If she could save Reid from himself she would.
There’d been no one to save her.
He battered into her and she absorbed his energy and grounded him, letting him pour his angst into her, both of them climaxing fast and sharp. He came back to himself then, but with remorse that made him unable to meet her eyes, even while his hands sought to soothe her.
They put themselves back together. There was a restroom on this floor and Zarley was able to repair her hair and makeup enough to allow them to leave without calling attention to themselves, but it turned out there was an elevator on this floor. They could take it to street level and avoid going back into the ballroom. She tried to take Reid’s hand when they stepped inside it, but he brushed her off and then made a sound of distress and grabbed for it, holding too tight.
“I don’t know what to say about what I just did to you.”
“Nothing that I didn’t want, Reid.”
“It was—”
“A little wild.”
“I was unhinged and I took it out on you. That’s not acceptable.”
“To whom?”
The elevator door opened and he put his hand over it to hold it while she stepped out. The car was waiting. “I’ll take you back to Kathryn’s.”
She stopped and turned to him, put her hand to his face. “I’m staying with you.”
“I could’ve hurt you.”
“You didn’t. You didn’t break a stitch in this dress.”
The driver opened the door for her and she settled inside. When Reid slid in the other side, he stayed against the door, so she went to him, easing across the seat, taking his hand and making him put his arm over her shoulder. She snuggled into his side and he sighed, resting his cheek on her head.
“You’re sure you want to stay with me.”
“One hundred percent.”
He gave the driver instructions to return to his place via a liquor store. This is what he’d meant on the way here about not disappointing her. He’d wanted her to see his triumph, instead she was witness to his darkest of hours.
“I talked to Sarina while you were busy. I like her. She said she misses having you around.”
Reid brought his arm down and she sat straighter, giving him space. “I made her cry tonight. Fuck. I made Sarina cry. I’ve made women at work cry, but never Sarina. I broke her heart tonight. And Dev, the way he looked at me. Owen was the first person in college not to treat me like a redneck hick. I thought when they sided with Kuch to oust me I’d read too much into our friendship, that it was over. I was wrong. But it’s over now. I’ve fucked it all up.”
“You can fix it. You can apologize. Grovel.”
The car came to a stop outside a bodega. Reid opened the car door.
“I’ve destabilized the company. If I get back in Dev will quit, so will Owen. No amount of groveling can fix that, can take away the fact I made Sarina cry. I made Dev hate me, and Owen. God, I made Owen’s job impossible. If he was a different man, he’d put a hit out on me.”
He got out of the car and went into the store, returned with a clink of bottles and another suggestion he take her back to Kathryn’s which she declined. They rode the rest of the way to Reid’s apartment in silence and inside he made for the terrace, shedding his coat and tie, rolling the sleeves of his dress shirt up, a bottle in his hand.
He was going to trash himself.
She went to the bedroom and took the dress off. It didn’t have a mark on it. She put her robe on and took her makeup off, brushed her hair out and then she went to him.
“Come to bed, Reid.”
He shook his head. He had a grip on the balcony railing, using it to hold himself up. He took slug from the bottle.
She loosened the tie on her robe, let it hang open. “Flesh and bones beats booze.”
He groaned. “I can’t touch you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.”
He looked out at the bay. The hand holding the bottle shook. She took it from him and he didn’t resist.
“I don’t trust myself not to take this out on you.”
She put the bottle on the floor. He’d forgotten to furnish the deck. “You felt rage.” She stepped onto his dress shoes, stood on her toes. “But you banked it.” She put her hand over his heart. It’s why he was shaking now. A kind of shock at realizing what he’d done, but not to her, to himself. “You would’ve stopped if I’d asked you to.”
He removed her hand. “You should’ve. I don’t know what that sex lesson was but I don’t want a repeat of it. It scared me. It still scares me. I need time. I need a drink, I need.” He stopped and shook his head. He wasn’t making eye contact. He hadn’t since the gallery, his eyes flitting everywhere but never catching on hers. She felt the absence as a gnaw of anxiety in her belly. “You should sleep in the other room tonight.”
“If you want me to. If you promise not to drink that whole bottle and the one in the kitchen.”
He hung his head. “I don’t understand how you can be here with me. I’m an overprivileged asshole who never looked his own failings in the eye, playing at master of the universe, and you knew that from the beginning.”
“How important is Ziggurat?”
He frowned, tried to wave the question off but answered anyway. “It’s critical. Company revenues will halve in the next two to three years unless Plus is relaunched on a more adaptive platform.”
She got the point about the revenue. “What made you think Owen and the team can’t get it right?”
He explained. Half of it went over her head but the essence was that it was his design and without him even the most talented team would have difficulty pulling it off.
“You believe everything you said, no bullshit.”
“None.”
“Then you were fighting for what you believe in with the best weapons you had to hand.”
He lifted her off his shoes and set her a little away. He leaned on the railing and put his head in his hands. “There’s no way to make what I did tonight right, Zarley.”
“You’ll find a way. I’m not saying it will be easy. But you wouldn’t have gotten here,” she looked out at the bay, “if you didn’t know how to work smart.”
