Hate the Game

by Holly Hall

  “Wow. I can’t imagine.”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m. . . Okay. Wow. I wish they had margaritas, because if I can’t say sorry, the least I can do is offer you comfort in the form of tequila.”

  “At the risk of being crazy?”

  “Yes. I would sacrifice my magnetism to make you forget that devil woman.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. “And now I’ve just reminded you of her. See? I’m hopeless.”

  “That’s one thing you’re not.” Theo rose from the bench, gathering our trash in one hand while offering me the other. We called another car and crossed the city toward home. Home, as in our shared apartment building. Home, where we’d face off across the hall once again and say our good-nights.

  Theo’s hand was on my leg, and his thumb was grazing my outer thigh through the slit in my dress, making a mesmerizing path back and forth, back and forth. These were the nuances you forgot about when the relationship was no longer new. The touches that felt monumental, the loaded glances that warmed you to your marrow. I didn’t know where this was headed, but I committed the feeling to memory as best I could.

  He held my hand when we got out of the car, all the way up to our floor and down the hall to where our doors faced each other over the not-quite-white tile. The point where our hands should’ve separated but didn’t.

  He’d had a hand in his pocket, smiling a little at the ground as we approached. Now, he faced me and rolled his lips inward.

  “I’ve been dreading this all night.”

  I was already toeing off my heels, past the point of caring how many microbes I’d collect from the floor even with my apartment less than a few feet away. “What?”

  “Saying good night.”

  The words fell like dice between us, like they were waiting to be scored, picked up, returned. Countered with a husky response. That was entirely too much pressure for me. Or so I thought.

  “So, don’t,” I said.

  Theo bit his lip, but not in a way that was meant to be sexy. He was chewing it like he was chewing over my proposition. It was sexy anyway. “Your place or mine?”

  Chapter 17

  Ava

  Pros and cons stacked against each other in my head. If we went to his place I’d have nothing to wear after . . . that. I wasn’t about to take myself, in this dress, across the hall in a vivid and obvious walk of shame tomorrow morning, even if that “walk” amounted to a mad dash to my door.

  I needed my things. Pajamas, toothpaste. Maybe a quick freshening-up session with a bottle of Summer’s Eve.

  “Mine,” I croaked, then I turned to my apartment door so he couldn’t see the vestiges of my worry. This was good. I’d have everything I’d need within reach.

  Once inside, I switched on the lamp in the corner. Even with the good lighting it was just as bad as I imagined. Evidence of the preparations for my glam evening was everywhere. A discarded heel in the doorway to my bedroom, one I’d deemed much too tricky for my already questionable balance. Makeup palettes littering my bathroom counter. Various bits of shapewear dangling from dresser drawers. Why didn’t I think about those things five seconds ago?

  “Sorry for the mess,” I said, discarding my clutch and heels on the coffee table.

  “You call this a mess?” Theo looked around, amused. His hands were in those damn pockets again.

  “For me it is.” I bustled around the living room, snatching stray socks from my couch and plumping pillows. “I was in a hurry earlier and didn’t have a chance to pick up before I left. I was torn between a smokey eye or a bold lip, so I tried both, and lo and behold the eyeshadow I chose was basically bomb-proof. I spent forever trying to scrub it off, then my eyes were so swollen I looked like I’d had an allergic reaction.”

  Theo perched on the edge of a dining chair. “I would’ve never been able to tell.”

  “Well, that’s because after that whole disaster, I put a couple spoons in the freezer for my eyes.” He looked somewhat appalled at that, so I said, “It helps with the puffiness. You just place them on your eyes like this.” I grabbed the spoons I’d thrown on the counter earlier and demonstrated, then realized I hadn’t needed to demonstrate at all. He was smart enough to figure it out.

  “So, you decided on the lips?”

  “Yes, and thank goodness because this is like twenty-four hour lip stuff. I’d probably need nail-polish remover to take it off, and that shit’s toxic. I bet I’d develop spidey senses or something.”

