Soft Shock (23 page)

“Where is all
this coming from?”

“Oh, and I saw
the way you were looking at Marci earlier.
Even now, after
all this shit has gone down.
Man, you are a grade
A
fool.”

“I have no idea
what you’re talking about.”

“You really
hurt Brynn. After she put up with you and your unnatural obsession with Marci.
And for what?
Kristin the antichrist?
It doesn’t make not even one bit of sense.”
Dante shook
his head.

“You shouldn’t
talk about Kristin that way,” Owen said. “There’s a lot you don’t know. And
regardless of whether you respect my choices, you need to respect my fiancé.”

Dante gave an
exaggerated roll of his eyes.

“You seem to
think Brynn’s better off without me, so where’s the harm?”

“There is none,
but I still want nothing to do with this lie of a marriage.” Dante took a
couple of steps toward him. “You know, Brynn took it really hard even though I
tried to tell her you’re just prone to bad taste in women.
Kristin,
obviously.
And Marci the whore.
How could you
think a girl like that would ever be worth anything is my only question.”

“Don’t you call
her that,” Owen said in a low, warning tone.

“What, a whore?
That’s what she is. Besides, you’re done with her. What do you care?”

“She’s not any
such thing. It’s none of your business what happened between us, and I won’t
hear you badmouthing her. Besides, what’s the difference between what she does
and what you do? You’re with a different woman all the time.”

Dante shrugged.
“That’s different. I’m a guy. That’s how we are.” Dante cast a disparaging eye
at Owen. “Most of us anyway.”

Owen crossed
the room until only a few feet remained between him and Dante. “You’ll want to
start choosing your words more carefully.”

“And why? Plan
on defending your whore’s honor?” Dante raised his eyebrows.

“You won’t say
it again.”

“You know, you
seem awfully interested in taking up for her even though you have a fiancé now.
Some kind of fiancé anyway.
What is it with you and
her? You know, the whore.”

Owen’s fist
came up and smashed into Dante’s face. He hit Dante so hard that his glasses
went flying off his face.

“What the hell
was that for?” Dante thundered.

“I told you not
to say it again.” Owen shook his stinging fist.

“Man, what is wrong
with you?” Dante drew his fist back and
rammed it into Owen’s stomach. Owen let his breath out in a whoosh but managed
to duck Dante’s next punch. Owen rushed forward while bent at the waist and
rammed into Dante hard, knocking Dante into a table. A vase crashed from the
table to the floor.

“Get off me!”
Dante shouted. “Enough!”

Owen backed
away, his chest heaving.

“Man, I’m out
of here. This ain’t even worth it.” Dante hunted up his glasses, pushed them on
his face, and grabbed his jacket. After snatching his sandwich from the plate
he’d set down earlier, he was gone.

Owen tongued
the corner of his lip and tasted blood. He stood there in the empty apartment,
trying to figure out what had come over him. As he looked around the living
room, his eyes landed on his bike in its designated corner. Of all the places
his mind could have gone, it chose to go to the late September morning when
he’d met Marci.

He’d once asked
her if she believed in fate. He had at the time, but his faith in it was
lacking now.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Laundry had a
sneaky way of piling up with little warning. Marci realized she hadn’t done
laundry in almost three months one morning when she went digging around her
room for her jeans that went so well with her pink cashmere sweater. She had
her dry cleaning picked up and dropped off, but she’d developed a nasty habit
of buying cheap, disposable clothes from clearance racks and/or from stores selling
cheaply made clothes instead of doing laundry when she got really busy. Now, a few
weeks into the new semester, she realized she was doing just that. She hadn’t
done laundry since November, and it was now early February.

She had a
little free time on her hands as she didn’t have any classes to teach or attend
on Tuesdays, and she didn’t like what happened when she had free time. Free
time allowed too much freedom for thinking. So she started doing laundry in
hopes of finding the jeans she wanted. She got through a few loads before she
came across them. She picked up the jeans with an “Aha!” of triumph and tossed
them into her laundry basket.

After a few
more hours of laundry and grading papers, she came across a gray sweatshirt
that didn’t belong to her. She thought back to the night she’d acquired that
sweatshirt. That had been the Tuesday before Thanksgiving—near the end.
That was when she’d begun suspecting things were going into dangerous
territory.

After putting
in hours on her final project for Professor Ming, she’d needed a break. Dante
had been gone for Thanksgiving break already—which was good as he didn’t
seem
to
much care for her. Marci let herself in with
the key Owen had told her on the phone that she’d find under the mat.

After letting
herself in, she’d gone over and knocked on the door to Owen’s room. No light
appeared to be coming from the cracks under or around the door, so she wouldn’t
have thought he was in there if she hadn’t talked to him a little while ago.
He’d called out for her to come in.

“Hey you,” he’d
said as she walked into the room.

She kicked off
her booties and started to ditch her jacket before saying, “It’s freezing in
here.”

“Come over
here. I’ll keep you warm.” He lifted up his blanket for her to crawl under. She
ditched her jacket and climbed into bed with him. He was wearing a threadbare T-shirt
and sweats. He pulled her close and ran his hand up and down the sleeve of her
sweater. “That better?” he murmured.

She shivered
and tried to tell herself that the tingling she felt was just from being warmed
up now that she was under the covers. Something about being close to him felt
different, though.
Familiar in a scary but not altogether
unpleasant way.

“What are you
watching?” she asked.

“Movie.” He
kissed the back of her neck.

“Are you?” She
turned in his arms and put one of her legs between his.

“It’s funny.
You’ll like it.” He nudged her over onto her back so she could see the
television screen across the room. “Let’s watch this first.”

