Crushed (Crystal Brook Billionaires) (8 page)

“So you went out last night?” I asked. “Is that why you slept in late?”

Her face fell slightly, and she looked down at the table. “Uh, actually, no… did I say I did? Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s fine.”

“I was just at home,” she mumbled. “Trying to sleep. It’s, uh, been hard.”

My stomach tightened at the sight of her in such clear pain. “Understandably. Have you tried anything to help?”

She peeked up at me. “Like sleeping aids? I have something that I got with a prescription, but I don’t want to use it regularly.”

“Ah.”

She exhaled heavily then turned her lips up in a forced grin. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Yes,” I agreed, quickly searching for potential things to talk about. “Uh, so how about that game last night?”

“Which game?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea. I don’t watch sports.”

Claire laughed. “Neither do I. What’s even in season?”

“Baseball, I think.”

“Oh. Baseball is… okay. I’ve played it.”

“I’ve read about it.”

Claire giggled. “I bet you have. You never played any sport?”

“Soccer, for a while. I’m afraid I’m not very athletic.”

“But you have such a nice body.”

Half a second after she spoke, she blushed. “I mean that, um… you look athletic.”

“Thank you,” I told her while reminding myself not to read too much into the slip up. Even if Claire did find me attractive — and damn, I hoped she did — it didn’t mean she was looking to start anything up.

The time had definitely come to change the subject, yet again. “Do you have any plans today?”

“I’m going to meet up with my friend Radha in a little bit.” She looked at her watch. “Actually, wow… in about thirty minutes.”

“Ah.” My heart started to race. I didn’t want another four weeks to go by before we saw each other again. “I have some free time while I’m in town. Would you like to hang out again?”

I tensed and waited for her response. Hopefully, I had selected the right words. If I got too pushy, she might get scared away.

Claire licked her lips. “Maybe… yeah.”

“What about Monday night?”

Her brows furrowed. “But Monday night is the Met Gala, right? Aren’t you going?”

“I planned on it. I don’t have a friend to go with me, though,” I said, taking care to use the word friend instead of date. “Would you like to?”

Her eyes went wide. “To the Met Gala? Damn.” She whistled low. “I don’t want to come across as low class or anything, but I’ve never been asked to a red carpet affair before.”

I chuckled. “You definitely don’t come across as low class.”

“Are you sure you want to take me?”

There was a hint of sadness in the question.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be sure? Because we don’t know each other well? Or because…” I trailed off, getting nervous. Claire herself looked slightly uncomfortable and hesitant to answer. “It won’t be a date,” I assured her. “I promise to be the perfect gentleman.”

“Oh, I believe you,” she said in a soft voice.

A pleasant chill went down my back.

No, I told myself. Danger, danger! Do not think of her in that way.

She started nervously playing with a thin silver bracelet on her wrist that I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s just… well, I’m not in the best place right now. So I would hate for you to go all out and show up to one of the biggest events of the year, and then have something happen.”

“What kind of something?”

“Like the person who came with you breaking down.”

She looked flatly at me.

And then that moment became a dare. Claire herself didn’t dare me, no. Life itself did. There I was, presented with one of the most captivating people I had ever met. It was just suck ass luck that we had met during such a difficult time for her.

So what are you going to do,
life seemed to ask.
Are you up for the challenge?

Could I be nothing more than a casual acquaintance — or, hopefully, friend? Could I stick to the boundaries she needed? Was I strong enough to control what was already my budding romantic feelings?

I didn’t have a choice. The woman had already reeled me in, though she hadn’t meant to. Even if I was destined to fail, God help me, I was going to try.

“Don’t worry,” I told Claire with full confidence, trying to assuage her concerns. “Our evening will be perfect. Trust me.”

Claire

T
hey slipped through the crack underneath the drawn blinds, headlights sweeping the living room. I turned, not wanting to leave the beautiful dream.