  He smiled, probably at my expense. I was rambling and I’m pretty sure I was going to blow it. But knowing I was rambling was no help, because that made me more nervous for what I was going to say next. Hence, another round of diarrhea-of-the-mouth.

  I tossed the socks along with everything else I’d collected into my bedroom. “Yeah. Don’t think that would mesh well with my plans for the evening. Anyway, do you want something to drink?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Okay. I want something to drink. Maybe some water.” I got the sense he was watching me as I filled a glass from the pitcher in my fridge. I couldn’t blame him. That was the thing about disasters; you couldn’t take your eyes off them.

  “Ava,” he said, and I said, “Hmm?” around a mouthful of water. “Are you nervous?”

  When I swallowed, a rivulet of liquid took a detour down the wrong pipe and my answer was sputtering gibberish. “Me? What? No. Why?”

  “Your place isn’t really all that messy, you know. So don’t feel bad about that.” I was in the middle of waving him off, when he continued with, “And me coming over doesn’t mean you’re obligated to have sex with me.”

  That shut me up. So he was thinking about us having sex, too. Glad I wasn’t the only one. What if I’d made a move and he’d politely, yet firmly, shut me down? The horror. I’d have to live out the rest of my days across the hall from someone who knew I’d wanted to jump his bones and was promptly denied.

  His laugh roused me from my thoughts. “Is the prospect really that terrifying?”

  “It’s been a while. You would’ve broken one hell of a dry spell.” Oh. My. God. “Shut me up right now, please.”

  Theo shook his head and stood up, and just as I was coming to terms with the fact that I’d scared him off and he was leaving, he shucked off his jacket. He hung it on the back of the chair and then began loosening his bowtie. So he was staying. More than that, he was getting comfortable. I took another gulp of water to stave off any inopportune comments.

  Bowtie dangling around his neck, he undid his cufflinks and dropped them onto the table one by one. Plink, plink. Then pushed the sleeves of his crisp white shirt to his elbows and gestured for me to join him on the couch.

  That couch.

  Things had happened on that couch last time. I wondered if he was thinking it too. I took my water with me and sat a safe distance away, and when he bent at the waist and gripped my ankle, I held my breath. My foot? He wanted my foot?

  He placed it in his lap and began kneading the sole of it, eliciting an embarrassing groan from me. I instinctively bent my knee, trying to jerk my foot away, but he held it steady.

  “Are you ticklish?”

  “No, I just remembered I’ve been walking on those feet all day, waltzing across dance floors, traipsing across gravel, barefoot in the hall. I don’t think you want to be handling them.”

  He slanted his head at me. “You don’t think I’ve thought of that already?”

  “It’s . . . unhygienic.”

  “And it’s my choice whether I want to catch street amoebas from you or not. Let me live.”

  A forceful giggle escaped my lips. “Street amoebas.”

  “Whatever they are.” His hands were moving again, his fingers working between bones and ligaments, and I was rendered speechless. I guess a foot massage was like catnip for me. I stopped just short of purring.

  Instead, I laid my head back on the arm of the couch and willed myself to relax. If I focused too lo
ng on my red-painted toes in his lap, I’d get self-conscious all over again. We didn’t need that.

  “How’s that?” he asked, applying more pressure, and I made a vague noise that I hoped conveyed approval.

  “Is this on your list of services at the gym?” I cracked when he switched feet.

  “No. I can’t be catching street amoebas.”

  “Nasty little things.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  I sighed again, contemplating. There were a hundred places Theo could be right now, but he was here, in my apartment, rubbing my feet. Not for the first time, I wondered what we were doing. And not in a solely self-deprecating way.

  Sure, we didn’t exactly match up when it came to physical attributes—I already knew that—but even my last boyfriend, whom I’d loved and who’d loved me in return, hadn’t done anything like this for me. And here was Theo, someone I’d only kissed and groped a little, with his hands on my feet like it was something we did on the regular. It didn’t add up.

