Sweet Victory: A Novella (His Wicked Games #2.5) (9 page)

But for the life of me, I can’t imagine any interpretation of Lou’s words that isn’t completely sketchy. I don’t want to get involved, but at the same time it feels like betraying Calder to know that something is wrong and willfully hide it from him.

No
, I tell myself.
You promised yourself you’d stay out of this. Give Lou the benefit of the doubt.

No matter how many times I tell myself that, though, it does little to settle my mind. And sleep continues to evade me. Finally, desperate, I remember the bottle of red wine in the kitchen. If I chug the rest of that, it should knock me out in no time.

Slowly, I slide out of Calder’s arms and rise from the mattress. I pull on my tank top and sleep shorts before heading out to the kitchen.

The wine is, thankfully, just where we left it. I grab it and drink straight from the bottle. It settles heavily in my stomach, but I know that it won’t be long before my eyelids start to droop. Wine has either one of two effects on me: either it revs my libido into overdrive or knocks me out cold. Since over the course of this evening Calder’s managed to satisfy my body in every physical capacity, the second result seems inevitable.

I stand there in the kitchen for a few minutes, sipping at the wine and looking around. I’m already considering how we might organize things in here: the glasses in that cabinet, the plates in the other. The silverware in the drawer by the dishwasher, the spices in the nook in the corner. It’s not solely my decision, of course. Calder and I will have to make these choices together, and I can’t help but smile at the image of us arguing over where to put the pots and pans. It’s just so…
normal
. So amazingly domestic. Knowing us, of course, it will probably turn into a bet or a game—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m thinking up the perfect challenge when I hear a door open, and for a minute I think Calder’s woken and come to find me. But when I step out into the living room, I instead find myself face-to-face with Lou.

She looks like she’s as startled as I am to meet like this in the middle of the night. I’m glad I had the foresight to put on some clothes, but that doesn’t mean I’m exactly pleased to see her.

Lou, I notice, has her backpack with her and is fully dressed. She’s even wearing her shoes. This isn’t a late-night trip to the kitchen for water, then. She’s leaving.

“What—where are you going?” I ask. I still have the bottle of wine in my hand, and I hold it against my stomach as if it might somehow calm the sudden churning in my gut. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.

But Lou just smiles and shrugs. “I thought I’d get out of your hair.”

She steps around me, continuing toward the door, and I call after her before I can stop myself.

“What are you planning?”

She freezes, then looks back at me. For a moment, I sense something in her eyes—guilt? Distrust?—but in the limited light coming from the open kitchen door, I can’t quite decipher it. But then she smiles again and shakes her head.

“What are you talking about?” She says it so lightly, so sweetly, that if I didn’t know any better I’d believe in her innocence utterly.

I step closer to her. There’s still time to let it go, to pretend I never heard her phone conversation.

But then I think of Calder, sleeping peacefully in the other room, and of all the heartbreak she’s put him through already. I won’t let her cause him any more trouble. Not if I can help it.

“Calder’s your brother,” I say lamely. I’m not sure how to broach the topic directly; the last thing I want is to sound like I’m lecturing her.

But apparently I don’t have to say anything more than that.

“Are you insinuating that I don’t know that?” she says. There’s still an airiness to her voice, but she’s no longer smiling. “I know you think you’re trying to help, but this really isn’t any of your business.”

“I love him. If I think someone’s hurting him, then I make it my business.”

Lou actually rolls her eyes at me. “Just because you’ve been banging him for six months doesn’t mean you know anything about how things work between him and me.”

My fingers tighten on the wine bottle. “But you think lying to him is going to help?”

“Look,” she says. “I can’t really explain what’s going on right now. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

But that’s the problem—I
don’t
trust her. I don’t know anything about her—except that she left Calder alone for a year and then decided to show up on a whim with a trail of trouble behind her.

“Are you coming back?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. “It’s easier this way.”

I can’t believe she’s trying to sneak out without saying a word to him. He thought this was going to be a second chance for the two of them, and now she wants to slip away into the night without any sort of warning?

“Won’t you at least tell him goodbye?” I say when she turns back toward the door.

She doesn’t even look back at me. “Goodbyes have never been our thing.”

“Bullshit.”

That
seems to get her attention. But instead of getting pissed or insulted at my language, she actually looks… impressed?

“It was good to meet you, Lily.” Before I can stop her, she’s at the door. “Take care of him.”

And then she’s gone—out the door before I even realize the conversation is over.

No. It’s not going to end like this.

I run after her, and it’s not until my feet hit the cold concrete outside that I remember I don’t have any shoes. It doesn’t matter. I chase after her down the stairwell.

“Lou! Wait!”

She pauses at the edge of the parking lot.

“I need to go,” she says.

“So you’re just going to walk out of his life? Again? Without any explanations?”

She crosses her arms. “Is that what you think? That I’m abandoning him?”

“You’ve done it before.”

She only looks stunned for a moment before the anger flashes in her eyes.

“Ah, I see,” she says. “I get it now. You blame me for all of this.” She gestures back at the apartment. “You think I’m responsible for the way things are with me and Calder.”

“You’re the one who took off to the other side of the world. You’re the one who left him to deal with your father’s death all alone.”

I regret the words immediately. Lou looks like she’s going to punch me.

“He was
my
father, too,” she says. “Did you forget that part? People deal with shit in different ways.” She turns to go, then thinks better of it and swings back to face me again. “And for your information,
Calder
sent me away after the funeral. He didn’t want me here. Ask him.”

