, slap it off, then sit up and push the heavy fall of my hair back from my face. That’s when I get the first real glimpse of my room and it hits me: Z isn’t here. He didn’t just crawl out of bed before me. He actually left before I woke up.

The jerk.

Even as the thought occurs to me, I push it away. After all, I knew what I was getting into when I slept with him. Neither of us pretended it was anything but what it was. No reason to blame him now just because he did exactly what I knew he would. It isn’t like I wasn’t warned.

Except … except last night felt like something more to me. It sounds stupid, especially considering I’m lying here alone and Z went God only knows where without even saying good-bye—but it’s still true. Which proves what an idiot I am.

I settle back in bed, think about going back to sleep—it is my day off, after all—but I’m awake now, my mind whirling in circles as it tries to assimilate this new reality.

I slept with someone.

I slept with someone who wasn’t Remi.

I slept with someone. No, not someone.

I slept with Z.

It’s strange to be thinking this, stranger still for it to be true. Up until now, Remi—my high school boyfriend and the love of my life—was the only guy I’d ever been with. For the most part, I liked it like that. It made it easier for me to point at our relationship and know that it was right and good and pure, despite what people have said since the accident. It also made it easier to accept that those years with Remi were all I was ever going to have.

Now that acceptance is gone and I don’t have a clue what anything means.

Not anymore.

The old familiar sorrow weighs me down, the pain I’m so familiar with that it feels like an extension of my own body. An extra limb I carry around all the time. Yet it’s different, too. More regret, less devastation. A softening of all those jumbled feelings inside me.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe time—and great sex—really do heal all wounds.

Just the thought, sarcastic though it was, has guilt crashing through me. I lock it away, shove it down deep, just like I do with everything I don’t want to deal with. Then I climb out of bed and head for the shower. No use sitting around here all day, moping, when I don’t have to work. Maybe I’ll take the bus into town and do some sightseeing. Catch a movie. There’s got to be something to do in this town that doesn’t involve snow.

On my way to the bathroom, I plug my phone into my stereo and hit some random playlist, and by the time the chorus for Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” comes on, I’m feeling pretty good. After all, there’s no reason to be upset. I wanted to sleep with Z to feel something and to get rid of the whole pressure that came with Remi being the only guy I’d ever slept with. I did that, and had a really good time, too. I have nothing to complain about.

And if I repeat those words often enough, I might actually believe them.

Refusing to go there again, I focus on exfoliating my skin. Shaving my currently nonexistent leg hair. Conditioning the hell out of my curls. Anything and everything but what it felt like to be held and kissed and loved by Z.

My eyes are closed, my head bent back under the water to rinse the last of the conditioner from my hair, when I hear the shower curtain being pulled back. I scream loud and long even as I reach for the only weapon I have—a bottle of conditioner—and prepare to brain the intruder with it.

“Whoa! Hey!” Z throws his hands up in front of him to protect himself from my imminent attack. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Z?” The conditioner falls from my hand into the tub with a thump. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought you breakfast. I thought we could eat together.”

“Oh. Right. Breakfast.” I stare at him for long seconds, trying to assimilate this very unexpected development. “You went out to get breakfast.”

He looks confused for a second, but then the smile fades from his face. “You thought I left.”

“You did leave.” I state the obvious, even as I turn the water off and reach for the towel I draped over the curtain rod.

“I told you I’d be back in a little while.”

He steps back into my room as I climb out of the tub. The bathroom’s about the size of a postage stamp and the only way for two of us to be in it at the same time—if one of us isn’t in the shower—requires us to be a lot closer than we currently are.

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