Page 2 of Wicked S.O.B.
Finding myself isn’t the problem. I know exactly who I am. My problem is never being good enough for her.
I raise my glass again, and I spot the bloody gash on the back of my hand. I didn’t feel it before, but as I stare at it, it begins to sting.
How exactly did that get there? At the beginning or at the end of my loss of control?
My mind weaves in and out as I try to remember. Okay, so I’m wasted. The alcohol is working. So how come I don’t recall getting drunk?
I stop thinking altogether when the buzzer sounds to alert me that my private elevator is on its way up.
She’s here.
I don’t move. I can’t. The thought of her reaches deep inside and paralyzes me. It has from the first moment I saw her through my camera lens. The moment she raised those gorgeous, defiant eyes at me and dared me to resist. Dared me to fall.
Two days she’s been away. I glance down at my watch, and my mouth compresses. More than two days. Fifty-four and a half hellish hours.
For each second the express elevator takes to race up ninety-two floors, my heartbeat accelerates faster. My stomach hollows, and my knees turn to water. My breathing grows noisy and heavy in the silent chaos of the living room.
In front of me, the unparalleled view of New York City she loves so much—the hundred-million-dollar view that made her cry when she first saw it—ceases to exist for me. My every sense is poised for the sound of the front doors opening. For the sound of her. For the sight and smell of my everything.
At some point I brace my free hand on the solid glass wall when my knees threaten to give way. I shake my head at the fatalistic simplicity of it all.
Thisis why I can’t have her.
Thisis why I can’t let go.
The door opens. Shuts. She walks into our apartment. Into my life once again.
A raw, savage joy fills me at the sight of her reflection in the window. But that joy is in fierce battle with the unrelenting anarchy that tells me I won’t survive this war raging within me.
Her gaze finds mine for a long, solid second.I’m here,it says.I’ve come back to you.Still, I remain where I am. Desperate. Watching. Craving. Her stare slides over me, sizzling between my shoulder blades and over my back, over the ass she loves to sink her nails into when I’m balls deep inside her. My weak-as-fuck legs. My bare feet.
Back up again.
Her fingers twitch at her sides, and she inhales greedily. Her eyes attempt to tell me she’s missed me as much I’ve missed her. But I know that’s not true. She will never know the true depth of what I feel for her. How can she when I’ve been afraid to plumb the depths of it myself?
She inhales audibly. The sound transmits straight to my cock. I’m hard as steel before she exhales.
Then her gaze moves away from me.
Through the glass’s reflection, I watch her take it all in, the carnage that is an outward reflection of the churning inside me—the smashed lamp, the cracked bust of some sculpture I’m sure I paid an insane amount of money for. The shattered screen of the high-definition TV on the wall, and the Tang Dynasty vase that caused that carnage. The spike sticking out of the coffee table.
I have no recollection of how that particular one got there but I remember the sting of its sharp edges when I threw it. That’s why my hand is bloody, I recall now. Breath locked, I wait for her reaction.
Condemn me. Rip me to pieces.
Her eyes return to mine as she steps over broken glass. She doesn’t make an effort to right anything in the room. Instead she drags the strap of her purse over her shoulder and drops it on top of the shattered furniture along with her overnight bag. The black velvet blazer she’s wearing comes off, and I get an eyeful of the red crop top she’s wearing with figure-hugging jeans.
Without stopping, she heads across the room for me. I ball my fist against the window, the glass in my other hand shaking like a fucking baby’s as I watch her.
She stops when she’s inches behind me. In the reflection, I see her exhale again. Her breath washes over my bare skin, attempting to breathe life into me.
“Quinn.” Her voice is low, husky. Unflappable.
I shudder at the strength in it. At the strength of her. At times I envy it. Her life hasn’t been easy. She’s been through so much, lived for years in a nightmare that would break most people. She even risked her life multiple times for her baby sister. And yet she stands tall. Proud. Strong.
I look at her and want to weep. She’s a fucking mountain. She’s too fucking good for me.
“Quinn, look at me,” she says. Only then do I realize my head is bowed, my forehead pressed to the glass. I lift it, and our gazes connect again.
