Deliciously Damaged

by KB Winters

  “I think so. Sam, go check if the door is locked.”

  “No, no, Sam can’t. You need to get up and check.”

  “Then we can talk about what’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he laughed again. “Then we can talk about what’s wrong with me.”

  It took a good minute to haul myself up off the floor but I managed to without breaking anything. I scooped the phone up and carried it with me as I checked the front door. “It’s locked,” I reported.

  “Good. Now tell me, what’s wrong with me?”

  “You won’t get out of my head.”

  “I’m sorry about that. In all fairness, you won’t get out of mine, either.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. My energy was depleting rapidly and the last thing I remember was collapsing onto the couch.

  Chapter Two

  I opened my eyes and quickly snapped them shut again against the harsh light glaring into the room.

  “Where the hell am I?” I wondered aloud, wincing against the volume of my own voice, even though I’m pretty sure it was only a groggy whisper. I placed my hand on my forehead and massaged my temples with my thumb and middle finger. As I massaged, my brain struggled to kick into gear, but after a few moments, little glimpses of the night before starting floating in my memory.

  Drinks with Hannah…dancing with a random dude…Jett? Jeff?...Hannah leaving with random hot guy…wait…wasn’t that the guy I was dancing with?...Weird…Marx showing up…Tank taking care of me…talking to Cooper…

  Cooper!

  My eyes flew open again and I quickly moved to cover them with my hand, shielding against the light coming in from the window. I realized I was lying on my couch, in the living room of my apartment. Alone. I patted myself down. Fully clothed. Okay…so that’s all good.

  But shit…I started to remember bits of conversation—hating myself a little more with each embarrassing detail of my late night drunk dial.

  Eventually, my eyes adjusted to the light, at least as well as they were going to with the raging headache pounding the inside of my skull. I grabbed my phone off the floor and stumbled into my bedroom, blessing the darkness, and eased my way into bed, careful not to move too fast. I lay down next to Sam and stroked his fur, letting the motion soothe me back to sleep.

  A few hours later, I awoke to the sound of my doorbell chiming.

  “Balls,” I groaned. I covered my face in the safety of a pillow and waited for whatever vacuum cleaner salesperson, “tell-you-about-Jesus” fanatic, or cookie-peddling Girl Scout to give it up as a lost cause, vacate my welcome mat and let me go back to wallowing in my stupor in blissful silence.

  The ringing continued.

  My eyes darted to the clock on my nightstand: 6:58.

  It was a little late for salespeople or Bible thumpers to be out. Maybe it was cookies. Come to think of it…cookies could really hit the spot right now. I heaved my stiff body out of bed and shuffled to the door. I couldn’t believe I’d slept all day. And damn I was thirsty!

  I knew I looked like hell. My haggard appearance might be enough to scare the Girl Scouts away, but maybe they’d chuck a box of cookies at me as they made their escape.

  I opened the door, not thinking to check the peephole first, and gasped when I found Cooper standing on my stoop.

  “Well, fuck,” I finally said.

  “Is that a greeting or an invitation?” he asked, flashing me his wolfish smile.

  I started to shut the door on him.

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry. Come on, don’t be like that. I brought you a present,” he said, stepping forward to block me from completely closing the door in his face.

  I looked down and saw the large, handled paper bag he had in his hand. I stepped back and waved him in, too shocked to fully register what I was doing.

  “Cooper, what are you doing here? Come to think of it, how did you even know where I was?” I asked as I watched him cross into the kitchen and casually start unloading groceries, as if he had been here a million times before.

  “You told me last night, remember?”

  “Barely,” I mumbled.

  He laughed. “Yeah, you were pretty gone. You told me you were at home. I figured you would still be here, nursing a pretty wicked hangover, if my spidey senses are correct.”

  “Spidey senses?” I wrinkled my nose at him as I plopped ungracefully into a dining room chair, my legs feeling like Jell-o.

  He stopped what he was doing and looked up at me. “Yeah, like Spiderman.”

  “Ugh, what is it with boys and super heroes?”

  He chuckled and went back to unpacking the bag. “Actually, I would be more like Batman, if you stop to think about it.”

  I pinched the back of my hand to make sure I was actually awake. This whole conversation was weirding me out. The sharp sting assured me that I was, in fact, awake. “And why’s that?” I asked, deciding to play along and see where in the world he was going with this.

  “Well, I’m rich, I don’t like bad guys, and let’s be honest, I do wear black quite well,” he answered, wiggling an eyebrow in my direction.

  I looked him up and down, considering if maybe this was some sort of imposter version of Cooper. “Do you have a twin?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just curious. You don’t exactly seem like yourself, is all.”

  He laughed and held up his palms, as if surrendering a battle. “What? A guy can’t be happy and just have a normal conversation?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just shrugged at him and he went back to whatever he was working on at the kitchen sink.

  “All right, here you go,” he said, turning back to me. He stepped into the dining room and set a couple pills in front of me and then a glass containing a pale, orange-colored liquid.

  I raised my eyebrow at him. “What is this?”

  “Hangover cure.”

