Hard (17 page)

“When the door got kicked in,” I say, following him, “I
took it as an opportunity to upgrade security.”

“Someone
kicked in the door?” he says, opening the refrigerator, the
door’s suction loud, the light bright in the dark kitchen. He
scans the shelves.

“Looking
for you and ten thousand dollars,” I say.

He
grabs a yogurt and lets the refrigerator close, turns his back to me
as he opens the utensil drawer. “I’ll pay you back for
the door,” he says.

“Yeah,
you will,” I say. “And when are you going to pay Ryder
back?”

He shrugs, digs a spoon into the yogurt. “Soon.”
“When?”

“No offense, Cass, but what do you care?” he says. “It’s
my fuckup, it’s my money—”

“It’s his money,” I say. “That’s the
problem.”

“What,
are you and Ryder pals now?” he says. “You’re on
his side?”

“I’m
on my side,” I say. “And while you’ve been doing
whatever the fuck it is you’ve been doing these past couple
weeks wherever the hell you’ve been ignoring me, I’ve
been negotiating with him to save this house and your ass.”

Jamie
looks at me. “Nobody asked you to do that,” he says. “I
can take care of my own problems.”

“By
running away from them?” I say. “Because you know what,
Jamie? Even if you leave, the problems don’t go anywhere. They
just wait for you to come back.”
And send you threatening
flower bouquets in the meantime.
For the first time, I realize
Jamie and I are swimming in a similar ocean of trouble. He’s in
over his head, but maybe I’m just treading water til the tide
starts to roll in with the storm.

He
puts the empty yogurt container on the counter. “I’m
close to getting the money, okay?” he says. “I just need
a little more time.”

“I
think you should just talk to Ryder,” I say. I comb my bangs
out of my eyes. “He’s actually a pretty reasonable guy.”

“Yeah,
if you’re a pretty girl, I’m sure he’s a real gem,”
Jamie says. “But my seeing him right now is probably not in the
best interest of my kneecaps.” His face softens, his eyes get
bigger, and I know what’s coming. I’ve seen it all his
life. Jamie’s going to try to get something for nothing.
“You’re not going to tell him I’m here, are you?”

I
sigh. “I don’t know.”

He puts his hands on my arms, which are folded in front of my chest.
“I am really close, Cass, to paying him. And putting this whole
thing behind me. Us.”

I
close my eyes. “Fine,” I say. “I won’t tell
him you’re back. But when you say you’re close to all the
money, you better mean like the distance between a pig and a mud
puddle: all but drowning in it.”

“Thanks,
Cass.” He hugs me, then turns to leave.

“I
think you forgot something,” I say, pointing to the empty
yogurt container and dirty spoon.

Jamie
turns around. “Oh, no, I’m done with that.”

“Then
you better get back here and take care of it,” I say. “Because
I’m about done cleaning up your messes.”

CASSIE

At
Altitude the rest of the week, I feel nervous whenever I’m
around Ryder. And not
“I-know-what-your-cock-tastes-like-and-it-makes-my-panties-wet-but-we-have-to-work-together”
nervous. That kind of nervous I wouldn’t mind. Actually, I sort
of like that kind of nervous. My nerves are of the
“I’m-not-telling-you-something-you’d-definitely-want-to-know”
variety, which makes me feel like I’m lying right to Ryder’s
handsome face.

For some reason, not having yet told Ryder about Sebastian doesn’t
seem like as big a deal as not telling him Jamie’s back in
town. Sebastian is my secret to keep, and even though there’s
still a part of me that feels like I should tell Ryder, I guess I
also feel like I don’t know exactly what we are right now—just
sex or something more? A rebound or a relationship?—and that
makes everything a grey area, truth-telling included.

But
keeping Jamie’s homecoming from Ryder is a secret I’m
keeping just for Jamie, not for me. I’m doing enough for Jamie
as it is without adding lying to the list, though it took three days
after he got home to realize that I seemed to be going somewhere from
the morning until the evening, mostly because I don’t think he
got up until mid-afternoon. “Do you have a job or something?”
he asked last night when I got home from working all day at the bar.

“Or
something, yes,” I said, putting away the groceries I’d
picked up. “I’m keeping the books for free at Altitude,
thanks to you.”

