These Things About Us (15 page)

Trace tried pulling off again, but I still hung onto him. Some part of me knew that I was being pathetic but he’d been the one to keep me safe for weeks now. If there was a life raft in this room to keep me from drowning, it was him. “I want to stay with Trace,” I mumbled.

Wes clicked his tongue and then left without further ado. After Wes was gone, Trace stood up and twisted his hands in my grip to hold my arms instead of my face and pull me out of the chair.
“We’re going upstairs anyway. You should get into bed.”

“I’m not tired,” I said but only two steps towards the door I realized that I was utterly exhausted. Not only were my limbs heavy, but my feet ached with each step and my eyelids were close to dropping shut while I was still walking.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

He was right behind me on the steps with his hands on my back, and I was glad to have them there because I wasn’t far from dropping down and falling asleep on spot. The last two flights of stairs we managed mostly thanks to him pushing me upstairs.

He put me into my room and sat me down on my bed where I struggled out of my jeans and then fought my way into the blanket. Trace asked something but my mind was already cloudy and light and I just turned down whatever he was offering. 

I awoke with Trace’s smell tingling my nose and a happy smile spread faster on my lips than last night’s memories could pop back into my mind.
But then they did. Reese in the narrow hallway, coming closer and laying his hands on me.
I wasn’t as distraught by what he tried to do as I was by what I had done. I had yet to meet the girl with moderate looks that had not yet been the target of unwanted sexual attention. I wasn’t new to that sort of experience. The other thing held more power over me. Me turning him into a punching bag.

I sighed and turned to grab my phone off my nightstand but froze mid-turn. Trace was half-lying on my bed, half-sitting in my chair. His arms were folded under his head and his earrings glistened in the early sun. He also made the funniest squeaky noise when he exhaled. Most importantly though: he was sound asleep next to me and I didn’t wear pants.

I slid out from under the covers and tiptoed over to the closest thing I could find, which was a pair of black leggings. I jumped into them, checked if Trace was still sleeping, then turned to my suitcase to put on a shirt that would cover how tight the leggings were over my butt.

“An angel?”

I froze. Even if the owner of that raspy, just-woken-up voice was possibly the safest person to be around, I hadn’t wanted him to see that. He knew I had a past, but only because I’d told him. I didn’t mean to unwrap more of it for him like this.

“Did you design it yourself?” he asked, either oblivious to my stiffness or insensible to it.

“No, a former friend of mine did,” I said forced my muscles to relax. I couldn’t make him unsee the tattoo. There was no use in denying him any more questions. Maybe if he knew more about who I used to be, he’d understand why I freaked out at the prospect of relapsing. “I can’t draw, but I told her what I wanted and she did a great job.”

“Why an angel?” Trace rubbed his fingers into his eyes and peeled the sleep out. How he could be so invested in a topic when he’d just woken up was beyond me.

“It’s not an angel. It’s Lilith. Adam’s first wife who was so independent, dominant and rebellious that God killed her children to punish her. She kind of turned into a winged demon and did a lot of bad stuff to take revenge. I used to think she’s a good role model.” I shrugged and headed back to the bed to grab my phone and check the time. 7.20 am. We had barely slept five hours.

“It looked like an angel to me,” Trace grinned.

“You didn’t get a close enough look.” His eyebrows shot up and he leaned back in his seat with his hands behind his head like he was about to get his very own show. “And you’re not going to get one either,” I grinned and tossed one of my pillows his way.

He caught the pillow and threw it back on the mattress. “I’m fine sleeping here another night and watching you change.”

“Pervert.” A knot tightened in my stomach at the word and reminded me why Trace was here in the first place.

“What the fuck did I say? Why are you frowning like that?”

“You didn’t say anything. I just almost forgot last night.” 

“Let me help you.” His hand slid over the crumpled blankets and reached for mine, and I let him take it. “Just tell me how. I’ll do it.”

