Filfthy (28 page)

D
emi

I
have
to bite the inside of my lip to keep from lashing out at him. All I want to do is scream at him for wasting my time, for squandering away the last seven years, for showing up like some valiant knight with shitty timing.

He lingers by the door, stepping into his grubby work boots. He smells like a garage, and his nail beds are black. Once upon a time, he was supposed to go to college with Derek, finish with law school, and then work at my father’s practice.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he says.

I can’t look at him.

“Not yet, anyway,” he adds. “I’m just asking you to let me at least try to make some of this up to you.”

“You can’t.”

“Demi.” He moves closer. I turn away. It’s juvenile, I know. “You can’t even begin to imagine how many nights I laid awake thinking about you. About us. About old times.”

I focus on a salt fleck on the floor of the foyer. It must’ve been tracked in from outside, when I sprinkled ice melt on the steps earlier.

“If I could go back,” he says. “I’d make different choices. I never would’ve left that night. I just thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Was there someone else?” I ask the heaviest question of them all, the one that’s lingered over me like a dark cloud. It’s the only plausible answer to this ridiculous question. My broken, teenage heart could only ever accept the explanation that he left because he loved someone more than he loved me.

“God, no.” Royal cups my face with his stained hands, turning it to face him. “Never.”

Our eyes meet.

“I don’t understand.” I pull his hands from my face. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

Royal gives me a nervous smirk, a dimple popping up on his right cheek—the one I used to kiss when we were younger.

“Maybe I’m scared,” he says, puffing his chest out like I needed any kind of reminder that he’s all man now.

“Scared of what?”

“Scared you might look at me differently. Think of me differently.”

“I loved you more than you could’ve possibly known,” I say. “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done back then to change that. I was
stupid
in love with you.”

His lips tighten, and he offers a pained smile.

“I want to tell you, Demi. You deserve to know. I owe you that much.” His words come rushed, and he licks his lower lip. “But I’m not ready, and neither are you.”

I offer a sarcastic “ha,” step away, and slap my hand against my side.

“Fine, then,” I say. “If this is all the closure I’m ever going to get, so be it. Can’t force you to tell me anything, so I won’t waste my time trying.”

“Closure?” He lifts a single eyebrow. “Closure means we’re done forever. Means we’re never going to see each other again.”

“Exactly.”

I didn’t wait seven damn years for him to stand in my home and refuse to give me the answer I deserve. All those years, I’d painted him as some kind of idyllic fantasy. He represented youth, and carefree summers, and can’t-sleep-love. Happily-ever-afters and everything little girls dream of. He was a cool breeze on a hot day. Electric kisses and mischievous firsts. An addiction I couldn’t get out of my system.

And I still can’t.

“I want to see you again,” he says.

My gaze snaps to his, fitting perfectly. The thundering heartbeats in my chest threaten to knock me over with each boom. I hate that his six little words so easily command my attention.

“Maybe I don’t deserve it,” he says, “but it doesn’t change the fact that I still want it.”

I fold my arms. “Entitled much?”

“I’ll tell you what happened, Demi. I promise. But not yet. Let’s get to know each other again. Let me take care of you,” he proposes. “And when the time is right, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

I exhale. “How can I believe you? How can I trust you?”

“You can’t.”

My breathing halts.

His expression hardens. “But I’m asking you to try.”

I walk backward until I bump into the bottom of the stairs. Perching on the second to last step, I rest my head in my hands.

“I don’t know. I have a lot on my plate right now.” My gaze is fixed on his worn boots. In my heart of hearts, I know he’s had a rough seven years, and my chest burns when I think about all the ways his life could’ve turned out better. “I don’t think I have the energy for . . .
this
. . . right now.”

“Yeah, that’s not a good enough reason for me to walk away.” He takes a step toward me, dropping to my level and pulling me up. “I’ll be here in the morning to shovel your driveway before I go to work. I won’t bother you. Don’t worry.”

His hand reaches behind me and helps itself to the back of my jeans, where he retrieves my phone and keys in his number.

