Shredded (8 page)

She doesn’t pull away, though, like I expect her to. She doesn’t slap my face, doesn’t stand up, doesn’t do any of the things I think she will. Instead she sits up and grinds herself, slowly, carefully, determinedly, over my cock. And embarrassing though it is, I swear I almost come at just that touch. Which is crazy, except—in my defense—the girl does one hell of a hip swivel.

Of their own volition, my hands go to her hips and I hold her in place for one second, two. Every urge I’ve got tells me to thrust up into that heat. I’ve been sexually active since I was thirteen years old and I’ve learned a lot in the last eight years. It wouldn’t take much to send her over the edge, right here. Right now.

Except Luc, Ash, and Cam are running straight at us, and while I don’t normally mind a little PDA, something tells me that once I start fucking Ophelia, I’m not going to want to stop. At least not for something as boring as listening to my friends gloat over their damn snowball fight victory.

Which is why I ease Ophelia off me, even though it takes every ounce of willpower I have. She blinks a little as I set her down on the ground next to me, and suddenly the lust in her eyes clears, becomes something else. The second it does, she scrambles backward, away from me, before jumping to her feet. This time her legs hold her, but I think that’s more miracle than actual skill.

“Ophelia.” I sit up, reach for her hand. I don’t know what I want to say, but I know I
can’t leave her like this. With her eyes wild and her arms wrapped around her waist, she looks completely freaked out. Worse, she looks empty. I’ve had enough experience with the feeling to recognize it in her.

But before I can do anything more than say her name again and climb to my feet, the others are on us.

“You okay?” Luc asks her as he wraps a comforting arm around her waist. “That was one hell of a fall.”

“I’m fine,” she says, and though she’s still stiff, I notice that she doesn’t jerk out of his hold. Instead, she stands there, her body sagging a little against his, looking completely comfortable. Way more comfortable than she looked when we were together.

It pisses me off. Then I get pissed off about being pissed off. Luc is my best friend, and Ophelia’s just some girl, some bet. And yet I can’t stand the way he’s touching her, can’t stand the way he ducks his head and murmurs something only the two of them can hear. Even if it’s nothing, even if he’s just checking on her, I still don’t like it.

I jump to my feet, shove my hands in my pockets. Focus on the fact that this latest fall has aggravated all the aches and pains I got from my earlier swan dive in the half-pipe. My leg has started aching again and the bruises over my ribs throb in time to my heartbeat.

The hospital offered me a script for painkillers, but I didn’t take it. I know the nurse thought I was crazy—or a recovering junkie—but the truth is, the pain is part of the reason I do the things I do. It grounds me in a way nothing else can.

“Are you all right, Z?” Cam lays a gentle hand on my arm. “You didn’t hit your head again?”

“I’m all good,” I tell her, shrugging off her touch. It feels like she’s offering so much more than friendship with that hold, and it’s not something I want any part of. With anybody, really, but certainly not with her.

“So, what’s next?” I ask. “One of those parties or—”

“I’m going home,” Ophelia says.

I glance at my watch. “But it isn’t even ten o’clock yet!”

She shrugs. “I’ve got work in the morning.”

“So do we, but you don’t see any of us punking out early!”

“Guess I’m just not as cool as you, Z. But then, who is, right?”

Ash makes a big point of coughing to cover a laugh, so I shove him and then flip him off. Whose side is he supposed to be on anyway?

“If you really want to leave, I’ll walk you to your car.” It’s dark in the park, but I can still see her eyes. They’re wide and a little startled, and I decide not to push her anymore.

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Ophelia answers. “It’s just a couple of blocks that way,
right?” She gestures toward the park’s entrance.

“Actually, the clinic’s parking lot is that way.” I point in the exact opposite direction. “About three blocks.”

“Right. Cool.” She tosses her hair, tries to act like she’s not flustered at all. But I can tell she’s spooked. Right now, tough-as-nails Ophelia is anything but. “Thanks for letting me hang with you guys tonight. It was fun.”

