Текст книги "Better When He's Bad"

Автор книги: Jay Crownover

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“No.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. He was holding a tumbler of Scotch that was older than me and watching me with unfathomable eyes.

“I’m surprised you agreed to do it. Seventy-five hundred is a fair chunk of change and I know you squirreled away most of what Novak paid you. You can’t be hurting for cash. I thought maybe it was to save face in front of the redhead, but then you showed alone.”

“I don’t have to save face for anyone.”

“Ahhh . . . but she was different. I’ve been around a long time, Bax. My primary job is to instantly read and judge people. There was something more to her than one of your typical tramps.”

I gave him a dark look and opened and flexed my hands mechanically. I had never been much of a drinker because of my mom, but right now I was wishing I had a bottle of tequila and a dark room all to myself to get myself psyched up in. I wrapped my hands around the linked chain railing and watched the crowd below mill about. More than half wanted my head cracked open, and the rest didn’t care who won as long as they got their payout at the end of the night. It made my stomach hurt. I didn’t want this scene to be what my life looked like anymore, but I doubted I would ever fully be rid of it.

“She’s important to someone who’s important to me. That makes her different.”

“It’s more than that. A man like you—put him in a cage for long enough, and he either becomes domesticated or regresses to all wild animal. You went in wild, so that means all there was for you to do was be tamed. Your edge is gone, Baxter. I can see it, and if I can see it, that means Novak is going to see it and exploit it. You need to be careful.”

His words wormed under my skin and made my blood throb in my head. Without thinking about it, I grabbed the tumbler out of his hand and sent it sailing over the open railing to the crowded floor below. I watched as it shattered on the ground, sending glass and expensive liquor in every direction and splattering the crowd. Nassir clicked his tongue at me and squeezed me on my shoulder.

“See what I mean? Before, you would have just ignored me. Good luck, my friend. Normally I wouldn’t think you’d need it, but tonight I am not sure that is the case.”

He turned toward the steps. “You have ten minutes, I suggest you use it to get your head in the game.”

I blew out a heavy breath and hung my head. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard I saw stars behind my lids. It galled me, but Nassir was right. I wanted out before getting locked up. Doing time had just solidified that living my life like I had nine lives and was bulletproof was getting old and just made me feel foolish. When I pried my eyes open, the first thing they landed on was a shock of orange-and-red curls moving through the frantic and frenzied crowd. I blinked because I thought I was hallucinating, but sure enough, she turned to look up, and our eyes locked. A girl with a stylish blond bob put a hand on her shoulder and yelled something in her ear and she nodded, never looking away from me.

I hadn’t seen her in a week, since Tuesday morning, but it felt like longer. Like her skin was paler, her eyes were smokier, her freckles more prominent across her pert little nose, and like she wasn’t sure what she was doing here either. Her friend grabbed her elbow and pulled her out of the way as the other guy suddenly bounded into the center of the circle.

A loud roar from the crowd went up and he started screaming like a lunatic. Shit, I bet he was hopped up on something. There was no other way to explain the bulging veins and wild-eyed look he was sporting. He ripped his black T-shirt off and threw it into the crowd, getting everyone even more whipped up. He had on cargo pants and black smudges of something under each eye like this was some kind of combat mission. I felt my night get ten times longer.

Grumbling under my breath and wondering why Dovie was here, I went down the stairs and headed for where I had last seen her. I didn’t need to look very hard because she waylaid me as soon as my booted feet hit the main level. I took off my hoodie, fished out my cigarettes, and handed them all over to her without saying a word. Her friend was gaping at me and looking me up and down, but I was ensnared in that forest-green gaze.

“I got a text saying if you were fighting, Race was bound to be here. They even sent the code to get in that crazy purple door.”

Her hands clutched around my hoodie as I shook my head. “He’s not going to be here. It’s a setup. They want you here so I’ll be distracted and that Hulk has a chance to cave my skull in.”

Her eyes got big. “Benny?”

I shrugged. “Novak. That’s way too smart for Benny.” It bugged me to no end that I was actually happy to see her. I really liked the stubborn tilt of her chin and the messy waves of her endless hair. I pulled my shirt off over my head by the collar and handed her that as well. I saw her gaze drop to my chest then dart right back up. She might think I was scum and question my motives, but she was hot for me, no doubt about it.

