My Sweet Demise (Demise #1) (14 page)

“Next time don’t ignore me.”

He’s still drunk. I can hear it in his voice. After last night I don’t deserve this. “What I do or don’t do cannot be used as an excuse to get this messed up. You were gone. I was so scared!” I scream at him, smacking his chest. “What were you thinking?”

He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Why were you scared?”

I gape at him. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“You. The last thing I remember is watching you dance with that dipshit the way you danced with me. It was happening all over again.”

He isn’t making sense. “You don’t remember drinking an entire bottle of whiskey, bringing a girl back here, her giving you Ecstasy, and then you overdosing?”

“I overdosed?” He groans. “Shit. Rain, I’m trying to listen to you right now, really I am, but all I hear is ahh.”

“You were choking on your own vomit!” I smack his chest again harder. “You overdosed. What were you thinking taking Ecstasy? With her,” I add bitterly. “Why do you have to include these random women? She left you alone when you needed help. She won’t even take care of you and yet you wanted her? I stay with you all night and all I get is a pity hump in the bathroom and an accusation when you wake up?” I’m seething. My fears are coming out as anger. “All I’m good for is this bullshit—getting you laid and wiping your puke out of my hair.” My chest rises rapidly as I expel my emotions. His eyes are wide as he listens. But at least he’s finally listening. “Go to your own room, Kent. Now that I know you’re better I want you out of here. I can’t even look at you right now. What about a thank you? ‘Thank you, Raina, for not letting me suffocate last night, or overheat, or for not once leaving me alone like my date did.’ How about any of that? Get out.”

“I’m sorry.” He reaches for me but I knock his hand away. “Thank you for taking care of me. Of course I’m grateful. I feel like I want to crawl into a hole and never come back out. I’m so fucking ashamed I can’t even look at you. I puked on you?” He closes his eyes and then peeks at me. “There was so much wrong with what you said, by the way. Let’s start over.”

“I don’t want to start over. I’m too exhausted to start over. I want to go back to sleep. Could you go to your bedroom and leave me alone?” I lie back down to reinstate my point. I can’t even look at him.

“I’m so sorry. You have to believe me.” With a shaking hand he reaches over and runs his knuckles down my cheek tenderly. “Thank you for taking care of me. I didn’t deserve it.”

I nod once, trying with every ounce of self-control I possess not to cry. “Just go.”

“I don’t want to go.” He lies back down. “I don’t sleep in bed with girls, but since this isn’t my bed I don’t think it counts. I don’t want to leave you like this. I really scared you, didn’t I?”

His question is my undoing. The stressors of the past night come out of me in one painful rush. I throw myself at him and wrap my arms around his neck. “Oh, Kent. I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up again. You scared the hell out of me.”

My sobs rip me apart. At one point I don’t know why I’m crying. He’s fine. He’s safe. The nothingness is gone from his eyes. But I can still see it, and I know if I stayed out and never came home and drank with Sam like she wanted Kent would be gone.

His date would’ve left him to choke on the couch with a condom on and nothing in his eyes.

The idea sends a rocket of fear through me. I cling to him harder and sob. We both sink down on my bed as I snuggle against him, little sobs bubbling up when I think about him seizing, or burning up, or how he doesn’t think this is a big deal because he doesn’t remember any of it. To him it didn’t happen. For me it’s what almost happened.

He doesn’t talk while I cry. He rubs my back and kisses my hair. When sleep finds me I’m grateful. I dream of nothingness and black spaces. When I wake up we have shifted. We’re almost spooning, except his legs are thrown over my legs and I feel trapped.

When I try to move his body tightens around me. I refuse to like it. I refuse to feel his hard chest against my back or his strong arms holding me to him. Kent is everything I cannot have, for good reasons that have been shown countless times, and some of my own reasons, which don’t matter whether they’re good or not. Reasons rarely have to be good. Their practical impact on our decision making doesn’t change suddenly because they make more sense.

