Page 43 of Play With Me

I also didn’t move as they walked across the street, he securely holding her by the arm so that she wouldn’t twist her ankle in her six-inch heels. I simply turned around so that my back would be to them as they passed me.

“You’re definitely a special kind of woman, Evie,” I heard Brook say.

“You’re only saying that because you know you have to be nice to me.”

“I would never do that to you, Evie. I made you a promise a long time ago, and I’m going to keep it.”

She giggled, and then their voices blended with the rest of the traffic.

I grabbed the chain-link fence, my fingers gripping the steel wires until I was sure they could keep me upright should my legs give in.

What was happening to me? Why did that hurt so much? I was the one who chose to leave. I needed the distance; or did I?

My drive home in the rain put me in a worse mood when I almost ran over a cat, and so as soon as I crossed the threshold, I removed my soaked clothes, including my bra, and grabbed a chilled bottle of wine. I popped some corn on the stove, crawled on the couch underneath the covers, then watchedThe Notebook.

Twice.

Yes, I went there.

I didn’t quite remember if I cried the soppy kind of tears or the kind that squeezed all the wine I’d drunk straight out of that bottle through my tear ducts. But there was definitely crying involved.

Then there was nothing. Nothing but pounding and swelling in the middle of my brain. It overtook every thought. It throbbed to the point of waking me. I squinted, then blocked the direct sunlight on my face with my hand before shifting into a shaded area.

I could tell I was still on the living room couch because the leather stuck to my naked legs at places where the sheepskin covers had shifted.

“Ouch.” I touched my head.

“Need a pill?”

I jumped up at the deep voice, suddenly way more aware of my surroundings than I’d been a second ago. Wearing a black suit, Brook was sitting on an adjacent chaise.

“Fuck! Don’t scare me like that.”

He held out his hand with a pill and passed me a bottle of water without saying anything else. As soon as I saw him skim over my naked legs and adjust his crotch, I covered my lower half with a blanket.

“It’s not going to help.” He smirked.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not wearing a shirt and I already saw that your nipples are harder than stones.”

I wrapped the blanket around my whole body, took the pill from his hand and swallowed it, emptying the entire bottle of water.

“Thank you. How did you get in?”

“You gave me your key, remember?”

That was true.

“What are you doing here?” I tightened the hold on the blanket at my chest.

“I’m here to take you to a meeting with Emma. It’s about Xavier Black”

All leads on Xavier were dead. What was he talking about?

“I think she would have called me if there was a meeting.”

She would have called me because I was heading Xavier’s case. She would have asked me to investigate, so Brook was either that much better at hunting and pulling meetings out of a hat or he was bluffing.

---