Depths (20 page)

“Well, whatever-the-fuck the reason was, you never wanted to come here with me, but now you’ll slum it with Carlos? Is that why you weren’t into it when I was down to fuck the other night? Your taste got darker?” She gasps and bites her lip, and he seems excited to see her uncomfortable. “Aw, did I hit a nerve? You know what’s funny? That’s half the reason I was so into you. Being with you felt like slumming it a little, and that was exciting as fuck. All these uptight professional women, they don’t let me do the shit to them you begged for, Maren. I miss all those nasty little—”

They both jump when I topple my chair back standing up. It’s probably not fair that Jason is as drunk as he is, but any sympathy I may have had for his incapacity went out a smashed window when I heard what he said to Maren.

“Shut your fucking mouth and leave this table right now.”

I know he’s not going to back down, so I cuff my sleeves up as he opens his mouth to say something I just
know
is going to give me good reason to land a punch on his pretty boy face.

“I can talk to Maren anywhere, anytime I please, asshole. I’ve got first fuck claim on her. Here’s an idea? Why don’t you stop sniffing around my leftovers and find some nice Mexi—”

It was going to go on and disrespect Maren more, it was going to get racial, and I wasn’t standing for a single second of it.

Pulling my arm back feels amazing. Maren’s shriek doesn’t feel quite as good.

But then my fist slams into Jason’s mouth, and that feels beyond fucking incredible. I’m stoked that he isn’t so drunk that he can’t swing back, and swing he does. A nice wide arc of arm slashes my way and his fist hammers under my jaw and detonates an explosion of sparks behind my eyes, then his other fist wails up and whacks me square in the nose, giving me the perfect excuse to punch the bastard back.

His efforts throw him off balance and he knocks over a chair at the table next to us and topples back. I hurl him up by his collar, because I don’t hit an asshole when he’s down. When he sways back and forth on his feet, I slam into his nose twice, fast, and smash the side of his face.

For a single, spectacular second, there’s just the slow motion twist of his body and the fine spray of blood as he drops to the floor. The entire scene has a dreamlike quiet.

Then the sound and action rushes back at hyper speed. Maren is beating on my back, screaming in my ear. The manager and several staff members are rushing forward. Ally, all her pouting forgotten, races on too high heels to Jason’s side, where she sinks to her knees and sobs over his moaning form.

The manager is screaming and pointing at me, and it’s then that I realize I might be in deep shit. Luckily, Jason sits up woozily, helped by Ally’s frantic arms.

“I’m fine!” Jason yells, holding his gushing nose. “He took a cheap shot. Just get this border jumper out of my face.”

I lunge at him again, but Maren yanks my arm back, and the manager sicks two dark-skinned busboys on me. Luckily, their investment in causing me any harm only goes as far as getting me to the doors, where their boss can still see them.

“Good fight, man,” the younger one says in heavily accented English. Jason picked a particularly stupid slur. If he stays at the restaurant, I’d wager he’ll ingest a pound or two of scorned busboys’ bodily fluids hidden in his food. “You beat the piss out of that asshole.”

The other claps me on the back. “That guy is such a
pendejo
. He can
besa mi culo
. He had it coming. Nice job.”

I gasp and nod, thanking the guys between wheezes. I’m glad when they walk back in and I can try to catch my breath in private, until I realize I’m all alone with Maren, and she looks totally, absolutely disgusted by me.

Shit.

Some girls love a guy who fights. Kensley would orchestrate fucked-up scenarios just to see me throw down, but Maren is obviously more dove than hawk.

I lean over, blood dripping out of my nose and onto the sidewalk. I glance up at her, my hair in my eyes. “He shouldn’t have talked to you like that,” I argue, though she hasn’t said a single word.

Her mouth opens and shuts like she’s searching for something to say back to me, but she settles on just shaking her head. I want to pull her close, tell her that I’m sorry I messed things up on our first real date, but my nose is still spurting blood, and I feel a little bit like I might pass out any second.