“There.” He slides it back in my pocket, his fingertips brushing my hips and sending a hitch to my breath. “You can reach me anytime. Anything you need. And I’ll drop off some dinner for you tomorrow night. Just text me and tell me what you want.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He shrugs, as if to imply it doesn’t matter. But it does. It matters. So much.

“No, really. Why?”

“Making up for lost time, I guess,” he says. “Making up for a lot of things.”

“I hate to inform you, but it’s going to take a lot more than shoveling snow . . .”

I’m smiling.

What the fuck?

No.

No, no, no.

I’m supposed to yell at him.

Stomp my feet.

Curse his name.

Beat my fists against his chest and then kick him to the curb.

And here I am, grinning like some love struck teenager, letting the high school quarterback charm his way back into her life.

I wipe the smile, and any traces of it, clean off my face.

“It’s probably not a good idea,” I say.

“What are you talking about?” His expression hardens. He’s displeased with my refusal of his kindness, but what did he expect?

“With Brooks in the hospital, I can’t be spending my free time with an ex-boyfriend. Do you know how bad that looks? And if my parents found out—or Derek . . . no one would understand. Hell, I wouldn’t even understand.”

I shake my head.

“It’s too much. I can’t. I appreciate it, but I can’t accept your help right now.” I rise and walk to the door, the polite, Rosewood way of asking someone to leave. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“He was cheating on you.”

Royal’s words suck all the oxygen from the air.

My knees wobble and my face numbs. I step back, losing my grip on the doorknob.

“Brooks had been seeing someone on the side.” He speaks slowly. “For quite a while. Well over a year.”

“No.”

Royal nods. “I confronted him last week. He had no clue who I was, but I told him I was an old friend of yours. Told him if he didn’t make a decision, I’d tell you everything. Said I’d make damn sure he’d live to regret ever hurting you.”

He rakes the back of his hand along his five o’clock shadow, his head cocked and eyes wincing.

“The night of his accident,” Royal says, “he was headed north on highway nine. Crashed a couple of miles outside Glidden, not far from her house. He was going to
her
, Demi.”

R
oyal

“
D
emi
, say something.”

Everything about her is frozen solid. Her stance. Her expression. Her stare.

“You okay?” I ask.

She snaps out of it without warning, her glistening eyes blinking like someone flipped a switch. Stomping down the hall, she yanks open a closet door and rifles through it.

“What are you doing?” I call out.

Demi won’t answer. Thirty seconds pass, and she comes back with a shiny nine iron gripped in her fist.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” My hands protest, and I back up against the door.

“This isn’t for you.” She marches past me, rips the door open, and flies outside in nothing more than jeans and a sweater. Her bare feet leave footprints in the light layer of snow that’s begun to fall in the last half hour.

I step into my boots and run after her. By the time I find her, she’s punching in the code to their three-car garage. An empty stall where his Mercedes once sat holds the spot between a gorgeous, vintage Porsche 911 painted in a glossy shade of Bahia Red and a black on black Range Rover with twenty-inch rims and custom tints.

“Demi.” I move toward her and quickly veer out of the way when I watch her lift the golf club above her head.

Whack
.

One swing, and there’s a sizeable dent in the whale tail of the Porsche.

“Hey, hey . . .” I reach for her arm, but she pulls the club away, taking another swing. And another. And another. “Demi, okay. Enough.”

In no way am I about to defend Brooks Abbott’s behavior, but I kind of feel bad for that pretty little Porsche taking the brunt. She was innocent in all of this.

Demi drags the flat, steel club head along the driver door, leaving a deep scratch. I can’t help but mentally calculate the number of man-hours it would take to buff and repaint that kind of damage.

“Satisfied?” I smirk when she’s all finished.

Her shoulders rise and fall as she catches her breath.

“Let’s get you inside, Shoeless Joe Jackson.” I wrap my arm around her shivering shoulders. I’m sure her feet are ice blocks now, but I doubt she feels a damn thing.

Demi stops and looks down, dropping the golf club. And then she buries her face in her hands.

“What am I doing?”

“Come on, don’t worry about it. It’s over. Let’s go in.” My palm rubs circles into her tense shoulder. “I’d have done the same thing.”

