Run.
Run away. They’re making fun of you, Laura. The voice sounded like Josie’s. Like her mother’s. Like every person who had pretended to like her but had just been playing a joke on the fat girl.
Joke was over. She heard Dylan call out her name as she slammed the front door and marched through the dark to her car, the tears spilling over her lashes before she’d made it down the porch steps. She reached into a non-existent pocket for her keys. Keys. Thank God she’d driven here in her own car and could leave, but she couldn’t get out of here if she didn’t have keys.
Damn! Her purse. It was back in the—
Creak. The front door opened and Mike’s long, taut arm came through it, her purse dangling from the end, the porch light making the entire production seem like some rejected scene from one of the later Friday the 13th movies. Horror was apt; it’s what she felt right now. Gently, the arm knelt down, resting the purse on the welcome mat. Without a word, he withdrew his limb and the door creaked shut, the glow on her purse like a spotlight of failure.
Was that some sort of message? Don’t bother coming back in? Like a pilot light pluming as it is first lit, Laura felt a fireball of rage explode in her. She wanted to ram the front door and —
No. The fury snuffed out fast, leaving a deadly calm inside. Mike did that because it was Mike’s way—quiet, silent. Deliberate. He knew she wanted to leave and he helped. No judgments, no words, no complications.
What she needed most right now, as she sneaked up the steps and snatched her purse strap, was no complications. No thoughts, no feelings, no regrets, no nothing.
Laura stormed back to her car, yanked the door open, piled in and cranked the engine. To her relief, it started fine and off she went, the aroma of sex and Dylan and Mike perfuming the air. Their hands were still imprinted on her, the ache of them inside her stretching and throbbing inside, as if she hadn’t quite readjusted to the lack of their stroking, their kisses, their—
Don’t think about it. After her first threesome, she was touched out. The next thing to touch her lips better be named chocolate. Or coffee. Or Xanax.
Hot tears, though, beat them all to it.
“Her purse? Of all the gestures you could have made, Mike, the one you picked was to put her purse out on the porch for her?” Although he’d stayed in bed while poor Laura had wrapped herself into a knot rushing to put on her clothes, now Dylan leaped out, pacing like a caged animal. His nude form was less appealing than it normally would be as Mike struggled to make sense of the last hour.
“She needed to be able to leave in peace.”
“She’s going to think that was some sort of big old ‘fuck you,’ Mike! Like we were telling her to get out.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Dylan replied savagely. He grabbed his boxer briefs and dragged them on. Mike heard the popping of stitches and bit back a smirk as Dylan untangled himself from having put both legs in the same hole. As Dylan figured it all out Mike calmly put his own underwear and pants on, desperate to go for a long trail run. Where the hell was his shirt?
“Where are you going?” Dylan shouted as Mike wandered out of the room in search of his shirt.
“For a run.” Where was it? He and Laura had been by the bed, and her fingertips had—Oh. Yeah. Turning around, he walked back in to find Dylan shoving his shoes on, glaring at Mike like he’d just ripped his puppy’s head off and eaten it.
“At midnight? Smelling like—uh, us? Are you trying to be bear bait?”
Behind the door he found his shirt in a wrinkled heap. His biceps ached as he stretched his arms and slid them into the sleeves. Sore already? He snorted.
“You think something is funny? At a time like this? Man, you’re cold.” Dylan bounded to his feet, fists curled, itching for a fight. Mike knew he wasn’t mad at him; Dylan was frustrated and hurt, and this was what he did.
He got mad.
Mike, on the other hand, got out. Out on the road, the trail, the running paths—wherever his feet took him. Coming right up to him like a peacock ready to strut, Dylan got in Mike’s face, his bare chest brushing against Mike’s tight-weave cotton.#p#分页标题#e#
“What the fuck are we supposed to do now?” he hissed, arm pointing toward the front door. “She’s gone. Your little plan failed.”
“We don’t know that. Quit saying ‘my plan.’ My plan didn’t involve a threesome on the spot.” A deep itch, an urge like a tic, swelled up in him from bones to outer skin; the need to flee. To run. To race.
To get the hell out of there.