by Maddy Raven
She shook her head in disbelief, unable to process what was happening.
Then, her body took over. She grabbed his drink from the table and flung the contents into his face.
WILL
“ARE you kidding me?" the girl asked. “Do you seriously not remember me?” Will blinked. He had no clue who she was, only that she had just thrown a drink in his face and she was more than damned lucky it hadn’t gotten on his clothes. He took a napkin from the table and blotted his face, his eyes roaming over her body.
She was in her early twenties, attractive, but not particularly his type. He wasn’t into brunettes. She had decent clothes, makeup, and hair but was detectably less wealthy than most of the girls who frequented this particular club. Her look screamed Forever 21, not Banana Republic; otherwise, she was hot enough.
“Should I?" he asked, faces racing through his memory as he tried to place her. He remembered all the women he slept with, but this one wasn’t one of them—no, she was a mystery.
She glared at him, and his eyebrows shot up in recognition.
“Alexa Romo,” she said sarcastically. “But my friends call me the girl who is broke and unemployed because some dick got in my car earlier today and forced me to hide him from the paparazzi!”
“You two know each other?” Vivian’s stare shifted from Alexa to Will and back again.
“I offered to help you!” he said furiously. “I said I would pay for everything.”
He glanced at Vivian, who shook her head in admonishment, and immediately shut his mouth. If she was giving him the stink eye, he must have done something wrong.
He had been relieved earlier that evening when Vivian told him she had come back to make amends. They hadn’t mentioned the events leading up to Grace’s death, and he preferred it that way. She was as culpable as he was, though she didn’t seem to wear her guilt the same way he did. Seeing her there, even four years later, reminded him of the careless decision he had made that betrayed everything he and Grace had shared. It was that decision that had ultimately led to her death.
So when Vivian promised that her college roommate would be joining them later, he had tried not to look so relieved. One hour. He would only have to endure one hour of being alone with Vivian, who looked so much like her sister that his heart ached every time he glanced up from his drink.
He couldn’t believe that the friend Vivian had spoken of—the one who was supposed to be a blessed distraction from his guilt and his past—was the nightmare of a girl he’d met earlier at the grocery store. What were the odds that she was Vivian’s college roommate?
“Please, please tell me you’re not friends with this guy,” Alexa said. “He’s a smug, incendiary, two-faced—”
“He’s Grace’s ex-boyfriend,” Vivian interrupted. “Remember, I told you about Will?”
“Oh,” Alexa said, and in that moment, she really did look contrite. Will watched her sit down and hand him a napkin from the table. She didn’t meet his eyes, but he knew that look to well—the piteous one that seemed permanently fixed on everyone’s faces when they found out about Grace. He despised that look.
He snatched the napkin out of her hand, crumpling it in his fist, and tossed it back onto the table.
Vivian raised her eyebrows. “Obviously, you two need a minute.”
Alexa opened her mouth to protest, but Vivian was already ducking toward the bar.
Will slid into his seat across from Alexa, arms crossed as he leaned back and watched her.
She sighed loudly, her shoulders falling until she was hunched over the table. “I guess I owe you an apology.”
“Why?" He shrugged, pretending that the thought of Grace didn’t make his entire chest hurt. “Because my girlfriend died four years ago?”
“No, of course not.” She finally looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time. Her eyes weren’t anything special, at least, not like Jaycee’s. Last night’s date had the kind of eyes that were magnetic, the kind that exhilarated him—and his body. No, Alexa’s eyes were the same, doe-eyed brown that he had seen a million times before. And yet, he couldn’t draw his gaze away.
“I’m sorry for throwing your drink at you,” she said.
Will leaned forward, his arms resting on the table. “Is there some reason you hate me so much? Because I’ve had people hate me for a lot of reasons—my money, my looks, my business acumen. You seem to hate me for something else, and I can’t quite figure out what that is.”
“Your looks?" she scoffed. “That’s exactly why I don’t like you. You’re full of yourself. It’s unattractive.”
“Unattractive?” Now it was his turn to scoff. He had never had a woman call him unattractive before, and he wasn’t about to let this one do it now. “I can get any woman in this bar to give me her number.”
She laughed, though he wasn’t sure why. It was a fact, a simple truth—he could take his pick from the women in this club and have their number, not to mention their panties, in under twenty minutes.
“You want to make a bet over that?” she asked.
“Pick anyone,” Will said, leaning back in his chair. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Opening the fold, he tossed the contents onto the table and nodded toward the pile. “Fifteen hundred.”
She stared at him, something between anger and amusement lingering in her expression. “Fine,” she said, taking the cash. “In that case, I want you to get my number.”
She folded his money and tucked it into the cup of her bra.
“That’s a cheap trick.” He watched her smug grin dissipate quickly into guilt. “You play this game with all the men you meet?”
She frowned. “Only the ones who throw their money around to compensate for other deficiencies.”
“You’re a fun time,” he said without amusement. “Take the money. You need it a lot more than me.”
He could tell his insult stung her, and she shook her head and sighed, plucking his money from her bra and throwing it back on the table.
“It was a joke. Relax.” She nudged the money toward him, but he barely shifted in his seat.
