Played

by Colleen Charles

  “Who is it?” Angela practically leaned into my lap and looked at my phone. “Who’s Trina? Chastity, is everything okay?”

  I nodded miserably. “She’s my roommate,” I said. “And Chase still hasn’t texted me back.”

  “Oh, Mr. Bradenton, pull your head out of your sculpted ass,” Angela sniffed. “Sex and the City or Real Housewives?”

  My heart plummeted as I checked my texts once more. Still nothing. It’s over, a cruel voice in my head whispered. He only wanted to pop your cherry. You should’ve known better, Sexe.

  “Sex and the City.”

  Angela smiled. “Got it,” she said. “And don’t worry about Chase,” she added. “He’s an idiot if he thinks he’s better off without you.”

  I nodded, but inside, I was numb.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chase

  “Chase?”

  I turned and stared. My ex, Amanda Fucking Kimble, stood right behind me. So close, I could’ve reached out and touched her glossy hair. I used to love smelling her hair. It smelled of cherries and always felt like spun silk as it drifted through my fingertips. It was shorter now but still gorgeous. Like the woman it was attached to. If possible, she looked even better than she had back in college. Her bright blue eyes sparkled in greeting, as big as Zooey Deschanel’s, and she’d poured her petite-yet-curvy figure into a Herve Leger bandage dress. Dressed to slay.

  Too bad I had on my Amanda Kimble body armor.

  “This is a drink,” I said, scanning her lush body with my eyes. Once I’d given her the stare-down she craved, I lifted an eyebrow in question. “One drink and I’m leaving because I have somewhere to be. You going to the club afterwards? Is that why you’re wearing that.”

  Amanda simpered. She lowered herself down into the small leather chair across the bar table.

  “I had to look nice,” she said, lips pouting as she spoke. “It’s been so long, Chase.” She reached across the table and stroked my arm with her manicured nail. I flinched before pushing her hand away.

  “We’re not here to rekindle things,” I snapped. “Don’t forget, the last time I saw you, your legs were wrapped around some asshole’s waist. Watching a man’s bare ass isn’t my thing.”

  Amanda whined and snuggled into her chair. “I told you,” she said in a voice just above a whisper. I had to lean forward to hear her, but that was all part of her master plan. To lure me into close physical proximity. Except she hadn’t counted on the fact that her body no longer held any allure. “That was a mistake.” I watched as she licked her plump red lips. Nothing. Not even a twinge down below as I stared at her perfect features. “Chase, I’d never hurt you on purpose.”

  When I first met Amanda, her touch had sent shivers through my whole body. I hadn’t been a virgin at the time, but she’d made me feel like a goddamned altar boy. I smiled, and she perked up. But she had no idea why I smiled. I was the one getting closure because seeing her did nothing for me. Nothing. Now, I felt nothing but numb. She reached out and placed her palm over mine.

  “Amanda,” I said as calmly as I could. “Don’t touch me.” When she didn’t pull her hand away, I wrapped my fingers around her own and pushed her hand back into her lap. Amanda let out a small cry of surprise, but she didn’t fight me on it. Instead, she pushed her arms together until her breasts were shoved into savage cleavage.

  “Chase,” Amanda purred. “Don’t tell me you haven’t missed this.” She batted her lashes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about me every single day since we broke up.”

  I laughed. “Since we broke up? Really? Is that what you’re telling people now? It’s been years, Amanda. I don’t think of you at all.”

  Amanda’s smile faltered for a moment. “We broke up. That’s what happened,” she said, annoyance turning down the corners of her mouth. She’d allowed her irritation to creep into her tone. “Chase, it was college. Everyone cheats in college. That’s what college is for!” She tossed her wavy blonde hair over one shoulder, assaulting me with a vicious wave of Prada Candy. “Chase, it didn’t mean anything. It was just drunk sex!”

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at her. “You’re right,” I said. “I have thought about you, Amanda. Almost every single fucking day since you fucked my roommate. My friend. The only thing that would have been worse is if you’d fucked Nolan.”

