Текст книги "Playing with Trouble"
Автор книги: Chanel Cleeton
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
Chapter Eight
With just a couple weeks until the election, all eyes are on the Reynolds family. Will Senator Reynolds keep his seat or is another scandal poised to take him down?
—Capital Confessions blog
Blair
His voice broke the spell in the car, pulling me back to reality, reminding me that this was the man who tormented me weekly, the man who’d basically admitted he was a disaster. This was not me. This was touching the stove and then acting surprised when I got burned.
I tried to jerk my hand back, wishing I could jump over to the other side of the line, but Gray held me in place, his fingers gripping mine. He didn’t hold me like he was trying to keep me there; he held me like I was a life preserver he needed to keep from drowning. I knew because I held him the same way.
You are in so much trouble.
“Why?”
I asked the question because I had to know, needed him to give me the rest of the pieces of the puzzle. Needed him to explain why he kissed me back and then fled.
“Because I want you. I’ve wanted you since the beginning. Since you walked into my class that day.”
The revelation that he’d wanted me since the beginning, that I wasn’t crazy or alone in feeling this way, lit me up inside, even as it terrified me. I wanted the rest of it; some part of me demanded it.
“Why?”
“Because I ruin everything I touch. Every time.”
I didn’t know how bad his baggage was, but if he thought I’d lived some charmed, easy life, he was off the mark.
“And you think what, exactly? That you’re protecting me from the Big Bad Wolf?”
His jaw clenched.
No fucking way.
“I take it you don’t read the gossip columns?”
He made a face. “Yeah, right before I get my fucking nails done.”
“Cute.”
He shrugged.
“I was engaged.”
That got a reaction.
“You were engaged.”
“I was.”
“What happened?”
“It didn’t work out.”
“Why?”
I shook my head, not quite ready to spill all of my secrets. “You first.”
A look of surprise crossed his face and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Are you negotiating with me now?”
I nodded. “I read your bio.” It was a small concession to make when I was curious for more, and after my mouth had basically assaulted his, I couldn’t be bothered to care.
“How did you go from a successful private practice in Chicago to teaching at Hannover?”
His mouth tightened, and suddenly, seven years between us seemed like so much more. He looked hard and jaded, and I knew my question had pissed him off.
“I had a problem.” Dark humor filled his voice. “Several, actually.”
His gaze shuttered, the heat that had been flickering at me, teasing me, completely evaporated.
Caitlin’s words came back to me, and I knew whatever his story was, it was bad.
Maybe I’d pushed him too far. Maybe I was stupid to think that there was a tame side to him, that there was more than the professor who barked at me from the front of the room three days a week.
“Aren’t you going to ask what it was? What they were?”
There was a dare in his question. I ignored it.
I turned away, staring out the window, out of range of those dark eyes that only seemed to lure me deeper.
I felt him around me even though we weren’t touching. His anger was palpable, pushing at me. This was the man I saw in the classroom. The man who infuriated me and made me want. This was the dangerous man who pulled me into a game I didn’t know how to play.
Gray’s hand touched my elbow and I froze. He’d moved closer to me—too close. I could feel his big body at my back, could smell the scent of his cologne surrounding me. If I rocked back, if I moved an inch in my seat, I’d feel him against me. My brain told me to move forward. To jerk my body out of his grasp. To take my hand back.
I stayed still, somewhere between where I should be and where I wanted to be.
He turned me to face him, his hand on my elbow warm against my bare skin. His gaze was solemn as it met mine, and for a moment, I stared into the dark depths, wondering what I’d find there.
“Strippers, booze, and blow.”
Holy shit.
What the fuck was I doing?
I felt my jaw drop open, knew I probably looked horribly appalled, and yet, I couldn’t get that expression off of my face.
“I’ve shocked you.” His jaw was tight, his emotions locked behind what might as well have been an iron wall. He was the one with the poker face now.
I’d grown up around politics. I wasn’t naive; maybe a bit sheltered, but not naive. There was nothing about his tale I hadn’t heard before. I still wasn’t prepared.
“No. Yes. I—”
“What?” He fired the question at me in a tone made for the courtroom and I flinched under his scrutiny.
“I don’t know.”
I was vehemently antidrug. Like, wouldn’t even consider smoking pot. It wasn’t even something my father had drilled into me, it was just my own personal dislike for it. I’d had friends in high school who did drugs and I hated being around them when they were high, never understood the risks they took for the pleasure they got from it. Everything for me was carefully weighed in terms of risk and reward. If I was going to utterly fuck up my future, then you’d better believe the payout would be amazing.
Nothing had ever come close.
“You could have been disbarred for the drugs.”
His mouth turned grim. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
It wasn’t any of my business, but because I’d liked kissing him, because some part of me wanted to do it more, I demanded the rest. Thanks to that kiss, we were no longer at the beginning of this. The second our bodies had found each other, we’d fast-forwarded somewhere to the middle, and now I was trying to catch up.