“Give me a minute. I’ll take you home.” I tilt my head back and feel Maren’s cool hand on my neck.

“You stupid ass,” she mutters, bending my head forward with the gentle press of her fingers. “You’re just making the blood drip down your throat. Tilt forward.”

She leads me to the curb and we sit. Her fingers come close to my face and she clamps them at the bridge of my nose, tight.

“I’m sorry.” I try to look over at her, but her wrist blocks my view of her face. A few long seconds tick by. “Apology not accepted?”

Her sigh shifts her entire body. “I don’t think you should try to make me feel bad about not accepting your apology, because I don’t think your apology means a damn thing.” I can barely catch her words, like she’s looking away from me. From us. From this disaster of a date.

“I mean it,” I insist. Her second sigh is deeper and way more irritated. “I mean it because I really am sorry that I ruined our date. I was having a great time, and I hate that it got fucked up.”

“Or that you fucked it up?” she corrects.

“That’s kind of cold. Jason deserved it.” But I sound petulant, even to myself.

“Okay. Maybe he did. He’s had that coming for a long time. And it’s not exactly wrong that you kicked his ass. It’s just…look what we traded for it.” She’s got this wistful tone going in her voice, and I hate it. “I’ll always think of our first date now and remember Jason.”

“So?” I loosen her fingers from my nose and pinch it myself, because it’s driving me insane to not be able to see her. Funny how I haven’t been able to see her for all of five minutes, but the second she’s back in my line of site, I’m shocked all over again by how damn gorgeous she is.

Those big blue eyes blink with confusion. “So, I don’t want Jason to have anything to do with the new part of my life. I want him to be part of my past, period.”

I start to laugh, but stop before I dislodge another blood clot. “I don’t think it works like that, Maren.”

“Like what?” She straightens her back and squares her delicate shoulders, getting even more gorgeous as each pissed-off second ticks by.

“Like, you don’t get to move on and just blow your past away. Everything you do, every new move you make is all tangled up in everything you did.” Her eyebrows slam down over her eyes because she clearly hates what I’m telling her. “I’m not saying you don’t move on and grow. Just, you can’t disconnect yourself from who you were.”

“But what if who you were was just who you were being while you waited to become the real you?” She turns her head and looks at me intently, like she wants me to give her an answer. Not just any answer, either. The right answer.

In the name of saving this date, I’d be happy to do just that. But I have no clue what she wants to hear. I doubt it’s what I’m going to say.

“Um, I think this is pretty philosophical for a guy who just answered a couple of insults with his fists, but I can tell you what I think. I think you are who you are. There is no waiting. There’s no pausing any of this. And if you feel like you’re on a break or whatever, okay. But you better get back to it. Life goes fast, and who wants to sit any of it out?”

She presses a hand to her eyes and lets out a little shuddering sound.

“Maren?” I take her free hand, and, when she doesn’t pull away, I wrap an arm around her. “What’s wrong? I promise you, if it’s this whole bullshit fight, I’ll march back in there with my damn tail between my legs and make nice. You’re right. I
am
an ass. Even if that tool deserved it.”

Her laugh borders on a wet hiccup. “It’s not that. I mean, yes, you are an ass, but, yes, also, Jason deserved every punch he got. I just…” Her voice wobbles as she tries to get the next words out. “I just want this part of my life to be over for good sometime soon. Erased. Gone.”

I could totally tell her that she can do that if she wants.

But I don’t.

“Why?” I ask instead. “That’s me erased, too, at least partly. That’s me and you talking on the phone all day at work, watching baseball together, hanging at the beach, making out in my kitchen…all that. You want it gone?”

She shakes her head and rubs under her eyes hard with her fingers. “No. No. I don’t want to erase anything about you. But everything else?”