There, I studied the stack of books on the coffee table. They were all fiction titles I didn’t know. A couple of them looked unread, but the other four had colorful tabs marking their pages.

I resisted the urge to crack one of the books open and take a peek. Peter was definitely the kind of guy who wrote notes in the margins of novels. I hadn’t known someone like that since tenth grade. My English teacher, Mr. Bryant, had been proud of such a little quirk. I’d found it slightly geeky and assumed I’d never meet another person who did the same.

But then I met Peter.

I met him, and just like that, someone hit the fast forward button. Time had gone by like mere minutes.

And yet they’d taken on an importance I didn’t know time could possess.

As time — more specifically, time with Peter — became more important, everything else became so much less so. Sleep took the biggest hit. I’d gotten maybe three hours of it in the last day and a half.

But really, who needed it? Who needed it when everything you set your eyes on seemed devoted to blessing you, to bestowing you with its grace?

You could live off of the life force of the Universe. You could float around, sucking its strength in.

But you had to be in love with it all. That was the secret.

The floor creaked. I snapped my head towards the doorway. Peter stood there, not a hair on his head changed from two minutes ago. It was all the same. Same unruly brown hair. Same strong jaw. Same crooked smile. I hoped he stayed that way forever.

“You can look at those,” he said.

I felt my cheeks color. “I didn’t know if it would be intruding.”

He shook his head. “No.”

Slowly, he stepped across his living room and towards me, each one of his footsteps matching ten of my heart beats. When he settled onto the cool leather couch, we were less than an inch away. The heat from his thighs teased my skin even through the fabric of my jeans.

Feeling slightly self-conscious though we’d been this close a number of times, I ran my palms against my knees and searched for something to say. “I finished your book.”

He smiled. “Really? Already?”

I shrugged sheepishly. “What? Was that too fast?”

He laughed. “I don’t think there’s a standard.”

“Hm. It probably was too fast though. Poetry is meant to be savored. Right?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You’re the poet.”

“Ah, but you’re the reader, the one who gets to enjoy the poems.” His hand found mine, and he lifted my fingers off my thigh so they could twist around his. “But if you’re worried about it, read it again.”

“I will,” I promised him. “I haven’t read much poetry, but God… there was that one that just took my breath away. The one about seven generations. It was amazing.”

His thumb ran a little circle over the top of my hand, distracting me. There was something else I had meant to say, but when Peter touched me like that, words had a way of floating right out of my head.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he murmured. “I’m still adding poems to the next one. I’ve been sending them to my publisher.” He grinned. “She’s trying to convince me to cut back. She thinks no one wants to read a two hundred and fifty page book of poems.”

“I do,” I quickly said. “If they’ve been written by you.”

I was vaguely aware that I sounded like a blabbering fan girl, but I also couldn’t be bothered to care. Both of Peter’s hands were caressing mine now, and his lips swooped down to press against mine.

Somehow it was even better than our first kiss, or the one after that. In fact, like everything else with Peter, kissing just got better and better. The heat from our mouths fell down into my torso and fired me up. I untangled one of my hands from his and placed it on his cheek. His skin burned just as hot as mine, matching my desire.

Without warning, Peter broke off the kiss. Our faces hovered inches away, just far enough that we could see into each other’s eyes. His gaze softened as he looked at me, and simultaneously, the elated sensation in my chest grew.

Did he feel what I felt?

Was this the thing I’d read and heard about so many times, but never once experienced myself?

Were we falling in love?

Peter’s lips fell against mine once more, and there, in our touch, I found all the answers to my questions.

Claire

R
adha stared at me from across my coffee table. Positioned right in the middle of the couch, her long black hair in a sleek ponytail, she looked more like a human sized doll than a real living being.

“Well?” I asked. “Did you hear me?”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “Yeah. I heard you. Is he legit?”