“You need to stay out of the way. The crowd goes nuts. There’s no ref, no rules, and things get ugly fast. If someone bet a lot of money on me and I lose, it’s not just the other fighter who wants to kick my ass. Be smart. If you feel the crowd turn, get the fuck out of Dodge, or better yet, haul ass outta here now.”

She folded my stuff against her chest and gave the blonde a searching look. The other girl shrugged and looked back at me.

“It’s your call, Dove. I told you something about that text didn’t seem right.”

Her head snapped back in my direction. “Is it safer for you if I go?”

I didn’t get to tell her “hell yes” it was better for me if she left because Nassir appeared by my side.

“Time to roll, lover boy.”

I gave Dovie one last look and stepped around her into the crowd. I rubbed my hands briskly over my shaved head and tried to shut down the noise and the smell of sweat and anticipation. I brushed off pats on the back and high fives and growled at Nassir, “What’s that guy jacked up on?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Clean fight, my ass.”

“Did you really expect anything else?”

Not from him.

“Keep an eye on the girl, Nassir. If anything happens to her in your house, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

There were only a few people between me and the raw circle.

“You better make sure you make it out the victor if you want to ensure her safety.”

I gave him a dirty look and he just offered that perfectly crafted smile at me. I wanted to punch him, but just then there was a roar worthy of the Serengeti. The last of the barrier between me and my opponent ducked out of the way and I was hit with the equivalent of a human bulldozer. I smacked into the cement hard enough to have my ears ringing and to have Big Bird dancing an Irish jig above my head. I grunted when I felt heavy jabs on either side of my ribs, but it was hard to hear anything above the shouts of the crowd and the bellowing breath of my attacker in my face.

I got a hand around his throat and shoved him up and off of me, not to the ground, but far enough away that I could throw myself up to my feet. He wasted no time in lunging at me again, only this time I was ready for him, and caught him across the middle with a well-placed knee that had him buckling over. He was strong, but the narcotics were making him frantic, not able to predict my next move, so I felt no remorse in clipping him hard across the side of the face while he was hunched over. A spray of blood out of his mouth followed the blow, and angry gasps and shouts from the crowd echoed off the rafters.

I jumped back as he suddenly surged upward and rammed the crown of his head right into my unprotected gut. That hurt. The wind whooshed out of my lungs and blackness started to tinge the edge of my vision. It set me off-kilter enough that I didn’t rally enough to block his next punch, which split my cheek clean open. I tasted my own blood in the aftermath and it made me furious.

He swung a wild kick at my legs and missed. I grabbed one of his arms and wrenched it up behind his back. I cranked on it just hard enough to hear a loud pop and let it go. I didn’t want to break it, but jacking up one of his hands would save me more of those brutal body blows. I spit out a mouthful of blood and gasped as his free arm suddenly snaked around my neck. I don’t know how he got that kind of leverage, but he sure as hell was using it to his advantage. He squeezed and squeezed and I clawed at his skin until it was slippery with blood. I couldn’t breathe. He was straight choking me out.

Right before it was all said and done, I threw my head back as hard as I could because I could hear him snorting out breath in my ear. Luckily I had a superhard head, because even over the screaming crowd and the blood rushing in my ears, I heard the thin bones in his nose snap and the furious howl that followed. The second nose in as many weeks that I had broken, only this guy wasn’t Benny. He was juiced up and out for my blood. I jumped back as he barreled, unwieldy, toward me. My head hurt, my ribs had to be bruised, and the rusty taste of blood from my face and my newly reopened lip cut was filling my mouth. Someone in the crowd threw a beer bottle in the circle and it shattered at my feet. I guess maybe I should’ve thought first before tossing that glass over the railing.

I dodged him once, and then once again, and landed a solid blow to his knee with a kick on his last pass. I was getting tired, but he had chemical fuel to keep him going, even though his face looked like raw meat and his dislocated wrist was hanging at a weird angle at the end of his arm. It needed to end . . . like now. I was trying to put together the best way to make that happen, pinpoint his weakness, when he bent down and pulled something out of the side of his boot. I swore loudly and took an involuntary step back when the switchblade flicked open. The sight of the weapon literally made the crowd erupt. More glass and liquid I didn’t want to try and identify rained down on us. This wasn’t going to go well for me.

