11
Lindsey
I’ve finally started to get Chris out of my head. I caught up on my blog and even pre-wrote a review for next week to make sure I don’t get off track again. I managed to find someone at the bank to at least talk to me about a loan for Amelia’s beauty school, and I’ve barely thought about the fact that Ryan and Claire’s wedding is just a few months away. All in all, it has been a pretty successful week.
But when I hear a loud knocking at my door, I’m gripped by a sudden certainty that things are about to get complicated again. Amelia’s out working and Brooke is sleeping in, so I can’t just ignore it and hope someone else will answer. Besides, part of me is worried it’s Alec again. I’m only holding on to my resolve to stay away from Chris by a thread, and the hundred thousand dollars that might hang on that decision isn’t helping. Besides, if it were Alec at the door, and he decided to tell Brooke about the offer he made me, I’m not sure I could look her in the eye and tell her I was letting a chance at enough money to fix all our problems slip by.
I pull the door open and have to tilt my head up, because Chris Savage is standing on my porch. He’s actually wearing a crisp dress shirt and pants with a tie. He smells faintly of something manly that makes me think of forests on cool mornings and freshly cut wood. It’s intoxicating. I’ve seen this version of him on magazine covers and in tabloids, and it’s actually more impressive in person. That’s not to say his less put together mountain man look doesn’t have its own appeal.
All I can do is frown up at him as I try to piece together what he’s doing at my house and why he looks like he actually tried this morning.
“Your offer,” he says. “Does it still stand?”
I cross my arms because I don’t trust myself not to slam the door in his face. Only a man who looks and carries himself like Chris could just walk up here after a week of pretending I don’t exist and act like it was no big deal. I can feel the urge to nod my head so strongly it hurts. I can’t help thinking that I’m a glutton for punishment.
“It depends,” I manage.
He leans against the railing with an amused grin. “On?”
“On whether you’re going to behave.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I thought part of the deal was I could still be an ass. You’re telling me I’d have to be nice to you?”
“Civil. At least.”
He makes a show of thinking it over, tapping his perfect chin with his finger before finally shrugging. “Fair enough. After all, civility is always up for interpretation.” He extends a hand for me to shake.
I stare down at it. I could close the door and forget any of this happened. I could leave him as a strange, bizarre part of my past and keep living the life I've been living. Or…
I could forget my pride and all the logical bones in my body that are urging me to teach him a lesson. I could accept that he’s not perfect and probably never will be, but that maybe, just maybe if I take his hand and try this thing with him, things might get better. Not just for me, either. He might finish his book. I might find something worth remembering. My family might even end up a hundred thousand dollars richer; I don’t want to fixate on that particular outcome because it makes me feel sleazy, but I can’t completely forget it, either.
I grab it his massive hand, letting it swallow mine up. He yanks me in for a hug, squeezing me too tight and grunting like we’re old friends. He doesn’t let go immediately though, and when I try to pull away he keeps me squeezed to his body, bending his neck to whisper in my ear. “I just need to make one thing clear before we start all this.”
“Okay,” I say, throat tight. He smells so good it’s not even fair, and the power of his body practically pulses through me, driving me into a dark place in my mind where I can’t help thinking how easy it would be for him to hold me with those powerful hands and keep me where he wanted me while he—
I squeeze my eyes closed. Stop it, Lindsey.
He chuckles softly, an almost taunting sound, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s about to say but he’s going to do it anyway. “If you follow through with this,” he says. “I’m going to end up fucking you. You realize that, don’t you?”
It’s like an invisible hand is gripping my neck, squeezing my vocal cords so tight that the only sound I can make is a whimpering kind of grunt of disagreement. I want to think this is part of his act, just another line to try to drive a wedge between us and keep me from liking him, but I have no real way of knowing.
He pulls back so I’m forced to look in his eyes; there’s a new light in them I haven’t seen yet, like this whole time he has been in some sort of hibernation but now the furnace inside is blazing and he’s completely and terrifyingly awake. “Fight it if you want,” he says. “Deny it if you want, too. But I’m going to prove you’re no different than the rest of them. I’ll fuck you like a wannabe groupie and I may even let you have a signed copy of my book for your trouble. Make no mistake though. If you let me, I’ll use you. That’s what I do. You wanted the real me? Take a long fucking look,” he says, the amusement suddenly draining from his face. His lips twist as he looks down at himself, arms splayed.
He watches me, eyes still blazing and chest heaving, waiting. He doesn’t rush the moment, in fact, Chris never seems to rush. Even now when his anger is flaring and he’s clearly at the edge of control, he’s content to wait. He lets his anger stew and the moment hang between us, granting weight to his words with every second that passes until I feel like they press down on me, squashing any argument or complaint I might voice.
I can feel myself standing at a sort of crossroads. This is where I really decide. I shook his hand but I can still turn away. If I take one more step though…
The hunter just showed me his trap and dared me to walk into it. No, he practically taunted me and said he knew I would. But he’s forgetting there are more options. This isn’t some game with only two outcomes. If I know where the trap is, I can skirt the edges, avoid it entirely. Because I don’t believe him. Maybe he thinks he’s finally pulling away the mask and showing me who he really is, but it doesn’t match up with the words I’ve seen him write and the emotion he’s poured into those pages. It’s not the good guy I’ve seen glimpses of.
