No Interest in Love (5 page)

Ah, forget it. I'll tease her when she's awake.

I rest my hand on the seat release to lower myself into a more comfortable position. My fingers pull very slightly, and I ease it down with my upper back. Better go slow, because Shay's feet are right under—

BOOM!

My hand slips on the seat release and I fly back with another banshee scream. But it's drowned out by the intense thunder and simultaneous crash of lightning right outside the car window. Shay shoots up and taps the top of my head.

“Movemovemove,” she chants at me, and I hoist myself and the seat back to our original position. She wraps her small hands around her ankle, muttering in Korean under her breath.

“Oh shit, did I hurt you?” I ask, rubbing the throbbing in the back of my head. Shay reaches behind her, pulls open the car door, and climbs out into the rain.

“I'm sorry!” I shout after I climb out too. She's limping up and down the side of the road, hands set firmly on her hips as she takes deep breaths. “Get back in the car. I'll look at it.”

“I'm fine!” she calls back, rain wetting my hoodie that she's wearing so much it looks hard to move in. “Just got to walk it off.”

Blowing out a frustrated breath at her stubborn ass, I duck back into the car and grab her open bag. I'm pretty sure I stuffed some sort of first-aid kit in here.

“Will you just come here?” I say, popping my head out of the side door.

But she ignores me, throwing her hands into the downpour. She's shouting a lot of Korean, but some English empties out with it.

“Tell me I didn't sign up for this, because I take it back! I want Rae's life or Jin's. They can deal with this one from now on!”

“Will you get your ass in the car?” I shout at her. She's gonna end up as roadkill if she steps any closer to the lines. Her wet hair sticks to her cheeks as her eyes move from the sky to me.

“I'm allowed to be mad, Jace! I'm allowed to have a freaking moment when the cherry falls onto the pile of shit.” She gestures to her ankle, and I get out, slamming the car door shut.

“Man, I apologized. It's not like I meant to squish your damn foot.”

“I'm not mad at
you
.”

“Then why the hell are you yelling at me?”

“It's raining!” She spreads her arms wide. “Don't people yell in the rain?”

She manages to get a laugh out of me, but it disappears into the thunder when she rips her bag from my clutched fingers.

“You're a damn liar,” I say, smile fading. “You're mad at me.”

“I'm mad because we're stuck on the side of the road and not in an airplane. I'm mad because my ankle is killing me. I'm mad because why is it raining so much? I'm mad because Barry got promoted before me, and it's because I'm piss-poor at my job.” She swipes furiously at the wet hair clinging to her cheeks, finds her glasses and jams them on, and then goes back to digging through her stuff.

Stressed-out Shay is someone I'm familiar with, but I've never heard her say her thoughts out loud like that. She's always seemed confident in her work. She gets me auditions I'd never be able to get myself. It's my own fault I botch them.

I take a step toward her, putting my hands over hers before she tears her belongings to shreds. “You're great at your jo—”

“I'm mostly mad because you were right.” Her brown eyes blink up at mine, water dripping down her glasses. She tugs her purse away from me again and shakes her head. “And I
hate
it when you're right.”

“I'm always right,” I tease. “But what about this time?”

“We should've stayed at the hotel. I should've listened to you. I'm so darn impatient all the time and if we'd just stayed maybe…and now…what if I totally just screwed this up? What if I never get their approval, huh?”

My brows pull in. “Whose approval?”

Her eyes widen like she didn't realize she was speaking out loud. Rain pours down her glasses, off her quivering bottom lip. She stares at me for half a second or half a lifetime, I can't tell anymore, before her tongue snakes out and swipes off the drops of rain. Her gaze goes back to her bag and a small growl escapes from the back of her throat. “Ugh,
why can't I find it
?”

I reach for the bag, since I'm the one who jammed everything back in, but she pulls it away. A frustrated growl barrels through my own throat and I go for it again. I'm fighting over a damn purse.

“Let me help you, damn it.”