  “What are you thinking so seriously about?”

  “Hmm?” I raised my head and saw he was looking at me. “Oh, nothing.”

  “Tell me what’s got you so worried. You’ve talked about everything just short of your blood-type tonight, but you haven’t told me what’s really going through your head.”

  “Trust me, my head is a messy place.” His eyes stayed on me like he expected more. I wasn’t getting out of this one. “Liam never did anything like this.”

  “Liam obviously didn’t know the way to a woman’s heart, then.”

  “No. I guess not.” Well, he’d known the way to mine. Saying just what I wanted to hear without telling me anything of real substance, apparently.

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No, you don’t. Just remember, I’ve been through things too. I know what it’s like to be hurt.”

  I opened and closed my mouth. Did I really want to go there? Re-live all the feelings I’d buried after my last relationship ended? Things like inadequacy, doubt, and fear that I’d never be good enough?

  I settled for the short version. “He made me question my trust, my instincts. End of story,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it right now.”

  “That’s okay.” He’d been focusing on his hands, maybe so as not to make me uncomfortable beneath his gaze, but I still felt the weight of his impending judgment everywhere. “I understand that. How long ago was it?”

  “Eight-ish months. We were together a year.” How could I explain it’d felt so much longer? That the strings of manipulation had been so interwoven with things like intimacy and loyalty that I couldn’t tell one from the other? “I introduced him to my parents.”

  I fought the urge to figuratively bury my head in the sand. Eleanor and Terry Wynn were sacred to me, and he’d even gotten to them.

  “Ouch.” Theo’s hands stilled near my ankles, but he kept my legs across his thighs. “I guess, on the bright side, it’s good he didn’t make it to future-son-in-law status. They didn’t have a chance to accept him as family.”

  “That is true. But I was so proud. It was their first time visiting me in the city. Normally, I’d go to them. I wanted to give them the tour of my new life, my great job, my banker boyfriend. I wanted to show them I was making it. But really, I wasn’t happy at work, and I could feel in my gut it wasn’t right with Liam even as I couldn’t imagine letting him go.”

  Almost like a reflex, Theo’s hand slid up my shin to squeeze my knee reassuringly. His expression had turned, what? Contemplative? His gaze was muddled, impossible to decode.

  “Sorry. I said I didn’t want to think about it and here I am, oversharing,” I said.

  “If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked. But without all that you wouldn’t be the Ava I see now, and that would be a damn shame.”

  I smiled despite the heavy mood. “You think it’d be a shame if I weren’t a hot mess? I don’t know if I can agree with that.”

  He cracked a smirk. “Heavy on the hot. Light on the mess.”

  “Oh my goodness.” I hid a grin. “That’s totally something I would say. I’m embarrassed for you.”

  “Let me be cheesy for once.”

  “That was straight from ‘Theo’s Book of One-Liners.’”

  He tilted his head from side to side. “I say what I mean.”

  I was certain Liam had said what he meant, too, but it was impossible to tell through my rose-colored glasses that what he’d meant was control. To implant his barbs so deep that I didn’t know how unhealthy our relationship was until I was out of it.

  “I don’t want to get hurt,” I said, and I think my candidness surprised us both. Something flashed across his expression. “Can you promise me something? That you’ll be honest, and you won’t say or do anything you don’t mean?”

  He nodded. “I won’t ever lie to you. Or use you. And I know that’s hard to believe, but I don’t mind proving it to you. Slowly, if need be.”

  His words were only words, but they were sincere. Effective. My doubts quieted enough that I could detach myself from the grip of those memories. Theo had migrated closer and was supporting himself on one hand over me, while the other rested on my thigh, bringing attention to the slit in my dress that’d risen to new heights.

