Sitting up in the bed, I gripped the sheet that was draped across my hip and held it against my chest while looking around the room. He had an old wooden desk covered in papers and notebooks and a laptop that was closed. I wasn’t one to snoop, but the thought crossed my mind to figure out what made a guy like Ford tick.
Instead, I found myself standing from the bed and wrapping the sheet around my body in that dress-like way women do in the movies. I’d never considered that I would be doing that same stereotypical day-after-sex move.
My bra was dangling precariously off a book stand, but my panties were nowhere to be found. Though, it was doubtful that I’d be wearing those again any time soon.
“Ford?” I called out as I opened the door of his bedroom.
Even though I knew his brothers had spent the night at their mother’s house the night before, I was cautious as I took my first step into the hallway.
When Ford didn’t answer, I called his name out again. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was completely alone in the apartment. If I hadn’t been angry before, I was furious now.
My jeans and shirt from the night before were resting on the arm of the sofa and I stomped my way over to them. Carelessly I dropped the sheet from my grasp, the cotton material pooling on the floor at my feet. Sans undergarments, I tugged on my jeans and pulled the shirt over my head. I only needed to go up one flight of stairs, and frankly, I didn’t care if anyone saw me. My breasts were perky enough that I didn’t really need a bra beneath my shirt anyway. Ford could hang onto my bra as a memento because that was the closest he would get to seeing my underwear again.
I found my flats and duffle bag in the kitchen and looked out into the apartment. The sheet was lying on the floor and I had to force myself to leave it there. I didn’t need to clean up his mess.
The bag felt heavier than I remembered, and as I slipped the strap over my head, I tried not to think of what happened last night. How Ford had lifted me onto the kitchen counter and I had lost control.
“It was a one-time thing,” I whispered to myself as if I needed the reminder.
Except somewhere deep inside, I wished it wasn’t. It was easy to ignore my attraction to Ford when we were sitting in class, but when we were alone that was a different story. He flipped the switch inside me that I thought I had disabled. No boy was going to have possession of me like that again, it’s why I fought so hard against Ford. But in one night, he decimated my walls completely. I just hoped this time it wouldn’t take nearly as long to build them back.
I was about to step out of the kitchen when an idea formulated in my mind. An idea that would hit Ford where it really hurt. Opening the pantry, I searched until I found his coveted box of Cookie Crisp. I reached deep inside and pulled out the clear plastic bag then shoved it into the side pocket of my duffle bag. I slipped the box back onto its hidden shelf as if it had never been moved.
Since waking in Ford’s bed alone, I smiled wickedly for the first time.
Exiting the apartment, I checked the knob and made sure that their door was locked. I may be angry, but I wasn’t malicious. Just as I turned around, I heard a playful voice call my name.
“Jolee?” Chance said. He eyeballed me and then the apartment door.
“Hi.” I was nervous that he’d seen me leaving their apartment. My voice squeaked and my hand jutted upward in an awkward wave.
“Were you just?”
Sighing, I replied,” Yeah.” There was no point in hiding it where I had been. My ability to think on my feet was lacking.
“But they. . .” His words lingered in the air. Chance didn’t need to finish his sentence, I knew what he was implying. It was even worse when his eyes drifted down to the duffle bag resting on my hip.
“Yeah.”
“He’s not a bad guy, Jolee.”
Of course his brother would try to stand up for him – that’s what family did. But he couldn’t save Ford. I didn’t think anyone could.
“He is, but that’s okay.” I stepped toward the stairs that would take me to the fourth floor. “Have a good day, Chance.”
“Yeah, you too,” he replied, his voice lower than before.
I tried not to think about Ford’s brothers finding out that we slept together the night before. It wasn’t their business, but I got a hint of joy knowing that they’d tear into him. I may not know them well, but we all got along the night Link gave me a place to stay.
In record speed, I zoomed through my apartment and straight into the bathroom. I was thankful that neither Willow or Haley were around. But as I started the shower, my need to wash away the night growing with every passing second, a knock sounded on the bathroom door.
“Jolee? Is that you? I’ve been freaking out not knowing where you were.”
I never had girl friends growing up, not ones that knew all of your deepest desires and secrets. And knowing that I may have worried my roommates left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Despite my natural instinct to pack away my emotions into a tightly compressed box, I found myself shouting to Willow, “I’ll tell you everything when I get out.”
Sitting on the couch between Willow and Haley with a glass of red wine in my hand, I was waiting for their reaction after I divulged everything that had happened with Ford. Willow blinked her large brown eyes that were a trait on my mother’s side and Haley stared with her jaw agape. I gave them every sordid detail, assuming that was what girls did when they gossiped, but I may have overindulged.
“Okay,” Willow said first, then took a sip of her wine. “That was not what I was expecting. But damn, girl, please tell me he is as good in bed as he looks.”
“Gosh, it was so good. I don’t know if it was all of the tension between us or what, but I didn’t know sex could be so. . . “
I glanced around the room trying to come up with the right word.
“Hot?”
“Amazing?” they both chimed in.
“Explosive.”
Haley grabbed the book on the coffee table and fanned herself.