  Her lips puckered in a fake pout. “Chase,” Amanda whispered. She reached for me again, but I slapped her hand away before she could touch me. “You still care for me.” She licked her lips. “Admit it,” she said, voice dripping icicles. “Admit that I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. I know you’ve slept with models. But you’ve never been able to get me out of your head, have you? I’m your person. Your one. And you’re mine.”

  I burst out laughing. “You are so conceited,” I told her, shaking my head. “I’ve thought about you, Amanda. But only because each day has made me more grateful that we never got married.” For a moment, I was stunned that I’d actually spoken the words out loud. But now that I’d opened the floodgates, there was no stopping me. “I’m glad you fucked my roommate,” I said, keeping my tone low but my words clipped. “Because if you hadn’t cheated on me, I’d have married you. And if we’d gotten married, I’d never been allowed to live the life I’d always wanted. And if I’d never been allowed to live that life, I never would have met the woman I really want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  The white wine was cold and shocking as it splashed against my face, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

  ***

  Chastity

  Half-drunk and falling asleep, I left Angela’s around midnight. I knew that I’d regret drinking so much the next day, but thinking about Chase fired me up, and cupcake wine numbed me out. The emotions roiling through me annoyed me and kept me from my studies. Kind of like the man. Not having to feel anything for a few hours was worth it.

  It was a three-mile walk home to my place, but I didn’t have any money for a cab, so I had to hoof it. The streets of Bushwick were well lit and cheerful, but as soon as I crossed into the seedier neighborhoods, a little bit of my self-awareness came back. I darted across the street when I realized someone was following me.

  Panic erupted in my brain. I couldn’t think of what to do – my legs kept walking mechanically forward as my mind raced with possible strategies. My eyes searched for a place to whip out my phone and dial 9-1-1, but the street was purely residential. Whenever I sped up, so did the person behind me. I could hear their footsteps on the pavement, echoing mine. When I snuck a glance over my shoulder, I saw a man dressed all in black, with a hat and a scarf wrapped around his face.

  Suddenly, I burst into a run, palming my phone in my jeans pocket. A stitch dug into my side immediately – I hated running – but I knew that I couldn’t stop. I ran until I felt like my feet would fall off, until my chest heaved, my body sweating and aching. I barely slammed the door of my apartment building behind me when I saw the man in black darting across the street.

  As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, my heart slammed against my chest. No lights illuminated the apartment.

  “Trina?” I called. “Are you home?”

  She didn’t answer. With a sigh, I flicked on the lights. I knew I had to find that cop’s card – Danvers or Darmody or whatever the hell his name was. He hadn’t been very helpful before, but now there had to be security camera footage of the man in black following me all the way from Bushwick to Crown Heights.

  A package on the dinette table caught my eye, and I sucked in a breath. When I saw the manila envelope marked ‘Chastity,’ my heart leapt into my throat again. I’d already had enough unwanted excitement for one night. I knew that I should wait for the cops, but curiosity urged me to open it. I had to know – I had to find out exactly what was going on. With trembling fingers, I unsealed the envelope.

  Glossy photographs slid out of the envelope and scattered to the floor. I barely noticed Trouble’s squeaky
meow as I reached down to grab one of the pictures. When I realized the identity of the photographer’s subject, I let out a cry of shock.

  Chase’s smiling face stared back at me. Chase fucking Bradenton, with his fingers clutching the hand of some gorgeous blonde as he gazed into her eyes. There was a timestamp at the bottom of the photo. It had been taken earlier, just two hours ago. No wonder he’d left the office early and hadn’t answered any of my texts or e-mails.

  Tears overflowed my eyes, and I dropped the picture to the floor. With a shaky hand, I reached for my phone. But it wasn’t Darmody that I wanted to talk to anymore. No. I had to talk to another woman.

  “Hey!” Angela’s voice rang through the speaker. “You okay? You just left.”

  I started sobbing. “I…” I trailed off. “I need to come over, okay? Can I spend the night?”

  “I’ll send a cab over to pick you up. My treat,” Angela said, her voice dripping empathy. “Chastity, don’t worry. Whatever happened, no matter what, it’s going to be all right.”