My fingers looked tiny in his hands, almost childlike. Pictures of all the uncontrolled, x-rated thoughts and dreams I’d had of him flashed through my memory and half a dozen supplied me with dirty answers on how he could help me. I pulled my hand out of his and let my curls fall into my face to hide the blood boiling under my skin. “It’s okay. I mean, I’m still a good person, right? I don’t drink, I don’t sleep around, I show up for work on time, I try to be nice to people. I’m… Mostly doing okay.” Trace said nothing. He didn’t even move but since I wouldn’t look up again for fear my cheeks were still flaming red I just continued talking. “You didn’t have to stay with me, you know?” Although I was glad he had been here all night. No wonder I had slept peacefully with my own security guy right next to me.

“I asked if you wanted to be alone and you said no.”

“Oh.” So that was that question I couldn’t remember correctly. “But you could have left the second I was asleep.”

“I thought you might wake up scared and alone. I could prevent the alone part.”

I pushed my hair back and saw him watching me. He didn’t look away when I caught him and it made the back of my neck tingle. How could he just say things like that and look at me like I was worth being taken good care of? I didn’t know how to reply. At least I had a clue how to handle Trace when he was angry and unfriendly.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said through a crooked grin.

“How am I looking at you?” He was the one who should stop looking at me in ways that made the hairs on my arms rise.

“You won’t like my answer.”

“Tell me, please.”

Trace leaned over and played with one of my curls. I watched how he straightened it and how it bounced back into its natural form. “You look at me like that with your big eyes and I think of ripping those clothes off your body. That’s why you have to stop.” My mouth hung open. I was sure I had misheard. He tore his eyes from my hair and looked at me. “See? I told you, you wouldn’t like the truth.”

The problem was that there was a very stupid part of me that loved his answer. Said stupid part was also responsible for the heat rising in my body and the blood hammering in my ears. The stupid part wanted to grab Trace and make him a man of his word. The smart part, however, managed to gain control over my tongue. “But you don’t like me.” Okay, maybe that part wasn’t so smart after all.

He gave a husky laugh. “You irritate me. You confuse me. And you fascinate me.”

“You have to stop being interested in me.” My intelligence rose back to life. “I have to stop making mistakes and maybe I have to figure out how to date like a normal person but that’s not something I can focus on right now. I have to find my mother first. That’s what I came to England for.”

“Why do you have to find her? You’re an adult.”

“But I need somewhere I belong. I sure as hell don’t belong to my dad anymore and I don’t really belong here either.” I rubbed my fingers over my temples. A killer headache was starting to build behind them.

Sierra had been right: Trace was interested in me. I couldn’t run like she’d advised me to because I still needed this job and this room, plus I knew that I’d be lying to myself if I claimed that I wanted to run from Trace. Even after telling me he wanted to see me naked I felt safe here with him. He wouldn’t act on his words because he put my well-being first. Somewhere beneath that scratchy attitude and all the ‘fuck’s he tossed around, there was the guy who genuinely cared that I got home safely and that I wasn’t hurt.

“What about you and Wes?” He ripped me out of my thoughts.

“What about me and Wesley?”

Trace’s face transformed from confused to amused before deep laughter burst from his chest. He sat back, all tenseness fading from his body. “He’s going to pay for that. Little fuck. Letting me think you two were madly in love. It
was
you banging on my door.”

Oh, right. Trace hadn’t known about the fake part of the fake sex.

“Wesley and I never…”

“Thanks, I just figured that out.”

After Trace had left my room, I busied myself with the camera. I had taken fifty pictures of every piece of furniture in the room by the time the battery died on me and I had nothing left to distract myself with but my phone - which I would stare at for hours and contemplate whether enough time had passed since stealing Sabrina’s phone or if I shouldn’t call ‘Lawrence’ just yet, only to put the phone down eventually and be a crack closer to breaking apart completely.

Considering my limited resources I jumped under the shower and spent enough time scrubbing away the last 24 hours’ worth of grease to turn my fingertips into prunes. I had managed to keep my thoughts Trace-less until I was toweling down and someone knocked on the bathroom door. The idea of him being out there just three feet away from me and my nakedness squeezed the air out of my lungs.

“I still need a couple of minutes,” I gasped.

“Let me know when you’re done? I’ll be in my room,” Wesley yelled through the door. Not Trace. I hadn’t even realized how tense I was until my muscles slackened.