We’d had a panel of attorneys come and talk to us about mental health and substance abuse issues in one of our first-year seminars and the numbers they’d given us were staggering.
Lawyers were almost four times more likely to suffer from depression than non-lawyers. State bar associations were concerned with the growing number of suicides within their ranks. Around 20 percent of lawyers suffered from alcoholism and substance abuse. I knew it was one of the dark sides of the profession, hell, I’d seen it more times than I could count among my father’s political allies.
It was still difficult to understand.
He didn’t speak; I wondered if he wasn’t going to answer me, if I’d asked for more than he was willing to give. And then he spoke, and gave me more than I’d ever expected.
“I was hired by a small but prestigious firm right out of law school. It was the kind of place where you could make a killing if you were willing to work your ass off. I was. I caught a couple of big cases, had a few large settlements go my way, and suddenly I was making more money in a year than my parents had made in their entire lives.”
His gaze clouded. “I was young, and I was stupid, and everything happened so quickly, and I made some shitty decisions. I worked hard, but on the weekends I partied hard. I don’t even remember the first time I did a line, just that it soon became more of a habit and less of a weekend thing.
“In the beginning, I told myself it was no big deal. Just me blowing off steam. Work hard, play harder, and all of that bullshit. And then little by little, inch by inch, it began seeping over into all aspects of my life, and what I thought I’d had under control began to control me.”
I’d gone to an elite prep school and I was all too familiar with casual drug use. He described a world I’d been exposed to for years. Power and money had a way of making people think the rules didn’t apply to them. That they could be invincible.
It really wasn’t that different from the way I’d grown up with my father. Power was his drug of choice and his addiction obliterated his family.
“The more money I made,” Gray continued, “the more it began taking over my life. My partners intervened before it ruined my work, but it was close. Too fucking close.” He looked away from me, staring down at his hands, his body strung tight. “You don’t need to hear how ugly it was. Trust me. I wish I could forget it all. Wish I could take it back.
“I went to rehab,” he continued. “I’m clean now. Hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done. I haven’t touched coke in a year.”
I swallowed. “And the drinking?”
“I don’t drink. I’ve been sober for a year now.”
His eyes goaded me, pushing me to ask for the rest. It was like he was daring me to leave, to sever the connection between us.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Every single intelligent, sensible part of me screamed that this was a whole lot of baggage I didn’t need in my life. And still, something held me in place.
Gray’s hand stroked mine, his thumb tracing circles on my skin.
His gaze met mine, and I forgot where I was, and all the reasons I shouldn’t feel anything for him. He was a train wreck, and I’d never been the kind of girl who wanted to fix a man or found baggage sexy. The world was full of screwed up guys; I didn’t need to go looking for one. But even though I hadn’t gone looking for trouble, apparently trouble had found me.
And I let it hold me close when I probably should have pushed it away.
“And the rest?” I couldn’t actually say the word, strippers.
“Just wrecked my marriage.”
And just like that, my stomach clenched.
He’d been married.
Gray
The second I told her the truth about all of it, as soon as those words left my mouth, I hated myself. I shouldn’t have told her. I didn’t know why I did. Her lips had me spilling all of my secrets with more skill than a seasoned interrogator.
I’d meant to warn her off; I just hadn’t been prepared for how well it would work. Or how shitty I’d feel when she looked at me like I’d disappointed her.
“You were married?” Her voice squeaked out the words, her cheeks red.
“Divorced now. It’s been almost two years. It was bad before, but once we separated, it was like I was on a mission to self-destruct.”
Blair opened her mouth and closed it, as if she had a question she wanted to ask, but couldn’t get up the balls to do it. Maybe she was trying to be polite. Maybe I’d horrified her into silence.
I just kept talking, giving her more than she’d asked for, more than I’d intended to give. That was the dangerous thing about Blair. She didn’t even have to try and she pulled everything out, unraveling you thread by thread.
“We were only married for two years before it all fell apart. We were a bad fit from the start, but my problems didn’t help. She left me and maybe there was a chance, if I’d cleaned myself up, that we could have gotten back together. But I kept partying, more and more. There were girls. It all just became one big ride I couldn’t pull myself off of. In the end, she found another guy, a better guy with a stable job, who made her happy.
“One day my partners demanded I go into rehab. Fucking up my marriage wasn’t enough to give me a wake-up call. But my career? My wife was my mistress and my job was my wife. So yeah, at the threat of losing all I built, I cleaned myself up. Too little, too late.
“My personal life fucked me professionally. When things started blowing up in Chicago, I needed an out. My ex-wife’s father is a well-known federal court judge. They were out for blood, and it became clear that my odds of finding a good job in the Chicago legal community were coming to an end.”