She gives a little wave, starts to walk toward the other side of the park. I fall into step beside her, while Cam, Ash, and Luc bring up the rear. Now that they know we’re okay, they’re back to boasting about how they kicked our asses in the snowball fight.

We would have been home free if Ophelia hadn’t slipped, but I don’t bother to correct them. I’m too busy trying to ignore the way she smells—all sweet and warm, like peaches in the summertime. It’s a good smell, one that’s doing nothing to help my dick deflate even though it’s obvious I’m not going to be getting any action with her tonight.

“You don’t have to walk with me,” she tells me, sounding irritated. “I can find my way back to the clinic, you know.”

“No doubt. But it’s dark, and while most of the tourists are tucked up in their beds at the resorts, you don’t know who’s out wandering the streets. It’s safer if we go with you.”

“I don’t need a protector, Z.”

“No one said you did.” I glance at her. “Besides, does it look like I’m applying for the job?” With my tattoos and piercings and all-black wardrobe, no one looks less like a white knight than I do, and believe me, I know it.

She looks me over from head to toe, and for a second it looks like she might say something else, but in the end she just shakes her head and keeps walking.

We make the rest of the three-block trip in silence, the only sound that of our boots crunching in the snow and the laughter of my idiot best friends, who are still behind us. I try to think of something else to say, but for the first time ever I’m at a total loss for words. I don’t have a clue how to talk to this girl.

Once we get to the parking lot, Ophelia says, “My car’s parked right over there.” She points vaguely toward the left side of the lot. “Thanks for walking me.”

“No problem,” Ash tells her.

“You okay driving back to the lodge on your own?” I ask suddenly. It’s snowed some since we’ve been out, and the roads are slick and a just a little icy. No big deal for me, but Ophelia’s a southern girl. Icy streets are a whole new ball game for her.

My friends turn to stare at me—I guess they’re not used to me giving a shit about anyone but them—but I ignore them. I may be a loser and a fuck-up, but I’m not a total dick. Or at least, I don’t think I am.

She rolls her eyes at me. “I’m good, Z.” She gives me a little push. “Go get your car at the movie theater and go to that party or whatever. I’ll see you around.”

Then, after giving the others a little wave, she starts across the cleared and salted parking lot with long, sure strides.

I watch her go, her confident gait eating up the distance between her and the dark blue Honda sitting under one of the huge parking lot lights in the first row. She doesn’t look back once, but still, I wait until she reaches the car and fumbles her keys out of her purse before I turn away and head back up the way we came.

“So,” Luc says as we head back to my car. “What was all that rolling around on the ground with Ophelia?”

“Shut up,” Cam snaps at him, sounding totally annoyed. “They fell.”

Ash snorts. “Yeah, right. That totally looked like a fall. If, you know, a fall is another word for foreplay. You better start looking for another board, Luc. I think you’re going to have to kiss your Flow Darwin good-bye.”

“I don’t know about that. It’s been twenty-four hours since they met and Ophelia’s driving herself back to the lodge, with no invitation for Z to follow. That has to be a first.”

He’s right, it is, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Part of me wants to just fuck her and get it over with, but another part is growing a little more interested in her, in who she really is, each time we meet. Ophelia never says much about herself, but I can see that there’s more to her than the tough-girl attitude and the snappy comebacks. I just wish I knew what it was—and whether or not finding out will fuck me up more than I already am.

I don’t say anything else as we walk back to my Range Rover. But as we pass one of those electronic signs that flash the date and time, along with the store’s specials of the day, there’s a part of me that freezes as I see today’s date up there in bright red lettering. November 18, 2013. November 18. November 18. November 18.

The knowledge explodes through me, nearly rips me to pieces. Not the date, not even what the date stands for—what it will always stand for. No, that’s not what shreds me completely. It’s the fact that for the last couple of hours, while I ate ice cream and had the mother of all snowball fights, I’d forgotten. Forgotten what had happened to them. And forgotten my own culpability in it.

As if I had that right.

I stumble, nearly go to my knees as it all slams right back into me. The guilt and pain and pressure of it. The blame and the agony of it, so heavy that only years of practice—years of holding that shit way down deep—keeps me on my feet and moving forward.