“Sure,” I answered and yanked my panties up my legs.

I slipped back into my leggings and the long T-shirt and twisted my hair into two thick braids before I went to knock on Wesley’s door.

“Come in!”

I entered to see him sitting on the bed with his laptop on his knees and his backpack lying next to him. It had to be amazing to get to study. You had something to do during the day and you could learn more about whatever interested you the most. You could meet people. Smart people. Normal people. And then, afterwards, if you were lucky you got a job you were passionate about. I hadn’t wanted all that until it hadn’t been an option anymore. “You can have the bathroom.”

“Thanks. Hey, how are you? Is everything alright?” He closed the laptop and placed it next to him before he wiggled himself to the end of his bed. “Last night was crazy.”

“You have no idea,” I sighed. “But Trace helped.”

“He broke that asshole’s nose. I’m happy you’re alright but guess who got to clean up all the blood?”

I wanted to insist that he had his facts mixed up but I snapped my mouth shut. Trace hadn’t only pulled me aside to take care of me. He had taken the blame. Maybe he was a knight in shining armor undercover as a tattooed bartender/singer/songwriter. Or maybe he just wanted to get into my pants very badly. No, I was actually sure that he wasn’t only being nice to lure me into his bed. Men who wanted to get laid were nice in the most obvious ways, always highlighting how very gentlemanly they were behaving in case you weren’t paying attention.

Wes scooped up a towel and a pair of jeans. “So you’re okay?” he asked and came to a stop before me.

I nodded and smiled up at him. “Yeah, I’m okay. Enjoy your shower, I still have to thank Trace for what he did.” I scurried out to the hall and stopped at Trace’s door where I waited for Wesley to disappear into the bathroom until I lifted my fist. Before I could knock, the door swung open and Trace fell a step back to avoid a collision. He had changed into a pair of dark blue jeans and my grey sweater.

“You want it back?” he asked.

“I…” I tilted my neck to forget the shirt and remember why I came here.
“Yes, actually, I do. But that’s not why I’m here.
I wanted to ask you something.”

“Walk with me? Vince is waiting downstairs.”

“Okay, sure.” We headed for the stairs and I twisted my body to look back at him. “Wesley just told me that you broke Reese’s nose but I know for a matter of fact that my knee did the damage.”

“Is that your question?” The staircase wasn’t wide enough to walk next to each other, so Trace pressed past me, then turned around and took the stairs backwards in order to face me.

“Did you tell everyone that you beat him up?”

He looked over his shoulder. Whether it was to check for eavesdroppers or to avoid plummeting down the stairs I didn’t know. “I didn’t tell them otherwise,” he said. “When a tiny girl and a big guy leave a man lying in a room, messed up like that, who would you assume is responsible?”

“The big guy, of course. But you still could have set things straight.”

“What good would that do? And for the record, my fist and his face had a date when I threw him out of here.”

“Trace! He was already hurt.”

“He deserved it,” he grunted and turned around on the last step.

Alex’s strained voice came from the office and Vincent, in all his blue hair and tight leather pants glory, was leaning against the bar, balancing a glass of water on two fingers. He quickly put it down on the counter when he saw Trace. Then his eyes fell to my level. “The American!” His lips bowed into a wide smile. “Didn’t know you were coming with us. Otherwise I would have cleaned the car.”

“Uhm… I’m not. Where are you going?”

“We’re going to visit my mother,” Trace explained.

Wesley had never talked about their mother. “Why isn’t Wes coming with you?”

“The boy is not speaking to his own mother,” Vince chimed in.
“Can we share stories of our screwed up families in the car?
We’re going to get stuck in traffic.” He twirled around on the heels of his shoes and took a long, demonstrative stride towards the door. I bet this guy was some sort of actor or dancer. He had that sort of body control.

“You should come. Unless you prefer sitting in your room all day.”

I didn’t know how to politely tell him that I had no idea how to deal with mothers, so I should probably not meet his unless he was prepared for chaos. I settled on a reply that was easier to stomach than my family trauma. “It’s not Tuesday yet. I’ve got to work.”