“I wasn’t joking.”
She pursed her lips. “I shouldn’t be taking your money, alright? You’re right. But you know what? You’re right about something else—I do need this money more than you. That little stunt you pulled earlier cost me my job. I have student loans out my ass, no leads on a steady paycheck, and when I got home, my ex-boyfriend was busy fucking some other girl in our apartment. So yeah, I’ve had a pretty bad day. And the truth is, if I let my pride get in the way of taking this money from you, I’ll have nowhere to live. Because I’m completely broke—no savings, no credit, barely a paycheck from my last employer, and no way to pay rent to an ex-boyfriend whose generosity has dried up.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, just like earlier after she crashed the SUV. He bit his tongue, trying to decide what to say. He wanted to tell her that her financial problems weren’t his responsibility, but he couldn’t be that heartless, not even to her. And not if he had the means to fix it.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. She wouldn’t meet his eyes as she desperately tried to wipe away the tears. “I should have been nicer to you today. It’s not your fault that my life is falling apart. I mean, not entirely.”
“Stop,” he said lightly. He couldn’t help but feel guilty—he had used her, and regardless of any poor decisions she had made to get to this point, he did owe her something for the part he played in her current misery. “I guess it’s my fault you lost your job.” He nudged the roll of bills back toward her. “Take the money.”
She shook her head, fresh tears filling her eyes. “I’m trying to blame you, but it’s my fault. I’ve already fucked up twice, and what happened today was just the last straw. Doesn’t matter anyway…” She laughed bitterly, her voice raised and her arms outstretched. “Look at me—I graduated from Northwestern and I haven’t been able to hold a steady job in two years. I always seem to find a way to
mess it up and this—this is just the latest in a string of failures.”
Alexa was beginning to make a scene, Will noticed. The groups at nearby tables were staring at them before leaning in to each other for a whisper. He couldn’t have that—especially not if Morgan showed up. Nothing would be worse than a picture of some girl sobbing in front of him with a fake headline of how he’d broken her heart.
“I’m going to make a call for you,” he said, desperate to do anything to get her to stop crying. “I’ll book you a suite at the Regency for the next seven days. You can get yourself together without having to go back to your apartment.”
She looked startled, and he wondered if anyone had ever given her a break in her life. “Thank you,” she said earnestly. “You have no idea how helpful that will be.” And then, she started crying even harder.
Will glanced around him and shifted in his chair, trying not to panic. What was with this girl? The nicer he was to her, the more she babbled on about her problems. He wasn’t used to girls crying in front of him, especially not in a club where everyone was supposed to be having fun. Where he was supposed to be having fun.
“Alexa,” Vivian called over the music as she got closer to their table, a man in tow. “Now that you’re single, I wanted to introduce you to—”
Will cringed as Alexa turned around and Vivian stared at her in horror. “Alexa! Did Will make you cry?”
Alexa laughed and wiped away the remaining tears with the back of her hand. “I’m going to the restroom to clean up.”
Vivian slid into her empty chair, dragging her friend into the seat next to her. “What did you do?”
“She’s having a bad day,” Will said. “A really bad day.”
Vivian raised her eyebrows but didn’t seem too bothered. Maybe she was used to Alexa’s bad days, and her habit of blubbering in front of complete strangers too.
“As I was saying,” she began again, “this is Charlie, one my oldest and dearest friends from high school. Charlie, this is Will. He’s going to inherit Harper Global someday.”
Charlie reached his hand across the table, and Will shook it firmly in his own.
They started talking, but Will couldn’t completely wash Alexa from his mind. He nodded his headed and laughed whenever Vivian did, which seemed to fool them; but he found himself wondering about Alexa’s story, her series of poor choices that had gotten her to where she was.
When she came back to the table, eyes thankfully dry, she was more subdued, only commenting with a quiet laugh when Vivian told another story from their college days. And when Vivian gleefully held up her phone and shouted, “Picture!” she didn’t protest.
Will stood between the two girls, arms draped around their shoulders. He glanced to one side at Alexa, who looked even less comfortable than he felt, standing stiff and as far away from him as the picture would allow.
Vivian, on the other hand, pressed against him, one hand resting on his chest, the other around his waist. He turned to speak, and she was there, her lips narrowly missing his, meeting the corner of his mouth instead.
He clenched his jaw, keeping his composure for the camera before pulling her into an empty hallway at the back of the club. “What was that?”
“A confession,” Vivian said. “From a girl who’s always had a thing for her older sister’s boyfriend.” She leaned toward him again, her head tilted upward until her lips found his. He felt instinct setting in as he kissed her back, then pulled away and stepped back, shaking his head to clear the lust that was overshadowing reason.
“No,” he said. “It’s not right. This—you and me? This is what Grace and I argued about.”
“What?” Her seductive smile disappeared in half a second.
He stared hard at her. “You didn’t know?”
She stepped back and pressed against the hallway wall. “She left your apartment because…”
“She saw us. She thought I was sleeping with you behind her back.”
