Breathless (112 page)

“Night, Coach.”

“Night, girl.”

I stuck a hand out the door and waved. Jesse rolled his eyes, but his coach barked out a quiet laugh before I was pulled inside the room. Then, as the door closed behind us, Jesse turned and regarded me for a moment.

I held my breath. Everything changed now. We were alone. There were no friend dramatics, no other guys or teammates around us, and his coach had left us alone. It was only me and him. Jesse dropped his hands from the door and walked to me, quietly. A shiver went up my back as I watched him come. He moved with a gracefulness that was sensual and dangerous at the same time. His eyes had darkened. The same desire leapt inside of me. It burst into flames and I gasped when I felt his fingertips against my skin. They trailed around my neck and he turned my mouth to his. My heart was pounding. It wanted to burst out of me, but then everything went away. Jesse lifted me in his arms. My lips gasped against his; they were cemented to each other. I felt the bed sheets underneath me. All I wanted was him. All I needed was him.

Seventeen

Jesse was gone when I woke the next morning for the second time. He had slipped out of the bed earlier, but pressed a kiss to my forehead before he left. So when I woke again, it was to the annoying sound of the phone. Angie sounded bright and perky on the other end. Apparently my cell phone wasn’t doing the job, so she had asked around and found where the Golden Boy’s room was. I was supposed to be thankful she hadn’t come in person. I growled back. I wasn’t ready for her that morning. I wanted to curl back up in bed and never move. It smelled like Jesse. Everything did – the pillows, the bed sheets, even the towel he had left on the other bed.

But Angie was insistent, so an hour later I met her in the lobby for breakfast. She looked refreshed in a blue dress with her hair in braids on top of her head. Ugh. She looked gorgeous. I touched the ends of my hair and knew my messy ponytail would never look sexy on me, not when I stood next to her.

“Hey, my only best friend now. What are you hankering for?”

“Jesse,” I grunted.

She froze for a second. The bright smile slipped a bit, but she rolled her eyes. “Okay. I got that, you stupid girl-who’s-going-to-be-destroyed-later-by-him, but I was talking about food.”

I opened my mouth.

“And not in the way of what you want to taste right now, but actual food that we can sit down, order, digest, and take home in a doggy bag. That kind, you wanton woman, not anything that has to do with sex.”

I closed my mouth. I had another smartass comment on the tip of my tongue, but I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m still pissed from last night, I think.”

“You think?” She arched an eyebrow high as the hostess led us to a table in the hotel’s restaurant. As we slid into our seats with the pool as our backdrop, Angie frowned when she opened her menu. “I’ve moved onto being angry.”

I opened mine as well. “But why are we so angry? She didn’t do anything to us last night.”

“Uh,” she choked out, shocked. “Are you kidding me? You don’t even know what she said to me last night.”

“What’d she say?”

“Well, she called me a bitch when she realized I had been the one on Cord’s phone. Then I called her a backstabbing bitch, both to her boyfriends and to her friends. I called her a bunch of other names too, not appropriate for here.”

When the waitress approached, we both ordered coffee. As she left, I glowered over my menu. They all looked the same: skinny, gorgeous, blonde hair, with very full lips. I growled as I remembered Sabrina from the night before, and the club’s hostess as well. Both could trip on a box of doughnuts and get fat, for all I cared.

“Okay.” Angie snapped my menu out of my hands and snapped her fingers in front of me. “Where’d you go? I was here ranting about our lost friend, but you went somewhere else. I know you, Alex, and I know you don’t have it in you to be that angry at Marissa.”

Oh, right. Marissa.

I shrugged. I was beyond caring now. “I don’t know. I was pretty upset with her last night too. She doesn’t treat Eric right at all.”

“Hmmm mmm.”

“What?”

She gave me a knowing grin. “And that has nothing to do with you and Jesse, right? You’re not equating him and Marissa together? She cheats on Eric. He’ll cheat on you. You see where I’m going?”

“No.” We weren’t in an exclusive relationship. He could do whatever he wanted. So could I.

“Oh. Okay, well, you’re mad that she’ll cheat on Eric?”

“If she hasn’t already.” I leaned forward. “Her and Cord were giving each other the bedroom look last night.”

“Really?”

“You didn’t catch it?”

