Back in business!!
Excerpt from Made for Breaking...
*There's some language, so....yeah...*
Could
he really be this stupid? Drew had always known he wasn’t gifted – hell, he
wasn’t even sure he was smart – but
was he really so stupid as to find himself in this position?
“A
mistake?” he’d asked Lisa afterward, in the moonlight, in the panting
silence. And he’d said nothing since. He’d laid her over the hood of a car,
without condom, sweet talk, or promise, and had then been mute their whole
drive to Double Vision. Now, he watched her serve drinks from a bar stool, and
he watched the fine tremors of intensifying anger go dancing across the taut
muscles in her arms. She smiled, she even forced a laugh or two for her
customers, but underneath her glittery lip gloss and smoke gray eye shadow, she
was seething. At least…he thought so. He had no other explanation for the way
her face snapped back like a rubber band when she thought no one could see her;
her lips thinned and her eyes flashed and she was a little bit terrifying as
she pulled glasses and poured shots.
He had to say something.
“Lisa,” he tried as she passed in
front of him. When she ignored him, he waited for her to pass back the other
way and said, “Lis,” with a pleading note in his voice.
She halted like she didn’t want to –
arms still reaching out ahead of her, legs mid-stride and off-balance – and
darted him a glance from the corners of her eyes, refusing to give him her full
attention. She said nothing.
“Can we talk?” he asked. “Maybe when
you go on break?”
In answer, she snatched her apron
off, fumbling with the strings and cursing under her breath; she headed for the
back hall at a march and Drew slipped off his stool to head after her.
Down the wood-paneled,
fluorescent-flickering corridor that led to the exit, the din of the bar dulled
to white noise, the music a hot pulse that came up through the floor. Lisa’s
angry strut reminded him, for some reason, of a cat, and her dark ponytail
whipped as she ducked through the door of the employee locker room, a warning
toss of sleek hair that told him to follow at his own risk.
He paused a moment, his casted hand
on the doorjamb, and asked himself what he would say. Was he afraid of her? Of
what she would expect now that he’d touched her – been inside her? No. There
was guilt, and regret, and worry, but there was no fear. And under the others,
deep down and fragile, was even a kernel of hope – hope that her skin was still
tingling the way his was, that she wanted a chance to try again. Because he was
a dumbass prize fighter with nothing but a duffel of clothes to his name, and
Lisa Russell was the best thing to happen to him since…ever. And because of that,
he had a feeling that, whatever he was to her, it wasn’t good, and didn’t even
begin to hedge toward best.
Steeling himself against her
eruption, he pushed through the swinging door.
And wasn’t prepared for the scene
that greeted him.
Lisa sat on the same long wooden
bench where she’d bandaged his hand before, her platform sandals tucked
together on the floor, an arm around her middle, thumbnail clenched between her
teeth, lashes batting a fast rhythm against her cheeks. In the moment between
the door closing and her eyes snatching up to his, guarded and closed, he could
have sworn she was about to cry. There were tears in her voice, but not on her
face as she launched her offensive.
“Never
again,” she said with such force that it catapulted her to her feet, her
body rigid with the tension of conviction that crackled through those two
words. Her eyes had a wild, animal shine to them, and her straight, white teeth
were bared like fangs. “I said – I’ve been saying – that I would never let some guy compromise anything about me ever again!”
Drew hadn’t expected this; he
blinked stupidly. “Lisa, I asked you – ”
“Oh, fuck your asking. I knew
better. I let you – ” She spun away from
him and paced down the length of the bench, little hands balled into fists at
her sides.
He sighed. Even worse than having a
female with hurt feelings over his silence, he had indignant, don’t-need-a-man
Lisa on his hands. He could have apologized for his silence – soothed with
empty platitudes – but he had no idea how to fix this, whatever it was. After a
long moment of watching her narrow back – and wishing he’d had a chance to see
the skin beneath her yellow halter top in warm lamplight – he said, “I’m not
going to tell anyone.”
Her head whipped around.
“Remember? You said, ‘tell anyone
and I’ll kill you,’ so I wasn’t gonna to say anything. I figured we were gonna
pretend it never happened.”
Something went rippling across her
face: pain, regret, guilt, something. She pulled in a deep breath and let it
out in a rush. “Right.”
“Right,” Drew repeated, studying
every twitch of her lashes, waiting for the moment when she let slip what was
really bothering her. “So we don’t have to do this” – he gestured between them,
at the empty air charged with what they weren’t going to say – “if you don’t
want to. We can honest to God pretend nothing happened.” That wasn’t what he
wanted, but she did…
Maybe she did. She did, didn’t she…?
Her eyes moved over him, sharp and
attentive, assessing. He remembered the breathy sound of his name on her lips
in the garage, the seeking way her fingers had probed through his shirt. Her
invitation then had been unmistakable then. Now – this new invitation – was
unbelievable.
Realization slammed into him: she
didn’t want to pretend, she wanted to acknowledge, and she wanted him to be an
obnoxious ass about it. She wanted him to stake a claim.
“Yeah,” she said, and blinked hard
again. “Yeah, we should do that.” She shook her head. “Sorry I jumped all over
you about it.”
She didn’t look at him as she moved
to the door, but she hesitated. It was only a second, but it was long enough to
confirm his suspicion: never again was
sounding like a long damn time all of a sudden.