He charged again and I barely escaped the blade. I felt the razor-sharp tip skim across the taut and sweaty skin of my abdomen. I backed up, keeping one eye on him and one eye on the knife in his good hand.

“Shit.” His eyes were all kinds of crazy and out of control. He had to be hurting as much as I was, but there was no sign of it behind the glassed-over and vacant gaze due to the drugs. He parried, I moved. He thrust, and I jumped back. I realized the only way to get this over with was to let him get close enough for me to get the knife out of his hand.

I took a deep breath, stepped into his next forward motion, felt the blade slice cleanly across my ribs, high, close to my armpit, and locked my arm down so that he was stuck. We were now eye-to-eye. His nose was beyond fucked up and he was huffing and puffing like a bull. He wasn’t going to go down without a serious effort. I twisted, used the leverage I had despite my side being flayed wide open, and bent, and bent until I heard the bone crack and the knife clatter to the ground at our feet. He howled, screamed, and struggled to get me to let his now-useless arm go. I refused until he toppled to his knees in front of me, blood and snot smearing the black paint all across his face.

I put my knee under his chin so he had to look up at me.

“Hurt?”

He screamed a litany of swearwords at me.

“Seriously, dude. Are we done?” I squeezed the broken arm even tighter next to my gushing side. I was losing a ton of blood.

He made another noise and tried to grab for me with the hand I already dislocated. I sighed. I shoved him back and delivered a swift, nasty, totally dirty kick to the face. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell over like a baby rhino taking a tranquilizer dart.

I heard the crowd go nuts, heard my name, but it was taking everything I had to stay upright. I saw Nassir nod at me, saw the circle start to tighten around me as the monster’s entourage tried to rouse him. I needed air. I needed to get the hell out of here.

Suddenly all I could see was wide green eyes full of concern. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding a lot.”

She handed me my T-shirt, and instead of putting it on, I bunched it up and stuffed it against my side. I felt the blood seep through the fabric instantly.

“I’ll live. I need to get my money from Nassir before he comes up with another stipulation or brilliant plan.”

She bit her lip and moved my hoodie to the side to show me a thick envelope in her other hand.

“I had Brysen count it while you were fighting. He handed it to me before you even threw the first punch. He must have been pretty confident you were going to win. It’s there, minus his cut.”

I blinked because her voice was going in and out and I was having a hard time keeping her face in focus.

“I need to get out of here.”

“You need a hospital.”

“Just a little patching up. That’s what Race used to do for me after I fought.”

Crap. I must be light-headed. I never would have told her that otherwise.

She tilted her head to the side and held out my hoodie. I needed her help getting my heavy arms into the sleeves. I just stared at her dumbly when she stuck her tiny hand into one of the pockets and pulled out my keys.

“Come on. I’ll take you to your mom’s and see if I can keep you among the living.”

“No one drives my car.” I sounded drunk. The words were slurred and I didn’t honestly know if I was going to make it as far as the suburbs.

“No one but me.”

She slid her tiny frame under my arm on my noninjured side and I almost collapsed on her. For the first time since I let Race take me to the hospital when I was sixteen, I relied on another human being to take care of me. I didn’t want to think what that meant for either one of us.

CHAPTER 6
Dovie

I KNEW SOMETHING WAS off with that text message. Just like I knew I was in trouble when I woke up on that couch and Bax had been holding me like I was something to be treasured. I never felt safe, never felt protected, even with Race in my life. I still knew every day was going to be an uphill battle. But in that instant, while I was all wrapped up in him, I felt like nothing bad could ever get to me again. That’s why I bolted. Sure, I didn’t know what his ultimate agenda with my brother was, but more than that, I was starting to think he might be developing a separate one for me. It wasn’t smart to send Brysen back to the Hill after the fight without me. I should be running from this guy as fast as I could, yet every time I turned around, I seemed to end up closer and closer to him.

