Random Acts of Hope (17 page)

“
Fair warning: I have no intention of having your name tattooed on my shaved butthole.”
 

“You checked out my Facebook page,”
I
said grimly. “I never asked that fan to do that!”

“You slept around
a little, I take it
?”

I stared dumbly at her, cock throbbing, hands itching to touch her. I was pure energy and needed to move, to flow, to touch, to do something other than talk. If all we did was talk I’d go out of my fucking mind.

“I was a free agent.” Shit. That sounded about as stupid as it was. “So were you. You really want to air out a laundry list of all our sex partners for the past five years?”
Please say no
,
I prayed,
because not only did I not even know the name
s
of a few of them, some were just known as Red Lipstick Circle Chick and another was named Boney.

I
was
not proud.

But I
was
not ashamed. And I ha
d
n’t slept with anyone for two whole months, other than my hand. And my hand is a really bad conversationalist.

Her face froze, though, when I made the comment about sex partners. The thought of her on her back, crum
p
led sheets surrounding her, some asshole pounding into her body, made a wall of red fury fill my vision. I f
elt
like fire
was
in my blood, and if she look
ed
at me with that cocked eyebrow one more time I
was
going to kiss that look off her face, tongue and tease her until she
was
begging for more, and I
was
going to make her mine again.

Mine.

And no other man
would
get between us again. Ever.

“You want a list of all the sex partners I’ve had in the past five years?” she sa
id
in a deadly tone. The room sp
un
a little and it
was
not from those beers.
The entire atmosphere tilted a little, like the earth shifted a little to the left, adjusting itself because its boner had a pinch point.
 

“I—”

“You want a complete list of every sexual partner I’ve had since when, exactly?
Please clarify your request so that I may serve you properly.” She sounded like a really officious phone sex operator.
“Would you like that notarized as well? Need it in calligraphy, or perhaps with gilded edg
i
ng? There’s a monastery nearby that might have a monk who can create a lovely scroll for you.”

What just happened?

“No, Charlotte, you’re being—”

She marched over to her desk and picked up a clipboard and a pen. Scrawled out sharp, hard let
t
ers, each pen stroke making me angry and confused.

“Charlott
e
,
you
started this. Calling me by my col
le
ge nickname. Obviously you’ve been digging around about me, and that’s cool. Really. I get it.” Her nostrils
we
re
f
lared, lips pinched shut, and I
hadn’t s
een her this pissed since the time I forgot to pick her up after work one time, back in high school, when the new band was practicing so much and finding its groove, and time disappeared.

Kind of like how it felt a second ago.

“I didn’t start anything, Liam. You started it. Tapping on my window like a vampire, coming in, shoving me against the wall and kissing me like you were about to fuck my brains out—”

“I was.”

That stop
ped
her cold. She stare
d
at the sheet
o
f paper on the clipboard, breathing so hard I start
ed
to think she
wa
s hyperventilating. Then, with a little too much care, she slowly t
ore
the sheet of paper off the clipboard and hand
ed
it to me like it
was
my own death sentence.

“There, Liam.”

At the top, in angry block letters she’
d
written:

THE LIST OF PEOPLE CHARLOTTE HAS FUCKED SINCE LIAM

And it
was
completely blank.

Charlotte

Oh, it’s on.

You come to my apartment at three in the morning smelling like beer and tasting like desperation, a whiff of two or three other women’s perfumes on the oil of your sweaty, musky, delightfully
tanned
skin and you kiss me so hard and so long I can feel it in my clit—and you want to talk about who I’ve
fucked
?

He star
ed
at that sheet of paper like it
was
the Golden Ticket and he
wa
s Charlie.

“
G
et out,” I growl
ed
. “Get the fuck out of here, Liam.”

“I don’t understand.” He held the paper up. “It’s blank.”

“GET OUT!” I shout
ed
, then immediately lower
ed
my voice. If the women in my dorm ever knew what was going on in here—
who
was in here—I’d never hear the end of it. You lose your credibility in a dorm with
three
hundred women and that’s it. Game over. Job done.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Then I’m calling security.”

“Wait—no! I don’t mean it like that. If you really, really want me to leave, Charlotte, I will.” Those eyes b
ur
n
ed
into mine like the
y we
re liquid gemstones.
M
y core clench
ed
, the sound of my own breath like a steam engine roaring in my ears, down to my lungs, through my organs and infusing every part of me.

“
I just told you to go,” I said, but even I could tell I was weakening. Because I didn’t want him to go. I wanted his heat against me again, that mouth on my earlobe, telling me he was sorry, he was stupid, he never meant to hurt me five years ago. All the sweetness and caring and protection I never got, not one drop from the day of that phone call, I needed.
 

Now.

Here.

Forever.

But not from a half-drunk stripper who fucked anything with a slit and who
wa
s coming on to me like I
was
just another piece of meat.

“I’ll go, but I have some things to do.”

“Not
me
, buddy.
You’re not doing me tonight.
”

“Then
I have some things
to
say
.”

“You have words? Great. Let ’em out.” I crossed my arms over my chest, the ges
t
ure defensive. I didn’t care. Here we went—five years of pent-up steam about to burst. The ceiling
can’t
hold
us
.

“Why is this page blank?”

“You lose fifty IQ points over the past
five
years, Liam? You can guess.”

“No one?” His eyes bugged out of his head. “Not a single damn guy.”

“No.”

“
N
o
t
even a—”

“
N
o.”

“Why not?”

