Inner Core: (Stark, #2) (14 page)

I was before you dragged me to your cave and marked me, and I will be, always
.

I inhale deeply, spent and satiated. With his head still buried in the niche of my shoulder Daniel utters, “Christ, Hayley, of all the people! Out of everyone it
had
to be the one person I detest?” He takes a deep, frustrated breath. “He had you, Hales.” His voice is beaten and dark, affected. His head doesn’t leave its den, and I realize painfully that he's avoiding looking at me. Though I know I should be irate or feeling degraded, I'm not. My empathy goes out to him, knowing that if it was the other way around, I would have been devastated. I'm well aware that I myself already hold plenty of animosity in my heart for anyone who's ever been intimate with him, physically or emotionally. I can’t even fathom the thought of how I would feel if it were someone I loathed, someone who betrayed me.

And if there's one chapter in my thick book of sordid memories I wish I could delete…  
There's a long moment while we are physically attached and mentally departed when we just let our sweat evaporate. Daniel is first to break contact.

“I’m going to wash my face,” he says, his voice still restless. At the sight of his departing figure I adjust my dress so I too can go freshen up. I barely rest my hand on the door of the ladies room when Tasha pushes it open. Her confused eyes x-ray me.

“What the heavens have I missed, Hales?” 

My mouth twists. “Let me lay it out for you, Tash.” I sigh. “Brad is Daniel’s number one persona non grata. I spent one night of sin with him in the past, and now you're seeing him. How about that for a horrendous coincidence?” I say dryly, returning her stare, disturbed and frustrated.

She flicks her eyes over me with a creased forehead, frantically playing with the colorful Swarovski ring on her finger, trying to take it all in. A heartbeat later I watch emotions flash erratically over her face as the information sinks into the soil of her recognition.

“You have a few things to think about while I vomit.” I pat her hand and give her a cynical, gloomy smile, which she mimics, then make my way to the first stall in the right-hand line of doors.

“This really bad joke gone wildly wrong has to be one of Nostradamus' lost predictions of disaster…” Even though she murmurs her words still reach me before I take the final step inside the stall, and I give a short, wry snort in agreement.

For the rest of the night Daniel and I make sure not to cross paths with my best friend and her date. The evening lingers unpleasantly due to Daniel’s combative mood and my desire to return home and make it all go away. But eventually, thankfully, it does come to an end.

When we finally make our way back to the car, we excruciatingly retrace our happy steps, the placid breeze having turned to a mid-December draft. We were two blissfully entwined souls coming in and are two very detached ones leaving.

Chapter 14: Rolling Snowball

Daniel slouches on the bed beside me propped up on a pile of plump pillows, and keeps a very evident, guarded distance. I turn to lie on my side, watching him closely. As a reaction to the vision beside me my heart free falls and crashes to the ground. Daniel is still wearing his tux, sans bowtie, his arm slanted over his face, shutting out the sight of me. Despite the almost nonexistent distance between us I know that at this moment we could not be further apart. I hope with all my heart that behind his closed eyes he isn't conjuring some disturbing vision of Brad and me. A fear that things are at a threat of going downhill gnaws at me mercilessly.

“Daniel… Are you okay?” I ask softly, knowing he's far from being even close to being fine, but I do it anyway for the sake of reopening a line of communication. Trepidation bleeds through me at the thought of what's about to come.

“Christ, Hayley,” he says from under his shielding arm. “The amount of bullshit that ran through my head tonight.” He heaves out an exasperated sigh. “So no, Hayley, I’m not okay and I’m not going to pretend I am.”

When I reach for his hand he flinches and stands up quickly. He walks out of the room and mutters in a sharp, cutting tone, “I am going to work for a while,” without even curtly glancing my way.

You mean you're getting away from
me
…

I decide to stop poking and to instead let him cool off, I go to brush my teeth. As I stare at my reflection in the mirror I am struck with the irony that my image looks nearly perfect. I look so polished and together and feel the absolute opposite inside.

I drop my dress to the floor, toss my bra towards the walk-in closet and slide into bed. Before killing the light I turn on my iPod to Evanescence to try and calm my livid temper.