Blair didn’t speak, just kept staring at me with a searching gaze. I didn’t know if she was attempting to unearth my secrets or sketch my character, but either way, I’d just given her everything. I doubted I’d come out looking good.
Was that what I’d intended all along? I didn’t even know anymore. This girl had my head so fucked I didn’t know which way was up.
An uneasy silence settled between us, as if we’d both shared more than we’d wanted to, and we choked on the intimacy we’d created.
And then she spoke, and just when I’d thought I’d emptied myself out for her, she yanked the rest from me.
“Why me? Why’d you tell me all of this? I don’t see you going to lunch with the other professors; you don’t appear to be close to any students. No one else at school seems to know what happened with you. Why tell me?”
“Because I like you.”
I wanted to fucking disappear as soon as I said the words. I’d meant to fob her off and instead I’d put it all out there. And even worse, as soon as I said it, I realized how true it was. It wasn’t just about sex anymore. I did like her and I had no clue how the hell that had happened. I’d definitely never meant to like her.
This was so fucked-up.
Her cheeks colored at my announcement and another wave of embarrassment sucker punched me. I waited for the polite dismissal I definitely deserved, but she stayed silent, nailing inscrutable.
“What happened with your fiancé?” I asked again, returning to her earlier announcement, needing to shift the focus off of me, not ready to expound on I like you, not sure I even had more to say. I hadn’t even worked out my answer and I definitely didn’t like the way she sat there studying me. She might have been twenty-three, but she had old eyes. Scarily perceptive eyes.
“He cheated on me,” she answered, her voice soft. She looked away from me, staring down at her hands and something clenched in my stomach.
Fuck.
If I’d wanted to put some distance between us, mission accomplished.
“What happened?”
“I found him having sex with his best man in the changing room of the church on our wedding day. I was nervous; I think I knew things weren’t right between us, and I went to talk to him before the ceremony.” She let out a sad laugh. “I don’t even know why I went or what I was looking for. I think I just hoped that he would make me feel better about everything. That he’d convince me that we were meant to be together. But the second I caught them together that was it. I found out he was gay and they were in love. I called off the wedding.”
Jesus.
“My father tried to spin it—reelection season and all that—but that stupid Capital Confessions blog got ahold of the story and we’ve been plagued with gossip ever since.” She looked up and met my gaze, her voice strained. “So I do know a little something about having your dirty laundry aired for the world to see.”
“It’s not entirely the same, though. What happened to you wasn’t your fault. What happened to me was mine.”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking I should have realized something was off. That if I’d paid more attention, if I’d been honest with myself, I would have known. I should have known. Who misses something like that?”
“It’s not your fault.”
She shrugged. “Regardless, it stayed with me. He was at my parents’ party. I owe you thanks for that, by the way.”
“What did I do?”
“You distracted me. I was so nervous about seeing him and, at the end of the day, I didn’t even think about it.”
“After all that, your parents invited him to their party?”
“Wealthy donors with deep pockets are hard to come by,” she answered, her voice quiet.
“Your father’s an asshole.”
“Yeah. He kind of is. When the engagement fell apart my parents sort of lost it.”
“They were pissed at you?”
“They aren’t big on scandal. Ironic given everything that’s happened with my father lately. The wedding was supposed to be a PR opportunity right before the election. Camelot and all that. I sort of ruined the image. Law school was a compromise.”
It sounded like less of a compromise and more like her trying to fulfill everyone’s expectations of her.
“You’re not close?”
“Let’s just say things with my family are complicated.”
“More complicated?”
She nodded. “I’m guessing you also missed the news that my father had an extramarital affair and fathered a child?”
Jesus.
Maybe it was how spectacularly I’d fucked up my own life, but I was impressed by her ability to keep her shit together in spite of all that drama.
“You always seem like you have everything together. Grace under fire and all that.”
She shook her head. “Trust me, it’s not necessarily what it looks like.”
“It’s exactly what it looks like. Other people would probably lose their shit in the face of all the things you’ve dealt with. Not to mention, your first semester of law school can be its own brand of hellish torture. You’re doing really well. You should be proud.”
Blair
I didn’t feel like it. In fact, lately it felt like all I heard was all the ways I was fucking up. His words meant a lot more than I thought they would.
Each one loosened something in me, and I moved closer to him without even realizing it, as though I wanted the comfort he gave me, our bodies inches away from each other.
His eyes darkened, heat blasting back at me. I swallowed, my stomach tight, waiting to see what he would do next.
Everything about him screamed bad idea. I’d just ended a relationship with a guy who cheated on me on my wedding day, had seen the devastation my father’s infidelity had caused. Had seen firsthand how power and greed could wreck lives. The last thing I needed or wanted was more baggage, especially someone dealing with some dark stuff I wasn’t equipped to handle. And he was my law professor. I needed to keep reminding myself of this.