Of all the questions I’d imagine
d
Liam asking
me
over the years, this wasn’t one of them. I had thought he’d ask whether I’d gotten an abortion, or how the miscarriage felt, or whether I’d decided to keep the baby or put it up for adoption, or what the baby looked like when it came out, or—well, a lot of questions. A ton of them, in fact. I’d had five years to torture myself. I’m good at that.

A pro.

But why hadn’t I slept with anyone since Liam? How could
that
be the first question he asked?

“Why did you fuck everything that looked at you?” I challenged back. His eyes went flat with rage, his face slack. I couldn’t have pissed him off more if I’d tried. I remembered this look.
I
t
wa
s the expression of a Liam gone over to darkness, to a place where he’d be raw and real and not hold back.

Don’t hold your punches. Let’s get this over with and out in the open, because five years of tucking it behind the couch and under the rug and in the closet and flushing it down the toilet hadn’t really gotten us anywhere good now, had it?

“
Because when I fuck, I lose my mind. And I lost my mind the day you—well, that day, and it was better to lose my mind with someone than to be alone and do it.”
 

Holy shit.

Because that
wa
s exactly what I’d done. Gone batshit crazy alone, losing my mind day in and out, thinking and rethinking and analy
z
ing and wondering and crying and then, slowly—recovering.

I
t never occurred to me that shutting out the world was worse than throwing myself into it.

Liam had done the opposite.

But I wasn’t buying it.

“That is bullshit,” I hissed. “Tell me the real reason why.”

He flinched, then shook his head, hard and fast. “How do you
do
that?”

“Do what?”

“
K
now me so well.”

“If I know you so well, then you should know me better. Why do you think I didn’t fuck anyone for five years?”

“
B
ecause once you have this, everything else isn’t worth it?”

And that’s when I threw the clipboard directly at his face.

Liam

I knew she was strong, but
holy shit
, she snapped that clipboard at my head like a well-trained Australian aboriginal ninja. The metal part of the clipboard hi
t
my hairline with a sickening slicing sound, and the next thing I knew I was h
al
f on her couch, half on the floor, eyes open and full of water.

I reached up. Red water.

Charlotte was in my face, crying and apol
o
gizing over and over, mopping my head with a cold washcloth. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to cut you!”

“Yes, you did,” I mumbled.

“No, I didn’t!” she cried.

“You threw it. You meant it.”

“I threw it because you pissed me off, but I didn’t mean to nearly scalp you!”

Her hands were all over me, the blood covering the front of my shirt, dotting my jeans, flowing onto her floor. I reached up to touch the cut and caught a whiff of her scent, the fresh c
oc
onut and
cinnamon
aroma that was uniquely her. The taste of that one kiss was still in my mouth, and as she tenderly wiped the blood from my face, the pain started to hit. Stinging and throbbing, the top of my forehead began to burn.

I reached up and felt it—a one-inch gash.

“We need to get you to an ER.”

“
I
t’s not that bad.” One hand was on my soaked t-shirt, leaning against my shoulder as she crouched over me, eyes worried and full of self-reproach.

“I should know better. I never do that! I have more self-control now.”

“You always did throw shit at me when you were mad.”

“Those were teddy bears and pillows from my bed! And only you. I never threw stuff at anyone else.”

“I’m honored.”
Is that because there’s never been anyone else?
I wanted to ask, but bit my tongue.
 

Her face was inches from mine, her lips slightly parted, the sweet pink of her tongue poking out between her teeth. Her eyes bored into mine, rimmed with tears, her fingers streaked with my dried, rusty blood.

“It’s slowing,” she said, tearing her eyes from mine, looking at the cut. She pressed the cloth into my skin harder. “
L
et me get some ice to put in here.”

As she s
t
ood and walked to her sink, I watched that fine ass sashay across the room, begging for my hands on it, for my bare skin to tickle hers, for our bodies to join.

Blank page.

Blank fucking page.

She had been celibate? For five fucking years? No wonder she was a sex toy party hostess. I’d be humping sink drains
and keychain holes
if I went five years
with
out sex.

I stood, careful to get my bearings. Blood was probably thin from the beers, and I was dehydrated, too. Like she read my mind, Charlotte came back with a glass of water and an ice cube tucked in a freshly wetted cloth. She stood on tiptoe
s
and pressed the ice bundle on my face.

“Ow,” I said, tipping my chin up to drink the water.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Quit saying that.”

“I mean it.”

I put the glass on her kitchen table and reached up for the hand holding the cloth. Gently, I peeled it out of her
clenched fingers
.

“What are you—” And then I reached down for the he
m
of my t-shirt and stripped it over my head in one quick roll, a great stripper move.

Her audible gasp confirmed it.

Fabulous
stripper move.

And then—

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, kissing her lips with a feather stroke. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” I said again, my hands reaching for her hips, pulling her so close. The brush of her shir
t
against my bare skin made me take a ragged breath.

“Your head—”

“Is hard. Like other parts of me.” I tightened my grasp of her waist and she got my point.

“Liam, I—”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured against her ear, my hands holding her still. She slipped her arms up and around my neck, and as I pulled back our eyes met, her
s
troubled and dark. I d
id
n’t know what mine looked like but they were probably pretty damn similar.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, fingers dancing around the gash. “I didn’t mean—” Emotion clogged her throat, and we both realized we weren’t apologizing for what had just happened.

Not one bit.

Through what seemed like a hundred “I’m sorries” we kissed our way to her bedroom in a matter
of
minutes,
tumbling over our own feet, going so slow yet still tipping to and fro, struggling to find balance. Her mouth—ah, that lush, sweet mouth—was a garden, and I was on my back, face tipped in adoration to the sun for giving me such brilliance, delightful aromas, and the indescribable lightness of being with her.