Soft Shock (5 page)

“Wait.” Owen
jumped to his feet and wrapped his hands around hers. Bringing her hands to his
lips, he kissed them. “I didn’t know this would be the last chance I got.
Please. Can’t I do or say anything to change your mind? I know this is going to
sound crazy, but the moment I saw you after the unfortunate way I ran into you,
I knew something was there. I was in this horrible place that morning. Right up
until the moment I met you. When I saw you, the clouds lifted. I’ve felt so
much lighter ever since. I don’t want that feeling to go away. I don’t want you
to go away. I feel like everything happens for a reason. I ran into you for a
reason.”

“Other than not
watching where you were going?”

A slight laugh
escaped him. “Other than that.” He pressed her hands between his. His hands
were so warm. Firm. Capable. “This isn’t the last time I’m supposed to see you.
It can’t be. Let me at least have your phone number.”

“Jacket,” she
said in response.

“Huh?”

She gestured
around his room. “I need my jacket. Can’t find it.”

Owen glanced
around, bent to pick up her black jacket from beneath a chair. She appreciated
the muscles moving under the skin of his back as he did so. He wheeled around
with the jacket held to his chest. He had a slender yet muscular build that
reminder her of a well-conditioned soccer player’s or a swimmer’s. Nice.

Still holding on
to her jacket, he said, “What if I told you that you have to agree to go out
with me to get this back?”

“I’d run out to
my car in the cold, and if I catch pneumonia, it’d be on your conscience.”

“It doesn’t
even have to be a huge deal of a date. We can grab coffee or something.”

“I think we’ve
shared enough coffee. Goodbye, Owen.” She reached for her purse.

“Wait, no, you
can’t go out there like that.” He thrust the jacket at her. “Here.”

“It really is
best this way,” Marci said. “I’m not good with relationships.”

“What about a
new friend?”

Marci laughed.
“I’ve heard that one before. You’re sweet. Go find yourself a sweet girl.
Like that one at the bar tonight.
Stop wasting your time
thinking about me.” Marci started to say goodnight for the last time when he
surprised her with a deep kiss. She dropped the jacket and wrapped her arms
around his neck. His kisses were addictive. She knew she should push him away,
but the whole time they’d been talking, she couldn’t deny that the hope in the
back of her mind was that he’d kiss her again.

Chapter Five

He meant to
stop before it went too far. In fact, he hadn’t meant to kiss her again at all.
He only knew he had to stop her from leaving, and he hadn’t known how, and
before he could have a single, rational thought, his arms were wrapped around
her again, and he was crushing her lips under his. No, he hadn’t meant to do
this, but now he couldn’t stop. And she wasn’t trying to push him away.

He hadn’t meant
to let it go this far, either. One minute, his hands were under the hem of her
shirt and he was feeling the smooth, warm flesh of her belly. The next, she was
completely naked and trying to get him to join her in the nakedness.

He pulled back
from her kisses for a moment and trailed a finger down her cheek and under her
chin. He then gave her lower lip a few soft kisses before pulling back and
staring into her eyes in the near complete darkness, the only light coming in
jagged, pale slits from the street light outside in the parking lot filtering
through the blinds over his window. His hands slipped to her waist as he
trailed kisses from her neck to her shoulder reverently. Pulling her close
again, he massaged his fingers into her buttocks as he kissed her mouth long
and deep. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone, and he put all of
that into that one searing kiss. When he pulled back, they were both gasping
for air.

When she
reached for his belt buckle, he didn’t try to stop her. He made small circles
on the skin at the base of her neck with his index fingers and watched. His
belt fell to the floor. His pants slid down to meet it. That was when she
looked up and he saw the hesitation mixed with desire in her eyes.

She knew this
wasn’t right, either. Some part of her knew. He saw it in the way her movements
were slower now, tinged with doubt, in the way she wouldn’t quite look him in
the eye. She didn’t seem as bold and self-assured as she had when they’d first
gotten into her car earlier. But she’d never be the one to stop them. He
considered going forward, and he let her get her fingers in the waistband of
his boxers before he said anything.