“I want you,” he whispered, the confession sending another tremor through my body.
Fuck.
It was the whisper that did me in. There were so many tones to his voice and they each showed a different facet of his personality. The professor gave me arrogance delivered with cold, clipped words. The man who was surprisingly easy to talk to gave me patience and even laughter. And the man who looked at me now like he wanted to strip my clothes from my body and fuck me in the backseat of his car gave me whispers throbbing with temptation, sex, and promise.
I closed my eyes, rooted to the spot where our flesh met. Bound by his hand and his words. This was a moment for whispers, a moment when the images we showed the rest of the world were replaced by the people we were underneath all of the pretense and civility.
This was madness. Undeniable madness.
I didn’t know if it was the dance, or the kiss, or all of the restlessness that had been building inside me for months—Thom, law school, this crazy arousal that hummed in my veins—but sensible had gone out the window. I was so sick of playing it safe, of hiding behind a mask that sucked the life out of me more and more each day.
“Why me?” My voice shook as I pushed the words out.
I needed to understand; some secret, dark part of me wanted to hear him say he felt the same way I did, that I wasn’t the only one who had completely and utterly lost control.
I’d never had a lot of power with men. I saw how Jackie was with Will—all she had to do was look at him, and he would do anything for her. He was hooked by her and she by him.
Even before I’d found out why my fiancé didn’t seem all that into me, I’d known he wasn’t hooked by me. He was sweet, and—I’d thought—loyal, and things had been easy between us. We hadn’t been the type of couple to get into fights or break up a lot. We hadn’t cared enough to. He hadn’t cared enough about me. I saw the virtue of easy, but sometimes easy was lazy, and in that moment, I didn’t want easy.
I wanted a man who would walk over glass for me, a man who would care enough to fight for me. I wanted a man who would work for me, so my gaze narrowed as I made him work for it.
Gray shook his head, breaking the connection between us. His voice was sandpaper sliding over my electrified, sensitive skin.
“I don’t know.”
I forced myself to look at him, nowhere near satisfied with his explanation. He’d given me easy—a boy’s answer—and he was all man.
“I don’t believe you.”
His breath hitched. “What do you mean?”
His fingers squeezed mine, his hand sliding into place until our palms connected and we were joined wrist to fingertip.
I struggled to form the words, so focused on how good it felt to hold his hand.
“You aren’t the kind of guy who just does something. Why me?”
He sighed as though the words pained him. “All that calm—the polite smiles, the pearls, the elegant voice—it’s just there for show. It’s not you. This is you.”
I wasn’t sure about that. I was afraid that was all there was with me. That I was the beige girl who was destined to stand in the background and look pretty, but not too pretty. Be smart, but not too smart. I was worried that Campaign Blair with her stupid handshakes and polite laughter was all there was.
I liked this girl better, even as she scared the shit out of me. She wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted—who she wanted.
Thom and I had started dating when we were fifteen. He’d been my first kiss, my only kiss. The first and only guy I’d ever had sex with. The worst part of it was that now that I knew he was gay, none of it felt real. I didn’t know how long he’d known that he liked guys, but the moment I’d seen him with someone else on our wedding day, everything we’d been to each other had died. And now every memory I had of us kissing or in bed was clouded with doubt and fear that there had always been someone else in his head, someone else he’d wanted when he pretended to want me.
I was filler. And all I wanted was for someone to act like I mattered, for someone to want me. Not because my father was the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, or because my mother had been a Vanderwaal, or because I came from money, or had my picture taken in some stupid society page.
I wanted someone to want me. And I didn’t want to be beige anymore.
I closed my eyes, wondering if I was losing my mind, if this was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. Possibly. I didn’t care.
My voice shook as I spoke the words, but I said them anyway, forcing myself to take a chance.
“Can we pretend that I’m not your student? For a minute, while we’re in this car, can we just pretend? When we step out you can go back to calling on me in class every fucking week and I’ll go back to glaring at you. I don’t want special treatment. I don’t want anything but this.”
My eyes fluttered open and I stared into Gray’s eyes, losing myself in the desire I saw there. No matter what, I knew—
He wanted me.
His voice turned husky and rough, his body tense.
“What do you want? You have to tell me. If I’m going to cross this line with you, then I need to know. I need to hear you say it.”
He looked at me like I’d pushed him past the brink of sanity, to somewhere dark and dangerous. It should have terrified me, and yet it pulled me somewhere I’d never been before.
“I’ve kissed one guy in my entire life before you. And now that I know I was just a placeholder for who he really wanted, it doesn’t feel real. And after our kiss . . .” I held his gaze, the desire staring back at me giving me the confidence I needed. “Kiss me. I want to feel what it’s like to be kissed by a man who wants me,” I whispered. “Please.”
