Shredded (13 page)

Shit. I cut the thought off before it can even form. I knew the girl barely twenty-four hours. She’s just another girl, just another resort bunny who’s here for a season and then gone. There’s no reason to let her get in my head and fuck with me like this. No need to pay any attention to her. No need to take anything she said seriously.

Except she was being serious when she said all that shit to me. When she told me she was willing to fuck me for the express purpose of driving me away. She wasn’t being cruel, wasn’t throwing shit out there to hurt me. She was telling me the truth. She’d actually been willing to have sex with me just to get me to go away.

That’s dedication, man. I mean, shit. I’ve known for years how fucking repulsive I am, but still, this is a new level. Even for me.

Suddenly I want another shot of tequila so badly that my hands are fucking shaking with it. Normally I’d ignore the urge, but it’s been a hell of a week already and it’s only Sunday. A few more shots won’t hurt anyone.

Except as I wander toward the bar for the Herradura, Luc stops me with a hand on my shoulder.

“Dude. What are you doing?”

“Getting a drink.” I hold up the bottle. “Want one?”

“It’s ten o’clock in the fucking morning.”

“Then I’m getting a late start. I should probably have two.”

“Really?” he asks, ripping the bottle of tequila out of my hand. “This is really how you want this to play out?”

“No, how I want it to play out is with that bottle of tequila in my hand, not yours. Give it back.”

“Fuck, no.” He walks to the bar sink, empties the entire bottle of Selección Suprema.

“That’s three hundred dollars’ worth of tequila you just poured down the drain, you know.”

“Yeah, well, you’re in the middle of throwing away about five million dollars in talent and endorsements, so what the fuck. Three hundred bucks doesn’t really mean shit to you, does it?”

“Not really, no.” I reach under the bar and grab one of the spare bottles I stock up on this time of year, in case of just such an intervention.

Luc watches in disgust as I crack the shit open and take a long swallow right from the bottle. It burns all the way down, but that’s okay. It’s just proof that I can still feel something.

“You’re acting like a total loser, you know that, right?”

“That’s not acting. It’s just truth in advertising, my friend.” I toast him with the bottle before taking another swig.

“Goddamnit.” He wrenches the Herradura out of my hand and throws it against the wall. Except it doesn’t make it. Instead, it takes down a sculpture halfway across the room, and I watch with something like awe as they both crash to the floor and shatter.

For long seconds neither of us says anything. There doesn’t seem to be anything
to
say. Except—

“My dad liked that sculpture.”

“Your dad hasn’t been here in three years,” he tells me as the pungent scent of tequila fills the air. “He won’t even have a clue that it’s gone.”

“Oh, right. I forgot about that.”

I stare at the destruction blankly, not sure what we’re supposed to do now. This whole intervention thing has happened a bunch of times—Luc, Ash, and Cam have been staging one around this time for years. But this whole bottle-throwing, sculpture-shattering move is new, and I’m not sure how to respond to it. We’ve been doing the same old song and dance for so long that anything new messes everything up.

Except Luc doesn’t seem to be playing. Not this time. As he stalks toward me, there’s no remorse in his face. No let’s-feel-sorry-for-Z-because-he’s-gotten-a-raw-deal look. In fact, the only thing I can identify in his face is pure, unadulterated fury. It’s kind of interesting, really, and there’s a part of me that wants to see what’s going to happen next. The rest of me just wants to walk back upstairs and sleep until this whole week, this whole month, is done with.

“What is wrong with you?” he yells, his face suddenly inches from mine. “What the
fuck
is wrong with you?”

“Hey, dude, you’re the one in the middle of the temper tantrum.” I hold my hands up in the universal don’t-blame-me gesture. “Maybe you should ask yourself that question.”

“You’re pathetic, you know that?”

“Obviously.” I lift a brow at him. “If you’re trying to piss me off, you’re going to have to work harder than that.”

“What the hell, Z?” He backs off, runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “We’ve been playing this scene out for years, and I’m tired of it. Tired of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Tired of coming in here and trying to pick up the pieces after you fucking shred yourself into nothing—”

“Hey, I never asked you to put the pieces back together. I never asked you for anything.”