He didn’t want to say anymore. The memory of his last fight with Grace dizzied him, and he leaned against the opposite wall. He remembered Grace’s sobs, remembered her fury, remembered the pain in her voice when she said she had trusted him, when she said he had betrayed her.
Vivian’s eyes brimmed with tears, hope written across her face. “I’m in love with you, Will. I know it’s wrong—”
“It can never happen between us,” he told her, shaking his head. She opened her mouth to speak again, but he walked away before she could use logic on him. He wanted to feel guilty; it was what he deserved.
Later that night, as the small group made their way to the Regency, he found himself foregoing his own room and allowing Vivian to lead him to hers. Whether it was from the alcohol or habit or desire, he couldn’t be sure, but they somehow ended up in bed.
His hands roamed across her naked body, skin meeting skin until the guilt wrapped itself around his senses.
“We can’t,” he breathed heavily. Vivian was now the exact age Grace was when she died, and if he looked at her in the right light, she could practically be Grace. Through his drunken haze, he could almost pretend that she was alive and they were happy again.
“Will,” Vivian whispered huskily, “It wasn’t our fault. Grace was murdered. That had nothing to do with what happened between us.”
Will didn’t want to think about what had happened between them—one mistake, one time. It had been so, so stupid of him.
Vivian’s lips murmured against his own, “She would want us to be happy.”
“No.” He pulled away from her. Grace had been right—he was a terrible boyfriend. He hadn’t deserved her, and she didn’t deserve what happened to her. He rolled onto his side, tucking an arm beneath the pillow. “We can’t let this happen again.”
Behind him, Vivian began to cry—the second girl to lose it in front of him that night—but she didn’t come on to him again. At least he didn’t think she did—when he woke up, he was still in the hotel, but Vivian was nowhere to be found.
He tried to sit up, futilely grasping at a full glass of water that rested on the nightstand next to him. He blinked sleepily as he looked around the room, his confusion growing deeper when he noticed the second bed beside him. He could have sworn that Vivian’s room had a king-sized bed. He glanced under the sheets. Still naked, but though his memory was foggy, he was certain that this wasn’t the hotel room he had fallen asleep in.
He picked up the glass of water and chugged it; underneath, someone had left a note.
Found you passed out and naked in the hallway, so I dragged you to my room to sleep it off. Stay as long as you want. You paid for it anyway.
Alexa
He held the side of his head and grimaced, wondering if he had drunk more than he had realized. He stood unsteadily, looking around for his clothes, but only found his cell phone sitting across the room, vibrating against the dresser with unanswered texts.
There were dozens, and every few seconds, the phone buzzed again. He scrolled through and clicked on the first one.
“Vivian Palmerson was murdered. You were the last to see her. Can your DNA be traced back to the scene?”
The next one was even more urgent. “Where are you? Team is at the house. Come ASAP.”
He stared at the texts, barely breathing, his mind unable to comprehend the words he was reading over and over again. Vivian couldn’t be dead—that was impossible. He had fallen asleep right next to her in her room.
Another text dinged urgently, lighting up his screen, pulling him out of his shock. He searched through the closet for the hotel’s complementary robes and wrapped one around himself, stuffing his cell phone in the pocket, before rushing out the door.
ALEXA
ALEXA needed to set her pride aside. That’s what she decided when she awoke early the next morning. She had the cash that Will had given her in hand, and though she felt guilty about spending it, she needed the money, and she needed it now. In the back of her mind, she told
herself that when she got back on her feet, she would pay him back—but then again, that was always what she told herself. It made her feel better about taking the money in the short term, but at the end of the day, she knew how unlikely it was that he would ever see it again.
Her first stop was to Target to buy a hoodie that she could wear over her black cocktail dress. She considered buying jeans as well, but she didn’t—fifteen hundred dollars wouldn’t last long, and if she was going to take the money at all, it had to go to her expenses, not her wardrobe. Next came a trip to her bank’s nearest ATM, where she deposited the rest of the money. Finally, she place a call to Visa to make the minimum payment on her credit card in the hopes that they wouldn’t cancel it.
The remainder wasn’t nearly enough to pay Chase back, but she could use it to put a deposit on a new place to live. She would have to find something small, a studio—somewhere the landlord wouldn’t check or care about her credit. She could always lie about her employer, seeing as she had only lost her job the day before, but a place that wasn't checking employment either would be the best option, even if it meant moving to one of the outer neighborhoods of Chicago.
Her plan sucked, but it was better than her original idea. The night before, she’d mapped out her strategy: buy a Chicago transit pass, store her most valuable belongings in a safe place, and sleep in segments on the train in the evenings. Most of the trains took about two hours to go all the way across the city and back, and she could probably survive on three trips worth of sleep per night for at least a few weeks.
During the day, she could hang out in the library or a coffee shot and use their free wifi to find a better job, a better anything.
At least now she had a livable solution, even if it was a terrible one.
She stuck her hands in the hoodie’s pockets and headed toward her apartment. She couldn’t take all of her belongings with her now, but at least she could get enough clothes to last a few days, along with other necessities: a toothbrush, makeup, a sensible pair of shoes. What she wanted more than anything was to get in and get out of her apartment without having to face Chase or his new girlfriend.
