by K. M. Scott
“What happened to honesty and the truth thing we had, Stefan? I can’t trust you. You’re that guy I always knew in the back of my mind would do something like this. I let myself believe you weren’t because I wanted you to be that guy I was falling for. It was a lie. You played me. Congratulations.”
“You know it wasn’t like that. Stop talking like that.”
I felt her slipping away even as she stood there with me. I was losing her.
“I can’t do this with you. Let me go.”
Her words made my chest feel like something was crushing it. I reached out but she pushed me away and as I stood there watching her go, she drove away.
I walked back into the club to find Lola still in my office, but one look at her and all I wanted to do for the first time in my life was hit a woman. “What are you still doing here? You got what you wanted. Go home, Lola.”
“Are you with her?” she asked with an edge in her voice that only pissed me off more.
“Get out!”
For the second time that night, a woman stared at me with tears welling in her eyes, but unlike with Shay, I didn’t give a fuck if Lola felt like shit or not. As long as she got the fuck away from me.
She ran out in tears, but I didn’t care.
I rolled over on top of a vodka bottle and pushed it off the couch, hearing it shatter as it hit the floor. Looking down through bleary eyes, I pushed the glass under the furniture. Just in case I had to eventually had to leave the couch. Not that I had any plans to do that. The bottles lined up on the coffee table would allow me to stay blasted for a few more days, and after that I’d figure something out. I did own a fucking bar, didn’t I? It couldn’t be that difficult to get my hands on more.
Closing my eyes again, I tried to think of anything but Shay’s face as she stood there out on the street in front of the club, her beautiful green eyes filled of hurt, but it was no use. That’s all my brain gave me every minute of the day and night. I wanted to remember the time when she buried me in the sand. The time we ate Mexican and on a dare she took a bite of a pepper so hot tears flowed down her face as we laughed at her stupidity. The night we rode through the streets of Tampa with her holding on so tightly I thought she’d break one of my ribs. Every minute I spent worshipping her body as we made love. Her lips. Her tongue teasing me like no other woman ever had.
Her gorgeous green eyes when she looked at me like I was the greatest guy in the world.
It always came back to the eyes.
I felt something run down my palm and opened my eyes to see a stream of blood from a cut on my fingertip. It should have hurt—it might have if I wasn’t so fucking drunk. Grabbing a bottle off the table, I took a swig of whatever it was and watched the blood from my finger drip down the glass.
Lost in thought, at least I got a reprieve from thinking of what I’d done. It didn’t last long, though, and a few minutes later I was back to feeling guilt so overwhelming that it felt like something was sitting on my chest and at any moment I might smother under the weight of it.
In the distance, I heard knocking. It started off soft and after a while it seemed to be close enough that I wondered if someone was trying to knock down my neighbor’s door. I didn’t care, but it gave me another distraction from my thoughts.
“Stefan? Stefan? Open your eyes,” a voice demanded but I shut them even tighter to block it out.
“Wake up, Stefan. Why are you bleeding?”
I slowly raised my eyelids to see Cash standing over me and Kane yanking the bottle out of my hand. “Go away.”
“You need to get up. Two binges in a week? What the fuck is this?” Cash asked in that mix of concern and disgust voice he often used when speaking to me.
“I’m not getting up, so go away. Kane, help me out for once, will you?”
“Stefan, you need to sit up. There’s blood all over your hand,” Kane said in a similar voice to Cash’s.
“Neither one of you really gives a fuck about me, so you can just leave me to my life.”
“Oh, Christ. We’re not going to do that again, are we?” Cash asked as he sat down in a chair nearby.
“Go easy on him, Cash. I think he might have a reason for this bender.”
I looked up at Kane as he pulled me up to a seated position. “You know?”
“Yeah. Let me get you something for that cut on your finger. I’ll be right back.”
He walked toward the kitchen as Cash waited for me to explain why I was laid out on my couch piss drunk and bleeding. Recounting all the stupid things I’d done wasn’t on my list of things to do today, so I pressed my head against the cushion and closed my eyes again.
Kane returned with a wet cloth and cleaned up my hand, wrapping it around my finger to stop the blood. Taking a seat across from Cash, he said, “Stefan and Shay had a problem.”
Cash looked confused. “Stefan, I get that you’re dating her, but women problems have never sent you into this kind of tailspin before. What’s going on?”
I licked my parched lips and tried to keep my eyes open even though they kept trying to close. “Can one of you get me a glass of water if you won’t let me drink while you’re here? My mouth’s like a desert.”
Cash hurried to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. “Here, drink this. Your body’s probably dehydrated. How long have been on this bender?”
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much about the first couple days. Ask Kane.”
“Cash, Stefan did what he could to make Lola happy. I’m not sure what happened, but Shay hasn’t been back at work since that night. Stefan, did she quit?”
“Yeah. She caught me with Lola.”
Neither of my brothers said anything. Good. I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Stefan, we told you we didn’t expect you to do that. Why would you? You had to know if Shay found out you’d lose her,” Cash said as if I’d been with Lola for any reason other than to help them.