“No.” She was surprised, but the waitress returned with our drinks. After the coffee was set down, we both ordered toast and fruit. The waitress seemed disappointed when she left. “I’m surprised that I didn’t catch that.”

“You were distracted by wanting to scratch her eyeballs out.”

“Yeah, there’s that.” Angie grinned as she took her coffee black. I poured a creamer in mine as she asked, “So the game is tonight, at six. You’re still going with us?”

I shook my head.“What? Why?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to open a conversation about how my parents would be there and there’d be a memorial dedicated to Ethan. I couldn’t handle that conversation right then and there. “You think Marissa is still going?”

She rolled her eyes. “I suppose. She’s the one with the tickets. Crap. I didn’t think about that until now.”

I laughed. “Wouldn’t that suck? You confront her about ditching us and she gets you back by giving your tickets away to someone else?”

She slumped back in her chair. “Man, that sucks, but I’d respect her a bit more if she did that. It’s something I would do.”

I laughed harder.

Angie grinned at me. “What the hell am I going to do? You can’t ask Jesse for tickets?”

I shook my head. No way was I going to risk that the seats he’d give us would be next to my parents. He’d do that without thinking, although his comment last night had surprised me. It’d been the first real one he had made that told me he was aware of what my parents were doing, or that I might be hurting because of them.

I swallowed that painful thought away.

She’d been watching me as I pondered all of that. Her eyes were too knowing as she sat back. “Oookay. We’re not going down that road, apparently.” Then she smirked. “Maybe we could call that captain on their team? He seemed like a nice guy, what’s his name, Ryan or—”

“Reed,” I supplied. “And that’d be worse. It wouldn’t be right if we asked him for tickets; besides, I think it might be too late.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Disappointment filled both of us when our bill came and we paid at the table. As we walked out, I asked, “So what’s on the agenda for you and Justin today?”

Her eyes sparkled in humor. “Can I make a comment like you did? Instead of Jesse, can I say Justin? Would you be okay if I disappeared for the day with my man? We had a crazy dirty night last night. I was worked up. I got him worked up.” She pretended to shiver from excitement. “He scratched me right and I scratched him back.”

“Okay,” I laughed and hit her arm. “Shut up. I got it. I won’t bring up Jesse in that way anymore.”

She tipped her head back as a carefree laugh came out of her, but it ended on a sour note. We stopped in our tracks when we saw Eric in the lobby. He was on a couch in a far corner with two of his bags packed at his feet. His head hung low as he was hunched over his knees.

She sighed, “That doesn’t look good.”

I touched her arm. “Let me, okay?”

“Have at it. Hopefully she didn’t railroad him like she does all her guys.”

“What?” I mocked her. “What about the ones who leave her in the dust?”

Angie grinned and waved at the same time. “Listen to us; we’ve turned into the mean girls. Good luck over there.”

As she went back to her room and I headed to Eric, regret filling me for a moment. I was being mean to Marissa. I had flinched as I heard the bitterness in my tone as well, but I also knew that everything would work out with her. It always did, even though it might take awhile this time. For some reason, I couldn’t turn my back as easily as I did before. For some reason, her betrayals hurt more than they normally did.

“Hey.” I sank onto the couch beside him and tapped the bags beside him. “What’s up with those?”

Eric’s head snapped up. His eyes widened, but then a depleted look filled them. His shoulders sagged forward. “I had a great lie to tell you, in case I saw any of you guys, but screw it. She’s not worth it.”

A foreboding sense filled me. I asked quietly, “What’d she do?”

“Besides spending the night in Cord Tatum’s room last night?” He shook his head. His mouth was strained at the corners. “She screwed him all night long, and they were loud enough that his roommate had to bunk somewhere else. She loved telling me that this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Eric.” I reached up to pat his arm.

A harsh laugh ripped from him. “There’s more.”

“Oh.” My hand fell back to my lap.

“Yeah, and I guess this morning he told her to take a hike.”

“What?”

“Yep. He told her that she should go back to her boyfriend because he’d be out with the guys tonight. I guess they party hard after their games, and he said he’d be getting other ass tonight. He told her not to wait for him and that she should patch things up with her boyfriend. I guess he thinks I’m a nice guy.”