“Sounds like you’re going to be disappointed,” I say finally, but my voice lacks conviction.
He ignores me, eyes still blazing.
God. I thought I understood how he roped girls into his bed even while he probably degraded them and promised to toss them aside the next morning. I thought I had felt all the powers of attraction he had.
Now though?
I realize he wasn’t even trying yet.
I remember reading stories online once about a phenomena known as the "call of the void", or the unconscious fixation we sometimes get with how easy it would be to swerve into oncoming traffic or walk over the edge of a cliff. I sat in front of my computer trying to make sense of it, because I had felt it too. Eventually, I decided it's just a natural curiosity, an almost unavoidable need to explore how easy it would be to throw everything we've built away in the blink of an eye, if we only wanted to.
Chris Savage is that void.
It’s impossible not to look into the molten brown of his eyes and not see how easily I could lose myself, how effortlessly I could take just one step into his trap and watch my life burst into a thousand unrecognizable pieces.
The scariest part is that sometimes I don’t want to recognize my life anymore. I don’t want to be the girl who is always doing the rational thing or making the responsible choices. I don’t want to be the smart one. I just want to be. For once I want to do something totally stupid and reckless, whether it makes financial sense or even logical sense.
“We start tonight,” he says. It feels like hours have passed since he pulled me into his arms but it has only been moments, a minute at most.
“Start what?”
“You’re going to help me write the manuscript.”
“How am I
going to do that, exactly?” I ask.
He grins. “Remember when you said you’d do anything?”
12
Chris
I look out the small, oval-shaped window to my right and see nothing but an endless expanse of inky black ocean flecked with bits of moonlight. To my left, Lindsey is sitting with the same expression she has been wearing for the past few hours. Her eyes are wide, fingers are gripping her knees so tightly her nail beds are white, and her lips are parted.
It amused me at first to see her in a state of shock, but I’m actually starting to worry that she’s still not seeming to comprehend what’s happening. I meant what I told her this morning. I’m going to fuck her, but I want it to happen the way I want. She’s going to know full-well what she’s walking into. She’s going to have a clear head and all the time in the world to feel the inevitability of it. When I bend her over once and for all, I want her to have fought and clawed with herself to resist me and to have failed.
It will be a surrender like nothing she’s ever felt.
A defeat, but a defeat so sweet she’ll spend the rest of her life having dirty dreams about it, pinching her legs together in public places when the shadow of the memory skids across her consciousness. She’ll touch herself when she thinks about it in the shower or at night when she lays next to whatever guy she ends up settling on and marrying years from now.
In a lifetime full of dull, half-bright moments and missed opportunities, it will be like her sun, a memory so fucking blinding and intense that nothing else before or after will ever seem worthwhile. It will ruin her, and she’ll never forgive me for it, but she’s going to love it so much that she’d never change it.
So the least I can do is show her a little mercy on the flight to Germany. Yeah. I decided the whole European promo tour thing wouldn’t be so bad after all, as long as I could bring Lindsey. It’d give me something to keep me occupied during all the travel. I even went as far as inviting my sister, but she couldn’t come until tomorrow, so once my plane drops Lindsey and I off outside Prague, it’s going to loop back to grab Lydia.
I haven’t exactly filled Lindsey in on all the details yet. I decided to test her devotion to the whole ‘do anything’ idea and told her she had four hours to pack enough luggage for two weeks and to bring her passport. Thankfully she had one, or I would’ve lost a bit of the dramatic effect.
I fidget in my seat, glancing over at her for what feels like the hundredth time. She feels off-limits to me. It’s not a feeling I’m used to, and it’s going a long way toward making her develop into the only thing in the world I want. Call it simple-minded, but when you can have everything in the world for the right price or the right smile, there’s nothing more desirable than the one person who is still willing to say no. Even if their willpower is faltering by the minute.
A few days ago, I was starting to think what I was feeling for her was emotional, that maybe I was getting soft with the mountain man act. It’s not that, though. I was starved of stimulation out there. She came along and was the only thing to occupy my attention. That’s it. No emotional baggage. I’ll prove exactly that to myself when I decide to seal the deal.
For now, I think I’ll keep toying with her, because it’ll be that much sweeter to take her the way I want if I don’t have to resort to the big guns to prove she’s no different than the other girls.
“You okay?” I ask.
She gives me a strange look. “Why? Worried you may not have traumatized me enough for one day?”
“You look tense,” I say. “I’m not trying to traumatize you, you know.”
“Really?” she asks, voice dripping with disbelief.
I shrug, grinning a little. “Okay. I’ve tried a few times.”
She surprises me with a half-smile. “You know you’re not that bad when you let your guard down.”
“No? I’d better keep it up then. I don’t want you turning groupie on me again.”
She rolls her eyes, but I can see a flicker of amusement still pulling at her features. “Groupie for T.S. Barnes… Maybe. I just might let you have that one. But please don’t ever try to say I am a Chris Savage groupie.”
