Dance for Me (Fenbrook Academy #1) - New Adult Romance (19 page)

Clarissa joined me at the table a few minutes later. She managed to come in and sit down without meeting my eyes once.

We sat there in silence for a moment. Clarissa made a gun shape with her hand and mimed shooting herself in the head. Then she let her forehead slump to the table, her hair covering her face.

“It’s not that bad,” I said at last.

The faceless blonde head nodded.
Yes it is.

“You did come home and catch me...thinking about Darrell,” I told her.

“Everybody does that.” She paused. “Well, maybe not in the lounge....”

“See?”

“It’s not even in the same league.”

I sipped some coffee while I thought, my embarrassment fading a little now that we were actually talking. “It’s no big deal. Spanking and bondage and stuff—it’s fashionable. Like in that book.”

Clarissa finally lifted her head from the table, horrified. “He doesn’t
tie me up!”

“Well, then!”

She hesitated. “I think he wants to, though,” she said in a small voice.

“Oh. Well, okay. I mean, as long as you like it.”

“I do.” She looked away quickly, flushing. “I just don’t get what he
does
to me. It’s like he flips a switch in my brain and suddenly I’m all.... He’s so
totally
not my type, but he just....” She gave a groan of frustration.

I sipped my coffee and smirked. “Like in the kitchen at Darrell’s house.”

Her jaw dropped. “You
saw?
” She thumped the table with her fist. “I
thought
you saw, but you didn’t say anything!”

“I think he’s cute. I think you’re cute together.”

She shuddered. “Eww. Don’t. I don’t want to be cute. And I don’t know if I want to be some guy’s...
plaything.
” She finally picked up her coffee and started to drink. After a moment, she said, “And the irony is,
you’re
the one dating the billionaire.”

Then she saw the look on my face, and her smile collapsed.

Neil came in and kissed Clarissa on the back of the head, completely unembarrassed. We sat in silence as he made himself a sandwich. When he tried to coax her back to bed, she waved him away.

“Okay,” she said as soon as he’d gone back to the bedroom. “What’s wrong?”

“We had sex,” I said at last.

She waited.

“Then we had a fight.”

She nodded.

“He found the scars.”

Clarissa bit her lip. She’d known I cut myself for about a year. I’d been standing on a chair to put the waffle maker back on top of the kitchen cupboard, had slipped off the chair and wound up on the floor with my skirt up around my waist. Like Darrell, she’d assumed the cuts were the work of someone else, and I’d had to tell her the truth before she called the cops on my recent ex-boyfriend. The following month had been hell. She’d been angry at me, angry at herself, hurt I hadn’t told her before...all the things I didn’t want Darrell to go through.

She’d finally accepted that it wasn’t a problem she could fix, though, and that I wasn’t going to tell her the reason I did it. After another few months, we’d returned to something approaching normalcy. I knew it still bothered her but, as long as I kept myself out of the emergency room, she accepted it. It became an unpleasant little habit we didn’t discuss.

I knew that with Darrell, it wouldn’t be the same. I’d grown to understand his mind and could see the way he observed and recorded and fixed things. I knew he’d want to fix me. Cutting myself would go completely against his logical view of the world, and he wouldn’t stop until he understood
why.
Once we got to that point, we were lost. He’d either hate me because I wouldn’t tell him, or hate me when he found out the truth.

“How’d he take it?” I could feel Clarissa watching me steadily as I stared at the chips on my Knicks mug.

“He thought someone else did them.” I refused to look at her, but it didn’t matter. I could
see
her in my mind, pressing her lips disapprovingly together. “I ran.”

“You really like him.” Not a question.

I didn’t answer.

“Maybe he’d be a good person to talk about it with.”
Since you won’t tell me,
she might as well have added.

I shook my head.

“Nat—”

“I can’t.” I got up and walked out.

And then I went to my room and got on the bike.

Chapter Twenty Three

Darrell

Ten minutes earlier

Meeting Natasha had changed everything. I’d had the nightmare a hundred times before and my solution to the rage had always been the same. Go to the workshop and
work,
create something that would hurt the people who’d taken my parents from me. It didn’t make the anger go away, but it focused it...directed it outward so that it didn’t destroy me. But today....

Today, when I’d woken from the nightmare the first thing I’d seen was her terrified face. I’d scared the hell out of her. And then I’d made it worse by pushing and pushing to know about her past. When she’d left, I’d had no idea what to do and had wound up in the workshop, hammering and welding. My normal solution—only it no longer did any good. However many times I heard that glorious, metallic ringing, it didn’t ease the anger inside me or the guilt over how I’d hurt Natasha.

This wasn’t something that was going to get better with time. I needed to
do
something. Three times I picked up the phone to call her, but I had no idea what to say. By the evening, I was going out of my mind. I knew when I was out of my depth. I called Neil.

“Uh huh?”

I frowned. “You’re breathing heavy. Are you at the gym?”

“No. Clarissa’s place.”

I heard the creak of a bed. “Should I call back? The two of you aren’t—”

“We were. Natasha and her just left.”

“
What?”

“Chill, you idiot. Natasha walked in on us. Clarissa’s gone to the kitchen to explain.”

“Explain?”

“There was spanking.”