“Stop,” he said
with a sigh. It was the fact that he needed this to be more than one night that
stopped him. That and seeing that at least part of her knew this wasn’t right,
either.

“Fine.” She
pulled back, but she didn’t look nearly as angry and frustrated with him as she
had when he stopped her the first time. “You need to make up your mind. I can’t
keep going through this.”

“You want me.”
He gave her a teasing grin.

“Never said I
didn’t. What I don’t want is to keep you.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m not giving
you my number.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t try to
find me online. I’m very hard to search for.”

“Fine.”

Marci grabbed
her clothes and got dressed again. This time when she got to the door and said
goodnight, he said it back and didn’t stop her from going out of the door. That
was okay. He had time. One thing was for sure, though. When it came to Marci, there
was no way was he settling for one night.

#

Sunday
afternoon, Marci sat cross-legged in her bed with Tyler strewn across it in
front of her, his chin propped up by his hand. They were watching an America’s
Next Top Model marathon as Tyler recovered from his hangover and Marci
recovered from her Rejection.

Ronnie had to
work at Schaffer’s, the restaurant where she waitressed, so she wasn’t around
to commiserate with them. They were supposed to be going over Tyler’s lines for
an upcoming audition, but the script lay abandoned near the foot of her bed.
Neither of them
were
in the mood to do much more than
watch—and comment on—ANTM.

Marci had seen
all the red flags with Owen and chosen to ignore them until she couldn’t any
longer. That’s why she’d been wary of him from the beginning—those
unassuming, beguiling ones could get you into some real trouble. Especially
when you added ridiculously good looks into the mix. Owen had to be a serial
monogamist. With the way he’d been talking last night, there was no way he
wasn’t.
 

Marci was not a
big fan of relationships. Her high school boyfriend had been hot, too, and
burned the hell out of her. She foolishly thought she was “in love,” whatever
that meant. And he’d claimed he was, too. He’d had the nerve to continue
claiming he was “in love” with her even after she walked in on him and her best
friend screwing just days before graduation. And this was after she’d already
locked herself into going to the same school for undergrad as both of those traitors.
Clearly, Marci been done with both of them after that, though. Both
exes—ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend—had stayed together and ended
up getting married or something. Marci didn’t know all the details and had
never tried to get them. It wasn’t like she cared what either of them did with
their lives now. Luckily, NYU was a big enough place that she’d been able to
pretty much avoid running into either of them during her four years there.

A few months
after that crushing blow, Marci’s parents got divorced, and her mother started
her Olympic sprint through marriages less than a year after the divorce was
finalized. By the time Marci graduated from NYU, her mom was working on her
fourth marriage. Seriously. One of them had only lasted three months.

After her
parents divorced, Marci’s dad moved to Arizona to live with the secret family
he’d started there while still married to Mom. Yeah. Her parents were two very
messed up individuals. Dad didn’t have time for Marci and seemed to have
completely thrown his old life away after moving to Arizona. All she had left
of him was his class ring, which she wore on a gold chain around her neck.

During
sophomore year of undergrad, Marci met a boy she’d thought had understood her
and her messed up family and everything else. He’d told her everything would be
different with him. That one day, they would start a family together that would
be filled with love and happiness and all the things she’d never felt she had
in her own broken family. She fell for his lies.
Worse than
hard.
He left her for someone else, and it took an embarrassingly long
amount of time for her to pull herself together after that. She cringed to
think of all the books she’d read, all the schemes she’d enacted, just to try
and get that boy to come back to her. How pathetic.

Yeah, she’d
given up on the silly idea of romantic love. Life had made her very
self-reliant emotionally, and that was probably for the best. Whatever doesn’t
kill you, right? After she’d finally pulled herself together after the college
boy fiasco, she’d learned to focus on herself, her career, and her friends.
Screw the rest.