  “Aha. What’s in this?” I asked, picking up the glass and swirling the contents. It looked…chalky.

  “Just trust me. It works.”

  His avoidance annoyed me. I set the glass back down, rebelling against his instructions. “I need to know what’s in it. I’m vegan, so if it has any—”

  “It doesn’t have any animal products,” he interrupted.

  “You know what vegan is?”

  “Yes, actually, I do. My—” he paused, a new emotion flickering briefly across his face. “Well, it doesn’t matter who. Point is, I know.”

  I wanted to press and get him to tell me who he was talking about, but something told me to leave it alone. At least, for now.

  “So, you want to tell me what’s going on? Why are you here?”

  He sat in the chair next to me. “I heard about what happened at Spotlight. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  A wave of nausea ripped through my stomach, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t just a side effect of the hangover. I jumped up from the table and went across the kitchen to lean against the counter, folding my arms across my chest, desperate to put some space between us. The smell of his cologne was suffocating and intoxicating all at the same time and I couldn’t think clearly with it triggering steamy memories of being in his arms and the feel of his warm skin on mine.

  Fortunately, my mind was slowly waking up and his mention of Spotlight instantly resurfaced the memory of the discoveries I had made the day before, and all the anger rushed back to the surface.

  “I don’t know why you’re bothering to apologize. You got me fired. You know, it’s weird how this all worked out entirely in your favor. Almost like it was planned. Don’t you think?” I arched my eyebrows at him and waited.

  He leaned back in his chair and mirrored my posture. “No, I don’t. So why don’t you explain it to me.”

  I scoffed. “You really think I’m that stupid? What is your problem, Cooper?”

  “My problem? Right now, it’s you. What the hell is going on?” he fired back. “I came over here to check on y
ou, and to tell you in person that I’m sorry about what happened to you. I have no idea why you’re so pissed off and think I got you fired. What happened?”

  “You know what you did, Cooper. You just didn’t think you would get caught, but guess what? You did.”

  “Caught doing what? I swear, if you don’t tell me what the fuck you’re talking about—”

  “Fine. You want to play dumb, I’ll spell it out for you. You did this! You’re the one that got me fired. I had just told you how much I needed the job and then not ten minutes later you shoot off some pictures, proving me to not only have broken the company’s rules, but also made me out to be a liar. You’re the reason any of this is happening!”

  “What pictures? Last thing I knew, I went to Rita’s office, against my better judgment, and told her nothing was going on. You were sitting right there! How could you think this is my doing?”

  “Don’t! Just stop.” I pressed my hand against my forehead and shut my eyes. My head was starting to feel like someone had the tip of a screwdriver digging into my temple. The stress piled on top of my existing hangover was only going to land me back in bed with a full blown migraine if I wasn’t careful. I eyed the “miracle cure” on the dining room table, but I couldn’t bring myself to back down now and take it. “Stop lying to me. I know it was you. Yesterday morning, I got into Rita’s email account and found the email address of the person who sent her the pictures…of us…and when I traced it back, I found that the email address is registered to you. You did it, you sent her those pics. Fuck. For all I know, you’re probably the one who hired the photographer who took them in the first place.”

  I let out a hysterical laugh at the thought. “I’m just a marionette puppet to you. And when I act out and don’t do what you want, you have to rearrange things to get me back where you want me. It’s like the very definition of maniacal.”

  “You think I would do that?”

  “I don’t think, I know. Come on, give it up. Drop the act. I have the screenshots saved on my computer. I can pull it up right now. So stop it, stop pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  I found myself holding my breath, waiting for what he would say next.

  “Show me,” he said, not moving a muscle. “You want to prove me to be the bad guy—then show me.”

  His response startled me and I was paralyzed for a moment. I knew that I had the proof to back up my theory, but him calling me out like that had me rattled, nonetheless. I stepped away from the counter and went to grab my laptop. I booted it up, waiting in awkward silence as it ran through the startup sequence. Finally, it loaded, and my fingers flew across the keyboard. Within seconds, the screen was filled with the images I had saved the day before. I pushed the computer across the table to him and stood back, crossing my arms again.

  “Do you mind if I email these files to myself?” he asked after a few minutes of careful study.

  I thought it was an odd request but I shrugged. “Do whatever you want. Apparently, you already have them.”

  Another silence settled on the room with nothing but the clicking of the keys to fill the void. I let my eyes wander across his broad shoulders and down his back, watching the muscles move with each keystroke. An overwhelming urge to reach out and skim the softness of his T-shirt overtook me for a moment, but I drew my hand back as if it had been burned, coming to my senses just before he turned around in his seat to look at me again.

  “Allison, I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t stoop this low. If I wanted you fired, I could have just told Rita to fire you. These pictures—I don’t understand. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, smarty pants. It doesn’t really matter. I’ll be fine.” The lie was so bad that even I was appalled by it, but I did my best to look confident and sure of myself, no matter how badly my insides were quivering both with fear and arousal.

  “I’m sorry for what happened at Spotlight. I wish I could convince you that I’m not the bad guy here, but unfortunately, I’m beginning to see that it’s impossible. I don’t know why you have to make everything so fucking difficult.”