Kent is wrong for me. I need to get away from him. These are all the reasons that matter to me right now.

“Willow,” Kent whispers in his sleep, nuzzling my neck. “I miss sleeping with you.”

I freeze. He thinks I’m another girl? Who the hell is Willow? I elbow him in his stomach.

He groans and wakes up. When he sees it’s me he closes his eyes again and holds me tighter. “Raina,” he whispers, nuzzling my neck. “I like sleeping with you.”

“Get off me.” I make my voice firm. “Get out of my bed.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re so mad I have a feeling you’ll leave forever if I get out of this bed right now. I’m not risking that.”

“What does it matter if I leave forever? I’m nothing to you but a wing-woman. We barely know each other.”

He’s quiet for a long time. When he answers his voice is gruff. “It would matter to me. It would matter a lot.”

Oh, please, don’t lay it too thick.
“I can’t do this right now.”

“Listen to me.” He grabs my chin and forces my face inches from his. Our eyes connect. I stare into them, relishing the emotion burning in them like oil set on fire. The nothingness is gone. “I’m sorry I put you through that last night. I’m sorry you had to see me like that again. I’m sorry you had to take care of me, and I’m sorry I can’t say the right things or do the right things. I’m sorry, I promise I am. I’m sorry for hooking up with you in the bathroom, and I’m sorry you think I didn’t want more. But most of all I’m sorry I scared you. How many different ways do I have to say it to you?”

I stare, trapped in his fiery gaze, as his words leave their mark on me. I try to look away but he grips my face harder, preventing me from separating the connection. I need a break, because that buzzing is back, and Kent Nicholson is lying half naked in my bed and I missed his eyes so much last night. Reaching up, I trace his chapped lips. “What were you trying to forget last night?”

“You really want to know?”

“I deserve to know.”

“I was trying to forget you.” He holds my gaze, daring me to ask him why.

For some reason his words make me shiver. I swallow hard and lean forward instinctively. “It worked.”

He smiles sadly. “Why do you think I do it? When I get wasted I’m nothing. Nothing can’t remember, can it? I like not being able to think. Thinking always leads to remembering. That’s something I try not to do as much as possible.”

“Who exactly are you trying so hard to forget?” It isn’t me. It can’t be. I’ve only been here a short time and he’s been doing this for longer.

He lets my face go and looks down. When he looks back up I feel a small, miniscule, pretty much nonexistent part of me admit I might want Kent past attraction. The pain in his eyes makes my heart ache for the hurt he feels. I can’t stand the sight of it so I quickly press my lips to the corner of his mouth, not even his lips, and hug him to me.

“Never mind. Forget I asked.”

“Her name is Willow Serena. She’s who I want to forget.”

I still in his arms. “Did you love her?”

“I’ve never loved anyone that much before her,” he admits hoarsely. “I didn’t even know I could love that hard.”

“What happened?”

He swallows audibly and shakes his head. “Enough talking for one day.”

“Okay.” I touch my hand to his face.

He sighs and lies on his back. Peeking at me, he smiles thinly. “That’s the first time I’ve said her name in a year. I guess it’s true about time and pain.” He makes hacking noise and covers his eyes with his hand. “Or not.”

I refrain from mentioning he whispered it in his sleep. “Sleeping with other women helps you?”

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“You puked on me last night. I had to drag your naked body into the bathroom and take a condom off your flaccid penis. You’re talking to me about this. Does it help you?”

His eyes widen and for the first time Kent Nicholson blushes. His cheeks flush with pink and he looks away, absolutely mortified. “Raina, baby, I’m sorry.” Taking a deep breath, he nods. “Fucking other women helps. But making them feel like shit helps a lot more.”

I suspected as much. “You really are a pig.”

“Not denying it.” He reaches for me, cupping my face in his large palm. “Thank you for taking care of me.” His thumb rubs my cheek. “Honestly. Thank you, Rain.”