  When I stepped back into her apartment half an hour later, Angela wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug. She flicked on the foyer light and took my chin in her hand.

  “What happened?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said in a tortured whisper. “Please. Do you have any more of that wine?”

  “Sure,” Angela chirped. “You wait right here. I’ll bring you a glass.”

  She darted off into the kitchen, and I dropped my bag on the floor with a heavy thud. There was a vast collection of shoes and umbrellas by the door. Angela’s got quite the Sex and the City fetish, I thought wryly as I glanced over the different pairs. Most of them were designer shoes – Manolos and Jimmy Choos and even a pair of Louboutins. When I saw the pair closest to the door, my stomach turned to ice. The shoes were covered in black sequins and more than a little scuffed. As I picked one of them up, I recognized Trouble’s telltale scratch on the heel. I kicked off my moccasins and knew before my foot was even inside that the sequined heel would fit perfectly.

  It did.

  The shoes in Angela’s foyer were the very same ones that had gone missing from my apartment, right before my dinner date with Chase.

  “Chastity?” Angela called from the kitchen. “Is everything okay?”

  I stared down at the shoes on the floor. No, I thought, my mind beginning to panic. Everything is most certainly not okay.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chase

  Once I got over the shock of having Amanda’s thirty-dollar-a-glass wine thrown in my face, I burst out laughing. Per Se’s buzzy atmosphere had died down in a heartbeat, and everyone stared at me, at us. Probably taking mental bets on whether I’d break down crying, start screaming and chase after Amanda Fucking Kimble, or waddle on over to the bar and grab a bottle of the finest tequila in New York City.

  Straight.

  Sans worm.

  “She’s my ex,” I said with a shrug to no one in particular. “She’s always been a little, you know.” I paused mid-sentence to do some circles around my temple with my pointer finger. Shit. I hoped this little episode didn’t make the society page. “But she can be your problem now, if you want her. She may be gorgeous, but her bite is worse than her bark.”

  To my surprise, the bar patrons started clapping, and I dipped down into an exaggerated bow to accompany a saucy wink. If I didn’t keep my sense of humor around this situation, I’d let out an inappropriate roar. As I weighed my options in my head, I pulled a linen napkin off the table and started wiping at the front of my shirt. The wine had soaked me through to the skin, and my nipples were like stiff pebbles rubbing against the Egyptian cotton of what had previously been one of my favorite shirts. Dry cleaning better get them out, or AFK would be footing the bill.

  I knew I could stay and drink. Drown my substantial sorrows and humiliation. Wasn’t it enough the first time she’d done it? After all, it wasn’t like I’d had any other plans for the night. But I wanted to see Chastity – I wanted to talk to her – to pull her into my arms, to tell her that whatever problems we were having could easily be solved. I knew to the depths of my soul that Chastity would never lose her shit and pull a stunt like throwing cold liquor in a man’s face.

  Amanda was my past. One hundred and ten percent ancient history, the kind of bygones I never wanted to think about again. I didn’t want to kiss her on New Year’s; I didn’t want to send her a birthday card. She reminded me of everything I’d hated about myself for so long. My life had basically been a decade-long foreign pub crawl after she’d broken my heart, and while some of it had been fun – hello Amsterdam – most of it had been a careful exercise in brutally ripping my heart into a shredded pulp. Forget putting my heart in a blender – I’d damn near come close to stuffing that blasted organ into a paper shredder and calling the highest-profile waste management company that Banks Realty could provide.

  But Chastity… Chastity was my future. She had to be because with her, I felt new. Cleansed. Like I’d had a date with an evangelical preacher and seen the proverbial light. With that in mind, I grabbed my Armani blazer from the back of the chair where I’d carelessly slung it. The other people in the bar had mostly gone back to minding their own business, and by the time I flew through the door to look for Diego, they weren’t even glancing in my general direction. And no photogs. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I scanned the street outside for my town car, momentarily forgetting that I’d taken a cab to meet Amanda. Shit. I needed to put the ever competent Diego on the personal payroll so he’d be at my beck and call. I could afford it. With a sigh, I stepped forward and raised my arm, hailing the first taxi that could swerve toward me. I flung open the door and slipped into the back seat as soon as the grimy yellow cab screeched to a stop. Jesus Christ. My town car expertly piloted by Diego smelled like a high-end department store and it seemed every single NYC cab reeked of a disgusting combo of B.O. and piss. My eyes watered under the assault.