I crossed my arms and leaned back in my favorite chair, the only chair since the living room in my one-bedroom apartment was so small that the single plush chair barely fit across from the couch, even wedged in the corner as it was. The place was minuscule, for sure. The kitchen literally existed in a corner of the living room. There were four squares of linoleum and the tiniest oven I’d ever seen.

Since getting my raise at the company the year before, I had more than enough income to move. I loved Hell’s Kitchen though. It was super accessible, and my apartment was undeniably cozy.

And it came with memories. In fact, it was one of the few places Peter and I had spent time in that I could still go to. His Brooklyn apartment was off limits, of course. I didn’t even know what had become of it. Presumably, Peter’s brother had come and cleaned it out, keeping select objects and throwing others away.

That familiar iron fist gripped my heart. Anything I’d left there was probably gone now, laying in a trash bag in a landfill at the edge of Queens. My extra toothbrush in his bathroom. The paperback copy of The Bell Jar I’d been reading on evenings spent there. I’d left it on his bedside table, right next to the reading lamp and the wooden coaster. Peter had always put a glass of water on that coaster for me. He knew I drank water like a fish during the night. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent the night at his place and he hadn’t set a full glass there for me.

And he’d never even asked. He’d just done it after noticing how much I got up to get water.

I would never walk past that building again. I didn’t want to see its sad, curtain-less windows. I didn’t want to see children’s tricycles laying behind the gate, didn’t want to see a new person’s trash thrown out on the curb.

On top of that, I had already promised myself I would never go to Prospect Park again. Those were stomping grounds I’d never even strayed close to before meeting Peter. That neighborhood was our place.

And some days it was easier to pretend it had died right along with him. The toothbrush too. The book. The coaster. They were all gone, just like Peter.

“Okay, now you’re not listening.”

“Huh?” I stared at Radha. “Sorry. I just got a little… um…”

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “So. Is he legit?”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you asking if he actually has tickets to the gala?”

“Yeah, exactly. Or is he just going to lure you into a black limo and then abduct you?” She raised her eyebrows, absolutely serious.

“No!”

“Are you sure? You can’t be entirely sure who’s a pervert and who’s not.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true. I could always meet him there. Although I really think he’s pretty normal.”

Other than the whole supermodel mom and billions of dollars thing.

Radha crossed her ankles and folded her hands in her lap, looking like a princess in the middle of tea. “If he’s telling the truth, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“I know. Trust me.”

“I mean, it’s the Met Gala, for God’s sake. Beyonce is on the chair this year.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded. “Seriously. I heard that all of the attendees get greeted by the chair members. That means you’re going to get to air kiss Queen B.”

“Cool,” I listlessly said, suddenly not feeling as into the whole affair as I had a minute ago. Not only was the thought of the gala slightly intimidating, it scared me in a profound way I couldn’t explain.

Or maybe it was just the prospect of going out with a man that terrified me. The only people I’d spent real time with the last month and a half were my family and Radha. Anything other than that I really couldn’t handle.

“I’m impressed with you,” Radha said. “Really.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re getting yourself out there.”

Snakes twisted in my stomach. “It’s not a date.”

“I know,” she softly replied. “Don’t worry. I know it’s not. I just meant that you’re going out and having a good time. That’s all.”

“Yeah,” I said, grabbing hold of my bracelet and twirling it around. “I don’t know. Maybe I won’t go.”

“You have to.”

“You just told me this guy might be a weirdo and that I have to be careful!”

“Yes,” she sternly said. “Be careful. But, damn girl, go. Did you not hear the other part about this being a once in a lifetime thing?”

I kicked my heels against the carpet. “All right. I’ll go. I just don’t want to give Owen the wrong impression.”

“From what you told me, I don’t think he’ll get the wrong idea. He knows what’s going on in your life.”

“He could know my social security number, for all I know. I don’t know just how much Gwen told him.”

“Your sister knows your social security number?”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past her to have memorized our whole family’s social security numbers. She can be like that.”