Society Girls: Waverly (3 page)

W
averly

He’s wet. That’s all my stupid brain can focus on as Knox walks into the atrium at the apartment building. Reina called and asked me to come down here to meet with them, but I didn’t know he’d be coming straight from the pool. Since I’ve been avoiding him the last couple of days, I also didn’t expect his stubble to have grown into an almost full-blown beard. One that’s got water glistening all over it, making me think of his face between my legs.

I shift in my seat as he greets Reina and Isa, entranced by the trail of water running over his eight-pack of abs, and disappearing into the waistband of his board shorts. I know he has a Speedo under there, and I’ve watched enough videos of him in and out of the pool to know just what he looks like in that bathing suit. For research purposes only, of course.

“Wave? Are you okay?” Reina asks, and when I can focus again, I see her looking at me with concern—and more than a little amusement—in her eyes.

I look her in the eyes, both of us knowing I was checking out Knox, and his package. “Yep. I’m great.”

“Why weren’t you answering my greeting then? You seemed
distracted
,” Knox says with a smile.

Damn it all to hell. Of course he noticed what was distracting me, too. Captain Obvious has nothing on me.

“I was just thinking about the mission.”

“So you were thinking about me.”

Maybe if I beg, Reina will let me stab him. Just once, and not anywhere that would jeopardize his career. Maybe in his hand. He shouldn’t need his hands to swim. I mean, they slice through the water, but a little cut wouldn’t affect much, would it?

“Waverly?” Isa asks, and I realize I’ve zoned out again. This time with violent, and not lusty thoughts, but still not a good thing. Shit.

“Sorry. I zoned out for a minute.”

“This is all a little hard to take in sometimes. I get it,” Knox says, motioning to his body.

“I was thinking of stabbing you,” I reply.

“My body is insured for twenty million dollars.”

“If you piss me off enough, it’d be worth it.”

He steps back, and takes the farthest chair away from me as Reina and Isa laugh. “Now that we’re all present, let’s get down to business,” Reina tells us.

I force myself to not watch as Knox starts to rub himself down with a towel, because I need to focus on the mission. He may
be
the mission, but he’s not all I have to worry about. I need to remember that.

“So, where are we going?” I ask, trying to show that I’m back in control of myself.

“Cape Town,” he answers, like it’s not a big deal.

My heart starts to race, because it
is
a big deal. The biggest deal. “No.” The word comes out before I can stop it, but I mean it. I won’t go back there. I
can’t
go back there.

“Knox can you please excuse us for a few minutes.” I hear Reina’s voice, but it feels like it’s coming from far away.

“What’s wrong? Is she okay?” I hear panic in his voice, and I know I’m slipping away.

“She’ll be fine,” Isa tells him in a calm voice, but she’s wrong. I won’t be fine. Not if they make me go there.

“No,” I say again. That’s all I can seem to say. Just that one word. And then everything goes blissfully black.

K
nox

“Let me go,” I yell, as Matt Corrigan pulls me from the room where Waverly fainted.

At least I think she fainted. I thought she’d be happy about going to Africa. I don’t know where she’s from in the vast continent, but I thought she’d want to go home. If the repeated “no” coming from her mouth didn’t tell me otherwise, fainting sure did the trick.

“You need to wait out here,” Matt tells me, finally releasing me once we’re outside by the pool.

The water isn’t calming me right now, and that’s almost as alarming as what I was forced to leave. “I need to know she’s okay.”

“She’ll be fine. He’ll make sure of it,” he tells me, motioning through the window to the dark-skinned man running inside the room.

“Who’s he?” I ask, not managing to keep the jealously out of my voice.

“Her best friend,
and
one of the best doctors in the world. Kenny will help her.”

“Just friends?”

“There’s no ‘just’ about their relationship, but nothing romantic’s going to happen.”

I didn’t see the woman come outside, but all of a sudden she’s standing next to me. Now, she…she’s who the press and the public would expect to see on my arm. Jet black hair cut longer in front, tattoos all over the parts of her body I can see, a slim but sexy body, and a piercing above her lip. She’s hot as fuck, and doing absolutely nothing for me. What the hell? Maybe I’m broken.

“Who are you?” I ask, trying and failing to put some swagger behind my words.

“His.”

The one word startles me, and I physically react. I wasn’t expecting that, and I look back and forth between them. She doesn’t look like the type of woman who would be easily claimed, and the doctor doesn’t look like he’d be up to the challenge. Objectively, I can admit that he’s hot, and watching him tenderly caress Waverly’s cheek as she opens her eyes makes me feel something, too. Something a lot like jealousy.

“You’re okay with him touching her like that?”

She chuckles. “Yes, I actually am. Waverly is not a threat to me. Honestly, the only woman in the world who is a threat to my relationship is me. Thankfully, I know how lucky I am to have that man in there, so I’m not going to do anything to fuck things up with him.”

“Wow. That’s…umm…pretty insightful.”

“Love will do that to you,” she says, turning to look at me. “It will also make you protect your man’s best friend from douchebag athletes.”

I pretend to look around. “I don’t see any lurking at the moment, but I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“You hurt her, and he’ll come for you. I’ll be right beside him, but he’ll be the one to take you down. There’s no one who can protect you from him in that scenario.”