  “I bet you’re going uptown,” the driver said with a smirk, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. When I gave him Chastity’s address – Crown Heights, Brooklyn – he snorted.

  “Seriously, dude, why is a high-class guy like you slumming?”

  “What?” I demanded, sprawling out over the leatherette seat. An underlying layer of cigarette smoke assailed me along with his flippant words. How old was this damn vehicle? It had been illegal to smoke in cabs for years.

  “Nothing,” the cabbie said. “Forget it. I probably wouldn’t like your explanation and wouldn’t believe it anyway. I know your kind. You lie just because you can.”

  He lowered his eyes to focus on the road as traffic whizzed by. I glowered at the back of his head. I knew exactly why he was surprised. It was a shock that someone dressed in vintage Armani would be going to a neighborhood like Crown Heights. But he shouldn’t have been complaining – the ride out there would probably give him enough in cab fare and tip money to feed his family for the next two weeks, if he was smart enough not to piss me off.

  Traffic crawled. My hand flew to my head to worry my hair. I could use a haircut, I thought as my leg bounced triple time on the dirty floor mat. As the cab crawled toward Brooklyn, I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed Chastity.

  When she didn’t pick up, I frowned. The voicemail clicked on, and I hung up in irritation, wishing I’d left a message as soon as I ended the call. My mind filled with words, spinning and twirling around in a maelstrom of silent verbal assault. I had no idea how to tell Chastity everything I was thinking – that I was falling for her in a big, forever kind of way, that I wanted to be with her for the long haul – without frightening her, but I knew that I had to try.

  No… not try. Succeed. Chase Bradenton never lost.

  I dialed her again, holding the phone up to my ear and praying she’d answer.

  She didn’t. The cab inched through traffic as panic threatened to choke me. By the time we’d arrived in
Crown Heights, the sky had turned from a luminescent orange into an inky blackness dotted with stars. Even though they didn’t sparkle in NYC as brightly as cities without as much pollution, I could still see them. All I wanted to do was stand on the sidewalk and stare at the glittering mass of twinkling orbs. With Chastity by my side, holding my hand.

  “Sixty-seven dollars and twenty cents, buddy,” the cabbie said.

  He turned around and speared me with a triumphant glare. Rolling my eyes, I passed him a Benjamin and told him to keep the change. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning as he drove off, muffler rattling from the undercarriage.

  I bolted up the stairs to Chastity’s apartment two at a time. Pressing my ear to her door, I listened for a moment before knocking. Silence. I wondered if she was sitting in her room, studying, that fat beast of a cat, Trouble, curled up on her lap. I grinned as I imagined her in her panties, in an oversized t-shirt and knee socks, absentmindedly twirling a strand of her dirty blonde hair as she pored over her psychology textbooks. I found that mental image just as sexy as the one I had of her naked beneath me.

  Rapping on the door, I waited for the eager rush of footsteps that propelled Chastity forward. Instead, I heard deliberate pacing toward the front door, a slow hand on the lock.

  “Hi,” Trina said, clearly confused. She flicked her dark hair over her shoulder and stared at me. No doubt the woman was a looker, but she didn’t make my heart beat faster or my cock twitch. “What do you want?”

  I frowned. I knew we hadn’t gotten off to the best start, but I didn’t understand Trina’s obvious hatred for me. Time to turn on the old Bradenton charm. I puffed out my chest and graced her with my best smile.

  “Hi, Trina,” I said, keeping my voice light and flirtatious. “Is Chastity home? I need to speak with her.”

  Trina’s eyes widened, and she made a little puffing sound with her lips. Then she shook her head.

  “She isn’t here,” Trina said as if I were addled. Probably wondering why I’d need to stop by and not just call Chastity’s cell. She narrowed her eyes and put one hand on a skinny hip. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing anyway?”