  “Why are you pushing this so hard?” The words left my mouth before I could stop myself. “Why do you even care what I think about you?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  Well, that was honest. I was surprised by the rawness of his answer.

  “I’m not the bad guy you might think I am. I don’t know what happened with Rita and Spotlight, but I need you to believe me when I tell you that it wasn’t me. I didn’t send pictures or do anything to compromise your job there.”

  I considered him, letting his words soak into my fuzzy brain. I felt like I needed to hold back, to be smart and look for the catch. But, staring into his deep brown eyes, I found myself releasing the hostility and I realized that I believed him.

  But just as quickly, I realized that it really didn’t matter whether or not he was the one who got me fired. The problem was that I couldn’t be around him. He was too tempting for me. At twenty-three, I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to settle down and get married and start popping out babies, but at the same time, I didn’t want to waste my time and emotions on a man who played the flavor of the month game.

  His words from the launch party that now seemed so long ago echoed back to me. He had called me out for basing the majority of my opinions of him based on water cooler talk. And he had been right. But then again, I really didn’t have anything else to go on. Maybe he had been telling the truth…but then again…maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he had just been trying to sleep with me. Which he had, so why was he still here?

  It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself silently. I don’t want to get close enough to find out. I’m already too close.

  “I’ll be just fine. I don’t need your pity—or charity.” I crossed the kitchen and picked up the paper bag of groceries he had brought for me. I set the bag on the table and pushed it towards him. “Please leave, Cooper.”

  “Allison, you’re being unreasonable. Take the groceries,” he said, pushing them back to me.

  “You can drop the whole knight-in-shining armor routine. It’s getting tired anyways.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” he said. His voice was still edgy, but quieter in a way, and I could tell I hit a nerve.

  For a moment, I felt a prick of guilt, but I stifled it back and kept my armor up.

  “You’re right. I don’t know you, and I’m okay with that,” I said, giving my final blow.

  He was silent for a beat, studying my face. “Then next time you get drunk, call someone else.”

  With that, he stood up and showed himself out of my tiny apartment.

  As soon as the door clicked behind him, I let out a pent-up growl and flopped onto the couch. His cologne lingered in the air and my whole body was still reeling from the effects of him. My skin was warm and as I replayed the argument, it morphed and I was imagining the look in his eyes if I had given in to him and let him have his way with me. I lay on the couch craving his touch, imagining his lips moving on my skin, and his fingers all over my body. I squirmed on the couch, letting my imagination take over, but then just as quickly, snapped myself out of it, cussing myself for getting so carried away. I jumped off the couch, threw the bag of groceries in the trash, and went to get dressed.

  Chapter Three

  I took a shower to get rid of any trace of Cooper’s smell on my skin, and then left to go back to Steelrods and get Cherry Bomb. It was dark outside and I got a weird déjà vu feeling as I stepped outside. I stood on the front steps, taking an extra moment to breathe in the fresh air. My head was still pounding but the pain was becoming duller. I knew I could go to the bar, get a couple more drinks and be feeling much better, but for some reason, the idea just seemed to be too much. I just wanted to get my bike, maybe go for a little ride to clear my head, and then go back home and climb back into bed.

  Steelrods was only about a mile away from my ap
artment. I normally rode Cherry Bomb because it gave me an excuse to go for a ride, plus a lot of times, there were other bikers there and everyone would go off for a ride together at night. I thought about calling a cab to come get me but in the end, decided to walk. The side streets were quiet. The only thing I could hear was the clicking of my boot heels as I walked along. I desperately wished I had brought my headphones with me, because my mind was chattering away. No matter how much I tried to hold it back, I couldn’t stop thinking about Cooper and the whole weird conversation.

  When I finally arrived at Steelrods, the only conclusion I had come to was that there were too many questions and not nearly enough answers.

  The bar was open, but I didn’t linger. I went around to the side, where I knew Tank would have stashed my bike the night before. There was a light fixture on the side by the door that led to the kitchen. As I got nearer, I could tell something wasn’t right. I glanced behind me but the alley was empty. Cherry Bomb was parked by the back dumpster but it wasn’t until I got closer that I could see what was wrong.

  “What the…” I bent down to investigate and saw the word “whore” had been carved into the leather of my seat.

  I backed away from the bike and covered my mouth to stifle my sobbing. I pressed my eyes closed and leaned against the wall of the bar. I didn’t even have to wonder—I knew who had done it. Marx. The look in his eyes as he had glared back at me when he left last night was a warning, not a parting shot. I wiped my cheeks and took one last look at the damage before I turned the corner and went back inside to find Tank.

  “Holy shit. I’m sorry Allie,” Tank said as we stood over the bike.

  “It’s not your fault.” I placed a hand on his arm.

  “I’d bet anything that Marx did this,” he said, looking my way.

  I nodded. “I know. Are there any security cameras out here?” I turned and scanned the edge of the building but didn’t see anything.

  Tank shook his head. “Not really. There’s one up there.” He pointed at the front corner of the building. “But I don’t think it’s facing this way. I’ll have Dean pull the footage just in case, though.”