When I groaned, I wasn’t sure what it was from: the splitting headache, the throbbing muscle aches, or the reminders of what had and hadn’t happened last night. Another groan slipped out when my eyes opened to find buttery morning light slicing through the window across from the couch I’d woken up on a week ago exactly.
Diverting my gaze, I saw the handcuff was still secured around my wrist, and beneath it were a few layers of gauze. From the feel of it, some kind of numbing antiseptic cream or healing balm had been rubbed on beneath the gauze. My mind might have been foggy about plenty of things from last night, but I did remember the rubbed-raw pain I’d felt from the cuff. I wasn’t sure where Knox was, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to know until I’d worked out a few things in my head. Ready to close my eyes and hold reality at bay for at least another fifteen minutes, I snuggled back into the pillow beneath me and curled my handcuffed arm closer.
At least I tried pulling it closer.
“If you pull it out of socket, you have to put it back in,” Knox’s sleep-heavy voice said from below me.
When I propped up on my elbow to take a look, I found him camped out on the living room floor, his wrist trapped in the same cuffs mine was. While my arm had been comfortably supported by a couch, his was raised. From the looks of his pale arm, it had been raised that way most of the night. Knox didn’t have a pillow under his head or a blanket draped across his body. Even his boots were still on.
“Sorry, I didn’t know we were still attached.”
“I suppose I can feel the attachment way more than you can,” he replied, eyeing his arm sticking up in the air.
Inspecting his arm again, I saw that it wasn’t just pale; it was almost white. In contrast to Knox’s other arm, which had the tone of someone who’d just spent a summer of afternoons out in the sun, all I could think about was loss of blood-flow and amputation. Scooting to the edge of the couch, I dropped my arm, bringing his down with mine. Now instead of his draining of blood, mine would pool with it.
“I see you couldn’t find a way to get the handcuffs off.” I jingled the chain keeping us together, looking at him and trying not to fidget as images of what had happened last night flashed before me.
“You passed out pretty hard. I could have rummaged through the garage for my bolt cutters, but I didn’t want to wake you. Breaking the bond didn’t seem as important as letting you have a little peace after everything that happened.” Knox’s eyes had yet to lock onto me, but they shut as he stumbled over his last few words.
“Why didn’t you just lay me down beside you on the floor? I probably wouldn’t have noticed if zombies had started tearing into my internal organs last night, let alone if I was curled up on the floor. Not to mention I’m guessing you have something that constitutes as a bed in here. You could have just laid me down on that, and we both could have been comfortable.”
Half of his face lined in a wince. “After the events of last night, I figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to have you and me on the same level. On the floor or on a bed. Especially not on a bed.”
“So you figured putting me two feet higher than you ought to ward off all temptation?” I peaked a brow at him, but his eyes were still firmly closed. From the looks of the hollows under his eyes, Knox hadn’t slept well.
“I figured it was the right thing to do. That was all I considered when I set you onto the couch.”
“And what about what happened before the couch, before I fell asleep. . . What do you figure that was? Right or wrong?”
I was diving right in, because why the hell not? That kiss had to be discussed sometime, and the sooner we got it out in the open, the less time we’d have to tread awkward waters. I couldn’t quite decide if I’d attribute last night to right or wrong, but I did know two things—I didn’t regret it, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. If I let myself regret things I’d done, or be ashamed by them, I’d be so busy wallowing in both that I’d drown. I lived. I learned. And then I kept right on living.
His forehead was deeply lined as he looked to be searching for the right words.
“If it’s too hard to talk about this early in the morning, fine. We can wait until our coffee has set in, but—”
“This isn’t because of the topic you’re bringing up”—Knox pointed with his free hand at his pained expression—“because who wouldn’t want to talk about what happened in the confines of my truck last night before seven a.m. on a Saturday morning?” Yeah, there was no way of mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. “The reason I look like a limb’s being ripped from my body is because I’m pretty sure my arm’s about to be.”
His arm still looked pale, but red pricks of color were bleeding through. I’d had plenty of body parts fall asleep on me and had experienced just as many of those body parts coming back, and it wasn’t a gentle or pleasant feeling.
“Sorry—again. Let’s do this a little more gradually.” I lifted his arm to more of a forty-five degree angle.
Knox pulled against me, lowering his arm back to the floor. “No, it’s okay. I’d rather deal with all of the pain now than stretched out into smaller doses.”
I winced when he punched the floor with his other hand. “Even your early morning proverbs are like little windows into your soul.”
“I’m an open book, right? I don’t get why no one else sees that.” He wasn’t squirming in obvious pain, but that almost made it worse to witness.
“Do you need something? You want me to massage it or something? Or maybe we can go in search of those bolt cutters now?” I might have tried to sit up, but with the way my arm was angled down, I couldn’t move anywhere without moving him. I moved, he moved. He moved, I moved. A pair of handcuffs had made me totally dependent on Knox Jagger, and him on me—somewhere, karma was having a good laugh that two willfully independent people had become dependent’s little bitch.
“You know what would help right now? Not talking about it—massage, bolt cutters, a surgical saw, or anything remotely related to my arm.” Knox’s eyes were still closed, but the lines were starting to iron from his face.
