Worth It

by S. M. Shade

  Arrogant asses.

  “Ignoring me?” Roman asks as I look up from the ground.

  His smile falters when he sees my face, but I force a smile.

  “Hunt, you’ll be staring at my spandex-clad ass all day. Don’t worry. I’ll wait up for you when you get too far behind. But only because I don’t want to be disqualified.”

  His throaty chuckle leaves me awash with tingles like some preteen moron, but I smile in spite of myself and look back toward the course. The first obstacle is the trampoline jump, and Heath is now explaining how to do it, along with every other obstacle.

  You hit the trampoline, and bounce over the large plastic tubs of goo to hit the mat on the other side. If you hit the goo, you have to do it again until you don’t hit the goo. Not too difficult to understand, but it is a much wider jump than usual.

  “Kasha!” Mom says, smiling openly when I turn to see she’s almost right beside me. “I’ve been missing you all over. Everyone keeps telling me I just missed you at every single turn. It’s about time I found you.”

  I’m tempted to slap her, but I wasn’t raised to slap my mother. My father would still be pissed to this day if I did it.

  Damn conscience.

  “Maybe you should go find Lydia, since she’s the real reason I decided to come, and thank her,” I state while glaring at her.

  Her smile slips, and she clears her throat while looking over my shoulder at Roman. Just like that, her sugary sweet smile is back in place, and she’s in control again.

  “Roman, dear, I’m so happy you made it. I’ve barely gotten to speak to you this week. Anderson said you closed the Harbin deal you were discussing with us last week. You two make quite the team.”

  Ugh. So Roman hangs out with my family?

  That obsessive attraction? Yeah, it’s gone now. Well, for the most part. As long as I don’t look at him. You’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with, and Anderson is not choice company.

  Neither is my superficial mother.

  “Yeah, it was an easy one to close,” Roman replies, and they get engulfed in their conversation about shit that doesn’t appeal to me, so I tune it out.

  Roman just lost a lot of sexy points because my mother seems to love him. Which means he’s loaded. It also means he’s part of this grand socialite world she’s so obsessed with.

  It’s not like I wanted to date him, but I did have thoughts about what it would be like to play for the rest of the week. And because of that kiss last night, I haven’t thought of much else. My fingers absently trace my lips, and maybe some throbbing starts in all the wrong places.

  Even the memory of him standing between my legs hits a strong chord, making my body sing with a lot of really unwanted desires. And… I’m going a little crazy. I barely know the guy.

  “You look lost in thought.” Roman’s whispered voice is suddenly really close to my ear, and I become painfully aware of the fact he’s pressed against my back.

  My hand falls from my lips and I swallow hard, but before anything else can be said, the loud whistle blares, and the race is on.

  My eyes widen, and I feel like an ass for forgetting what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. I manage to race toward the trampoline after another girl clears it. My feet hit the surface hard, and a sick feeling hits when I sink just before I feel it launching me into the air at the perfect angle.

  Someone screams, almost distracting me, but I land painfully on my side on the pad next to some guy, who rolls onto his feet and races with a girl to the next obstacle. An ungraceful grunt leaves my lips on impact, but I’m across. No one can land that thing gracefully. Most importantly, no goo for me!

  I roll off the mat and turn in time to see Roman defy all laws of nature and land feet first, bending his knees just barely before straightening to his full height and winking at me.

  I thought he was supposed to have a bum knee!

  All he does is wink and smirk. I’m starting to think my younger self called it right about the arrogant prick thing. Rolling my eyes, I turn around and start toward the wall, when I hear a burst of laughter coming from the asswipe behind me.

  “Something amusing?” I ask him, looking over my shoulder.

  He covers his mouth as his body shakes with laughter and his eyes dance with humor, but he doesn’t answer me. Resuming my original task, my eyes scan the wall we have to climb, and I tighten the harness that goes around both my shoulders to keep my arm in its socket. Time to give Dad’s sport harness a good tryout.