“I got a visit from Shank after we talked and he made it perfectly clear if I didn’t get back to business with Lola, he’d stop helping us. I didn’t want you to suffer for my fuckup again, Cash, so when she asked to meet with me in my office after the club closed, I did it. Shay walked in and found her going down on me.”
Cash frowned and hung his head. “Stef, you never had to do that. I don’t suffer because of your fuckups. You’re my brother, and I love you. You don’t have to make up for what happened anymore. I’m happy now. I don’t expect you to pay forever.”
“I didn’t want to see your engagement party or your wedding ruined because of problems at the club. I knew Shank wouldn’t keep helping us if I didn’t keep Lola happy. I couldn’t think of any other way.”
“I’m sorry. I never wanted to see you so unhappy. I would never ask you to give up what you had with Shay for my happiness.”
“Well, you were right when you said someday I’d love someone and I wouldn’t be enough to keep her.”
“Stefan, I didn’t mean that. I never wanted this to happen to you.”
I hung my head and quietly said, “I’ve had it coming for a long time. I deserve this.”
Cash stood and patted me on the shoulder. “Take all the time you need. I can handle the club. Don’t forget about the engagement party. Olivia and I want you there to share our celebration.”
“I’ll be there, Cash. I even promise to clean myself up.”
He left me sitting with Kane, who thankfully hadn’t said much yet. I could only hope he’d continue being so kind.
“Do you need anything from me? You going to be okay?”
I looked over at him and shook my head. “Nope and nope. But thanks for asking. I assume you’re here to take possession of your new place.”
“No,” he said and then chuckled. “You can forget all about that bet. Stefan, I know it’s a longshot, but maybe if you told her why you did it she might be able to forgive you.”
>
To hear Kane try to find a way to help me seemed so out of character for him that I couldn’t help but smile. “I told her. It didn’t matter.”
“Stefan, I meant what I said the other day. Shay is the only woman you’ve ever been with that didn’t disgust me. She’s smart and funny and somehow made you into a person who actually thought of other people’s happiness before his own, no matter how stupid that was. You need to go to her and convince her to forgive you.”
Obviously, Kane’s kind moment had ended.
“She doesn’t want to see me or hear from me ever again, Kane. What I did can’t be forgiven, no matter what my intentions were. I can’t blame her. Just the thought of her with another man makes me so fucking angry I want to kill someone. I can’t imagine what seeing her fucking someone would feel like. No, I fucked this up just like Cash predicted I would.”
“Stefan, for the first time in your life you have to fight for something you love. Don’t let her get away or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Trust me on this.”
I reached forward to grab a bottle of whiskey. “You’re not fucking listening. She doesn’t want to even see me anymore. What the hell do you know about this anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you with a woman.”
Kane nodded. “I know how it feels to lose someone you love. I didn’t do enough once, and now she’s gone forever. Don’t make the same mistake, Stefan. Find a way to win her back.”
I shook my head. “I don’t deserve her, Kane. I deserve bar sluts like Lola. No need to worry about me. I’ll never be alone.”
Just saying those words made me sick to my stomach, but it was the truth. I’d aimed for someone out of my league—someone I had no right to be with—and fate had made things right.
Standing, Kane did the same patting thing on my shoulder Cash had done. “Think about what I said. With Shay, even I liked you, Stefan. That’s got to mean something.”
I lifted the bottle to my lips and took a gulp of whiskey. With Shay, I liked me too, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now without her in my life.
* * *
FOR FIVE days, I lay in bed and cried like a baby. Carrie came over each night and held me as I sobbed and repeated every horrible moment of how I let myself fall for a player like Stefan March and how he broke my heart.
“I know, honey. I know,” she whispered softly as she gently stroked my hair. “I know it hurts, but it’ll get better. It just takes time.”
How many times had I said that to her and thought what I was saying couldn’t have been helping. What a crock of shit it’ll get better. Your heart’s broken. It’ll never get better. You’ll never be the same again. You’ll always be broken.
I never want to feel this way.
And there I lay in her arms while she whispered words meant to soothe me, but they weren’t working. I still felt as awful as I had the moment I walked into his office and saw him sitting there with his eyes closed, a look of almost pain on his face as Lola…
I couldn’t finish that thought. Just thinking about that moment caused my chest to tighten. Like falling for him had put something in my heart so that every time I thought of him now, it felt like a hand was squeezing it tightly.
Taking a deep breath, I dried my eyes for the fourth time that night. “You must be asking yourself what happened to the old Shay you used to know. Imagine what Elliot would think. He’d probably have a good laugh at my expense if he saw me now.”
Carrie smiled at my mention of Elliot. “He’d be so jealous it would probably eat him up inside.”
“Why? Who would want to feel like this?”
Pushing my tangled and tear-dampened hair from my eyes, she said, “Not jealous because he’d want to feel like this. Jealous because he could never make you miss him this much.”
“I miss those days when I didn’t feel like this for anyone.”
“Oh honey, this is the best stuff of life. You’ll never feel more alive than you do right now. That feeling that your heart is being torn out of your chest tells you it was real. You love him. There’s nothing better in the world than love. Even when it hurts, it still makes you feel.”