It had taken every fiber of control I possessed not to return his text in the middle of the week, and there was no denying I dragged Brysen to that fight more to see him than out of any real hope of locating my brother. I was dangerously attracted to him; he was magnetic and so hard to get a handle on, and after the violence of that fight, I knew he had vicious brutality floating close to the surface of his tattooed skin. He was also losing way too much blood from that knife wound, and stubbornly refusing to let me take him to a hospital. Instead he had shoved some money in my hands and ordered me to stop at a drugstore and buy the basic first-aid stuff I would need to keep him from passing out from blood loss. He also told me to grab a couple tubes of superglue. I didn’t even want to know what his plan for that was.

By the time we got back to the bungalow, his eyes were squeezed shut and deep lines of pain were radiating out from the corners of each eye. His skin looked kind of waxy and pale, making that black star prominent and so ominous where it throbbed at his temple. I had to scramble around the side of the car and get the door open for him. I gasped when I saw the wet spread of blood that had soaked through the side of his hoodie.

“Bax, that’s a lot of blood.”

He just grunted at me and struggled his way to the front door.

I had to reach around him to get it open and almost got lost in the endless darkness of his eyes as he looked down at me. I gulped a little and blinked up at him. He gave his head a shake and started struggling out of the blood-soaked hoodie before I had the lights on. The T-shirt he was using as a makeshift bandage was so saturated that all he could do was toss it in the trash on his way to the single bathroom that was in the hallway. I wasn’t sure what I should do. I got him someplace safe, he was a big boy and could clearly take care of himself, Brysen only lived a minute away and I could be back, safe and sound with her in a heartbeat, but none of that felt like the right answer. I argued with myself as I followed his half-naked form into the bathroom.

He already had black-and-blue marks flowering all over his taut skin and that knife cut on his side had just barely missed the naked pinup that covered his entire side. His face had a steady stream of blood trickling from the cut on his cheek, and his bottom lip was back to being split wide open. He was a mess.

“Sit down on the toilet and I’ll clean you up as best I can.” I was no stranger to patching up Carmen’s boys after scuffles with other kids in the neighborhood. Granted, this was on an entirely different level, and being that close to him made my skin feel like it was electrified.

He looked at me emotionlessly in the mirror over the sink. He looked like he had just come out of a war zone.

“Are you scared of me?” His voice was scratchy.

I met his gaze steadily in the glass. “Terrified.”

His chin dipped in a little nod of acknowledgment.

“Do you trust me?”

“No.”

I saw a shadow flit across that midnight gaze. He lifted a knuckle and rubbed at the blood smeared across his face.

“You going to go to bed with me?”

I sucked in a hard breath through my nose. I wanted to look away but he wouldn’t let me. “Probably.”

He finally looked away and picked up a washcloth and slapped it on the cut.

“I was hooking up with Roxie at the beginning of the week. I’m not a nice guy. I don’t know how things with me and your brother are going to play out. By the time I’m done with Novak, there’s a good chance I’ll be dead or back in jail. You still gonna go to bed with me?”

My heart did a weird flip and my blood did a weird thing where I felt like I could actually feel it slow down in my veins. At least there was no second guessing with him. He turned around and leaned back on the vanity. I sighed and reached around him to put a towel on his steadily leaking side. His blood-caked skin was warm, despite the fact he had goose bumps raised along his naked torso.

“If I do, is it going to be any different than you going to bed with Roxie or that stripper?”

“Do you want me to lie to you?”

I grabbed his hand and forced him to hold the towel so I could work on his face. I cleaned him off with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide, which had him swearing and scowling at me. I found the little butterfly Steri-Strips I bought and slapped a couple on his cheek.

“Yeah. I think I do.” I couldn’t tell the difference when he lied to me anyway.

He grunted and narrowed his eyes even farther at me when I slimed some antibacterial goo on his lower lip.

“Then no. You would be exactly like all the rest.”

I flicked my gaze up to him and we stared at each other for a drawn-out minute.

I cleared my throat. “Let me get something wrapped around that knife wound.” I gave a dry laugh. “Those are not words I thought I would ever have to say to anyone.”