  Just as I get to the wall and grab the rope, I hear Roman laughing again.

  A few whistles sound out around me, and I turn to see a couple of guys laughing and clapping. What the hell?

  That’s when I feel a little breeze… somewhere there should be no breeze. A-fucking-gain.

  No. Not possible. There’s no way people are seeing my freaking underwear three days in a row.

  I drop the rope and reach behind me, feeling the proof against my good hand when I realize I’ve split the back of my short, athletic, spandex shorts right up the ass crack. And it’s a wide split, because it’s spandex, and that shit doesn’t stay together if it isn’t stitched together with a seam, damn it.

  “Do those say… Anger Zone?” Roman asks between his guffaws. “All I can see is ‘GER’ and ‘ZO.’”

  Oh shit.

  Really?

  “They say Danger Zone, asshole.” As if that makes him laugh any less. In fact, I swear he’s laughing harder.

  It’s not like I can go change right now. There’s a freaking race going on.

  Grabbing the rope and ignoring the laughter, I start up the wall. When he starts humming Danger Zone below me, I roll my eyes. It was way cooler when I was singing it this morning.

  “You’re so immature,” I call over my shoulder, still climbing and hearing the sound of my shorts tearing more with each inch I gain on the wall.

  Just great.

  “Says the girl who doesn’t own a single pair of normal underwear.”

  I scowl at the vacant air above me while continuing to climb.

  “I can’t help it that I’m not a boring person,” I quip, trying to play it off. By this point, people seeing my underwear is getting freaking old. I’m definitely buying some plain Jane undies now.

  Roman laughs and starts actually singing the song, while I heave myself over the wall. “Wait on me, Goose!” he calls out, and I glare down at him while he mockingly grins up as he makes quick work of the wall.

  As soon as he crosses the top and joins me on the platform, he grabs the pole in front of us and slides down like a fireman on duty. I wait until he clears it to do the same.

  The second my feet hit the ground, I start running, flipping off some guy who joins in on singing that damn song with Roman. The next part is the hard part, since we have to crawl through the mud. At least that will hide my underwear, seeing as I’m about to be a mess.

  As much as I hate to take the time to do it, I don’t want to get my smart arm muddy, so I grab the plastic bag I had stashed in my sock and unwrap it, making quick work of it.

  I notice Roman is silently observing me, but not in a creepy, I-want-to-lick-your-nub kind of way. Once I have it secured on my smart arm, I start belly crawling under the netting, and Roman joins me at my side, still grinning, but at least he’s not singing anymore.

  “Didn’t expect you to dive right into the mud pit,” he says as we make our way through the slop.

  “Unlike some boys I know, I’m not afraid of getting dirty.”

  I smile sweetly while keeping my head low but away from the mud. Just as we reach the end, I reach over and grab his hair—no, not with my ball-crushing robo hand. He looks confused for a split second until I use my grip to slam his face into the mud.

  I’m the one laughing when I scurry out before he can retaliate, and I dance from foot to foot, waiting on him to climb out. All I can see are two slits when he opens his eyes and narrows them on me at the sa
me time.

  “I can’t move on to the next obstacle without you,” I remind him, hurrying him.

  He glares as he pulls himself out of the pit and grabs one of the hand towels that are off to the side to wipe his face. There are still remnants of mud, but for some reason, the whole dirty boy thing is sexy on him.

  I must really need to get laid.

  I grab a towel and clean off my left arm above the bag, then I pull the bag off as I jog with him toward the next obstacle. I drop the towel and bag onto a table.

  Mud runs down my legs as I rush to the line of the three mile run’s starting point, still waiting on him. He grabs two blue batons with our names on them, and he tosses me mine before we start jogging side by side.

  “Was that really necessary?” he asks as I grin bigger.

  “Yep,” I say in a sugary sweet tone, batting my lashes at him as I peer in his direction.

  His lips twitch, but he shakes his head and keeps running, staying with the pace I’ve set.

  “That’s no way to woo me,” he states with a heavy sigh.