“Jason is a dick, but would you really want to not remember anything? If you magically got to cut him out of your memory for good, you might wind up with someone like him again, right?” I can’t believe I’m defending Jason’s right to any space in Maren’s brain, even hypothetically.

But it’s not really that. It’s more like I’m trying to let her know that it’s totally okay to fuck up. More than okay. It’s normal. Our fuck-ups make us who we are, and if we don’t accept that…well, there’d be nothing but more potential fuck-ups in our future. Or, worse, we’d just freeze up and stop doing anything at all.

“I just need…a clean slate I guess. I just need to fix this all and be free to start over.” She looks up, her makeup smudged, her smile shaky, and touches my nose gingerly. “It hurts like hell, right?”

I nod.

“See? Wouldn’t it be great if you could make it go away?” Tears slide over her lips.

I shake my head.

“No?” she double-checks.

“I wouldn’t change a single thing about tonight. I know it’s not right that I liked kicking his ass, Maren, and I am truly sorry that it ruined the night for you. But no one is ever going to talk to you like that in front of me. I know you want me to say that I won’t do anything like that again, but I can’t.” I let go of my nose, which seems to have stopped spurting blood, and hold her hand, still damp from mopping up her tears. “I care about you. I’m not going to let anyone walk all over you. Not happening. Ever.”

She pulls her hand away from mine and nods tightly, like she’s done with me. Sometimes I wish I was a better liar.

Then she turns, grabs my face in her hands gently, and kisses me. It’s light at first. I did just get my face half bashed in, and I guess she’s trying to be careful.

But I have her. In my arms, the scent of her surrounding me, her body pressed on mine. And, more importantly, I have her happiness to be with me, her forgiveness, her excitement. So I kiss without worrying about my smashed nose, and every time I think the pain is going to get so extreme I honestly might pass out, I run my hands over her, let my fingers get lost in her soft hair, run my tongue over hers, and readjust so she’s pressed closer to me, twined tighter around me, and let my mind jump wherever it wants to go. Which is some pretty lowdown, awesome places.

“Thank you,” she whimpers, pulling away.

“You’re welcome,” I say, dragging her closer, rubbing my hands over her shoulders. “What are you thanking me for? Because I kind of feel like
I
should be thanking
you
.”

She cups my jaw, running a thumb over my cheekbone, her nose rubbing my against my face as she breathes me deep. “For taking care of me. No one, seriously,
no one
does that for me. I’m sorry I was mad at you. I’m just so used to being ignored. I’m so used to being the one taking care—”

She interrupts her own ramble, which is breaking my damn heart, and kisses me again, harder, with little nips of her teeth on my lips, and nuzzles her face against my neck. My hand drags up her dress, making the skirt ride high on her thighs, then heads up along her stomach, over the bumps of her ribs, and between all that lace that’s been teasing me through dinner. I brace my other hand at the small of her back as I run my thumb over the soft curves pressed high in that sexy bra.

She feels so good through the fabric, but I want my hands on her skin. I want her naked. I want her moaning. I want her all.

“Come home with me,” I say softly against her ear.

She bucks and rubs closer, letting out a long, “Mmm,” that lets me know she’s at least tempted.

And that shred of temptation is all I need.

“Come home with me because I want to strip you.”

She stops moving against me, and I wonder if I pushed it too far already, but her hands squeeze at my shoulders expectantly, so I tell her, in plain words, everything we’ve danced around and hinted at for all the weeks we’ve wanted each other so badly. “I’m going to strip every last shred off of you, Maren, because just thinking about seeing you naked gets me hard.”

Her fingers dig into my shoulders and she moans, making me feel brave enough to say more, to let her know how sexy she is and how turned on I am around her.

“And once you’re naked, I’m not going to stop kissing you and sucking on you until you come for me.”

Her breath catches in her throat and she rocks against me so softly, I don’t even know if she realizes she’s doing it. I unleash the words I’d hold tight unless I was in the dark, secret confines of my bedroom. I do it because I have a hard time containing anything I feel for her.