She’d turned on
her side, and he’d curled up behind her. Even though she felt like this was too
much like relationship shit, she went along with it. And the movie really was
funny. Something about being in that dark room, curled up with him made her
feel
warm and happy in a way she had no plans of admitting
to him. That gushy feeling that gave even the harshest things in life soft
edges drifted over her. It was that dangerous sort of feeling she hadn’t had to
deal with in ages. The feeling of being a little bit drunk off the person with
their arms wrapped around you.

They laughed
together, and he occasionally planted little kisses on her neck or her cheek.
His hand crept under her sweater but went no lower than her stomach. His little
touches, while much more innocent than most of the things they’d done, turned
her on in ways that didn’t make sense. Those touches were so much more intimate
than she’d expected or wanted them to be. She remembered wishing she could tell
him to stop, but she didn’t want him to. She remembered thinking,
he better not make me fall for him.

After the
movie, what they did wasn’t like before. If there was a difference between sex
and making love, and she believed there was and tried to stay away from the
latter at all costs, they made love that night.

His hips moving slowly, lovingly over hers.
His tender
kisses.
Her whispered name on his lips.
There was no
way she could escape that. And while the sex was always good with him, that
night was the best she’d ever had in her life. She’d given her whole self over
to him. She hadn’t been able to stop it. She’d had no control whatsoever, had
been helpless in his arms. And she’d loved it. So much so that it scared her.

The next
morning, Marci had gone out to his kitchen in search of coffee, shivering. He’d
come out of his room and gone back in without saying a word. When he came out
again, he was carrying a gray sweatshirt, which he slipped over her head and
pulled down over her T-shirt. He hooked a hand inside the sweats of his that
she was wearing and gave her a soft kiss. Then he pulled away and set about
making coffee. Once the coffee was brewing, he’d pulled a pizza box out of the
fridge. He started to turn on the oven, but Marci stopped him and shook her
head. She took a slice out of the box and bit into it.
So
good.

“Cold, huh?” he
asked.

“I like it
better this way,” she said, realizing those were the first words they’d spoken
to each other all morning. The first words they’d needed. “So good. Especially
when you’ve worked up a real good appetite.”

He grinned and
put his arms around her waist. She offered the pizza, and he took a huge bite
and chewed obnoxiously in her face. She laughed and tried to push him away, but
he wouldn’t let her. Yeah, she tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t let her.
That had been when she’d started to realize. Things were going to a place
beyond just sex whether she liked it or not.

She kicked the
sweatshirt under her bed.

One thing she
couldn’t deny, though. She missed him like hell. Seeing him the other day had
really brought that home. And finding his stupid sweatshirt only made it worse.
Confirmed it as something impossible to ignore or deny. She didn’t want him
with Kristin not only because Kristin wasn’t right for him from what she’d been
able to glean. She didn’t want him with Brynn even though Brynn was perfect in
every way from what she could glean.

She didn’t want
him with anybody else but her. Not that she wanted anything more than what
they’d been doing. All she wanted was for things to go back to what they had
been. Only thing was
,
she knew that was impossible.
And really, he deserved better than all she was willing to offer—all she
was able to offer.

That didn’t
change the fact that she wanted him back with her.

#

Owen spent
Valentine’s Day stuck in a fancy restaurant with Kristin. While she talked
about the wedding, he found that his mind kept drifting to Marci. He tried to
convince himself that he was making the right choice. That it would never work
out with Marci, and Kristin was the next best thing. Still, he’d felt something
with Marci that refused to be ignored. Something soul-deep. And she’d been on
his mind even more than usual since he’d run into her the other day in the
student union.

“Owen? Are you
listening?” Kristin snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“I’m sorry,
Kris. What did you say?”

“Where have you
been tonight? I get the feeling that your mind is far away from me and this
table.”

“I haven’t
gotten a lot of sleep lately. I have a big test coming up,” Owen said. Mostly
that was true. He hadn’t been able to sleep well for the past few nights, so
he’d stayed up late studying for his test. Dante had really gotten under his
skin the other day with what he’d said. Sure, most of it had been said in an
uncalled for, jerk way, but there’d been some hurtful truth to Dante’s words as
well.

“So. My
bachelorette party will be insane,” she said. “I told you we’re going to
Majorca, right?”

Who hadn’t she
told? “Yeah. Right” Owen sat up in his chair and tried to do a better job of
pretending to listen. Inside, however, something felt missing. Something was
off. It was that disturbing, unsettling feeling you got when you had an idea
you’d misplaced something but you couldn’t think of what it was or where you’d
left it.

All the
annoying things Kristin did that he’d been able to simply brush off in the past
pissed him off now. He
kept having
to bite back snide
remarks to avoid fights. That had never been much of an issue before. Had she
always been so materialistic? Whenever he did catch a snatch of conversation
tonight, it seemed to be about how much something cost or V.I.P. status or
designer name brand something or other. He really didn’t get half the
references she was making, and he really couldn’t have cared less.

What had they
talked about in the past? It was hard to believe that all their conversations
had been so one-sided and repetitive, but he couldn’t remember anything that
would prove him wrong at the moment. Had they ever had one really good
conversation? Had they ever had anything real at all?

“Owen,” Kristin
said impatiently. “Have I lost you again?”

“I was just wondering
what Jeremy’s up to.” That was a part of the thoughts that’d been running
through his head recently that he could actually share with her. “I haven’t
heard from him in a while,” Owen said.

Kristin gave
him a do-you-expect-me-to-care look. He thought of how Marci, who would have
never agreed to a Valentine’s Day dinner of any sort, seemed to be concerned
whenever Owen talked about Jeremy. And Marci hadn’t been the biggest fan of Jeremy,
either. Then he thought of the question his mother had asked that he’d had so
much trouble with and had gotten so defensive when answering:
what are you doing with her again?