  “Woo you?” I ask incredulously. “I’m not trying to woo you. If anyone should be wooing, it’s you. You’re the guy.”

  “That’s very sexist of you,” he points out, smirking while staring ahead.

  “That’s very arrogant of you.”

  He slants his eyes in my direction, and I stare at him, smiling like I’m winning something. Until I’m suddenly yelping and being slammed into… No, not slammed into. I just slammed into a damn pole.

  I clutch my head that took the brunt of the impact, waiting on the riot of laughter that never comes.

  “Shit!” Roman says, cupping my chin and tilting my head back. “We should probably take you to see a doctor. That was a hard hit.”

  No amusement, no laughter, no joking at all. He’s serious.

  Aww.

  I rub my head a little more, feeling a touch of a knot forming. Great. Now it’ll look like I have half a horn forming on the right sight of my head.

  “It’s fine. After being clumsy for so long, your body grows resilient.”

  He doesn’t look convinced and he studies my eyes, probably looking for signs of a concussion. I’ve taken much harder hits to the head and not gotten one of those. I really need to walk around in bubble wrap all the time.

  “We should seriously have that seen about,” he goes on.

  “No way,” I tell him, batting his hands away. “I’m not losing this race.”

  I turn and start jogging again, and he groans while running to catch up with me.

  “You’re stubborn as hell, you know.”

  “That’s no way to woo me,” I tell him, but I keep my eyes facing forward so that no more poles can jump out in front of me without my knowledge. “If you want to get laid this week, then you’re really going to have to step up your game.”

  He mutters something under his breath, and I smile to myself.

  “I like flowers,” I add, keeping with the banter. “And chocolate. And fruit. Give me chocolate covered fruit and you may even get laid twice.”

  I can feel him smiling without seeing it as we turn the corner toward the empty golf course, running down the sidewalk that surrounds it.

  “I could get you some new underwear. Maybe something with Batman?” he muses, forcing my smile to spread wider.

  “I have a few of those already.”

  He snorts derisively. “I’m not surprised.”

  “They have a cape too,” I decide to point out, because really, it’s only embarrassing if you can’t joke about it.

  “Why are you here?” he asks me, shifting gears in the conversation and taking it from fun to real without any preamble.

  I almost don’t answer, but then I do.

  “Because my mother is relentless and far more stubborn than I am.”

  “Why is Lydia here?” he asks, prying into things too real to share with someone I don’t know or trust.

  “Because she’s my friend, and for some reason, she needed to see this. Me? I want to fuck this wedding up.”

  “You’re going to ruin the wedding?” he muses, not sounding overly surprised. I guess my crazy is showing too much if people aren’t surprised by it anymore.

  “No. Not the wedding. Just some of it. You going to tattle on me?”

  “Tattle? I swear you’re fucking five.” He doesn’t sound annoyed. If anything, he sounds like he’s enjoying this. “But no. Jane is terrible,” he groans.

  “See?!” I exclaim. “I know! She’s worse than him, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “That’s because you see the worst in him, and you’ve never really given him a chance.”

  “Too deep for a conversation while running with mud on you,” I tell him, deciding to shift gears again.

  “Fine. Then let’s skip back to the wooing shit. What kind of fruit?”

  My smile spreads again, and I turn to face him for a second before returning my gaze to where it should stay—straight ahead.

  “Strawberries are good. Oranges in chocolate are my fave.”

  “Noted,” he says, doing something with his phone.

  “So you work with Anderson? And have dinner with my mother?”

  He smirks before putting his phone back in his pocket, and glances over at me.

  “You really hate her, don’t you? Little long to hold onto a grudge.” I don’t like it when people throw my words back at me.

  The light air around us loses some of the fun as seriousness comes into play again.

  “My father is an inventor,” I say randomly, shrugging.

  “And that makes you hate your mother?”

  “He’s also an artist.”

  “So that makes you hate her?” he asks, confused.