I’m lying. I’d never take shit out on a pretty little car like that, but I’m not about to make Demi feel worse.

Once inside, I escort her to a sofa next to a fireplace and get the flames going. I wrap her in a blanket the color of clouds and the texture of cashmere, and her shivering begins to subside.

“You had the right to know,” I say. “You’re by that asshole’s side every day, hoping and praying for a miracle, and . . .”

“I know.” She pulls the blanket closer to her face, staring ahead at a photo of the two of them on a side table. They’re smiling, her hand on his chest and her engagement ring glinting in the sun.

“You doing okay?”

Her eyes move slowly to mine, then back to the engagement photo. She leans forward, slams it face down, then sits back in her seat.

“I never suspected it. Not once.” She clears her throat, jaw tensed. “That’s what gets me. I’m sitting here, blaming myself for his leaving, thinking if I would’ve fought harder, maybe he wouldn’t be fighting for his life. And that asshole . . . that asshole was screwing someone else all this time? How did I not know?”

“He clearly didn’t want you to find out.”

“How’d you find out?” She looks my way, brows furrowed.

“I live in Glidden,” I say. “Saw him running around with a girl who was definitely not you.”

I won’t go into specifics with her.

“Wait. You live in Glidden?” Her eyes narrow.

I nod.

“For how long?”

I push a breath through whistling lips. “Shit. I don’t know. A few years?”

“So all this time, you’ve been living fifteen minutes away from me?”

My palm rubs my thigh. “Not the entire time, but yeah.”

Demi leans against the arm of the couch, her hand wrapped around her forehead. “I’m sorry. This is just a lot to process. Feels like an alternate universe or something.”

I know exactly how it feels to be coasting along and lose your footing the moment the rug is swept out.

The gas fireplace flickers against a fake wooden log, casting warm shades of amber and gold around us, and we sit in silence.

For a tiny sliver of a moment, I’m flooded with warmth, and it’s not from the fire. My chest fills, expanding, and the sensation runs through me, reaching my fingers and toes.

It’s a feeling I’ve only known in a lifetime that doesn’t exist anymore.

Home.

Being with Demi feels like home.

R
oyal

I
wake with a stiff neck
, the hint of a sunrise peeking through the picture window across the room. Demi’s fire’s still going strong and she’s out cold, her head on my shoulder.

Carefully maneuvering myself up, I prop her against some throw pillows and cover her feet with the rest of the blanket.

Half an hour later, I’m finished shoveling her driveway when she walks out to the front porch in a robe and slippers, a white mug of coffee in her hands.

“Thought you could use this.” She brings it to me and then re-wraps her robe and ties it tight.

I take a sip of the best damn coffee I’ve ever had as we stand and lock gazes.

“Sorry about last night. For freaking out.” Demi tucks her shivering fingers under her arms as the wind blows her robe open. “You must think I’m mental.”

My lips purse. “Nah. I don’t think that about you.”

“Either way, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

She’s such a fucking Rosewood. Always apologizing, even when not necessary. Always letting her manners get the best of her.

“Don’t apologize to me,” I say. “Apologize to that pretty little Porsche who got the shit beat out of her last night.”

Demi rolls her eyes.

“How messed up am I, that I beat up the car of a dying man?” she asks.

“Dying’s a strong word. We don’t know that he’s dying,” I say. “And look, I can fix it for you. For free. In my spare time. By the time the douchebag wakes up, he won’t have a clue. It’ll be our little secret.”

She laughs. It’s good to see her smile.

I finish the coffee and hand her the mug. “Gotta go home and get ready for work.”

Demi palms the coffee cup and nods. For the first time in days, she looks at me like she might not actually hate me. Her posture is more relaxed, and her gaze is more tender.

“I’m bringing you dinner tonight.” I fish my keys from my pocket.

She rolls her eyes.

“Taking that as a yes . . .”

I wait for her to go inside before driving away. I’ll be back tonight, and tomorrow night, and the next night.

I’ll be by her side every damn day for the rest of her life, making everything up to her. Being the man she deserves—the one who’ll never leave.

This time.

This time I’m here to stay.

Unless she wants me to leave.

And that could very well happen.