Jamie
furrowed his brow. “That’s how you’re negotiating
with Ryder?”

“You
got it, Columbo,” I said, shutting the freezer.

Jamie
folded the brown paper grocery bags as I unloaded them, the crunching
sound filling the silence between us. “So I probably don’t
even owe him a full ten grand anymore, right?” he said. “Since
you’re handling it and all.”

I
left the room so I didn’t kill him.

Still,
I can’t help but feel obligated to protect Jamie, as clueless
or ungrateful as he seems sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. He’s
twenty-two, definitely old enough to know better and definitely young
enough to be an idiot. This won’t be the last time he gets
himself into a jam, but I decide it’s the last time I’m
helping him get out of it. And if it’s my finale, maybe I can
help him get out of it all the way—and myself, too. I love
Jamie and I like Ryder (maybe even really like him?), but I’m
tired of being in the middle of their problem.

Which
is what I’m hoping Ryder will understand when I visit his
office before I leave work Friday evening and ask him to consider
forgiving Jamie’s debt.

“I
can’t do that, Cassie,” he says. He sits in his desk
chair and I sit on the edge of the desk across from him, cross-legged
in my jeans and t-shirt, feeling a prick of regret that I’m not
in a sexy short skirt and heels. Normally I’m not a big
advocate of using your body to get what you want, but normally I’m
not asking for something this difficult to get either.

“I
know you don’t want to,” I say. “But you can do it.
I mean, you’re able. They’re your shots to call. And it’s
not like you’re not getting anything back. I’ve worked
here for three weeks, plus waitressing that night, so I’ve paid
you back almost three grand by now.”

“That’s
not even a third of what your brother’s in for,” he says,
leaning forward, putting his hands on my thighs. “And don’t
forget the interest.”

“I
haven’t,” I say. I uncross my legs so he has to remove
his hands from me and I turn my head away from him, folding my arms
over my chest.

“This isn’t personal but it also isn’t just about
money,” he says. “I can’t just call off a debt.
That’s no way to run a successful business.”

“A
successful, illegal business.”

Ryder
sits back in the chair. “Where is all this coming from?”

“Where
is all what coming from?” I can feel the awkwardness of this
conversation turning into my annoyance with it, though I’m not
even sure who I’m most annoyed with, Ryder for expecting the
money or Jamie for not getting it.

Or
myself. For thinking I could be the difference maker somehow, that I
could fill the gap between what Ryder wants and what Jamie doesn’t
have. That I would be the solution to a problem that isn’t even
mine.

In
England, that philosophy only ever led to a lot of heartache and
headaches, and while I know Ryder and Jamie won’t hurt me the
way Sebastian did, I don’t know why I thought they’d be
fixed any more easily or why I didn’t learn my lesson when
Sebastian taught it to me the hard way: you can’t change
people.

“This
sudden concern about Jamie’s debt,” Ryder says. “Why
are we talking about this?”

“Because
he still doesn’t have the money, and I seriously doubt he ever
will.”

Ryder
cocks his head. “He
still
doesn’t have it,”
he says. “So you’ve heard from him recently?”

Fuck.
I take a breath. “No,” I say. “I’m just
assuming.”

“You’re
sure you don’t know where he is,” he says, his voice so
calm and composed it makes me want to scream.

“I
have no idea.” I can feel my annoyance morphing into anger.
“And I also don’t know why you’re being so
stubborn.”

“I’m
not being stubborn. I’m getting what’s mine,” he
says. “It’s fair to expect your brother to pay me what he
owes.”

“And
I just work without any income until he does?”

Ryder
raises his hands, his big, open palms facing me, like he’s
surrendering or saying stop. “That arrangement was your idea.”

“Yeah,
well, maybe I made a mistake.” I slide off the desk and walk to
the other side of it, running my hand through my short hair. It’s
times like these I wish I could still wear a ponytail, something I
could pull to balance my frustration.

“You
don’t want to work here anymore?”

“I
want you to make this debt go away.”

“I
can’t, Cassie.” He shakes his head. “I can’t.
Not even for you.”

I
lean across the desk, my hands spread, my arms locked. “Why
not?”