  I felt something spark. Those embers of lust I’d tried to suppress from the beginning, when dating my hot neighbor was nothing more than a deluded fantasy—those embers flared to life and threatened to burn me from the inside out. I took that hand and moved it up, up, up to where it pushed the fabric of my dress higher and rested on the hot skin of my hip.

  No, not my skin. Dammit. I was wearing my most unappealing pair of nude shapewear, a romp in the sheets with Theo being the last thing on my mind when I’d gotten ready earlier. Theo was focused on my mouth, oblivious to my dilemma.

  I could not allow him to peel this dress off me only to reveal flesh-colored underthings. The image would be forever emblazoned in his memory; whenever he thought of me in this dress, he’d think of the sausage casing beneath it.

  I pressed my lips together and shifted, sitting up. “Sorry, do you mind if I, uh, take a second to. . .” I gesticulated vaguely in the direction of my bedroom.

  Theo straightened and blinked slowly, probably drunk off the hormones now assaulting his senses. Or maybe that was just me.

  I slid off the couch and hurried into my bedroom, where I did everything short of twerking to get the girdle off. God must’ve been distracted when he was crafting my hips. Like, oops, you get enough hip and thigh for three women, and by the way, here’s some muffin-top to go with it.

  Momentarily winded but free from the garment at last, I caught my own eye in the floor-length mirror across the room. My hair, which had been pinned in a twisty updo, was hanging in disheveled strands around my face.

  My hands hovered around my head in indecision. Then Theo appeared in the mirror, behind me, and it was too late to amend anything else.

  “Have I looked like this all night?”

  A faint smile appeared as he sauntered closer. “What? Beautiful?”

  I tilted my head. “A hot mess, like I said.”

  “And you know where I stand with hot messes.” He took me by the shoulders and gently turned me so I was facing him. Hooking a finger beneath my chin, he pressed a kiss to my mouth. “A sexy mess.” He worked the words into the kiss so I felt every one.

  Then his hand was on the back of my neck, and what had started soft became more insistent, demanding in the sweetest way. He parted the seam of my lips with his tongue, and my head lolled back to give him better access.

  We were a frenzy of lips and limbs; grazing, skimming, tasting, teasing. And I hoped this time, it wouldn’t all come to a screeching halt. Everything between us, every traded glance and innocent touch, seemed to culminate to this moment.

  Theo slipped his fingers beneath the thin straps of my dress, easing them off my shou
lders, but this wasn’t a frock that’d just slide off and gather in a silky, scarlet pool at my feet. The hips, remember?

  I turned to offer my zipper, mourning the loss of his lips for the agonizing seconds it took him to first unhook, then unzip. His fingers were hot against my back as the dress opened.

  Then it was gone, and the starkness of my nearly naked body against his fully clothed one when I turned around incited my fervor to level the playing field. Because if he’d felt as good as he had beneath me the other night with his clothes on, I couldn’t imagine how he’d feel with them off.

  Theo’s hands slid beneath the lace of my boy-shorts and rested on my ass as I set to work on the buttons of his shirt, cursing each tiny disc for the length of time it took to free it from the buttonhole.

  “Ass man,” I said, because clearly I was an eloquent speaker under duress.

  He squeezed my cheeks and said, almost in reverence, “More than two handfuls.”

  I pushed the shirt over his broad shoulders, and he had to release his grip to help me work the sleeves off his biceps. His pants were next, and amid my concentration with the belt, then undoing his fly beneath that, I noticed he was still wearing his shoes.

  “Oops, skipped a step.”

  “Unless you want me to keep them on.” He wiggled his brows.

  “You know, I think I’d be too occupied with all this you’ve got going on”—I waved in the direction of his pecs, abdomen, and everything beyond—“to care. But yeah, we should take those off.”

  In hindsight, I should’ve expected what happened next. Preoccupied by the task of undressing him, I went to untie his shoes while at the same time he bent at the waist to do the same. What transpired was a headbutt of epic proportions.