Freeing Tuesday (16 page)

I shake my head and swallow hard as I try to catch my breath, “No clue but I hope it’s happening again.”

Evan

“Don’t look at me like that. Not right now.”

“Like what?” Tuesday asks innocently as she straddles my thighs and pushes me back into the couch.

My hands drop to her ass as she rubs against the ridge of my erection. I know what she’s doing. She’s trying to distract me, but unlike every other time this week, it’s not going to work. I have questions, I want answers.

“Like you wanna tear my clothes off me and climb me like a fuckin' tree.” I push her back so I can see her face, “You’ve been pushing this off again and again.”

She scrubs her hands over her face. “It’s going to ruin everything,” she cries as she blows out a deep breath.

“Nothing,” I promise, “it will ruin nothing.”

She slides off my lap and distances herself from me, letting me know without words that this is so much worse that I think. She walks to the other side of the kitchen and turns her back on me. Lifting myself off the couch I make my way across the room to her, preparing myself for what she’s going to tell me.

“Don’t,” she cries out when I reach for her, “you can't say that it won’t ruin anything. This shit has ruined my
entire
life. That’s not nothing.” Her hands grip the counter so hard her knuckles turn white.

“You told me a lot the other night. What makes you think this piece is going to change how I feel about you?”

Tuesday growls and spins back toward me, her hands fisting by her sides and I watch as she shuts herself down. “That was
nothing
compared to this! What do you want from me?” she screams.

I grab her hand and try to pull her to me but she pounds her fists against my chest, pushing herself away. “Talk to me for Christ sake!” I bark out.

“Why?!! I’m fucking broken. That should be enough for you.”

“We’re all broken, Tuesday! Every. Single. One. Of. Us. All in our own ways, we’re all broken and fucked up!”

“Really?” she says, her hands shooting to her hips. “So since we’re all broken what do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to tell you that I was married to a man that wouldn’t have sex with me because I would bring in more money as a virgin? Or would you rather know that he would force himself on me in other ways because he was demented and liked to hear me scream.”

Holy shit.

She looks so lost as she screams at me and all I want to do is hold her and make all this shit go away, make the pain of her past go away. I can’t though, and I know that if I even try to move right now she’s going to hurt me. I can’t come up with the words I want to say so when I don’t say anything she keeps yelling, rocking my world harder than I ever thought possible.

“Or would you rather know that the fucking tattoo on my hip is my sale number? Oh wait!” She smacks her hands off the counter, the noise echoing loudly around us, “Maybe you’d rather know that my husband is the biggest human trafficker in the country and you just being with me could get you killed if he finds me. So tell me Evan, which one of those fanfuckingtastic facts about Tuesday did you want today? And
please
tell me because I would love to know whose life is this fucked up and who is just as screwed up as me? Maybe we can share bedtime stories.”

I can't make my head wrap around the words I need to say. I don’t move and can’t breathe as the anger builds up inside of me. I see red and all I want to do is hunt these fuckers down and make them suffer as much as Tuesday has.

I move toward her, hell bent on comforting her but she stops me with one teary eyed look. “You need to go home.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I can’t help the shock in my voice.

“I can’t handle this right now, Evan. I just gave you everything, laid it all out on the line for you and I need a little time to adjust and you need time to process. I’ll come by tomorrow maybe and if you still want anything to do with me, we’ll talk.”

She still doesn’t get it. What am I going to have to do to get it through her head?
“If I still want anything to do with you?” She nods and turns away from telling me to lock the door on my way out. “This changes nothing Tuesday, but if you need time I’ll give it to you. But don’t push me away because you think it’s what I want.”

Her head hangs as she listens to me. “We’ll see.” Is all she says before she shuts the bedroom door, effectively shutting me out.

Tuesday

I know I made a huge mistake when I told Evan to leave last night. I lay in bed all night and couldn't even fall asleep because all I could think about was everything I threw at him and then I made him leave. How the hell could I do that?

I round the corner when I step off the elevator on his floor, ready to apologize for making him leave last night, but when I hit the end of the hallway I stop dead in my tracks. The coffee I bought him on my way over slips and hits the ground, making enough noise to make him untangle himself from the bitch he has wrapped around him.

"Tuesday," he breathes.

My eyes sweep over to the girl who can’t even be twenty. She has the nerve to smile and wave at me. Noticing that I'm looking at her and not him, realization must finally dawn on him because he quickly tries to cover up what I just saw with an excuse.

I knew it was too much.  I should have listened to myself and not let anything happen between us.  Hell, I should have listened to Jameson when he told me he knew Evan couldn't do this. I didn’t do anything I should have and now not only do I have to deal with the fact that I told him
everything
but also that he couldn’t handle it and he dealt with it by running to another woman.