She spins around, whipping my arm with her wet hair. I blow out a breath and reach around her, manage to grab hold of the thing, and pull.

She pulls back.

“Let go,” she says.

“You need to calm down.” I tilt my head expectantly, and her eyes narrow to slits.

“I'm. Fine.” She gives her bag one giant tug, and the contents fly out, some rolling down the road. The bag itself washes to the edge of a very large storm drain, and before I can even move it's suctioned down into the abyss with the rainwater. Her thick wallet pushes out of a puddle and starts following the same path. Shay's breath hitches…and then stops.

My feet trip over themselves to go after it before it goes down with her clothes, and I get tangled up in my own haste. The world blurs and whooshes past my ears. I smack the road hard, loose gravel digging into my stomach and my thighs. My face lands in a puddle, splashing rainwater up into my nose. Sharp pain attacks the back of my throat as I sputter out the water I've inhaled. I peek an eye open just in time to see the wallet tip over the edge, and I reach into the drain before it falls.

Nothing.

My fingers grab at nothing.

I feel Shay kneel down next to me, her knees sending puddle water up my arm. Her upper body leans over my head to peek into the darkness of the drain. After two seconds, she clutches at her chest as if she needs help to breathe.

“Shit,” I grunt out, pushing myself to my knees to see where all her other belongings went. Even though it's midday, it's too gray and foggy to make out much detail. But through the rain I can see her broken tablet, the Q-tips all along the road, and the roll of Ace bandage across the mud.

I lean back and swipe my face free of puddle water. “Guess we can't wrap it,” I say like a genius.

Shay's wide, panicked eyes slowly fall. Her mouth sets into a firm line, but I don't think she's pissed anymore even though she has every right to be. The loose gravel under her shoes crunches as she gets to her feet. I automatically reach out to help her, my hand clasping the crook of her elbow as she uses mine to steady herself. There's not a wince in her expression, not a tear or shred of panic, and I'm wondering if she's transferring that all onto me, because I sure as hell feel it.

Once she's steady, she loosens her grip, unclasping her fingers from my arm one by one. I push up on my knee, ready to hoist her over my shoulder and set her back in the car, but she starts limping toward the side of the road. Her arms are straight lines, parallel to the angle of her spine.

“What are you doing?” I call out.

“I'm hitching a ride!” She jabs a thumb out even though there is not a car in sight, and then starts marching down the side of the road, limping every other step.

She's lost her mind. It's disappeared with her stuff, and because I don't think she should be on her own—and I feel somewhat responsible for her breakdown—I snatch her ID from the center console, grab my carry-on, and drag it behind me as I catch up to her.

“You shouldn't walk on it if it's killing you.”

“I am not in the mood for a lecture.”

“You lecture me all the time. Eye for an eye.”

When she doesn't respond to my obvious teasing, I grab her upper arm and spin her toward me. Her watery eyes blaze hellfire at me.

“Let. Go.”

I do, slowly. Like she's a flight risk. “Damn it, Shay. I'm sor—”

Honk honk!

The horn makes us both jump, but I go backward while Shay leaps toward the road. She waves her arms at the semi, but I doubt the driver notices anyone that small through the rain and lack of light.

I see it seconds before it happens. The warning is right on the tip of my tongue. There's a puddle the size of Texas in front of her feet. The trucker doesn't see a damn thing other than the curve of the road in front of him. And the eighteen-wheeler barrels through that puddle at about forty-five miles per hour, sending that water twelve feet into the air.

Her hands fly up to protect her face, and the water splashes across her entire body. I reach out, getting my finger into her back belt loop, and I pull her to where I'm standing. She trips on her bad foot and topples backward into me before she rights herself.

She's covered. Mud from bottom to top, dripping down her hair and off her chin. She slides her glasses off, and her eyes and mouth pop open. The smallest sound escapes her lips, almost like a dog realizing that it's not getting any table scraps. And something kicks me
hard
in the stomach. It nudges at my chest and makes it incredibly difficult to see straight. The corners of my mouth turn up, and a gutful of laughter pushes from my throat.