When we get to my car, Ash suggests hitting up one of the parties I mentioned earlier, but I just shake my head. I’d only suggested the parties because I wanted to spend more time with
Ophelia, and now just the thought of squeezing into one of those crowded, smoke-filled houses makes me crazy. The pressure’s so bad I can barely think, can barely breathe. The last thing I need is to be trapped in the middle of a crush of bodies.

In the end, I drop Cam, Luc, and Ash back at their respective homes, then head to my dad’s place. My place, really, since the great tech genius himself hasn’t been back here in three and a half years. Not since my high school graduation, and even then it was just an overnight trip. A quick in-and-out to attend the ceremony and tell me he was proud of me. I might even have believed him—if he’d been able to look me in the eye when he said it.

An old Red Hot Chili Peppers song comes on the radio, and I reach over and turn it up until the beat is so loud that I can’t think through it. Then I just coast, every part of me on automatic pilot as I make my way through the softly falling snow, with no plans other than to go home and get high.

At least until I turn onto Red Maple, heading toward Park. Because there, all bundled up in a bright red jacket and sitting on a bus stop bench at the side of the road, is the girl I’d walked to her car nearly an hour ago.

Chapter 6

Ophelia

This time I don’t bother to look up when the car pulls to a stop in front of me. I’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes waiting for my connecting bus, and this is the fourth car that’s stopped. I don’t think I look like a hooker sitting here all zipped up—and it is obviously a bus stop, after all—but given all the idiot guys who’ve stopped to offer me a ride, you’d think I was wearing a sign that read No One Refused.

Which is
so
not the case.

“Hey!” one of the morons in this newest car calls to me, but I don’t even turn my head. If I completely ignore them, maybe these idiots looking to get lucky will finally go away.

“Ophelia!”

This time I do turn, at the urgent tone and the sound of my name. Shit. Not a stranger then, but Z, who looks confused and more than a little pissed off.

I wave to him, then go back to what I was doing before he pulled up. Which isn’t much, really. Just staring down the road and trying to keep my teeth from chattering.

I hear him curse, then the sound of the Range Rover turning off and a car door slamming. Which means I’m not getting rid of him as easily as I’d hoped.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, coming around the front of the car to crouch down in front of me. “I thought you had a car.”

“I do.” But it’s not the blue Honda outside the clinic. No, my car is safe in the parking lot outside the employee housing provided by the lodge—in the same spot it’s been in since I arrived here twelve days ago.

“Then why aren’t you driving it?” He looks at me like I’m insane. And maybe I am. Either way, it’s none of his business.

Which is why I shrug. “I’m still new to Park City, don’t know my way around very well. I took the bus today because I was worried about getting lost and being late to my appointment.” Not a lie, I tell myself. Just not the whole truth, either.

But Z doesn’t look like he’s buying it. Big surprise. After all, it takes a con artist to know one.

“Isn’t that what GPS is for?” he asks.

“What’s the big deal?” I demand, going on the offensive because the defensive obviously isn’t working. “Why does it matter if I didn’t want to drive today?”

“It doesn’t matter. Except you lied to me. And now you’re sitting out here at the bus stop, alone, in the dark and the cold, waiting for a bus that doesn’t look like it’s coming anytime soon.”

“It’s coming. It’ll be here in seven minutes.”

“Great. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you won’t be a Popsicle by then. Or a rape victim.” He stands up, reaches for my hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”

I yank my hand back, glare at him. “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Relax, princess. You’ve been safe with me all night. I’m not going to suddenly attack you. I just want to take you back to the lodge.”

“I’m fine. The bus is almost here.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” He gestures toward the nearly empty street. Currently the only car on it, besides his, is stopped at the light a few yards away. The two guys in the front look about our age, maybe a little older, and seem intensely interested in what’s going on between us. “You don’t actually think I’m going to leave you here alone, do you? With assholes like that around? It’s practically the middle of the night.”

“It’s not even eleven o’clock yet.”

“Still. Come on. Get in the car and I’ll take you home. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is you’re wasting your time. I’m not going to sleep with you.”