Page 5 of Destroyed

"Go on," she says.

"I’ve liked keeping things loose and free the last few years. I had that couple I was seeing a few months back and I stopped seeing them before your wedding. And I've stopped texting that co-worker Dave for random sex. I even stopped going clubbing unless it was with Xavier."

Riley is just looking at me, nodding her head. It annoys me.

"So I'm pissed. I'm pissed he doesn't remember me, and I'm pissed I care this much about him and how he feels and what happened in his past and that he never told me about it!"

She smiles. "There it is."

"What?" I snap.

"The true problem," she starts, "is that you've fallen in love and you didn't want it to be true. And now you know for sure that it is."

"Don't be gross and cheesy," I say, picking up the shot of whiskey the waitress dropped off. I take it in one gulp and chase it with a sip of my martini. "It's just that Xavier and I are fun. The sex is fun, the conversation is fun, and he's never made me feel like I couldn't keep doing what I had been doing. Which was sleeping with other people as I saw fit. And I never asked him about what he got up to."

"He hasn't been 'up' to anything other than your vag for at least three months," she says, laughing. "He likes you too, Corrine. He may not have all his memories now, but they will return. You heard what the doctor said.”

She picks up her drink. “And when they do, you can return to how things were." She smiles and reaches across the table to touch my hand with her free one. "Or maybe you take a chance, hoping it'll be even better when you're bothhonest." She enunciates the word.

"We'll fucking see about that," I say, taking another sip of my martini so I don't start openly crying in the bar. What do I do now? It’s not like I chose to fall for Xavier in the first place. In fact, I tried pretty damn hardnotto. When we’d first met at Lock & Key, the high-end nightclub downtown that turned out to be a sex club, I’d assumed the evening with Xavier would end there. It would be a night of fun and drinks in an atmosphere where I felt in my prime.

We had hit it off quickly; though we were both wearing masks the night of the grand opening, I could instantly see that Xavier was a good-looking, confident guy who took charge. He’d come up to the couch Riley and I had been sitting on, and we were watching an orgy in the middle of the room, making me hot and bothered.

But then, when we ended up alone together as Riley chased after Sebastian a bit later, I found he liked the same things I did.

Sex.

Drinking.

Oh, and sex. Did I say that?

We had wandered Lock and Key together, grabbing drinks at the different bars and watching people grind against each other to fulfill the needs their bodies created as they watched carnal activities taking place around them. I’d admired the girls on the stage in the main room and I caught him staring at me more than once as I appreciated the women as equally as the men.

I surprised him that night. I also excited him. From what I knew about Riley’s law office, Bolt Corporation lawyers thoughtthey were hot shit. He’d probably never been with someone who could easily say no to him.

So that’s exactly what I did. We kept drinking and watching others have sex until I had reached my max. I had texted my then-hookup, or hookups, Jade and Kevin, and they’d picked me up at the club. I still remember the look on Xavier’s face when I said, “This was fun, but I have a date.”

“At 4:00 in the morning?” he had asked me, clearly confused.

“Intimacy happens at all hours,” I’d told him, then walked out of the club with a smile. It was no loss on my part. I had plenty of fun with my playmates at my place after that.

But Xavier hadn’t given up. He had tracked me down only days later when we all started realizing that Riley was not sick at home but being held captive by her fucking psychotic husband, Nate. Xavier had come to my place, where Riley had been staying, to take time away from Nate, and we’d worried and raged together.

I was fucking scared when we realized what had happened. At that time, I didn’t have friends to turn to, nor did I want to tell our parents everything happening. All they knew was that Riley and Nate were having issues, and Riley was staying with me.

So when Sebastian found her and took her back to his place to recover, I learned more about Riley’s new boss and his friends. Though they were complete playboys, they were also savagely devoted and loyal to those they cared about. And I saw that Xavier cared for Riley and, in turn, me too.

She was in and out of consciousness for those early days home, but I stayed close by, filling Sebastian in on her progress. She was too shell-shocked to want to see anyone else, especially a man. But she got better, and I helped her see that what was starting between her and Sebastian was one million times more important than a piece of paper that tied her to crazy Nate Green. She’d felt so much shame and that was something I couldnever tolerate. There was no reason to feel bad about the desire she had instantly had for Sebastian, nor for the shit she had to go through with Nate. She got handed some crappy shit.

But all that’s over, and now Sebastian and Riley are disgustingly happy, and I just want to go back to my casual lifestyle with Xavier that was starting to become about more than the sex.

But if he doesn’t want me around and doesn’t remember what wewerelike, I see it as having two options: I wait for him to come around and hope it’ll be the same, or I convince myself I don’t need him anymore.

Neither seems fun.

Chapter 3

Xavier

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