“No one?” I ask, nodding my head to where Reina’s sitting with Waverly.

“No one. Not even her. She wouldn’t try, though. Wave’s one of us, and that means more than whatever crazy amount you paid her. You’d do well to remember that.”

“I’ve played along, but I don’t see what you think I could do to Waverly. It’s not like we’re involved romantically, or even fucking. She’s my bodyguard.”

“Is that all she is? All you want?”

“Yes.”

“You need to work on your lying skills, Swim Boy.”

“I’m not lying.” I am so totally lying, maybe just not to myself anymore.

“Remember what I said, because we both know the truth.”

She walks inside, and sits on her doctor’s lap. He places his arm around her while keeping one of his hands linked with Waverly’s. The two women perform a hug that should be awkward with how they’re sitting, but it’s not. I see the smile on Waverly’s face as she looks at her friends, and I know I’m lost. Lost in this woman, and wanting her to find me. And maybe just maybe, I want her to find my heart, too.

W
averly

I’m embarrassed. Totally and utterly embarrassed. I can’t believe I fainted. Yeah, I was shocked to hear Knox say we were supposed to got to Cape Town, but I’ve been trained to keep my emotions in check. I’ve been trained to do whatever it takes to guarantee the outcome I need. Yet, two words erased all of it. All of those years of becoming a child soldier just vanished. Reina’s going to pull me from this mission, and I have no one to blame but myself.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her.

“There’s nothing you need to apologize for. I had no clue he’d want to finish his training in Africa.”

“Africa?” Kendrick asks from where he’s sitting next to me with Matisse on his lap.

“Cape Town,” I tell him, trying to hold back my tears as my friend looks at me with sympathy in his eyes.

“Maybe it’s time.”

“It’s not Ken. I’m not ready.”

“It helped me to go back and have that closure.”

“Because you wanted to go back. You missed it.” He doesn’t deny it, because he can’t. His silence fuels my desperation—and my anger. The anger is for me alone, but I take it out on him. Just like always. “You never tell anyone that it’s South Africa we come from, and that’s because you wanted redemption but you don’t want to remember it all, either. Everyone asks about your accent, and you just say you’re from Africa. Never South Africa. Never Cape Town.”

“Stop it, Waverly,” Matisse has steel in her voice as she calls me out, but as always, my best friend is protecting me.

“It’s okay, Tees. She’s right. My country has overcome Apartheid, and survived so much, but it is still a flawed place. A place of trafficking and other horrors mixed with honor and compassion. I both love it, and feel shame about it, so I am intentionally vague about where it truly is I come from.”

“The swimming program there is exceptional,” Isa says, working to bring us all back on track.”

“It is. As Ken said, there are many great things about our country. Our city, even. Unfortunately, the only good thing I ever experienced there is currently sitting in this room with me right now.”

“I won’t make you go. Knox will need to change locations, or we’ll send someone else,” Reina tells me, and I know she means it. She won’t hold this against me.

“You went back to Mexico even though you’d been taken there.”

“Yes, I did.”

“That was brave. I just don’t know if I can be as brave as you.”

She shakes her head. “I wasn’t brave, Waverly. I wanted to die. I knew going back could help me make that happen.”

“That was
never
going to happen,” Matt tells her with a growl.

He went after her, and almost died saving her from the man who’d taken her for a second time—once when she was a girl headed for a convent, and again when she was one of the most powerful women in the world, and thought she was done living. I didn’t think love like that was real until I met them and the other couples from the Society. Or saw Ken and Matisse fall and break, only to put each other back together again.

Still, what Reina says shocks me, even though I know it’s true. “I can’t believe you can just say that…say that you wanted to die.”

“Admitting my weaknesses is the strongest and bravest thing I will ever do. Not many people live without demons. It doesn’t matter whether they worry about their appearance, their job, their love, or something else. We all have things that could potentially push us to the point of no return. I survived mine, because I had people who weren’t willing to let me go, and had the skills and resources to stop it from happening. Not everyone is so lucky, but I wish they were.”

“I survived.” I say the words out loud, and hear Ken gasp from beside me.

I’ve never said those words before, out loud or in my head, but right now I know they’re true. Things were horrible for me, but they could have been much worse. I am here right now, living and breathing. I have friends who care about me, and maybe I’ll never have the kind of love some of them share, but I’m lucky. I’ve known that for some time now, but I’ve never allowed myself to voice the truth. I’m still a little battered, but I’m not broken.

“I’ll go to Cape Town,” I add, knowing Ken was right when he said it was time. I need to go there if I’m ever going to move past what happened to me there.

“I meant what I said, Wave. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, Rei. I do.”

“I’m going with you,” Ken says.

“No. You’re going to stay here with Matisse.”

“He can go with you,” she says without hesitation.

“No. It’s time for me to stand on my own. With the knowledge I have friends to call on if I need them, of course.”

“You’ll always have that,” he tells me.

“I know.”

Matisse slides off of his lap as my best friend stands and pulls me up into his arms. I hold on tightly to him for a few minutes, and then I let go. I might have to wipe my eyes a little, and his are a little misted over as well. This is a new chapter for us, and it’s what we both need. He needs to always put Matisse first, because she deserves nothing less. And I need to face my demons, and let myself finally live. Maybe even love. Or at the very least, lust.