“You’re welcome. Thank you for telling me about Willow.”

“You’re welcome, I guess.” But he’s clearly uncomfortable. He presses his finger to my mouth. “Don’t say her name again. On your lips it’s wrong.”

I want so badly to tell him I know who she is. Her name on my lips hardly counts when he already informed me she’s his ex-fiancée. I picture the onyx-haired beauty in his room on his mirror. But his pain is his pain, and even being puked on doesn’t change that.

“Got it,” I let him know. My stomach falls with disappointment when I check the clock. “I have to go to work.”

His head snaps up. “You’re leaving?”

“I have to. Some of us don’t have rich daddies to take care of us.” I poke his side and get out of bed. He doesn’t move. I find my last clean uniform and hold it up. “I’d change in the bathroom but it’s filthy thanks to you. Get out so I can change.”

“Change in here.” He crosses his arms behind his head and then drapes his ankles over one another. His abs stretch and his shorts fall down, revealing a large patch of his golden pubic hair. My temperature flares at the sight of his body, so lean and tempting. Even after last night Kent is still incredibly attractive to me, maybe even more so, because that nothingness makes me appreciate him even more.

“I won’t look,” he promises, yet he doesn’t close his eyes.

“You’re impossible.” I laugh in disbelief. “Please roll over.”

He rolls over and now his back is on display. “Better?”

It’s a delectable back. All of his muscles are taut and smooth, stretching enticingly under his skin. His back dimples make my mouth water. I imagine kissing them, biting them, licking them…I force a deep breath into my lungs and take my clothes off, quickly changing into my uniform.

“You can roll over.”

He does so slowly, still hurting. “You’re the first girl who doesn’t want me to see her naked.”

“Interesting, isn’t it?” I grab my hair straightener and plug it in, sitting on the edge of my bed as I wait for it to get hot enough to straighten the mess my hair has become.

“Disappointing is more like it.” His foot reaches up to trace his toes down my thigh. “Who was that guy you were dancing with last night?”

I’m distracted by his toe. “I don’t know. Some guy. He likes me and wanted to dance.” I bring my brush through my hair as his toe goes higher.

“Do you like him?”

“I don’t know him. Samantha gave him my number, so I’ll have to figure out a way to turn him down without being mean.”

“Be mean,” he grunts. “You two friends now?”

“She’s a nice girl.”

“She wasn’t nice when she was with me. I don’t do nice. She’s lying to you.”

“Nice girls make mistakes too,” I remind him haughtily.

“When are you going to get over that? So we hooked up. And did you say you were a pity hump? Are you kidding? I could’ve had you in that bathroom. How would you feel about yourself if you let me screw you in a bathroom?”

I look down. For the first time I might believe him. “You held back for me?”

“I wasn’t holding back for me.”

He’s right. I wasn’t thinking about anything the way I should have. I imagine losing my virginity that way and cringe. “So you were into it?”

“Raina,” he says impatiently, “I was so into it, into you, into the sounds you were making and the look in your eyes, I haven’t been able to think about anything else other than you falling apart in my arms.”

Heat erupts across my flesh as if Kent Nicholson’s words are made out of flames. “I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. I promise I’m not usually that desperate.”

“You weren’t desperate.” His toe continues its ascending journey. He gets to the top of my shorts and then begins to descend, tracing his previous path. “I turned you on the same way you turned me on. You don’t have to apologize for it.”

I turned him on?

I didn’t know I could do that, although I suppose it’s natural. Kent seems like he needs more than what we did to get turned on. I gulp and close my eyes as something strange moves over me. It’s confidence, or pride, or some sexy combination of both. It’s not something I’ve ever felt before. “I attacked you.”

“You can attack me anytime.”

I move away from his toe. “I won’t.”

“Why not, if you don’t mind me asking?” His foot starts messing with the only part of me it can still reach. His toe dips under my shirt and traces my lower back.