She groaned and moved toward the kitchen. “No. I’ve been on the phone with my friend Melissa all damn day because Patrick’s being a douche-nugget about my furniture.” She yanked the cork out of a wine bottle and filled a glass with deep red liquid. “Sorry, you want some?”’
“I’ll help myself to water. Who’s Patrick?”
“My ex.”
My head was buried in the fridge when she muttered the word. When I looked back, she was swallowing the wine like she was in a college chugging contest.
“Hey.” I walked to her and took the glass from her mouth, smiling as she leaned forward to get one more drop and then licked her lips to get any remaining ones that fell. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head and looked over my shoulder. “That’s not why you came here. Not to talk about that.” Her brow wrinkled and she looked at me. “Why did you come here? This morning…I thought—”
“We’ll get to that.” I opened my water and chugged half of it. I was stuck on her ex being an asshole—an asshole that fucked around with another woman and was stupid enough to get caught. Red blurred at the edges of my vision. “Tell me what happened today. Is that why you were irritated when I called?”
“Irritated, pissed, distracted and too busy to handle all this shit on my lap? Yes.”
“Whoa.” I handed her wine back. She was babbling and manic. Maybe the alcohol would settle her down. “Calm down. You eaten dinner yet?”
“No. I ordered pizzas a while ago.”
Pizza and massive carbs would mean a four-hour workout tomorrow instead of three. I didn’t say shit. She looked like she could reach for a butcher’s knife and fling it at the next thing that set her off. It wasn’t going to be me moaning about pizza.
“How about we sit and talk,” I suggested and then opened the door to the freezer. I was helping myself like I lived there and she didn’t say a word. I dug through bags of frozen vegetables until I found an ice pack.
“You’re hurt?” Her eyes jumped and her gaze quickly roamed my body before meeting mine.
“Twisted my ankle. No big deal, I swear.”
Her shoulders slumped a bit and for the first time since I’d arrived, I think she breathed.
I walked to the living room couch and sat down, propping my foot onto a pillow on the coffee table to keep it elevated. Once I was settled, I put my arm on the back of the couch and gestured for her to join me.
I tried not to let it bother me that she sat just out of my reach instead of curled into my side like I wanted.
We’d get there after she bitched about Patrick and after we talked about where I was taking us. She didn’t trust me yet and she shouldn’t. I’d been way too fucking mercurial.
“Talk to me.” I waited for what felt like forever before she began.
Chapter THIRTEEN
SHANNON
I’d been on a rollercoaster all day long. After Oliver’s abrupt departure this morning—not knowing at all where we stood, but feeling like something had shifted between us, something moving past this four-week arrangement we’d agreed on—I’d received a call from Patrick.
The day went downhill from there.
I set my glass of wine down on the table and tucked my feet under me on the couch and faced Oliver.
He’d gestured for me to sit next to him, but I was still too raw, too dizzy to trust his touch.
Now, just out of his reach, I wished there was a way I could move closer without being obvious. I wanted to be closer to him, pressed against his defined chest and enclosed in his sinewy arms.
Under the right circumstances, it would be a safe haven.
I didn’t know if we were there yet, so I held back, trying to be smart.
“Patrick and I lived together,” I started after I tried to piece together the day enough to tell it so it made sense. “But he moved into my apartment. I added his name to the lease after the first year, and I’ve since had my name removed from it, but all the furniture in it is mine. He’s refusing to give me a time that movers can be there to pack it up and move it out here until I agree to see him so he can apologize.”
“He wants you back.”
Oliver’s voice went steely and I sighed. “Yeah.”
“And you want?”
“Gosh.” I shook my head and messed with my hair. “Not that. I think he’s embarrassed and pissed that someone of my caliber of lifestyle walked away from him.”
Oliver’s brows jumped up his forehead.
“I know,” I said as I laughed softly. “His family is really wealthy. Think they might have owned all of the Iowan land at one point, and they’ve sold it off.”