When I wake from a very troubled sleep and move my hand over to Daniel’s side of the bed, I find a disturbingly cold and empty mattress. I shift over to check the time. It’s long past midnight.

Still shaking off sleep, I shrug into Daniel’s abandoned
shirt. There are muffled noises coming from the opposite side of the house which get louder as I surface from the night’s alcohol debris, lumbering through the corridor. The blurred noises morph into harsh sounding music as I near the gym. I stop short when I open the door, taking in Daniel’s sweaty image as it appears before me in the predawn light. Frenzied rock music plays in the background while Daniel beats the living hell out of a punching bag. I only manage to register one word from the blaring music: “radioactive”.

I cringe.

As I take a step forward I'm well aware that I'm stepping against an impasse. He's never going to voluntarily address this, at least not verbally.

I would.
I'm done ignoring our differences!
But I know that for this to work I should first check my ego at the door. When Daniel stops to grab a water bottle from the floor beside him, he notices me. He watches me with his lips tightly pulled together into one frozen line for some tense moments, then raises questioning brows over disturbed eyes. I move to the remote sitting on top of the bench press and turn down the music, then settle cross-legged where the remote had been.

“Let’s talk about it,” I say in a determined yet gentle tone.

“No.”

I take a moment to find the right words to reach him without unleashing his inner tiger. As I do so, I watch his strained face. There is a sweat drop slowly crawling from his temple to his hard-set jaw. His hair is damp and stuck in wet clusters to his face. His chest is bare, tan and covered with a glossy layer; he's still wearing his dress pants, and he's barefoot. A vision of heated, raw masculinity.

“Don’t even say his name,” he warns.

I keep studying him, weary and deeply caught up in my thoughts, still silent.

“Don’t even think about him.” The very next words to come out of his mouth are uttered quietly and incoherently, and I’m sure they're not intended for me, but I still manage to gather something about contaminating my body and bearing his children. 

My stare deepens. The color of his voice and his entire air could not be more livid. He is purely and simply infuriated, and me? I couldn’t be more content. I need to fight my urge to smirk at the implication of his words, and knowing fine well that if my lips even slightly pull up right now, psycho here will flip.

Time for scrubbing Hales. This needs to be done with delicacy and in an alert frame of mind.

Disregarding the hazard signs scattered all over his face, I say calmly, “It was a one-time thing.”

He slams an audible punch into the suspended bag and closes his eyes, fuming. I wince at the thud but go on. “After that one incident, there was nothing physical. We barely even spoke after that.”

He holds the bag in both hands and rests his forehead on the black leather, his eyes still closed and the planes of his face hard. 

“What was it, did he dazzle you with his extensive polish and guile?”

I disregard the jibe; I will not be dragged into any base, worthless product of his ragged emotions. He turns to look at me, the side of his face still pressed against the punching bag, volcanic emotions in the depths of his stare, and...Something else.

“I slept with someone.” Air is sucked out of me as I try to make sense of this.

And henceforth the testament for you, Hayley, for what he’s been trying to tell you for a while now
. My sympathy from a moment ago changes radically.
Hell
, I think.
DIE! T
o my ripped open eyes he continues in a frost-coated voice, “When we broke up, I slept with someone.”

His revelation hangs thick in the air between us for a few ticking moments, so perceptible it's almost physical. As the weight of what he said sinks in, each word feels as if it is burned onto me with a branding iron. I feel a fracture expending in my gut in tandem with nausea that travels, slow and burning, up my throat. I can’t look at him right now. Just the thought of him sharing an intimate moment with someone else…

I close my eyes trying to stop the tremor building inside, doing my best to shut all this out. I can’t breathe.

And here
I was about to serve him my head on a plate, all for nothing.

“And now's the time to tell me that? Are you getting back at me? Is that what you're doing?
I
did
not
sleep with Brad to hurt you!” My voice is almost a scream. And in response to my tone something seems to be changing within him. Perhaps it's the logic behind my point, the realization of what he just threw between us. There’s a twist of remorse tugging at his face. For the first time ever, I see Daniel’s eyes grow panicked.