“Because you’re a total fucking coward. Everyone thinks you’re so fucking brave with all those stunts you pull. So fucking noble to face the ‘tragedy’ of your past and still live your life
on your terms.” He opens his arms wide. “But look around, asshole. There’s nothing noble about you. Nothing noble about drowning yourself in tequila. Nothing noble about fucking girls whose names you can’t remember when they’re still in your damn bed. And there’s nothing fucking noble about throwing your life away because your sister lost hers.”

“Don’t you talk about her.” I’ve been keeping my cool so far, mainly because Luc hasn’t said anything I don’t already know. But the second he talks about April, it’s like a shot of fucking adrenaline to the heart. “Don’t you fucking talk about her.”

“Why not? Because it will upset you? Because it’ll make poor little Z cry?”

“Fuck you, man!” My hands started shaking the second he brought her up, and I shove them in my pockets, hoping he won’t notice.

“Wow, great comeback,” Luc mocks. “Did it take you all day to think of that?”

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“You know exactly what my problem is. You’re just not man enough to face it.”

“You know what? I don’t have to stand here and take this. You’re in my house, not the other way around. So why don’t you show yourself out before shit gets said that can’t be taken back?”

“It’s too late for that, don’t you think? And we’re not in your house. We’re in your daddy’s house. Your daddy’s mansion. Poor little rich boy—”

I launch myself at him before I even know I’m going to move, plow my fist into his jaw. “What the fuck do you know about it anyway? What the fuck do you know about anything?”

“I know more than you.” He shoves me hard, nearly sends me sprawling on my ass. “Look around, Z. You have everything,
everything
, and you’re just pissing it away.”

“What have I got? Huh, Luc?” It’s my turn to throw my arms wide, to turn around in the middle of this fucking mausoleum that I hate but still can’t find the energy to move out of. “I’ve got a big fucking house that no one else wants. Big fucking deal.”

“Bullshit. You’ve got everything right in front of you. You’re just too scared to fucking take it.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because it’s true.” He gestures to me. “Look at yourself. It’s three weeks before the fucking Olympic trials, man, and what are you doing? Trashing your body? Trashing your life?”

“I don’t give a shit about the Olympic trials.”

“Oh, don’t I know it. You’ve made damn sure we all know it, haven’t you? You fucking prick.”

“Get out.” I turn, head for the staircase. “I don’t need to listen to this.”

Luc moves fast, gets in my way. Refuses to let me pass. “This is exactly what you need to hear.”

“Get out of my way, man.”

“Not until I say what I came to.”

“I think I’ve heard more than enough.”

“You haven’t heard shit. You never do. You’re too locked in your own head, too busy being self-absorbed and tortured and fucked up to hear what you need to.”

My hands clench into fists. “Get the hell out of my way.”

“What are you going to do? Hit me again?”

“Yes, goddamnit, that’s exactly what I’m going to do if you don’t get the fuck away from me.”

“Have at it.” He spreads his arms wide. “You’re mad at the fucking world. Mad at yourself. Mad at your mother. Mad at your sister. You might as well be mad at me, too.”

I swing my fist into his stomach, follow it with an uppercut to the jaw that lays him out on the floor. “Is this what you want?” I shout at him. “Is this what you fucking want?”

He climbs gingerly to his feet, his fingers probing at the bruise I can already see forming on his jaw. “What I want is for you to man up. Stop being such a pussy and get your fucking act together. You’re rich—”

“Is that it? Is all this about the fucking money?”

“It’s never been about the fucking money and you know it.” He walks to the bar fridge, pulls out a few ice cubes, and wraps them in a towel. “You’re the most talented snowboarder I know—”

“Ash is—”

“No. Not Ash. You. We’ve been boarding together for over a decade. Been on the pro circuit together for four years. You do shit that no one else can even come close to, and you do it without even trying.”

“That’s not true.”

“Really? What about that inverted 1440 you pulled out of your ass the other day? Has anyone else done that, like ever?”

“Probably.”