It was an exaggeration, but their wealth overwhelmed me on the best of days. They either currently owned something, or had once owned the land most of the Des Moines area had been built on, not to mention the buildings they owned, too.
“Anyway, I’m just a girl from a rundown home, with a single mom who had two kids with two different dads and could barely afford to raise us.”
“That’s not you,” Oliver snapped. He was so serious.
I couldn’t pull my eyes off his tawny eyes.
“That’s not who you are.”
“It is, though.” I shrugged. I wasn’t ashamed of my past.
Compared to Patrick and his family, who hosted fundraisers for politicians and didn’t eat anywhere except a restaurant with valet parking—a rarity in Des Moines—we were common. Lower class.
I waved away his statement. “It’s not a big deal. Beaux and I came from nothing. I’m proud of my mom. She worked her whole life, paying for it in the end, and I didn’t mind taking care of her or helping Beaux succeed. I don’t even think Patrick wants me. He just doesn’t want to lose.”
“So how are you getting your stuff?”
“I’ve considered staying with Beaux until I can afford new stuff for my apartment above Stamped.”
“There’s an apartment there?” Oliver’s eyes lit with interest. “You mean, when I was there earlier, we were ten yards from a bed and didn’t end up in it?”
The teasing glint in his eyes relaxed me and I laughed, tilting my head against the back of the couch.
“Surprising, huh? But no, the bed is nasty and I could live there, but I want my own stuff. Patrick can afford to replace everything with the snap of his fingers. He’s only holding onto it to maintain some twisted sense of control.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“My best friend Melissa has a key. She’s going to meet the movers there next week, or as soon as I can get everything scheduled.”
She was ecstatic about the idea.
When we had talked earlier, she’d told me about a photo she’d seen online of Oliver and me leaving the game together. We’d laughed and over-analyzed everything that had changed for me in the short time I’d been here. When I told her I was happy, she’d reluctantly agreed not to cause potential problems with Patrick—even if she was gloomy about me making her promise not to slice and dice all of Patrick’s expensive suits like she’d mentioned.
While I had struggled with my frustration with Patrick all day today, I also realized something important.
I was over him long before our relationship was over. We’d been roommates mostly for six months before we broke up, before I caught him cheating. We’d drifted apart before he began cheating, bored and too placated with our lives after only a few years together. If a relationship could be that dull after such a short time, we had no business spending a lifetime together.
I wanted passion and excitement. I wanted friendship and respect. I wanted laughter and late night movies in bed and marathon, athletic sex sessions. I didn’t want those moments to dull before the I Dos were spoken, and with Patrick they had years prior.
It might have been my stubbornness that made me hold on for so long, something Melissa reminded me of when we spoke. I’d been unhappy for a long time and before I was unhappy, I’d been uncertain of the future.
I loved that she waited until she knew I could handle hearing the truth before stating it.
“Hey.” Oliver tapped my hand that was near him and when I pulled my gaze to his, he was smiling. “Where’d you go?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Sorry. I was thinking of Melissa. I miss her, I guess. We talk almost every day, but it’s not the same.”
His lips twisted, quirked up on one side. “What’d she say about me?”
The question threw me before I realized he was teasing. I teased back. “Said if you have a cock as big as I’m proclaiming you do, I’d be the biggest fool in the world not to ride it as long as it’s offered to me.”
The words flew unbidden from my lips. I blamed the wine I’d chugged. One glass before he’d even arrived. As the blush hit my cheeks, Oliver leaned forward to get close enough to wrap his hand around my wrist.
He tugged me to him, pulling me until I straddled him, careful of the leg he had propped on the coffee table.
“What exactly did you tell her about my big cock?” His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist and sent shocks up my arm to my chest.
I rolled my hips, unable to stop myself. Beneath me, his bulge hardened. “I told her everything. Everything you do to me. Everything you make me do. Everything you make me feel.”