Dirty Player(46)

Melissa bent down and picked up the remote. She clicked the button and the television screen faded to black immediately. “We have to go out. And you have to get back to work tomorrow.”

I should have been working for the past two days. There was too much to do and not enough time for any of it.

“I will. Tomorrow.”

“Fine. Then tonight we go out. Beaux said the team’s finally celebrating their win and he wants us there.”

I pushed off the couch and fixed my messy bun. I cringed at the feel of it. I really did need to get cleaned up.

“I’m not going out with them. Not now.” Before she could protest, I smiled at her. “But I will go shower, we’ll go to Stamped so I can check the mail, and then we’ll get drunk here.”

She pouted for a moment before her blue eyes shone when she smiled. “Deal. Now go, before I hose you down.”

“I’m not that bad,” I shouted as I walked away.

Melissa’s fake gagging sound was the only response I got.

I showered quickly, throwing on minimal makeup and comfortable lounge clothes while I got ready. And while I did, I hatched my own plan. I had stayed in a crappy relationship once, knowing it was going downhill but too afraid to stand up and ask for answers then. I wouldn’t be that woman again, and I wouldn’t wait around, eating my weight in food and drowning my sorrows, waiting for him to come to me.

I refused to believe that only shortly after telling me he was falling in love with me, Oliver truly meant the things he’d said.

“Let’s go,” I said to Melissa when I returned to the living room.

She was dressed just as casually as I was, both of us in tanks and short yoga shorts, our hair pulled up and off our necks.

She turned to me and must have seen the determination that had set in my eyes because her glossy lips spread wide. “Well, that shower seemed to have worked.”

I laughed and walked toward the door, digging my keys out of my purse. “Yup. And tomorrow, I get the rest of my shit together.”

I’d give Oliver the day, one more day to help his dad and be there for his parents, but I knew from Beaux that he was staying at the hotel in Raleigh while his dad was in the hospital.



***



The elevator bell dinged, jarring me. Wiping my palms down the sides of my skirt, I inhaled a breath as I stepped out of the elevator car and onto Oliver’s floor. I was surprised when the doorman at the hotel had given me permission to go straight up, but took it as a good sign. I hadn’t yet been removed from visitors allowed to head to Oliver’s place without a phone call first.

It was mid-morning. The night before, after getting done at Stamped, Melissa and I had sat around Beaux’s condo drinking and talking about everything and anything that didn’t involve Oliver Powell. Instead, we’d talked about her job as a freelance graphic designer while she continued to tell me how she loved the Raleigh area. Despite the heat that was going to take me years to get used to—but much less time to get used to in the winter, since I’d get to avoid Iowa’s bone-chilling windchill temperatures—I agreed with her.

Raleigh was beautiful. Not too large of a city that it was intimidating, and it had everything I could possibly want.

The bonus was definitely that my online sales of Stamped were still going strong. Soon, I’d be able to start paying Beaux back for everything he’d done for me.

Hopefully sooner than that, Oliver would apologize for being a complete prick and we could move past this small hitch in the road. All couples had problems. All couples fought. All couples said things out of anger, and he had to have been beside himself with worry.

I was counting on all of those things when I found my nerve to exit the elevator and turned toward his door.

I was three steps away when his door flung open and a woman—a beautiful woman—flew out, laughing as she did, her waist-length blond hair flying out behind her. “I’ll see you later, then!”

She turned around and froze, just as I did.

“Oh! Hello!” The beautiful woman—shiny pink lips, glassy-eyed—was looking directly at me, and she instantly looked familiar, although I couldn’t place her. Gorgeous.

She had to be one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Curvy, blond, so beautiful and sweet-looking my teeth almost ached. Or they would have…if I could have felt anything.

Everything went numb as I gasped.

What she must have caught on my face wiped the smile right off hers.

My heart froze inside my chest.

No. He wouldn’t…

Then her eyes went wide and she looked down following my gaze. She was wearing nothing. Not nothing nothing, but all I could see of her was a pale pink, silky robe, wrapped and tied tight at her waist.