“Stop!” she says, and her lips fight to stay in a straight line. She runs both her hands over the front of her hoodie, splashing muddy water at our feet. My stomach gets kicked again with another round of laughter…though as I let my gaze drift over her body, up and down across the muddy splatters and the clinging wetness of the oversized hoodie, I think more than just amusement is beating my gut.

I've never seen anyone look so damn adorable.

The thought catches me off guard. Almost pulls me down the storm drain with all her stuff.
Adorable
is the most terrifying adjective in the English language, especially right here, right now.

Adorable
means a
thousand
times more than
sexy
.

Sexy women I can handle. Sexy women are the ones I want to charm the pants off of. Sexy women are like Carletta Ocean—I can see them under me, backs arched and hair spread out against the sheets.

But adorable women…

I avoid adorable women. I run for the hills, leaving Jace-shaped holes everywhere I go. Adorable women hypnotize you with their innocent-looking grins and big doe eyes. They're the ones that catch you in their snares, holding on to your heart and squeezing it too tight when they cry or get hurt. Then squeeze it even harder when they're happy or excited.

They squeeze it the hardest when they are frustrated as hell.

And I can almost feel Shay's hand wrap around my ticker, nails digging into the organ as it drums louder and louder in my ears.

I have got to get my ass on a plane. Now.

Dropping her belt loop, I take three steps back. The rain pelts the top of my head, beating against my skull while I try—and fail—to think of anywhere for us to use a phone. My eyes keep drifting over her muddy oversized clothing, and I see that tidal wave on repeat, making a laugh rumble up through my gut again.

“Stop laughing!” she says, lips twitching and pulling…beating my stomach to bits as she fights a smile. Shay's always trying
not
to laugh around me. She told me during our third scene together.

S
HAY,
S
CENE
T
HREE
:
Setting: opening-night party my sophomore year at NYU.
We'd kept our distance after she thwapped me across the head during scene two. She was a junior-year business major, and I was a freshman theater major. So we didn't run into each other much outside the one class we shared. She was all work and no play while I sailed in the opposite direction. So it came as an entertaining shock when I spotted her across the room.

She was dancing with one of my buds, Alec. I remember thinking that if anyone could get in with Shay, he'd have the best chance. Alec's soft-spoken and never sticks his foot in his mouth by being an ass. He only fumbles in the nerdy/geeky way girls are into now. He had his hands on her hips, and she moved awkwardly against him. It was funny as hell.

When they stopped dancing, Alec leaned down to her ear and said something. She nodded and he wove his way through the crowd, leaving her there. Her hips still swayed to a beat that had to be only in her head, since it didn't match what was playing. I grinned, tossed my beer back, and waded through the sea of girls I'd been chatting with.

“Nice to see you outside of the Internet,” I shouted at her over the music. Shay might have disappeared physically off of my radar, but it was impossible not to see her meme at least once a week.

Shay startled back into another dancing couple, and before she could fall to the floor I reached out and pulled her close. I remember her smelling like peppermint schnapps. It made my mouth water.

Okay…I was drunk. I keep reminding myself of that whenever I recall scene three. I was hammered, plastered, pissed…whatever you want to call it. So when I pulled her tight to my body and started dancing, I was out of my damn skull.

She was shorter than the girls I was used to, and at first I thought maybe that was why it felt so weird to dance with her. Then I realized she was trying to get away from me, pushing at my chest with her wide eyes bugging out.

“Ew, no,” she said, and honestly, it cracked me up.

I dropped my arms and took a step back. “Haven't heard that one before.” It was a lie. I'd heard some version of that a few times.

“I'm surprised.”

And then, I swear, her eyes scoped me out. (It happened, even though she denies it now.)

“No, you're not,” I said with a cocky grin. “I bet you find nothing repulsive about me.”

“Just everything that comes out of your mouth.”

She said it with a smile, so I kept my own grin on my face, moving a bit closer to her.