“So get her home, say goodnight, then go back to your place. I’m on shift until daybreak, so if I hear any damn thing on the scanner about a ruckus in town, we both know who I’m coming to question.”
“We’re on the same page, Dawg.” I bring a hand up to salute him, smile for Will, then I toss my arm over Ally’s shoulders again and steer her in the direction we were already heading.
“Don’t look back,” I whisper just for her. “They’re trained snitches, and they don’t even care about potential ditches.”
“Gross,” she grumbles. “Why are people that way?”
“Beats me.”
I wave when Alex and Will cruise away, albeit slowwwwwwly. They creep along the street, and slow at the next intersection, and when they can’t avoid it any longer, they turn the corner and leave us be.
“Cops are weird folk, Allyson. In a way, a therapist is kinda the opposite, right? You get people to snitch to you, but then it’s locked up in the vault inside your brain where no one can touch it, not even lawyers or judges.”
“Well, I mean, a therapist’s notes can be subpoenaed for court proceedings, right?”
“I…” I purse my lips and try to think. “I dunno. I guess I never really thought about it.” Then I shrug. “Will you testify against me when I go back to court in a couple months?”
“Potentially. If you annoy me too much, I might be inclined to mention the drunk and disorderly behavior, and your penchant for ignoring me when I say we’re not gonna sleep together.”
“Oh please. I listened. We’re not fucking, are we?”
I wait for her answer, and smugly bark out a “No!” when she doesn’t speak. But then I stop when something catches my eye. “Though I did say we should get wild.” I look ahead of us, three or four doors down, to the Holy Grail of all stealable items. “Ally. You have a very important decision to make right now. Both options include getting wild. One is with clothes, the other is without.”
“I don’t know what yo—”
“Sex or no sex?
“Luke, I—”
“Sex or no sex!”
“No sex!”
“Deal.” I grab her hand and drag her along until she’s running all over again. “Move, move, move, move.”
Ally
Ludicrous
Sunlight filters through lace curtains, and a soft breeze follows so the lace ripples and draws me out of my fitful sleep. My eyes sting, and my mouth tastes like what I imagine the floor of a bar tastes like at the end of a long night. My skin is tight, feverishly hot. My nose is all stuffed up, dry and sore, which means, last night, I was a mouth-breather, and that’s gross.
I lay on my stomach, in a bed I don’t recognize, and when I try to turn over, I find I’m pinned to the mattress and unable to move.
My brows draw closer as my sluggish brain slowly comes to.
I try to move again, then a third time, and realize my skin is boiling hot because more than two hundred pounds of muscle hold me down, and a thick leg that probably weighs fifty pounds alone is pulled up and draped across the small of my back. My hair is splayed across my face, the ends tickle my nose, and below my cheek is a wet patch from my gross mouth-breathing and the resulting dribble.
I’m so effing classy.
My body aches, but I work on leveraging my companion’s leg off my bottom half.
My companion being Luke fucking Hart. Despite the fact I swore I would not.
He’s so heavy, so all-consuming as he drapes himself over me, but I inch my way to the right. Away from his arms, away from his legs. I fight for freedom, and pray to all the gods that I don’t wake him.
I don’t want an awkward morning-after talk. And though I can swear with almost a hundred percent certainty that we didn’t actually have sex – what, with the fact my dress and panties are still on, and there’s no ache between my legs that would be obvious, since it’s been much too long since I was last with a man – I still don’t want to chat. I don’t want the awkward ‘I told you so’ or the smug grin, so I worm my way to the edge of Luke’s bed, then I drop to the floor with an undignified squeak when my depth perception is still a little drunk, and I misread the distance from the bed to the floor.
One leg remains on the bed, while the rest of me splays on the floor on a pile of gym clothes – they smell of laundry detergent, not sweat, so that’s a plus – but still, my tailbone aches, and my legs are spread in a completely unladylike way.
Luke doesn’t move. Not a single inch, not even a snort or a repositioning to get comfortable after his human pillow left him. So I sit on the floor for a moment more, rub the heels of both hands over my aching eyes, and let out a soft groan. Because whether we slept together or not, we still slept together, and I’m still going to have to do the walk of shame.
“Shoulda just had sex,” I whimper. At least then, the walk wouldn’t be for nothing.
I climb to my feet with slow, painful movements, and as I peek around the room, I find nothing of mine but what’s on my body. No clutch, no phone, no shoes. Either they’re buried under the loads of laundry tossed around, or they’re simply not in here.
With a last glance for Luke and how annoyingly godlike he looks laid out half naked in his bed, I turn away and head through his door and into the hall. Looking left, then right, I decide the communal spaces are to my left, which means so is the exit.
In bare feet and on the tips of my toes, I make my way along the hall, past more baskets of clean laundry, and into the kitchen, only to muffle my yelp and jump back until my elbow slams against the doorframe.
The table is littered with shot glasses, playing cards, and an empty bottle of Jäger. My hand automatically goes to my stomach, because perhaps now I have answers. A dozen shot glasses, all empty, but all sticky with leftover alcohol, and beside them, the bottle, turned on its side, no cap.
My stomach swirls at the memory, and my brain insists I will never again think ‘Jägermeister’ without wanting to barf all over and curse Luke Hart to the universe.
Strangely, despite the booze and the memories slapping the back of my brain, that’s not what makes my heart race. Because beside the fridge is a plastic statue that stands at least six feet tall and is shaped like a soft serve ice cream. His feet are massive, his smile creepy, and he has his thumb up, as though to help sell it all… whatever “it” may be. Beside him, a llama of the same height. Polka-dot-bikini-wearing, and a wicked grin, like the ice cream man and the llama had their own Jäger fun last night, minus the alcohol poisoning.
My purse rests on the llama’s head like a pill hat, and on the floor in front of his two front feet are my heels. He’s not wearing them, but perhaps for a moment last night, I wondered if they would look good with the bikini.
With no warning, a coffee machine on the counter to my right starts sputtering. It’s like rise of the machines, like the universe thinks I can handle more surprises right now… though if I were able to think clearly, I would acknowledge that coffee machines have timers these days, and perhaps the universe is looking out for me.
I remain standing in place, but I scour the kitchen for cups. For mugs. Hell, a frying pan would suffice at this at this point. So when I find a stack sitting high up above where I can reach, I tiptoe to the kitchen table and grab one of the chairs I must’ve occupied last night. The chairs are wooden, dented, and mismatched, but they’re solid. Not a single creak or sway.