Ryder
stands. “Because this isn’t about you or Jamie. This is
about me.”

I
look up at the ceiling. “Of course it is.”

“Let me explain something to you,” he says, his tone
still calm but tighter now. Restrained. “In the fighting world,
every night you don’t know if you’re going to end up a
hero or at the hospital. The only thing you can protect is your
reputation, and I’m not ruining mine because you and your
brother can’t come up with ten grand.”

“I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“I’m sure you can keep a secret,” he says, his gaze
unyielding, trying to bore through to the hidden place where I’ve
pushed the truth. “But your brother clearly can’t be
trusted, and as soon as he shoots off his mouth, everyone with a hot
sister will think he doesn’t have to pay me back.”

“I get it,” I say. “So you can fuck me but you
can’t do me any favors.”

Ryder smiles, crosses around the desk and stands in front me. “That
was your plan the whole time, wasn’t it?” he says. “I’ll
have sex with him and get him to like me and then he’ll just
forget the whole debt like nothing ever happened.’”

I’m so angry I don’t think about my words before they’re
out of my mouth. “I’m kind of starting to wish nothing
had
ever happened.” “Finally something we agree
on,” he says as he opens the door and gestures for me to leave.
His shirtsleeves are rolled up, and I notice the mermaid tattooed
around his left forearm, her eyes closed and her arms raised, the way
a regular person like me might look as she floats down into deep,
dark waters, drowning even though she thought she knew how to swim.

I walk out.

***

Savannah calls on my way home from Altitude. She has a first date
tomorrow and she left work early tonight to pick up a couple outfit
options, so will I come over and help her choose?

My insides are still buzzing like a swarm of bees with razor-sharp
stingers from my fight with Ryder, where I feel like I meant
everything and nothing I said, and I can’t figure out which one
is making me more pissed off. I warn her I’m agitated. “That’s
okay,” she says. “At least I know you won’t
sugarcoat your critiques of these clothes.”

True. At least there’s that.

I lounge on Savannah’s bedroom carpet as she tries on a coral
bandage dress, pizza and wine on the little coffee table in front of
her bay window, like we’re back in college and she’s just
home for holiday break. “I think that’s the one,” I
say. “That color looks so good with your hair.”

“You think?” she says, standing in front of her
full-length mirror, holding up her blond curls. “It’s not
too daytime, is it?”

I bite into a piece of pizza. “In the summer, I think you can
get away with daytime all the time because it’s light out
until, like, eight o’clock,” I say.

“Good point,” Savannah says, nodding. “With that
kind of analytical brain, it’s not too late for you to go to
law school, too.”

“But Savannah, I can work at a bar for free the rest of my
life,” I say, a big, fake smile plastered on my face. “Why
would I pass up that opportunity?”

Savannah unzips the dress and hangs it in her closet. She slips on a
t-shirt and pair of shorts and refills our glasses of red wine. “You
know, it’s not like Ryder can make you stay there. You can just
leave, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”

“And never see him again?” My brain pushes the words out
of my mouth before I have a chance to think about what I’m
saying. I both want to take them back immediately and am relieved to
be free of the burden of that truth.

“Is that something you’re afraid of?” Savannah
says, sipping her wine.

I sigh. “Yes,” I say. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
I lie down and fold my hands over my stomach. “It’s,
like, Ryder was supposed to be this hot, sexy, nothing-serious,
nothing-real kind of fling, you know? Just naked, no-commitment fun.”

“Mm-hmm,” Savannah commiserates.

I stretch out my arms beside me and rub the soft, cream-colored
carpet, like an affectionate cat kneading its paws. “But it’s
getting deeper than that. I was so mad at him today, and not just
because of the debt stuff. It’s like, I was mad because the way
we were talking to each other, like we didn’t care about the
other one—it was kind of making me sad.”

“Your feelings can’t get hurt unless there are feelings
there in the first place,” Savannah says gently.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice barely louder than the ceiling
fan lazily turning above us.

“Have you told him about Sebastian?”

“No,” I say. “I could have. And I know I probably
should have by now. But I don’t even want to be married to
Sebastian anymore, much less have to admit that I am.”