The anger rolled off of him in waves, but he was tired too. I saw the exhaustion in his depths. Then he continued, “None of that went over with her. She came back to the room, screamed at me for an hour that I was a horrible boyfriend because I still had feelings for you and she knew it.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. His hands formed into fists. Then he bit out, “She blamed me for everything. She said I wasn’t good enough for her in bed, that I was too nice to her. She liked having guys treat her like shit. She said Cord had been liberating in bed, that she’s do him anytime he called her.” He cursed under his breath and swung his head towards me. I jumped back at the bleak look in his eyes. “Is that what it’s like for you and Hunt? Are you with him because he treats you like crap? Do all girls go for that?”

I sucked in my breath and told myself that this wasn’t really about me and Jesse. I started to reach for his arm again, but he hissed as he yanked it away. “Don’t touch me, Alex. Don’t ever touch me again unless you’re going to follow through with it.”

“What?” My mouth fell open.

He jerked to his feet. “I mean it. Don’t hug me. Don’t pat me on the shoulder. Not unless you’re ready to follow through and screw me. Isn’t that what you do with Hunt? He touches you and you melt for him. It disgusts me. You disgust me.”

“Eric.”

“I mean it. I’m tired of it. I’m always the good guy. I always get crapped on. I’m done with it.” He started to turn away, but then pulled something out of his pocket. He threw it at me.

As four pieces of paper fluttered in the air, I couldn’t move. This wasn’t an Eric that I had ever seen before.

He grabbed his bags and glared at me. “I’m going back home. Marissa took off this morning. She said she couldn’t stand being around me. I took the tickets out of her purse when she was in the bathroom so there you go, you can still watch your boy’s game. Shit.” He shook his head again. “I’m still being the nice guy. I wanted to be with you, but you never gave me the signs. And then Marissa was all over me and I thought, ‘why not? She wouldn’t hurt me,’ but the sad thing is that she did. I cared about her. I actually did. And then this trip happened. This was the trip from hell. I got to watch both girls that I cared about fall all over the assholes. That’s what he is, Alex. You know that too. I know you know that. He’s going to break your heart. Why won’t you stop it? I don’t get that. Why do girls like you always go for guys like that? I bet he hasn’t even lied to you about it either, like Cord did with Marissa. He told her upfront that he was going to screw other girls tonight and I know she’ll still go for him if he ever calls her. You do that too. You’re both so weak. You’re spineless.” He held a hand to his stomach. “You make me sick. I can’t even look at you.”

The tickets fell to the floor around my feet, but I couldn’t bend to pick them up. I couldn’t even pick up my own mouth as it fell beside them. My feet were cemented in place as I watched him leave. This was Eric Nathan, the good guy who was never going to hurt me. It was then, as I heard everything he flung at me, that I realized I could’ve been happy with him. He wouldn’t have hurt me as I knew Jesse would. He would’ve been good to me, treated me right. And maybe, even maybe, he might’ve helped me heal from the pain that I had left at home.

Shit.

He walked away from me, but he was right. Everything he said was right. And even as he left through the doors, I knew I’d still go to Jesse that night. But this time was different. This was the last time. I would end it after tonight. I had to, otherwise everyone would be right. I drew in a shuddering breath. I should’ve been crippled by what Eric had said to me, but I wasn’t. Strength started to fill me. I couldn’t explain it. I had no idea why I wasn’t crying or why I wasn’t filled with shame because he’d been right about me. Maybe it was because I knew I had one more night or maybe I was lying to myself. Either way, as I finally bent and picked up the tickets, I knew what I’d have to do.

I’d have to leave Jesse, but not until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I told myself. One more night in his arms, one more night to have everything else pushed away. I could forget for one more night.

Eighteen

I didn’t tell Angie what Eric had said, but I did say that Marissa had left after they had broken up. I expected a snarky comment from her, but she was silent. She only gave me a repressed smile instead. Justin, perfect timing as always, swooped in to literally sweep her off her feet. She shrieked as she threw her arms around his neck. They bounded away, towards the cab, but I heard her laughter a second later.

And then I followed behind. Since Marissa and Eric had both ditched for the rest of the weekend, I promised Angie that I would still go to the game. I knew Jesse wanted me to come as well, but when we got there, I wasn’t ready for the intensity that filled the stadium.