In the morning light, I noticed things I’d never noticed—like the dark stubble marking his face, more prominent around his chin and neck, or how if he hadn’t had several small and a couple larger scars smudging his face, he could have fallen dangerously close to the beautifully handsome category. From the dark, thick eyelashes to the full lips and even complexion, Knox’s face was just as appealing as what resided below it. The scars and the few just-there bumps along the ridge of his nose shifted him into the ruggedly handsome category and made him, to me, that much more attractive. Life had clearly done its best to knock him down, but Knox just kept getting up. That was sexy in a way that couldn’t even compare with chiseled abs or perfectly tousled hair.
When his lips parted to suck in a long breath, the flashes from last night came together into one long, continuous reel. Instead of just remembering his hands on me, I could feel them. Instead of seeing a still life of us wrapped around each other, I remembered the way his mouth tasted.
I shifted and tried to focus on him right here and right now, instead of on the Knox from last night because, quite frankly, I couldn’t think straight, let alone talk, when I was envisioning that version. “So. About last night . . .”
How did a girl begin this? How did I discuss a topic I wasn’t sure how I felt about yet? I’d made out with Knox Jagger. Actually, “made out” implied hot ‘n’ heavy kissing middle-school style. What we’d done hadn’t been anything like the awkward, fumbling mess that had been intimacy in middle school . . . What we’d been last night had been—
“Can we just not talk about it?” Knox interrupted my thoughts, wrinkles etching deep into his face again. Apparently this topic was even more painful than discussing his arm that had probably been two minutes from the amputation phase. “A girl like you doesn’t do what we were about to with a guy like me. Case closed. Moving on.”
So, to him, what we’d done last n
ight had been a . . . fill in the blank . . . mistake. Awesome. Even though I still wasn’t sure of my own feelings about it, “mistake” wasn’t a conclusion on the list.
I felt that all-too-familiar switch flip—the temper one. Maybe it was because I felt like he was trying to give me the brush-off or some lame excuse, but I’d just gone from groggy to wanting to throw my head back and roar. “A girl like me? Please, Knox. Is this where you flash the smart-girl card? Maybe the good-girl card? Is this where you try to get it into my head that a good girl like me doesn’t go for a bad guy like you? Because if that’s the case, here’s a story for you—I’m half as good as you think I am, and you’re half as bad as you’ve convinced yourself you are.”
“A girl like you as in the kind who has a future is what I meant,” he said calmly. “Not as in a good girl, because you’re right, you’re a far cry from being tagged a ‘good girl,’”—he chuckled, like the concept was hysterical—“and if you were so smart, you wouldn’t be chained to me right now.”
I smiled humorlessly at him, even though his eyes were still closed. When I thought about the girls who typically threw themselves at Knox, I realized that while they all had futures, they were probably more in hair styling or cocktail waitressing. “You wouldn’t be in college if you didn’t have a future in mind for yourself, so don’t try to sell me on the Knox-has-no-future thing. Not buying it.”
Knox groaned, but I couldn’t tell if it was from his arm or thanks to me. “I’ve got a future. Mine is just more . . . uncertain than most people’s. A little more could-go-this-direction or could-go-straight-off-the-face-of-that-rocky-cliff.”
“Do me a favor and don’t plunge over that rocky cliff until we’ve severed our bond here.” I shook my wrist, rattling the chain of our handcuffs. “I’d hate for my last act on this planet to be jumping over a cliff because the person in front of me did. It would be a slap in the face to the very essence of my life.”
“The very essence as in keeping as much distance between yourself and other people as possible?”
My mouth almost dropped open. I might have slugged him for that too-close-to-hitting-home comment, but I didn’t trust that touching him wouldn’t cascade into something else. I couldn’t pinpoint what had been the catalyst for last night’s events, and until I did, it was probably safest to keep all forms of touching to a minimum. “Are you trying to dodge the topic or just piss me off? Because you’re succeeding at both.”
“I’m trying to dodge the topic. Pissing you off is just an added bonus.” A smile pulled at Knox’s mouth.
Even watching his mouth stirred something inside, swirling emotions through me that were foreign. I’d just found myself smack in the most terrifying place a person like me could end up in—the land of the unknown. I’d rather be in a bad place, feeling sinister things and swimming in danger, than treading through an endless ocean of uncertain. If I knew I liked Knox—in that way—that was one thing. If I knew I despised him, that was another thing. But not knowing how I felt about him, or how I felt about what had happened last night, or how I felt about seeming to have some gravitational or instinctual—or a combination of the two—pull toward him made me feel weak. And feeling weak wasn’t something I knew how to deal with.
“Fine,” I snapped, sealing my eyes as well, since looking at him only made me feel more confused. One moment my gaze would sweep across his chest and I’d have an overwhelming urge to feel it pressed hard against mine again, and the next moment I’d want to give it a hard shove until I’d succeeded in pushing Knox Jagger out of my life forever. “If you don’t want to talk about last night, fine. I won’t make you. In fact, I don’t want to talk about it either,” I lied, crossing my free arm over my chest. “Because there’s nothing to talk about,” I lied again.