“No, no, no,” he repeats over and over, looking back and forth between us but I can barely hear him over the pounding in my ears.

I back up, leaving the spilt coffee in the middle of the floor and run back toward the elevator but think better of it when I hear his footsteps land on the carpet behind me and I hit the door for the stairs instead.

I make it down two flights before he reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me to a stop. His breath hits my face when he spins me and pins me against the cement wall with his half naked body.

“You are sadly mistaken if you think I’m letting you run away two days in a row.” His hand comes up to cup the side of my face but I flinch back. There is no way I am letting him touch me after he was just with another girl.

“Get. Your. Hands. Away. From. Me.” I shove hard against his chest but he doesn’t even budge.

“It’s not what it looks like, baby.”

My hand hits across his face with a loud snap and he growls, grabbing both of my hands and pinning them against the wall by my head. I take a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself down because I’ve been in this situation before and can’t handle the memories that are trying to come out. It doesn’t work, so I start yelling at him.
When the hell did I become the girl that cared about this shit?

“Is that what you’re going to tell her when you go back up to your apartment? Sorry, baby, but it wasn’t what it looked like. I didn’t just go chase another one of my weekdays down while I left you standing in the hall. Well, I hate to tell you this Evan but I will
not
be your week night special.”

“I’m not sleeping with Addison. I never have and never will.”

“Wow. I’m so proud that you actually know her name,” I say sarcastically, “now let me go so I can leave.”

He does the opposite of what I ask by pressing himself further into me and pinning my legs between his.

He raises his voice, making me flinch, “I’m not letting you go until you listen to me.”

Without even thinking my leg snaps up. My knee connects with his groin and he instantly lets go of my hands and stumbles back, lowering himself to the stairs as he coughs. His eyes squeeze shut and I take that moment of him not paying attention and finish running down the remaining five flights of stairs.

Hitting the gas in my car, I peel out of the parking lot just as he bursts through the front door and starts yelling for me to stop. I make it home in record time, surprised that I didn’t get pulled over, and stumble up the stairs. There is no way I can stay here right now, I can’t handle knowing he can just show up or that Jameson will know something is wrong and will know he was right.

So for the next few days I’ll sleep in my office or a hotel
, I think as I throw clothes in a bag. I have so much shit to get done for the
Rock for a Cure
festival this weekend that I doubt I would be home much anyway. After that, it won’t matter, we start the next leg of the tour a few days later and I won’t have to worry about him just randomly showing up.

Evan

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell just happened? I push myself back into my apartment where Jason and his cousin Addison are sitting on the couch looking at the sketches I drew up for them both last night.

“Was that Waffle that just ran out of here like bat out of hell?” Jason murmurs without lifting his head.

“Waffle?” Addison asks with a confused look on her face.

He shakes his head while I pull a tee shirt on, “Sorry, Tuesday. Was that Tuesday?”

“Yeah, she officially thinks I’m sleeping with your barely legal cousin.” I tap her number into my phone but she doesn’t answer so I dial Jameson. I know he’ll know what to do but he doesn’t answer either.
What the fuck people?
What is the point of a cell phone if you aren’t going to answer them?

“I would cut your balls off and set them on fire,” Jason says, finally looking up at me to make sure I know he’s serious.

“Have fun finding them, my girl just knocked ‘em hard. They’re sitting about here now,” I motion just below my ribcage to the spot that still feels like its housing my nuts. He just chuckles and shows something to Addison.

“Jameson!” I bark into my phone the second it rings. “You home? Is Tuesday home?”

“Hello to you too, asshole. I don’t know, it’s not my job to babysit your girlfriend.”

I don’t even respond to his comment before snapping back at him, “Just fuckin’ tell me if she’s home.”

He sighs and I hear him clicking his teeth together, something he’s done since we were kids and it drives me insane. “No, she isn’t. She was but she left with a bag, saying something about not seeing me again until Saturday before the show starts. What the fuck did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, Jameson. She saw me huggin’ Jason’s cousin Addi when they showed up to check out sketches. She didn’t see Jason, took it all out of context. She smacked me and kneed me in the balls when I tried to talk to her.”

“Yeah, sounds about right,” I hear him chuckle and try to cover it with a cough.

I lean over and rest my head in the palm of my hand. For the first time, probably ever, I realize I don’t want to lose a woman from my life.

“I don’t wanna fuck this shit up J, I really don’t.”

The sound of papers rustling interrupt the silence on his end of the line before he comes back. “I’ve got an idea but you have to trust me. You also have to understand that if you fuck this up with her you won’t have just me on your ass but a feisty red head too.”

Fuck, I don’t want that. I’d take that if I deserved it, but right now I don’t deserve it and I just want Tuesday to come back so I can explain all this shit to her. To make her realize that her past didn’t make me want to run from her, if anything it made me want to protect her more than I already do.