“Tell me what to do? Because right now, all I can see is how I’ve ruined people’s lives.”
She put her hand to his back and smoothed it up to his neck, pushing her fingers into his hair. “I can’t tell you what to do. This is not like Pleasing a Woman 101. You need to sleep. You need to let this rest. In the morning it will be easier to think it through.”
He straightened to stand, dislodging her hand. “In the morning you’ll have worked out this is more than the thing you signed up for.”
That’s not how she felt. “What you said when we left Kathryn’s. To the bone and back. You gummed my words up. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to hear something like that from you. To know I mean more than arm candy, that I’m more than your plaything.”
He cupped her cheek. “So much more, Flygirl. From the beginning. But I’ve let you down, I’ve hacked it up.”
She put her hand over his held it to her cheek, let him feel her headshake. He was a man who’d made a mistake and she was a woman trying to fix hers. They weren’t so different.
He let her lead him to bed. He washed up, undressed and lay beside her on his back, but on the far edge of the mattress, body tense and eyes open in the dark. She reached a hand toward him and he took it, threaded their fingers together.
“Have I told you about comfort sex?” It was the sex she’d chased when she’d found herself without gymnastics, without Dalton and without a clue how to rebuild her life. “Sometimes it helps when you feel bad.”
He tightened his grip, his elbow bent, drawing her to him. She shifted and their bodies met, his arm wrapping her close, his forehead bent to hers. His breathing was erratic and the sadness in him made him tentative, clumsy with his gentleness. He wouldn’t let her have his mouth, but he held her face a
nd kissed her cheeks, her, jaw, her brows, the tip of her nose.
The sex happened slowly, deliberately, with infinite care and exquisite tenderness. None of the comfort sex Zarley had chased was like this. It was always quick and thrilling but momentary and empty and over. None of it caught her up and made her feel vulnerable at the same time as she felt strong and safe.
Reid’s touch made her ache for him, made her deliciously hesitant with him, as if she might startle him if she moved too suddenly. They pleased each other in a space carved out from disappointment, in a cocoon of wordless passion, where her willingness to give and Reid’s desire for relief collided in a shower of shivers and heart-stopping quakes.
She provided and he accepted; he offered and she received, kisses made from longing and understanding, movements made from push and pull and lift and fill. Reid couldn’t still the trembling of his body and his breath was snatched and tattered. Zarley didn’t want to lose the flutter in her chest that told her this was vital, this she had to keep. It was beyond comfort, it was raw and revealing and drenched her senses in colors and feelings that made her body sing to Reid’s, be mine, be only mine.
Afterward, Reid’s face was wet and she gave him the privacy of that as they lay tangled together in a comedown bittersweet with things felt and unsaid.
This was complicated, but she could no more walk away from Reid now than she could when she’d first come to his bed. Because this thing was made from the opposite of mindless lust. It was choreographed with fragility and hope, from challenge and difference and mutual admiration.
She liked Reid for all his awkward grace and bullheadedness, for all his mental quickness and physical dominance. She liked his honesty, tenacity and ambition slammed alongside his willingness to learn from her. She liked his friends and the fact they loved him enough to be hurt by him. She loved his body and how he’d learned to use it to tune into hers.
She liked this man and she wanted to keep him past the use-by date of a thing.
He didn’t sleep; she let him think she did. Let him leave the bedroom and deal with his demons his own way while she lay in the comfort of his bed and dealt with hers.
In the morning she expected to find him passed out on the sofa or brooding at his desk. He wasn’t in the apartment. But he’d left a note.
Most awesomest Flygirl
You are a piece of magic like I never knew existed. I don’t know if I can hold on to you. I don’t know if you want me to, but I’d like to try.
I’ve got stuff to do to try to fix this mess I made, but when I get done with the groveling I’m coming back to you to eat more dirt. I hope you’ll wait for me.
I should be home by lunchtime.
If you don’t want me to chase you to the ends of the earth to make things up to you, leave me an answer.
Under that he’d written check one and drawn three boxes. She had a choice between: teach Reid about kinky sex, it was nice knowing you, or Reid who?
So not sulking then.
Under that he’d written. PS: You never told me tender sex might make an asshole like me want to weep, but in a good way.
TWENTY-ONE
Reid started with Sarina. Found a florist. Parked outside her place on the bike and watched the florist empty a van and fill her doorstep with every sweet-smelling lily they had. Her rattletrap car was in the drive so it was likely she was home. He didn’t knock. She wouldn’t want to see him. The card said simply, I’m sorry I’m an asshole and made you cry. He didn’t need to sign it.
He went from Sarina’s to the park where Owen cycled on Sunday mornings. He waited an hour but Owen was a no-show. Next stop Dev’s. He parked outside and called him. The call went promptly to message bank. That was the decoy. He knocked on Dev’s front door a minute later and when a sleepy Dev opened it, he put a foot in the jamb to stop it being slammed on him.
“Two minutes, that’s all I want, Dev.”
“Month of Sundays. I’m busy doing nothing. I don’t have two minutes.”
That was better than an amputated foot. “I’m sorry. I was an asshole and I was wrong.”