I blink at her.

“Guess you didn’t know him as well as you thought, huh?” she says.

She turns and storms across the parking lot, leaving me staring stunned after her.

He didn’t want me here
. Does she really mean that? Does she really
think
that?

A car door slams. I race across the parking lot, but she cranks the engine before I’m even halfway to her car.

“Lou!” I yell. “Lou! You can’t leave like this!”

She ignores me. Her tires squeal as she tears out of the parking lot, and I’m left standing barefoot and panting in a cloud of exhaust.

“Dammit,” I say, curling my hands into fists. “Dammit!” She’s gone, and I could’ve stopped her. I should have tackled her to the ground and dragged her back up to the apartment by her curly ponytail.

But it’s too late now.

I cross my arms over my chest. It’s a balmy night, but I still feel cold. I shouldn’t have said those things to her. I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved. Now I’ve made everything worse. Lou is gone—without a word to Calder—and probably hates me for good measure. I’ve pushed the only family Calder has left even further away. If there was ever any hope for the two of them… well, I’ve just made things a whole lot more complicated.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Her last words to me echo in my brain:
He didn’t want me here. Ask him
.

It’s with heavy feet that I trudge back up the stairs. I know I’m not responsible for whatever Lou is up to, but I also know that as long as I’m dating Calder, my relationship with her affects him too. It’s not like she’s going to be showing up for holiday dinners at our place after our last conversation.

Guess you didn’t know him as well as you thought, huh?

She’s wrong, of course. I know him plenty well. But that doesn’t mean her words don’t tear into me like shards of ice.

I’m going to have to tell Calder. I have to confess that I couldn’t keep my fat nose out of his family’s business and that I’ve probably driven his sister even further away. My stomach sinks more and more with every step, and by the time I reach the door I feel like I’m going to be sick.

And when I try to twist the knob, it only gets worse.

The door’s locked.

When I ran after Lou, I didn’t think to grab a key. I didn’t even consider the possibility that the door would lock automatically behind me.

Well, fuck.

I have two options: master the art of lock-picking in the next hour or so, or knock on the door until Calder answers. And as I don’t have any bobby pins on hand—just the bottle of wine, still clutched by the neck in my left hand—my options are looking a little limited.

And so, for the second time tonight, our door gets a solid pounding.

It takes several minutes for Calder to answer. When he does, he looks groggy and thoroughly confused. I’ve always thought he’s at his sexiest in the moments just after he’s woken up—his hair del
iciously rumpled, his eyes half lidded, his boxers slightly askew—but I’m too worried to appreciate it right now.

Calder glances to either side of me. “What’s going on? How did you get out here?”

I might as well just spit it out. “Lou’s gone.”

“What?”

“She’s gone. I don’t know where.”

Calder’s suddenly wide awake. “What happened? How did you end up out here?” He pulls me into the apartment and shuts the door again behind me. “What did she say?”

“I—I don’t…”
Grow a backbone, Lily
. No point in tiptoeing around it. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went into the kitchen for a little wine. I caught Lou sneaking out, but she wouldn’t tell me where she was going.” I watch Calder’s face as I speak. He tries to hide it, but I catch the shock, the confusion, the hurt.

“Calder, I…” I reach for him, but he jerks away. His emotions aren’t directed at me, I know, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. I must betray something in my face, though, because his eyes soften and he touches me gently on the arm.

“So you… ran after her?” he prompts.

I still feel sick about the whole thing—still wonder if I’m better leaving well enough alone—but if there’s ever a time to tell him about what I heard, it’s now. “I overheard her earlier, talking on the phone. Something about a fake ID and fooling a hiring manager… I don’t know. It might be nothing, but it sounded shady. Not that I’m accusing her of—I mean, I don’t think—I don’t know…” I realize I’m rambling, so I stop.

Calder’s brows are drawn together. I know that look. I hate that look.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I shouldn’t have eavesdr
opped. I shouldn’t have interfered at all. It’s not my place. I wasn’t trying to get in the middle of everything. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His eyes are dark, his mouth drawn into a straight line. But he’s shaking his head.

“Why are you apologizing?” he asks. “This isn’t your fault.” He draws me close to him, but his body is still rigid. As much as he’s trying to hide it, he’s upset by what I’ve just said. And even though I know it’s not my actions that elicited this reaction, it pains me to be the messenger.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say.

“Don’t.” He pulls back and jerks a hand through his hair. “It’s not you. It’s her. It’s all her. I can’t believe I… that I thought…”

His eyes blaze, but beneath the anger I can still sense his pain. Lou is supposed to be his family, and yet she waltzes in and out of his life as it suits her, coming to him when she needs something and running away again just as quickly. He wanted to fix this thing between them, and she wouldn’t even give it a chance.

I want to tell him to forget her. But I can’t. You can’t just ask someone to turn his back on the only flesh-and-blood relative he has in the world. Even when that relative is horrible.

“She’s your sister,” I whisper. “She loves you.”

And honestly, I believe it. For all of her jabs at me, she seemed to show some genuine affection for Calder—even if whatever mischief she has planned ultimately took precedence over mending the rift between them.

For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. I have no other consolations, no comforts to offer—at least, nothing that wouldn’t sound hollow and flimsy right now. No matter how wild or reckless Lou might be, she’s still Calder’s family. I want them to work things out—but I have no idea how to fix this.