“I can’t
believe this,” Marci said. “I don’t lose.”

Tyler
snickered. “Well, you got something out of it.”

When she got
home and Tyler asked who was buying
whom
drinks the
next time they went out, Marci had asked what counted as sex. Tyler made it very
clear that sex was actual, full on intercourse. She and Owen definitely hadn’t
made it that far. Although, what they’d done had been a little bit heavenly.
She’d had actual, full on intercourse that hadn’t been nearly as good as
fooling around a little with Owen had been. That man knew what to do with those
large, strong hands of his. She could only imagine how far his talents went. He
hadn’t allowed her to go past imagining.

“Yeah, yeah. As
you so nicely pointed out, it doesn’t count.”

Tyler flipped over
onto his back and turned his head in her direction, his blond hair falling
across his face. “You had a good time, didn’t you? Not everything is about
winning, Marci.”

“I guess,”
Marci grumbled. Clearly, he and Glenda King had different ideas about that. Glenda
King, her mother, had never changed her name again after the first divorce. Glenda
King, the neurosurgeon, had looked down on every choice Marci had made since
dropping her pre-med major in undergrad.

Marci’s phone
vibrated on her nightstand. She lifted the phone, held it in front of her face,
and read the name displayed across the screen. Speak of the devil. Sliding her
thumb across the bottom of the phone to answer the call, she put it to her ear.

“Mom,” she
said, pulling herself from her bed and going out to the balcony. Because she
paid the majority of the rent, she got the master bedroom with the attached
balcony that ran from her bedroom to the living room.

“Marci. Guess
what?” Her mom certainly seemed to be in a good mood. Probably she either just
completed some complicated twenty-hour surgery that would involve an
explanation full of multisyllabic words Marci would never be able to pronounce
or else something had happened with that guy her mom was seeing. What was his
name? Sean? Stan? She could never keep them
all straight
.
Only two things lit up her mother’s world—surgery and men.

“I’ll never
guess. No clue. What is it?”

“Come on, try.”

“You…I dunno.
Performed some really complicated surgery on a car crash victim whose head was
bashed in.”

“Not even
close. I’m getting married.”

Marci took that
back. Three things lit up her mother’s world.
The third thing
being getting married.
This would be husband number eight. Ever since
Glenda and Marci’s dad split, her mom seemed to be in a constant race to outdo
herself
when it came to the number and duration of her
marriages. At this rate, one day, Glenda would be getting married and divorced
weekly.

“What? You and
Daryl just got divorced in March.” And it was only October. And Glenda hadn’t
even met what’s-his-name until May. What
was
his name? Something with an “S.” Maybe Sam?

“I know that.”
Glenda’s tone started to cool. “Who’s the mother here?” Glenda let it be known
that she didn’t like being
judged
—especially by
her daughter.
And a “wayward, liberal artsy-fartsy daughter”
at that.
She never ceased to remind Marci of the paucity of black female
neurosurgeons in the world and that she, Glenda King, was one of the best. She
also wasn’t averse to dropping into a conversation that Marci had made a huge
mistake by “wasting” her intelligence and talent by not pursuing a career in
medicine.

Marci was not
in the mood for a fight with G.K. “Have you guys set a date yet?”

“We’re actually
in St. Martin right now.”

“For what?”

“We’re
eloping.”

“What?” Marci
couldn’t keep the startled half-scream out of her voice.

“Sherwin and I
are both busy people, Marci. We had to squeeze it in when we had time. And
really, after the first marriage, there’s no point in throwing a big party and
inviting all your friends.”

Or your daughter apparently.

Ah. Sherwin,
that was right. He was an E.R. doc. It was kind of coming back to her now. And
as for the big party, G.K. had stretched it out to the first five before
finally giving up. If people hadn’t started to talk after the second one, she
might have left it alone at three. But G.K. didn’t like people thinking they had
the right to judge her. Yet people’s opinions mattered to her so much in a way
she’d never admit.