Furrowing my brow, I shot Carrie a nasty look. “I had no idea I was best friends with a sadist.”
“Shay, I’m not happy you’re sad, but I am happy you finally found someone to really love. I was getting worried you’d never open up to anyone and instead choose the cold world of science over emotions, and yes, love.”
“I would have been better off sticking with the cold world of science. My research never betrays me by sleeping with another woman.”
“He didn’t sleep with another woman. Don’t make it worse than it already is. He let her go down on him. Entirely different.”
My stomach felt sick when she said things like that, as if his betrayal was any less terrible because his partner-in-crime wore clothes during it. “Again with making excuses for bad men, Carrie.”
Sliding off my bed, she began rummaging through my closet. “They’re not excuses. A blow job isn’t anywhere as bad as if you’d caught them having full blown sex in his office, or even worse, making love in a bed.” She poked her head out and held up a black sweater for my approval, as if she thought I was ready to get dressed and leave my bed. “I’m not saying what he did doesn’t deserve some punishment, but you did say he claimed to have to do it. You’ll wear this with jeans when we go out.”
“I don’t think so on both accounts. I’m not ready to go out, even if you put me in mourning clothes, and a man never has to let another women go down on him. How could I ever trust him again?”
She threw the sweater on the bed and headed toward the linen cabinet to get me a towel. “I’m not saying you can. All I’m saying is there are possibly things going on outside of what you know that mitigate the circumstances and might make you feel better about never seeing him again. That’s all.”
As she buzzed around my apartment, I thought about never seeing Stefan again. That pain in my chest that had finally receded came back with a vengeance, making me wince and want to cry again. There was no way I could forgive him, but thinking about never seeing him again hurt as much as the memory of what he’d done.
I heard a knock on my front door and looked at Carrie, who seemed surprised. “Did you order in?”
“No. I’d planned on getting you out of this house tonight, in fact. Do you want me to tell whoever it is that you’re unavailable?”
I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. Stefan had finally come to beg me to take him back. “You can tell them whatever the hell you want, just as long as they go away.”
“Okay. You sure you don’t want to talk?”
“I’m sure.”
Hidden in my bedroom, I listened as she answered the door, but I couldn’t hear what the person in the hallway was saying. Peeking my head out, I saw Olivia standing in my doorway talking to Carrie. Why was she here?
I looked a wreck, so I smoothed my hair back off my face as best as I could and brushed my clothes off from the two days I’d spent in bed in them and stepped out into my living room. “It’s okay, Carrie. Let her in.”
Olivia sat down and smiled the way she did that day she saw me at the hospital to visit Stefan’s mother. Always sweet, she had a look of concern in her eyes. I may have looked worse than I thought.
“Why are you here, Olivia?” I asked, too curious to remember my manners.
“I wanted to see if you were okay. Cash told me what happened.”
“How nice of the March brothers to share sex stories. I’m fine. You don’t have to worry. Just another notch on Stefan’s bedpost. You must have to devote a good portion of your days if you go to visit every woman he’s hurt.”
I knew I was being unfair. I didn’t care. Something about the idea of her fiancé and his brother talking about what had happened made me angry. That Olivia bore the brunt of that anger couldn’t be helped.
“It’s not like that, Shay. Cash t
old me you and Stefan broke up because of what he did for the club.”
“You’re buying that nonsense too? Is there some kind of collective delusion that comes from being around this family?”
“I just want you to know the whole story, okay? After that, I’ll leave and you can decide if you think what I said meant anything to you.”
“If you’re going to defend his actions, you can just go now, Olivia. The man slept with another woman.”
“Not slept with,” Carrie said as she walked over to sit next to me.
“Olivia, this is Carrie. She makes excuses for bad men. Carrie, this is Olivia. She’s marrying Stefan’s brother Cassian.”
In true Carrie style, she asked, “Is he a bad man too?”
Olivia smiled and let out a little chuckle. “He used to be.”
“I’m glad you were able to reform a bad man, Olivia. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have that ability,” I said quietly as I curled my legs up underneath me, already missing my bed. At least there I could cry and not feel as pathetic as if I started to sob right there in front of Olivia, which very well could happen if she continued to talk about Stefan.
“Stefan very well might be a bad man. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for him, though. When I started working at Club X, it was Stefan who made me feel welcome. Not that Cash and Kane didn’t, but Stefan was funny and sweet and put me at ease. I know his reputation precedes him, but I saw a change in him after he began spending time with you.”
“Yeah, well that change didn’t stick.”
“I know you think that he cheated on you because of who he is, but that’s not what happened. Yes, everything you ever heard about him was true, but this time he went with Lola to help Cash and me. You see, Lola’s father is a cop. A dirty one, but a cop, all the same. Each month, Cash and his brothers pay him to make sure the police don’t shut the club down. I know you know what happens in Kane’s part of the club, and without Lola’s father, Club X would be closed because of that.”
“What does this have to do with me and the fact that Stefan chose to go with Lola instead of staying loyal to me?”