“What?” I ask. “Didn’t like the book?”
She turns her head, leaning it against the back of the seat and closing her eyes. “Hated it.”
“But you read it?” I ask.
She swallows before answering, clearly trying to think of what to say. I smirk.
“I did,” she admits. “But it was only for my job.”
“So you reviewed me on your blog?”
She looks back at me, eyes narrowed. “When did I tell you about my blog?”
Now it’s my turn to stall for time, because I forgot that little nugget of information was a result of my own digging. I may have searched her on the internet when I was a few beers deep into some self-loathing. So I also know she clearly did not like my book, because she ripped it a new one in her review. She probably thinks I’ll be pissed if I find out she blasted my book, and I have no plans to convince her otherwise; watching her squirm is too much fun.
“Looked you up,” I say, deciding to go for the unapologetic approach.
“What, were you doing a background check on me? I thought I was supposed to be the psycho stalker here.”
“My next-door neighbor practically broke into my house two nights in a row. How was I supposed to sleep at night? I had to make sure you weren’t a serial killer or maybe escaped from a mental asylum.”
“So you know about the bodies in my backyard then?” she asks.
“All I know is you had some fun playing big-time critic with my book.”
The color drains from her face, but she seems intent on sticking to her guns. “Are people not allowed to hate your book?”
“If they aren’t, then I’d be in trouble,” I say.
“Wait, you’re trying to tell me you don’t even like it?”
“Hate it.”
“Wow,” she says. “Maybe you’re not so bad after all.”
I chuckle. “What, you thought I was going to try to convince you it was a good book? It was shit. A money grab.”
“So that’s what T.S. Barnes was? What you’d write if you didn’t care about money?”
I shift, feeling suddenly uncomfortable to have the magnifying lens on myself. I put a lot of fucking effort into not trying to understand my own motives, so I feel oddly under-qualified to explain my own reasoning. “Don’t think so,” I say after thinking a few seconds. “Just something to do, I guess.”
“And the manuscript?” she asks.
“That’s enough about me,” I say, putting my hand on her knee and looking her in the eye, daring her to move it. It’s an asshole thing to do—shifting the conversation away like this, but I’m not in the mood to dig deep. Truth is I don’t expect some therapy session fifteen thousand miles up to suddenly uncork my creativity. No, that’s what I’m hoping her pussy will do. The thought turns my stomach a little. I’ve been shitty to Lindsey. I know I have, but I never asked her to come barging into my life. I didn’t want anyone to try to fix me. Besides, I’ve been transparent with her, and she’s still here. At some point a grown woman has to take responsibility for herself, even if she can’t understand what she’s really walking into, right?
To my surprise, she plucks my hand up by lifting it up with her thumb and forefinger like it’s a dead rat. “No touching,” she says.
She almost convinced me she’s unaffected by my touch. Almost. Until I see her squeeze her thighs together a few seconds later and shift in her seat. I smile to myself. This is going to be too easy. Too fucking easy.
Lindsey didn’t seem impressed by my private plane or the limo that picked us up from the airport, or even the fact that paparazzi managed to find out I’m in Germany and organize a small mob outside our hotel all in the span of thirty minutes. More points in her favor, I guess. Anything she can do to separate herself from the faceless mob of groupies in my memory i
s a plus, and I don’t think I’ve met a woman yet who wasn’t itching to open her legs for me as soon as she got a sniff of my money. Guess I wasn’t looking in the right places.
“This is you,” I say, dangling a room key in the air high enough over Lindsey’s head that she can’t reach it.
“Really?” she asks in a dry voice. “So your confidence that you’re going to fuck me comes because you’ve mastered middle school flirting?”
I laugh, dropping my arm and handing her the key. “Maybe I want more than a fuck,” I suggest.
She frowns, snatching the key and looking surprisingly hurt. “Look. I’m already feeling jet lagged. I’m trying my hardest to stay civil, but I’m thousands of miles from my sisters with practically no notice. And you still haven’t even given me a proper explanation for what we’re doing over here. I’ve made a fool of myself in front of you more times than I can count already, but please don’t assume that means I’m an idiot or some dumb fangirl you can just manipulate at will. If you want to play Mr. Bad Boy and talk big about wanting to sleep with me, then fine, but don’t even pretend you’d ever want more than that.”
She slips the keycard into her door, drags her small suitcase inside, and closes the door on me, leaving me standing like an idiot in the hallway.
I drag my shit into my own room and toss it on the bed before sitting down on the floor, back to the wall. I’ve heard worse from women before. Far worse. But Lindsey’s tongue-lashing stung more than I’d expect. I’m left with nothing to do but think about how I’ve actually treated her since we met. It’s easy to see it from my side, to justify all the sleights, but for her?
Fuck.
I hop to my feet, resolution solidifying in my chest as I leave my room and cross the hall to bang on her door.
“Lindsey,” I say. “Just want to talk.”
She opens the door with red eyes and a glare.
“Can you open the fucking door all the way?” I ask, trying to talk through the narrow sliver of space she’s giving me.
Hate at First Sight Page 29