“Bullshit. If they had, we would have heard about it.” He sighs, presses the ice to his injured jaw, and I feel like an even bigger prick than usual. “Everyone knows you’re the most talented fucking boarder in the world right now. You could take the top spot at the trials. At the X Games. Hell, you’ve got a shot—a good shot—at taking home the gold medal at Sochi, but instead of working on your fucking boarding, you’re drinking yourself into a coma.”

That last hits a little close to home considering what I was thinking only about an hour and a half ago. Not that I’m about to let him see that. “There’s more to life than snowboarding, man.”

“Really?” He looks around. “What?”

“Excuse me?”

“What else have you got in your life but snowboarding?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s pretty self-explanatory. What the hell else do you have going on besides boarding?”

I don’t say anything, but then he doesn’t expect me to. No one knows how fucked up my life is, how fucked up I am, better than Luc. We grew up together. He was there when April died. When my mom fucking killed herself. When my dad told me what I already knew—that it was my fault. That it was all, every fucking thing, my fucking fault.

“Oh, right. You don’t have anything else.”

“That’s not true.”

“Really?” He starts ticking things off on his fingers. “Your father’s a douche who won’t have anything to do with you.”

“Because he blames me for—”

“No. Not because of that. Because he’s a total fucking douche and he doesn’t deserve you.”

“Wow, man. That’s deep. Should we hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ now?”

He flips me off but doesn’t stop with the listing. “You’ve got Cam, a really beautiful girl who’s in love with you, but you’re too busy fucking anything that moves to appreciate her.”

“Dude, I would
never
fuck around with Cam.”

“You better not or I’ll rip your dick off. Still, if she loves you, then there’s a chance that someday some other girl will. But you’ll never find her if you spend your life wasted and picking up a different snow bunny every night of the week. And I wouldn’t even say anything about that, except I don’t think you even like doing it. You sure as hell didn’t seem to want anything to do with Stacy this morning.”

For some reason Ophelia’s face flashes through my head, but I shut that shit down fast. She made her feelings abundantly clear on Friday night. And it’s not like it matters anyway. Not like I actually give a shit about her or something.

“What else?” Luc asks. “Oh, yeah. Thanks to your parents and a couple of trust funds—not to mention some really sweet sponsorship deals—you’ve got more money than you know what to do with, but you don’t give a shit about that, either. At least not as long as you have enough in your pocket to buy a dozen or so bottles of expensive-ass tequila.

“And you’ve got us. Ash, Cam, and me. Except you’ve spent so much time pushing us away lately, trying to keep us at arm’s length, that I’m beginning to think you don’t give a shit about us, either.

“So tell me, Z. What the hell do you have in your life that’s more important than getting
your ass out there on that half-pipe and getting ready for the fucking Olympic trials? Because, whatever it is, I’m just not seeing it.”

Chapter 10

Ophelia

I catch a glimpse of dark hair out of the corner of my eye, and even as I tell myself not to look, that it isn’t him, I can’t help turning my head just to check. Just to be sure.

It’s been three days since Z walked out of my room, and I haven’t seen him since. Not here in the café, not going into or exiting the dressing room on the other side of the lobby. Not even on the slopes when I’m walking to and from work. Not that I’ve been watching for him or anything. It’s just I’d seen him around a few times before Friday night and it seems strange that he’s simply disappeared.

I swear, if I didn’t hear people talking about him occasionally, speculating about his chances for making the Olympic team or winning this year’s X Games, I would think he didn’t exist. Or that I’d made that whole night up.

The movie. The snowball fight. The vulnerability I thought I saw in his face when he drove me home.

It’s that vulnerability that haunts me now, that I-won’t-let-it-hurt-me-even-though-it-obviously-does look of his that makes me feel like shit even though he was using me as much or more than I was using him. Because if it was true, if it wasn’t all an act just to get me into bed, then I can’t help feeling like a total bitch.

Yeah, he made a bet about screwing me—but that was before he even knew me. All he knew at that point was that I had a temper and wicked aim with an iced coffee. Is there any doubt he was pissed when he made that bet?

Not that I’m excusing him, because I’m not. I mean, no matter how you look at it, it’s … ick. Not to mention all I’m-God’s-gift-to-women-and-I-know-it.