“You might as well have just gutted me. It would have been less painful,” I murmur, and his eyes turn to two dark russet gems of alarm and guilt. I fight the sting in my eyes, collecting all my willpower to not let a single tear fall.

“From one of your catalogs?”

His face cringes at this streak of meanness. He wipes his glistening forehead and rubs his eyes, letting out an audible sigh. I know it's a low blow, but I am not on my best behavior, nor am I really thinking. Hell if I'll be culling my words carefully now. “Who was she?” I say, seething through my clenched jaw.

“No one.”

I raise an incredulous brow; my mouth involuntarily turns into a mocking semblance of a smile.

“Someone I met at a bar.”

I close my eyes. Bile acid burns me as it flows sluggishly up my throat. My intuition deep inside begs me to shut him up, and yet I don’t, as though I have an irrational craving for further penance.
You're doing one hell of a job here, Daniel, digging a grave for us.

“I was piss drunk, Hales. I didn’t know my left from my right.”

No circumstance would serve as an excuse here.
He rightly doesn’t make any attempt to get closer to me. “And yet you were lucid enough to use your other organs?”

He takes in a deep, repentant breath, gazing at me with his tapered, worried stare.

“Where did you...?” I can’t bring myself to name the actual act. Just thinking of it bites pieces out of my bowels.

“The bedroom.” He gestures toward that part of the house with his chin, and his dry answer vacuums away any air left in my lungs.

The same one I just slept in
. The strength of his words is like a wire around my neck that tightens with every syllable he utters.

“Did you kiss her?” Under his creased forehead his eyes flash to mine in surprise, trying to make sense of what my question means.

“Did you or not?” I yell. And his words from when we'd just met ricochet in my head: “I don’t kiss if I don’t mean it.”

“Hales, can you please keep your hand down and stop raising your voice?” he asks quietly. I can see his effort to stay intact but his working jaw gives him away.

“Well, what can I say? You just bring out the very best in me,” I say snidely. “Did you, or did you not?” I tighten the hold of my hand on my chest. He doesn’t answer, but his eyes and his silence speak volumes. I have my answer right there in his face and it is a punch to the center of my stomach.

“I was mad. I thought you'd left for good. I was so hurt. I thought it could somehow take the pain away.” He takes a deep breath. “It felt like revenge,” he mumbles wearily.

“Well it sure hurts. You did a mighty fine job at that. Fucking overachiever.” My voice comes out in sheer bitter disdain.

“Don’t say that.” He takes a hesitant step toward me.

“Don’t,” I say, wrathful, my eyes warning fires. “Don’t,” I sigh, now in a strangled whisper, unable to put any strength behind my voice anymore.

He looks at me with shuttered eyes, beat and broken. “What are you telling me, Hales?”

“Do you really want my impulsive response right now, Daniel?” I snap, my face glazed in rage. My heart twinges as though it's being pressed in some medieval torture device. “I can’t be here now. I can’t be next to you. I can’t sleep in your bed,” I say, revolted
.

I can’t even look at you.

“I need to be alone and think so I won't do something we’ll both regret. I, as opposed to you, don’t react on impulse, Daniel.”

He nods, knowing exactly what I'm referring to: how he assumed the worst when my conversation with Tasha was published by an eavesdropping reporter and he broke up with me. He reaches for my hand and I yank it away. Our fingers brush as we break contact and to me it feels like a blister. My breaking point is at the starting gun, just waiting to launch.

“Is there anything I can do now to make it better? I’ll do anything! I. Am. Not. Losing. You. Again.” He intones each word staccato.

I can sense he's itching to come closer, but fights it. The swelling in my throat expands but I hold back my tears. I can’t cry anymore
.

How can I respond to that? How do I figure out what’s right when his presence is clouding my thoughts? Leave now, Hales. Just leave.

“Don’t go away,” he says, as if he had a direct line to my deepest thoughts. “I'll sleep on the couch, in the guest house, just please calm down.” He almost begs me. For a moment I am overwhelmed. The Daniel I know so well doesn’t do begging.