NFH 02 Perfection (32 page)

"Yes," she said, gesturing towards the
bags, "would you like some?" The words were barely out of her mouth
before she found herself moving quickly out of the way as Jason sat
down next to her with a carton of chicken fingers in his hand and
one already in his mouth.

Shaking her head in wonder, she turned
her attention back to Trevor to find the man glaring at her, but
that didn't bother her since he seemed to glare at
everyone.

"Aren't the two of you supposed to be
with your family?" she asked, cautiously reaching out to grab a
chicken finger only to pause halfway when Jason shifted the box
away from her with a murderous glare. With a small groan, she let
her hand drop. Even though she was starving and it was P.B. Chang's
it wasn't worth losing a finger or two over.

"We were, but we had to leave to come
get you," Trevor bit out, looking angrier than she'd ever seen him
before. Then again he had left a Thanksgiving meal to come here and
she could only imagine the insane amount of food served at a
Bradford get-together.

"Why?" she asked, reaching out to open
the bag closest to her only to pause halfway there. She threw Jason
an incredulous look. "Did you just growl at me?"

He gave her a sheepish smile and a
shrug. "Sorry, habit."

With an eye roll and a few muttered
words about Bradfords and their food obsession she pulled the bag
closer to her, throwing Jason a cautious glance only to find the
man leaning back on the couch, watching television as he devoured a
large carton of beef teriyaki.

Didn't he just have chicken fingers?
With a mental shake she forced herself to focus on the really
pissed off man.

"Well, since I didn't ask you to come
the two of you can return to your Thanksgiving dinner and I can go
back to mine....." Her words trailed off as she looked at
Jason.

Wasn't he just eating the carton of
beef teriyaki? He ignored her questioning look as he dug into the
large carton of noodles. Sighing, she went to grab her Coke only to
find it and the backup she'd brought out only minutes earlier empty
next to a large stack of empty food cartons.

"You call this Thanksgiving dinner?"
Trevor demanded, grabbing her attention from trying to calculate
how much food Jason went through in a day. It was actually
frightening, because it appeared that he ate more than
Trevor.

"No," she said, jabbing a thumb in
Jason's direction, "I call this Jason's light snack."

"Sorry," Jason mumbled, not really
sounding sorry at all, but that was all right because unfortunately
the scents she thought were enticing only a few minutes before were
actually starting to turn her stomach.

"Look, I don't have to time to fight
about this. Run upstairs and throw some clothes on so that we can
go," Trevor said, gesturing lazily towards the stairs.

"Go where?" she asked, moving away
from Jason, not only because he was actually starting to frighten
her, but the garlicky odor from the noodles was starting to make
her feel sick.

"Go back to Thanksgiving dinner," he
snapped.

"Um, I was having Thanksgiving
dinner," she pointed out, not bothering to add that she planned on
sending the bags of food with the men, which was hopefully soon
because she really wasn't sure how much more her poor stomach could
take.

She went to stand up only to have to
sit right back down as a wave of dizziness hit her.

"Are you okay?" Jason asked around a
mouthful of food.

"Yeah," she said, taking a deep
breath, "I'm fine."

"Because you kind of looked a little
pale there for a second," Jason pointed out as Trevor dropped to
his knees in front of her.

He cupped her face. "Are you okay?" he
asked, pushing her hair out of her face.

She pushed his hands away. "Yes, I'm
fine. Now would the two of you just go back to your family dinner
so I can go back to mine?"

Not that she could eat anything at the
moment. Between her stomach twisting and her head spinning she
didn't think she'd be able to hold anything down for a while, never
mind eat.

"You need to-" Trevor began, but she'd
had enough already. She was sick and tired of the games, and of
this stupid arrangement which only made her want to cry herself to
sleep most nights because she loved him so much and she was nothing
to him. She shoved to her feet, forcing him to back up so that she
could walk away from him.

"No, you need to go," she
snapped.

"It's my goddamn house!"

"No," she said, pointing in
the direction of his apartment, "that's your
goddamn
house. This is
my
home."

"It's one and the same," he said
between clenched teeth.

"No, it's not! I'm your tenant, you're
my landlord! That's it! You have no business coming here and
telling me what to do!" she yelled, feeling herself tear up, but
she couldn't help it. She was so exhausted. She was physically
tired, emotionally strung out from pretending not to love him. She
couldn't take this anymore.

"I'm a hell of a lot more than just
your landlord!" he said, clenching and unclenching his hands by his
side as though he were fighting back the urge to grab
her.

"What are you then?" she demanded,
taking a step towards him. "Are you my employer? My friend? Or my
fuck buddy? Because last time I checked none of those titles gave
you the right to come in here and demand anything!"

"Wow....this is so awkward," Jason
mumbled, but instead of getting up and leaving like any normal
person would he simply tore into the second bag, grabbed anther
carton and gestured for the dogs to join him on the
couch.

Trevor on the other hand looked close
to killing her. "You know damn well what I am," he bit out
evenly.

"Yeah, I do," she said,
wiping at her face with the back of her hand as she made a
decision. "You're my
ex
-landlord,
ex
-employer, and
ex
-fuck buddy. So get out," she said, rushing out of the room
before she broke out into sobs.

She made it to her room before the
first one escaped and was sobbing hysterically by the time she
stumbled into her bathroom to splash cold water on her face. By the
time she'd realized what she'd done she was already blacking out
and falling towards the edge of the bathtub.