I sighed. Neil never did things by halves. “How did she look?”

“Fantastic. Smokin’ hot bod. We started out up against the wall—”

“
Natasha!
How did Natasha look? Did she look upset?”

“I didn’t get a good look at her.” He paused, his tone suddenly serious. “Why?”

I sighed. “We had a fight.”

“
Oh.
You want me to go see?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold up. I’ll go make a sandwich.”

I heard him put the phone down and then had to go quietly crazy for five minutes while he took his time in the kitchen. I strained my ears, but I could only hear a faint whisper of voices.

I didn’t understand her reaction. Someone had clearly hurt her—cut her or scratched her or something, on her thigh, and harmed her in some way with candles. Who, if not her foster dad? My gut tightened as I thought of someone, anyone, hurting her.

By the time Neil picked up the phone, I was going crazy. “How did she look?

“There’s definitely something wrong with her, man. They shut up when I came in. What did you do to her?”

I couldn’t tell him the details. “Nothing.” I sighed. “Something. I’m not sure.”

“You’re crazy, man. First girl you really like in years and you
fight
with her?”

“I’ve dated other girls.”

“But you haven’t
liked
them.”

And he was right. They’d been rich and pretty and utterly vacuous. Natasha was different.

“Okay, I’m an idiot,” I told Neil.

“I already knew that. What’d you fight about?”

“Just some stuff in her past. I wanted to know, and she didn’t want to tell me.”

“Oh.” Neil sounded like he suddenly understood. “You mean: she had a secret and you were being you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Obsessive and a pain in the ass.”

I gaped. “I’m not obsessive. I’m...thorough.”

“Which is awesome when you’re working but not good with fragile chicks.”

I thought about that. “I didn’t know she was fragile. Natasha’s fragile?”

“Everybody’s fragile, man.”

“Even you?”

“Maybe not me. Everybody else.”

I sighed. “Okay, okay. Stay out of her past. What else?”

“Call her.”

Chapter Twenty Four

Natasha

I had my head down, ass up, legs pumping hard on the pedals. I’d only been going for a few minutes, but I had the bike cranked up to maximum resistance and my muscles were already starting to protest. I hadn’t warmed up and was at real risk of tearing something, but I didn’t care.

Stupid
, I told myself.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Thinking it could work. Thinking I could have a relationship. All I’d done was taunt myself—let myself have a taste of everything I’d been missing, making its loss all the more bitter. I’d let him get too close, let my attraction for him make me forget what I really was. And then, just as I deserved, it had all come tumbling down.

I pedaled harder, panting now. The whir of the bike rose and rose. I’d ride until my legs burned. Until I damn well
did
tear something, serve me right for—

My phone rang.

I knew it was him, but I grabbed it and checked the screen anyway.

I kept pedaling, staring at the phone as it rang and rang. I’d just keep going. He’d get the message eventually. Probably count himself lucky that he’d escaped without getting too deeply involved.

I was going faster and faster, my chest heaving, the air like lava. The phone kept ringing and ringing, about to go to voicemail. I gritted my teeth, waiting for it to ring off—

And then, without consciously doing it, I’d hit “Answer” and my legs stopped moving. I couldn’t speak for a second, I was so out of breath, so we both sat there listening to my labored panting.

“Natasha?” he said at last.

I didn’t answer. I had no idea what to say. I heard the bike’s flywheel slowly spinning down.

“Natasha?” he sounded worried, now. I could hear my heart thumping, and it wasn’t slowing down like it should.

“Nat—”

“What?” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded angry and afraid, like a wounded animal ready to lash out.

“I’m sorry.”

It almost made me angrier. Why did he have to be nice? This would be so much easier if I could be mad at him. But that was the worst part—I knew his intentions were good.

“I don’t think....” My eyes stung, and I told myself it was just sweat trickling into them. “I don’t think we should see each other again.”

“No!” So loud and forceful I jumped. “Natasha, no! I’m sorry. I’m sorry I pried. I just—I want to protect you.”

My eyes were getting hotter and hotter. I wiped them savagely with the back of my hand and it came away wet. He didn’t get it. He wanted to know who’d hurt me so he could be mad at them. When he discovered I was hurting myself, he’d be mad at
me.
And then, inevitably, he’d want to know why I did it, and if I told him
that
he’d hate me forever.

Better to end it now.

I realized I’d been silent for too long. “I don’t think it’s going to work out, Darrell.” I thought of losing him, of never looking into those deep, clear eyes again. Of never feeling the push of his pecs against my chest, smooth and warm and so solidly
real.
I could feel myself slipping away again, and now that I’d started to get used to my new anchor, I wasn’t sure the old one would work anymore. I could feel the hot tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Natasha....” I could hear that he was choosing every word very carefully. And somehow I knew that this was as new to him as it was to me, that he wasn’t used to this sort of conversation. The fact he was trying made my heart melt. “I love you. I promise I will never, ever, ask about your past again. OK? It’s off limits.”

I felt a little flicker of hope inside me and immediately tried to stamp down on it, because I knew I was kidding myself. This was Darrell, with his brilliant mind and his eyes that saw everything. There was no way he was going to leave it alone. Not forever. A week from now or a year from now, he’d need to know, and breaking it off then would hurt even more.