Willow sat her glass on the end table and stood from the couch saying, “I think this calls for a celebration.”
“What are we celebrating?” I asked as I watched her move into the kitchen. Willow returned with a second bottle of wine and a cheesecake from her shelf in the fridge.
“Haley,” she commanded. “Call in two large pizzas. We need to recognize my cuz Jolee and her accomplishment at bringing Ford to his knees.”
“I didn’t,” I tried to explain as Haley began speaking into her phone and Willow popped the cork to the wine.
“Oh, but you did. It is a widely known fact that Ford never sleeps with a woman in his bed. And he is out the door the moment it’s over. He doesn’t linger. He doesn’t make small talk. And the fact that you stayed the night in his bed, twice I might add, and did the dirty all over his apartment, I’m fairly confident that you, my dear cousin, indeed brought him to his knees.”
Rationally I understood what Willow was saying, but regardless of what Ford had done with other women and with me, I just felt that we were back at that stairwell with him giving me the angered stare. I wasn’t sure if we were ever going to get past that moment.
“Pizza will be here in ten,” Haley stated as she queued up Coyote Ugly on the television.
We cuddled on the couch beneath a single blanket as the movie began. When the buzzer rang with our pizza, Haley ran down to pay the delivery boy and she was back in record time.
Raising her glass in the air as we sat with paper plates of pizza on our laps, Willow said, “To Jolee.”
Haley repeated the saying and the two chimed their glasses against mine.
It wasn’t long before we moved on from the second bottle of wine to the third. It felt good to let loose and enjoy the quiet time with my roommates and not worry about what was going on outside of this moment.
One of the dance sequences began on the screen and before I knew it, Haley had us pulled up
on the couch dancing wildly. My body moved with the beat of the song and I closed my eyes as I let the rhythm take me over.
“Dance Party!” Willow shouted as she paused the movie and switched the screen to a music station. Bass pumped through the speakers and vibrated the framed pictures against the walls. I had felt shackled in my life before coming to Wellington, but now there wasn’t anything weighing me down. Those iron binds wouldn’t get the chance to wrap themselves around my wrists again. This, here with my cousin and friend, dancing wildly in our apartment was more than I could have imagined. My parents didn’t think that I was strong enough for this journey, but I was determined to prove them wrong.
The music switched to one of my favorites, a song with a fast beat and thumping lyrics. I reached for the remote and turned up the volume before using the device as a fake microphone. Willow, Haley, and I laughed hysterically, and when Haley jumped off the couch, claiming that she was going to pee herself, our laughs grew louder.
Unexpectedly the door to our apartment flew open. Willow screamed and I jerked my head to stare at our three arrivals in hatred since they single-handedly ruined my celebration.
“Having a party and didn’t invite us?” a deep voice asked. I recognized the ridge rogue as Rylan.
“How did you know we were having a party? And how the fuck did you get inside?” Haley asked as she walked out of the hall. I started laughing again at her shocked expression. There was a whole lot of gorgeous standing in our doorway.
Chance chose that moment to speak up as Rylan was staring down Haley.
“The door was unlocked.”
“Just because the door was unlocked doesn’t mean you should barge in,” I said, my hands planted firmly on my hips. “And furthermore,” my gaze traveled to Ford who was standing behind Rylan and Chance as if he’d rather be anywhere else, “you’re not wanted.” Their attention on me only seemed to rise me up even more. Stepping off the couch, I moved onto the coffee table, using it as a pedestal for my tirade. From the corner of my eye, I watched as Willow reached out to me, but I had a point to make. “I know you rogues think that you’re better than everyone else, but-” The table wobbled beneath my feet, and before I could react, the top broke free from the wobbly table leg Willow had warned me about over and over again. It took just a second before I was staring at the ceiling instead of the gorgeous faces of the ridge rogues.
Shouts and cries rang through the room as I fixated my eyes on a cobweb in the corner.
“Jolee!”
“Are you okay?” Willow and Haley asked. I had hoped that they would reach me first, but I wasn’t surprised to see Ford’s exasperating face hovering over mine. The same hands that had explored every inch of my body the night before cupped the back of my head.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
I drew my gaze from the ceiling and watched as he took in my body from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
“I. . .I’m fine.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” he questioned only to receive a rolling of my eyes in response.
“Go away, Ford,” I murmured as I moved to sit up, my back aching in protest with the motion. He kept his hand on the back of my neck and I swatted it away, glaring at him. Did he not understand that I wanted nothing to do with him?
He held his hands up in surrender and turned away. “Let’s go,” he told his brothers. Chance followed closely behind, but Rylan lingered for a moment before turning his eyes away from Haley.
“Lock the door,” he growled to us before slamming it after their retreat.
“Oh. My. God.” Willow punctuated each word as she spoke.
“I’m sorry I broke the table.”
“I couldn’t care less about the table. But, oh my gosh, Jolee. Ford got to you so fast it made my head spin. And you should have seen the look on his face.”
I was busy gathering our wineglasses and the pizza boxes, but I glanced at Willow and Haley over my shoulder, noticing that Haley still had a glazed look on her face.