Chapter
27

"Look, I can leave if you want," Jason
said, moving to stand up as he grabbed the remaining bag of food,
but Trevor barely heard him as paced the living room never taking
his eyes off the stairs where Zoe raced up only minutes before
after she destroyed his entire world.

"Can you fucking believe her?" he
demanded, but he didn't give Jason a chance to respond or if he
did, Trevor didn't hear him.

He couldn't believe she'd just done
that. "After everything I did for her?" he said, shaking his head
in disgust. While he'd been ready to move forward with her she'd
been looking to get out. Well, fuck her, because he didn't need
her.

This wasn't going to last anyway. He'd
have ended things in another fifty or sixty years with her. He'd
never wanted anything permanent with her so this really didn't
bother him. This was fine. This was more than fine, he thought as
he drove his fist through the wall.

"Whoa! Calm the hell down!" Jason
said, getting to his feet.

"You calm the hell down!" Trevor
snapped, feeling ready to blow. "This is my fucking house!" he
yelled, hoping she heard him. Never in his life had he been this
angry.

"I don't fucking need her," he said,
resuming his pacing as he shook off the pain in his hand. "I gave
her a fucking place to live, a part-time job, I helped her find a
job and I took care of her and she didn't do a goddamn thing for
me," he said, getting more riled up as he paced the room. "Not one
fucking thing!" he yelled, half hoping she'd hear him and come
running back down the stairs so he could yell at her and make her
see that she'd made a mistake.

"Maybe we should take this to your
apartment," Jason suggested with a helpless shrug.

Trevor shook his head. "I'm not
leaving! You hear me? If you want me to leave then you get your ass
down here and tell me to my face to leave, because I'm telling you
right now, it's not over until I say it is!" he yelled.

"Okay, time to go," Jason sighed as he
grabbed Trevor and started pulling him towards the door.

"Get your fucking hands off me!" he
snapped, shoving his cousin away. "I'm not leaving until she talks
to me."

"Well, she's not going to talk to you
if you keep yelling like some lunatic!" Jason snapped. "Calm the
fuck down before you really mess this up. Right now she's just
pissed and you can probably save this fucked up relationship, but
if you keep acting like this and yelling she's going to call the
cops and have your ass hauled out of here."

"My relationship is not fucked up,"
Trevor bit out harshly, but in a more restrained tone. The last
thing he needed was to get sent to jail and give Zoe a chance to
leave.

This wasn't over.

Not by a long shot.

She was his and she damn well knew it
and she would remain his until he decided that he was done with
her.

"There's nothing wrong with our
relationship," he bit out distractedly as he paced the room, never
taking his eyes away from the stairs.

"Oh, you don't think so? How about the
fact that for the last two months the two of you have been trying
to hide your relationship?" Jason asked, grabbing his attention in
a big way.

"How did you-"

Jason rolled his eyes. "Puhlease, with
the way that you were watching her, smiling whenever she was around
or scaring every guy off that looked her way it was hard to
miss."

Trevor shot the man a
glare.

Jason simply shrugged. "Of course
there were also the matching hickeys the two of you wore about a
month back that kind of gave you away."

He didn't remember that, mostly
because they'd gotten carried away several times.

"I was actually hoping that you
wouldn't fuck this up. Zoe's good for you," Jason said, sitting
back down and allowing the dogs to settle on his lap.

Trevor had to snort at that. "She's
not good for me. She doesn't even come close to what I'm looking
for," he pointed out.

"No, she's a thousand times better,"
Jason said quietly.

"How the hell can you say that?" he
demanded, throwing another wistful look towards the
stairs.

"Because you love her," Jason simply
said, picking up a carton of beef and broccoli and offered some to
the dogs.

Trevor opened his mouth to tell his
cousin he was full of shit, but he couldn't.

On paper Zoe didn't meet any of his
standards for a wife. She didn't come from a big family, but that
didn't really matter to him anymore because he knew his family
adored her. His uncle wouldn't have yelled at her if he didn't. She
didn't have a lot of money, but that was okay because he did and
he'd happily support her. He actually loved spoiling her and found
himself looking for ways to please her.

Other than Haley she didn't have a lot
of close friends that she confided in, but that was also okay
because she could always confide in him and bitch about anything
she wanted and he'd happily listen. She also wasn't the type of
woman who made men drool, besides him, and got the attention of
every guy in the room, but that was okay because none of them
should be fucking looking at her anyway.

She also couldn't cook worth a damn,
she sang off key, was a bit of a neat freak, bossy, demanding and
perfect. He didn't need her to tell him that she loved him, because
he knew by the way she looked at him and treated him that she loved
him and he'd been a fucking idiot over the past two months. Instead
of keeping the best thing in his life a secret he should have been
dragging her out and enjoying being with her instead of punishing
them both for his stupidity.

"What the fuck did I just do?" he
whispered, wondering how he'd fucked this up and so fast. He'd
treated her like shit and assumed she'd appreciate any attention he
gave her. His father had been right all those years ago.

He was a fucking idiot.

"Besides put a hole in the wall and
sending the woman you love crying hysterically out of the room?"
Jason asked in an annoyingly calm tone. "You fucked up, but don't
worry you'll do that a lot."

"Gee, thanks," Trevor said
dryly.

"Not a problem," Jason said cheerfully
as he started searching through the empty bags and containers.
"Damn, it's all empty," Jason grumbled. "Could you go up there and
grovel now so that we can get our asses back to my mother's house?
I'm starving."

"Yeah, cause it's all about you,"
Trevor said wryly, turning to head up the stairs.