I took a step back.

I couldn’t breathe.

She looked back at me and followed my movement, coming closer while I backed away.

“You must be Shannon,” she said, walking toward me.

Without looking, I pounded on the elevator button with the palm of my hand. It had to open. It couldn’t have left yet.

He did. He wouldn’t, though…would he? Oliver had always promised he wasn’t a cheater.

And how did she know my name? I opened my mouth and closed it like a fish, unable to speak to her. I couldn’t draw air into my lungs to breathe.

Behind me, the elevator door opened.

Her hands went up. “This isn’t what it looks like, I swear to you.”

I said nothing. What could I say?

As I stepped back into the elevator, I heard Oliver’s voice.

I hit the button to close the door. “Bethany…you forgot…” He stopped as he saw me.

He had on pajama pants. Nothing else. Dark blond hair a shaggy mess that told me he’d just woken up. A woman’s purse in his hand at his side.

I made a choking sound and began slamming the button to close the elevator door.

I was standing there dressed in a super-cute tank and skirt and sky-high heels, looking my absolute best, and this woman—who looked so vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her—was dressed in just a robe and ohmygod so much more beautiful than me without any makeup on at all.

“Shannon…” His voice trailed off as he looked at me and then at Bethany.

His eyes went hard.

My heart dropped to the floor beneath my feet.

The doors shut right as he dragged his hands through his hair.

It was the last thing I saw and tears flew down my cheeks, unbidden, before I could stop them. Before I realized I was crying, my vision blurred and sobs wracked my shoulders.

I flew out of the hotel, only thankful I’d managed to park on the street and not valet.

That look in his eyes when he’d seen me.

I cried when I got to my car, my hands shaking so badly that I couldn’t control myself, couldn’t get my key in the ignition.

Everything about that moment.

It hurt more than when I’d seen Patrick. Then, I’d been angry.

This wasn’t anger rolling through me so hard it seemed to take forever for me to stop crying enough that I could drive away.

Never, in all of that, did he come to look for me. He didn’t call. He didn’t text or explain.

He had just stood there, looking at me like I was nothing to him.





Chapter TWENTY-SIX





OLIVER



Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

“Well, you totally screwed that up.”

I dropped my hands to my sides and glared at Bethany. Bethany who was in only a damn robe and had just come over to drag my ass out of bed because the night before I’d gotten so fucking drunk in the hotel bar that she’d had to practically carry me to my room.

She’d only come over that morning to make sure I was still alive and bring me coffee.

“What the fuck?” I asked. My mind was moving too slow—the result of too much tequila. It barely registered that Shannon was inside that elevator before it closed.

“If it helps, I told her it wasn’t what it looked like.” Her nose scrunched and she looked at the elevator doors. “I don’t think she believed me.”

A harsh laugh escaped me. “You think? Damn it.” My hands went to my face again and I tried to scrub away the remainder of the hangover pounding at my temples.

I’d been a dick to her.

A complete, fucking dick. I had no excuse and I had to make it right.

“Bethany,” I said, turning toward my friend. “She’ll never forgive me for this. Never, not after her ex—”

She rolled her eyes and let her Southern drawl flow free. “Not if you stand here talking to me. Go after her. You spent hours last night droning on and on about how much you loved this woman, and she was here even after you said those things to her. Go explain it. All of it.”

I couldn’t. Not now. Not when my head hurt too much to think straight. Not when she’d just seen what she thought she saw.

Fuck. We were both half-naked.

There was absolutely no way she was going to believe me.

“Damn it!” I balled my hands into fists and forced myself not to punch the wall.

For two days, I’d sat with my father, fucking pissed at myself for the awful things I’d said to her, the way I’d handled her. Beaux had said nothing when he’d shown up at the hospital with most of the team to support me and my dad. He’d wanted to hit me.

I could see it in the glare in his eyes and the tenseness in his body.

“Oliver, go to her. Go talk to her. Make her understand.”