  “No. She left him because he was a starving artist and his inventions weren’t exactly getting offers either. She wanted more. He didn’t start making money until after she cheated on him with her current multi-millionaire husband. Dad’s a true artist who just also happens to be incredibly smart with robotics, and I swear people like him feel things on a much deeper level. All these years later, and he’s still painting pictures of her for his private collection. She didn’t just break his heart when she cheated, Roman. She broke him. And she never even cared.”

  He grows quiet, and I try not to act affected. Word vomit is real, and I just threw up my past for no certain reason. But it’s out there now and there’s no taking it back.

  “Sorry,” he finally says. “I didn’t know about all that.”

  I don’t know why, but that makes me laugh a little. “Not your fault. My dad kept it quiet, so he wouldn’t tarnish her shiny new reputation in this world. Despite how she treated him, he still loved her and didn’t wish her anything bad. I wouldn’t hate her if she’d just left him. People fall out of love. I get that. What I don’t get is why she cheated on him instead of just leaving him.”

  “People make mistakes,” he offers gently.

  “That’s not a mistake. That’s a choice. A mistake is falling into a mud puddle. You don’t ‘accidentally’ fall onto another man’s cock with your vagina.”

  He groans, and I angle my head to the side as we slow our pace a little more. Talking and running is not easy, and I’m getting breathless. He doesn’t seem to be as out of shape as I am, since his breathing is just fine.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he grumbles, his cheeks a twinge of red.

  Aw, did I embarrass him? That’s a little adorable.

  “At the end of the day, I have a zero tolerance policy for cheaters,” I add. “Hence the reason I hate Anderson. He used to just annoy me. Now I wouldn’t drive him to the hospital if his dick was rotting off.”

  He grunts and reflexively covers his crotch as though he’s shielding it from the hypothetical dick rot.

  “Okay, fine. I really would drive him to the hospital, but I wouldn’t feel sorry for him.”

  He shakes his head and shudders a
t the same time.

  “On to less painful topics. What do you do for a living?”

  “My, my. You just shift subjects like I change underwear.” He arches an unimpressed eyebrow at me, and I shrug. “I make jewelry, and before you laugh or say that’s not a real job, you should know I’m good at it and I make a decent living.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything. That’s actually pretty cool.”

  I give him a suspicious glance, and he holds his hands in the air, palms up. “I really think it’s cool,” he adds.

  “What do you do?” I ask him.

  “Marketing. I land accounts and such that want new commercials, in short. I help them run a fresh campaign or coin a slogan. That sort of thing.”

  Puppy Monkey Baby starts playing in my head after that, but I decide not to share that with him.

  “You going to be my partner for the egg toss too?” he asks as we come up to the final half mile marker.

  “Is this wooing?”

  “Back to that, are we? I feel like we’re just talking in circles,” he sighs, but he’s smiling this time.

  “My panties might get shown a lot, but you do have to work a little bit to get into them.”

  To this, he laughs, and it’s a sexy laugh again. I really should be worried about the effect he has on me, but I’m not. After all, I won’t see him again after this week is over. If he works with Anderson, he’s almost a six hour drive from me, and long distance things never work out.

  “Can I ask a personal question?” he asks.

  “It’s a run. Not a psychology session, but sure. Let’s get deep again,” I quip, aiming for light.

  “What the hell kind of arm is that?”

  That has me laughing, and I lift my robo hand, squeezing it into a fist. “This is my father’s newest baby. Her name is Jill. So far, she’s amazing. I just hope she stays amazing. If I think about something hard enough, she understands the command. Climbing the wall back there was a breeze, which is phenomenal. Dad hopes that soon it will be as natural as using my flesh arm and hand. There’s a Nano patch on my neck that helps send and receive signals from the brain to the arm. When he gets neuro testing approved, there will eventually be a chip implanted in the brain. I’ll stick with the patch, but the idea of having a usable arm for the rest of my life… It’s a good feeling. It connects to wifi twice a day and sends all the data to my father, who is probably geeking away in his lab, sifting through said data as we speak.”