“No, no, no. That’s not how it works. You don’t get to rock up here and say sorry and think it’s all over with.”
“I don’t think—”
Dev pulled the door further open, but blocked the entrance. “Shut your mouth. I learned to cook Indian food for you.”
Reid’s jaw hinged open and Dev silenced him with a shove to his shoulder.
“I learned to do it, because on the rare occasions in college you bluffed someone out of their allowance at poker and we could afford to order in, you devoured the stuff. And when you were on a genius coding binge you stopped eating. I was always worried you’d pass out. You’d go flog yourself at the gym and then code for sixteen hours straight and not eat unless I brought you food.
“I grew up on hamburger helper, boxed mac and cheese and wiener dogs. I made my eighty-six-year-old grandmother teach me to cook Indian food via Skype because you liked it, and so you wouldn’t freak me out.”
Reid’d had an upset gut since last night. Dev’s words were making him feel like puking. “You never told me that. You—”
“Close your fat trap. I never told you because you’re one in a million and I’m the million and I got lucky to meet you. Look at my life because of you,” he shoved the door against the wall with a bang and gestured to the apartment. “I have money, security. My family is cared for. My ninety-six-year-old grandmother went on her first world cruise. All that was never happening to me no matter how hard I worked. I’m the million, I’m the every other person who’s not the infinitely small number of people who are like you.”
He pushed a breath out. If Dev would punch him, break his nose, this would be easier to take. Broken noses, cheekbones, they healed. This was ripping the connective tissue that attached his brain and his heart to his body.
“And you know your problem?”
He needed to sit down. He put his hand out and braced on the wall. “I—”
“That was rhetorical, dickhead. You suck at being a friend.”
“Then why did you stick around? We were mostly nothing, working on dreams and living on vapor. Years of that. Failure was the most likely option. Why did you stick by me? All of you.” Knees gone the way of Dev’s Masala noodles, Reid backed up against the wall and slid down it till he was sitting on cold tiles. “Sarina could’ve had any job in the city. Owen never needed to work. You could’ve cleaned up in the Valley. None of you needed me.” He looked up at Dev. “But you kept cooking for an asshole, filling my fridge, so what’s your problem?”
“Once you get off my doorstep, I don’t have one.”
“That’s how you want it?” His cell rang. He fished it out of his pocket. Sarina.
“Did you take Sarina flowers?
He nodded.
“Yeah, like you don’t remember she has wicked bad allergies.”
Oh shit. He knew that. Only hadn’t recalled it. Too busy thinking about grand gestures. “Fuck.” He answered Sarina’s call
“If you could arrange to have the flowers collected, maybe delivered to a hospital, that would be great.” Sarina in his ear, calm and clear, no trace of emotion in her voice.
“I remembered.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I’m at Dev’s.” Cell got snatched from his hand and Dev disappeared with it inside the apartment and shut the door.
Bile in his mouth. He swallowed it back. He sucked at being a friend and he knew it. He’d always known it, he’d tattooed it on his chest, but it was too big to deal with. How could you consistently fail at such a basic thing as friendship? Same way you could avoid sex till you scored it almost accidentally. He was the weird, loner guy and he was missing the gene that most people had to rub along well with others.
His whole life was a hack to avoid the hard personal stuff. Once maybe not having his personal shit together might’ve been excusable, but since running Plus stopped b
eing a life or death experience, what reason did he have for not building a proper adult life, with furniture and friends and people he loved in it?
Because there was worse. He couldn’t do basic friendship and yet he wanted Zarley in his life as more than a friend, more than a lover. How was that ever going to work out? How had he even entertained the notion?
She’d fuck near turned him inside out last night, being there for him, knowing exactly what to say, using her body to make him forget, to believe in himself again and asking nothing for herself.
His road, but she’s stood in his path to make him think.
He was still sitting on the tiles when Dev opened the door and held his hand out. He’d reached for it before he realized it was Dev’s hand, without his cell in it. They clasped and Dev pulled him upright.
“I can’t be doing this with you right now, Reid. Last night was one step too far. Owen is trying to decide if he should resign today to stop the share price crash that’ll happen Monday. You’ll get Plus back, but I won’t be there, none of us will, but that’s okay, we all get it, it’s business. You don’t suck at business.”
But he did. Dev was wrong. And Reid was right—again. Because as much as Plus needed him, it needed Owen’s financial smarts, Sarina’s pulse on the company’s culture and Dev’s precision as an engineer. It needed Kuch and the employees he’d badmouthed in a backhand way last night.
“I fucked up royally and I’ll make it so it’s clear I was in the wrong last night.”
Dev held out the phone. “If that’s even possible, Reid, only you could find a way to pull it off.” He turned away to go back inside.
Reid called after him. “But the other, the sucking at friendship. I don’t know how to fix that.”
Dev turned, eyes down on the floor. “Once I’d have been impressed the great Reid McGrath was admitting he needed my help. That he was confiding in me, showing me he was vulnerable. Human.” He looked up. “Now, not so much. Maybe one day I can stand to talk to you again.” He put his hand on the door and as he closed it Reid heard him say, “But not this century.”
Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) Page 21