“What kind of look did he have?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
“He looked. . .I don’t know. Like he would murder anyone if a single hair on your head was harmed, but he looked distraught too. I can’t really describe it other than it’s not an expression I’ve ever seen him wear around campus.”
“You’re delusional.” Setting the glasses in the sink, I glanced up to Haley, who was nodding her head.
“I saw him too,” she said as she walked toward me. “And believe me, I don’t think they would have rushed up here if it was just Willow and me.”
“Even if that’s the case, Ford and I. . .it was just a one-time thing. And really, I can’t wait for this semester to be over so I don’t have to prepare myself for battle against him every other day.” Angrily I folded up the cardboard boxes and shoved them into our recycling bin then turned back to my friends. “Thank you, guys, for tonight. It was fun. But I think I’m going to go catch up on some sleep.”
We said our goodnights and I went into my bedroom, collapsing on the mattress. The soft bounce of my body reminded me of the way that Ford had tossed me on his bed.
Was I destined to have things remind me of that night for my entire life?
There was one thing for sure though, it was a night that I was likely never to forget anytime soon.
Since the sleepover at Ford’s, my schedule had been thrown for a loop. The nights I laid awake in bed until the sun began to rise only to find myself fighting off the exhaustion while I was at class and work.
My eyelids had just started closing when a knock on my bedroom door sounded.
“Jolee, girl, you’re going to be late to class.”
“Son of a beach!” I shouted as I hopped off the bed. Wildly I pulled clothes from my dresser, opting for a pair of black pants and a red long-sleeved shirt. I ripped off my pajamas and tugged on my pants, hopping around like a rabbit until I lost my footing and fell face-first into my desk chair. It was going to leave a mark, but I didn’t care.
I needed to be in class today. Not just to throw comments at Ford, but because our midterm was next week and today was the first review session.
My hands gripped the cotton of my shirt and I yanked it over my head, then I shoved my arms through the sleeves, all while walking into the bathroom to brush my teeth. There would be no time for makeup today.
I was zipping up my boots and sliding my bag over my shoulder as I met Haley and Willow at the door.
“Thanks for waiting,” I told them.
“Still not sleeping?” Willow asked as we jogged down the steps and I shook my head.
I’d barely slept a total of ten hours in the two weeks since Ford ruined sleep forever. I just needed to get through to next week when we had Thanksgiving break. Flying back to Alaska was out of the question and my parents were going to be off doing more research. I planned to stay at the apartment and do absolutely nothing for four days straight.
The girls and I parted at the fountain in the center of campus, just as we had that first day of classes. The sun was shining brightly on the school grounds, but the forecast was calling for rain the rest of the week. Something I was not looking forward to. I could deal with the cold, but rain and I didn’t mesh well together.
Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I glanced at the time and my breath whooshed from my lungs in relief because I was arriving earlier than normal.
I opened the door to the lecture hall and to my surprise there sat the tortuous man in my chair. A smug smile grew on Ford’s face as I walked over to my row. He probably assumed that I would take the seat he usually occupied, but I wasn’t going to let Ford throw my day off track. I was lucky enough that I hadn’t overslept, I didn’t need him to cast a new halo of gloom over me.
“Good morning.” I smiled brightly at him as I slipped passed, arching my back ever so slightly so that my backside was closer to him than was necessary.
“What are you doing?” he
asked, baring his clenched teeth at me as I sat in the chair next to him.
“Well, I like my seat, and I also like to sit next to Keeley and Sarah. And since you took the seat I usually occupy, I simply moved over one. Does it bother you to be so close to me, Ford?”
“No.”
“Good, because I’m going to pretend that you don’t exist at all,” I told him as the rest of the class filed in. I could see in the way his hand tensed on the edge of the desk that I had hit a nerve. Luckily the professor chose that moment to enter the room and I was saved from Ford’s backlash at least for the moment. There was no telling what he was capable of.
That evening the girls and I planned a night out. Nothing crazy because we weren’t the partying kind, all three of us preferred to spend our time studying in the library or binge-watching shows. Tonight was Willow’s choice for dinner and she had heard rumblings of a pub off campus that had great food and atmosphere.
“It’s where the locals go. My organic chemistry lab partner is from the area and says that it’s the best.”
It sounded good to me, but I was worried that we’d walk in and everyone would turn in their seats to stare at the newcomers. “Are you sure that we won’t, you know, stand out?”
“No, she said college students drop in all the time. But it’s not like, a college restaurant, you know?”
Haley and Willow both wore similar outfits of jeans, gray sweaters, and black boots. I opted for my red pants and cream-colored sweater with my brown boots that just skimmed beyond my knees.
Willow curled my hair into soft waves that ran down my back and I kept my makeup light and easy. I wasn’t going there to impress anyone. Sitting in economics with Ford’s scent swirling around me the entire class, I kept telling myself that a boy wasn’t in my plan. I needed to remember that falling for someone wasn’t going to help rescue animals. Even though I really wanted to lean closer to the man that left me in the morning light alone in his bed, I had to force myself to maintain my distance.
Of Boys And Men: An Enemies to Lovers, New Adult College Romance (Ridge Rogues Book 1) Page 10