“Actually, there is something to talk about.” Knox’s tone changed, going a note higher with what sounded like worry. “Last night, while you were asleep, and the only thing asleep on me was my arm”—he cleared his throat—“I couldn’t stop thinking about the coincidence of you getting drugged two weeks in a row.”
With the reminder, the pounding in my head deepened. Rohypnol was the invention of the devil. It would have been worth the trip to hell just so I could flash my middle finger in his face. “Haven’t you heard? There’s no such thing as coincidences.”
“Exactly. Which means someone is specifically targeting you.”
My fingers curled into my palms. “You mentioned that comforting possibility last night. What has made you so sure this morning?”
Knox raised his shoulders. “Any piece of shit using a roofie to get laid is going to take the path of least resistance.”
I felt my eyebrows pinch together. “The path of least resistance? Are we still talking about me, or did we switch to physics? Because I’m kind of having a tough time keeping up with you this morning.”
Knox’s fingers brushed mine. Whether it had been intentional or not, it didn’t change the fact that a shock of energy flooded into my hand from his touch and spread up my arm. Damn it. Why couldn’t I find the cord to whatever my connection was to him and pull the plug? Why couldn’t I find the tie binding me to him and sever it? Why couldn’t I find the spot he’d left his mark on and wipe it away? Why couldn’t I be free of Knox Jagger and impervious to his touch?
I waited. And I waited some more. Apparently the answers were in short supply this morning. Knox’s voice forced me to shelve my abundance of questions for a day when the answers were being a bit more cooperative.
“What I mean is that a pill-dropper isn’t going to target someone like you—a girl who drinks water at a party, is known for writing articles about virginity and the diminishing gap between gender equality, and wears some variation of shirt that says fuck-off wherever she goes is not the path of least resistance.”
I nodded slowly, trying to keep up. I’d thought I was mostly clear of the drug’s effects, but mucking through this topic made me wonder. “Head’s pounding. Brain hurts. What are you getting at?”
He didn’t pause before answering, “You’re not safe at Sinclair.”
That wasn’t a revelation that blew the charts. “That’s why I carry a can of mace and know to go for the soft spots on a guy when and if the occasion warrants it.”
“This isn’t a joke, Charlie.” Knox opened his eyes at last. The morning light seemed to lighten and soften everything about him, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “You’re not safe.”
When I felt the chill creeping up my back, I braced myself and refused to let it materialize. I refused to become the gajillionth victim of fear. I refused to live in a state of it and let every thought and action be made from it. “I heard you the first time. I’m not going anywhere.”
When Knox sighed again, I knew it was directed at me or, more specifically, my stubbornness. “I know.”
“So why are we still talking about this?”
He leaned up onto his elbow, his face coming closer to mine. Out of instinct or precaution, I leaned back.
“Because I need you to agree to move in with me until we figure out who’s after you.”
For one second, I thought he was joking, which made me roll my eyes, but when I realized he was serious, my eyes come close to popping out of my head. “Not. Happening.”
“Charlie—”
“Let me repeat.” I locked my eyes with his so he could get the gist of just how serious I was. “Not. Happening.”
“Charlie—” he tried again.
“And for a third time. Not. Happening.”
“You’d think that, for a writer, you’d retire the same old phrase after the second use.” Seeming to try to prove he was just as serious as I was about the whole moving-in issue, he didn’t blink once during our stare-down.
“I’m a journalist. We strive to bring the point home in as few words as possible. In other words? We don’t fuck with fluff. If you’re looking for some drawn-out, detailed explanation as to why I can’t and won’t mov
e in with you, you just asked the wrong girl to be your roomie.”
Knox’s jaw tightened. Just when I was wondering if he’d forgotten how to make his favorite face of frustration. “I’m not asking you to be my ‘roomie.’ I’m not expecting you to move in so we can swap stories over daiquiris and braid each other’s hair while we watch romantic comedies. I’m asking you to move in to keep you safe until we nail this son of a bitch.”
I put on a pouty face. “We don’t get to play with each other’s hair? Then I’m definitely out.”
“Damn it, Charlie. Why do you have to be so difficult all of the time? There isn’t a prize for the person who dies with the highest record of frustrating the hell out of people.” And now a vein was popping to the surface on Knox’s forehead. His voice he was managing to regulate, but he couldn’t control his body as well.
Apparently, after last night, neither could I. “And yet that doesn’t keep you from trying.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he closed his eyes and took a few breaths. “This guy isn’t going to stop until he succeeds. Is this processing, or do you still think this is just some game?”
I didn’t like being told what to do, but I hated feeling like I was being talked down to. “Given this is my second time in a week of waking up to the not-so-riveting reality of roofies, I’d say it’s safe to say I’m not thinking we’re playing some summer-camp game.”
“Then why won’t you move in for a while? Why won’t you even consider moving in?” When his eyes opened, they didn’t search for mine. Instead, he seemed to be making a concerted effort to keep from looking at them.
The answer to Knox’s question was one I wasn’t prepared to give him. Not only did he not want to talk about that subject, but I didn’t really want to talk about it either. “Because it’s ridiculous,” was my chart-topping reply.
Hard Knox Page 14