He winced when I pulled the towel away from his side. “Hang out with me a little bit longer and they’ll become a regular part of your vocabulary.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I ran some warm water in the sink and tried to clean up the bloodbath. It was a long gash, probably five or six inches, but it was clean and didn’t look like it went deep into the muscle. I blew a wayward curl out of my face and pulled open several of the large bandage pads and the Ace bandage I had bought. I went still when one of his rough, callus-tipped fingers brushed across my forehead and moved a loose curl out of my eyes. That was what undid me about him. He was unpredictable, he was a criminal, he was hazardous to my sanity, but then he held me when I couldn’t sleep and he touched me like I would break. It was an intoxicating combination that I was having no luck in fighting.

“Lift your arm up if you can.”

It obviously hurt him to do it, but he got the thickly muscled appendage out of my way so I could secure the wrap all the way around his broad chest. I had never been around a man who built his body up to use as a weapon before. I couldn’t ignore how impressive it was. Even with the stark black ink that covered his abs and spread across his shoulders, it was still a nice sight. When he shifted I noticed he even had ink peeking out of the top the band of his boxers showing above the edge of his jeans.

“If you really don’t want to go to the doctor, that’s the best I can do with what we got.”

I took a preventative step back.

He moved stiffly and bent to pick up his ruined hoodie off the floor. The cream-colored tiles were stained crimson where it had fallen.

“If it’s still bad in the morning, I’m going to have you seal it shut with superglue.”

I made a disgusted face and followed him out of the bathroom. “Gross. No way am I doing that. If it’s not better tomorrow, we’ll take you to the hospital.”

He just ignored me and made his way to the back bedroom, where the bed was still barren of sheets and blankets. He threw the hoodie on the dresser, popped the button on his jeans, kicked his heavy boots off, and plopped across the naked mattress on his back.

“I don’t need a doctor. This is fine.”

“You’re white as a sheet.”

“I just got my ass kicked. Of course I look like shit.”

He didn’t really. He looked battered, worn out, and a little rougher than usual, but I really thought it would be impossible for him to look like shit. His eyes were closed and his chest was rising and falling in a pretty steady rhythm, so I thought maybe he was falling asleep. I needed to snag his car keys and go get some food and stuff for this shell of a house. He might not like it very much here because of the memories attached to it, but he seemed to keep landing back here for safety and security and he needed provisions.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

His voice was sharp when I turned to go back to the living room, where he had thrown the keys on the coffee table.

“To the store. I need to get food and stuff. This house is empty.”

“No.” His eyes were still closed and he sounded mad.

“No, what?”

Before I could react, he was up off the bed and had one arm locked around my waist. I gasped when the soft mattress was suddenly under my back and he was looming over the top of me, black eyes blazing like coals.

“I want you here with me.” He was braced above me on his good arm and using his injured hand to unbutton the front of my flannel shirt.

“Bax. The house is empty. I need to get food, need to buy the basics. I’ll be gone for like a second.”

Why wasn’t I making him stop undressing me? The front of the shirt split open and fell to the sides. I had on a serviceable black bra that was nothing fancy, but it made my skin look even paler and more speckled by contrast.

“Holy fuck . . . no wonder you dress like a hobo. You would never be able to leave the house if you walked around flaunting these babies.” His voice dropped an octave and his gaze flicked up to mine. Nothing but pure male admiration shined back at me. Apparently Bax was a boob man, and I had a really nice set, no getting around it.

“Look, Bax, I said I was probably going to go to bed with you, I didn’t mean tonight.”

He took a knuckle and ran the edge of it along the top cup of my bra. I shivered in response. His skin was rough and darker next to mine.

“We can’t have sex. No protection. I’m an asshole on my best day, but I would never put you at risk like that.” His mouth tightened and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “You really don’t want to know where I’ve been.”

He was right—I didn’t. I was surprised he didn’t cart a pack of them around with him until I remembered the girls he was used to hooking up with had to have them on hand for business purposes. Gross.

“Besides, I can barely move. I asked if you were going to go to bed with me, not if you were going to fuck me, Dovie. I just want you here.”

I needed to argue, to make him let me up, but with a gesture born of pure familiarity with getting women naked, his hand snaked across my ribs and popped the fastener of my bra open. Because my arms were trapped in the straps and the loose material of my shirt, I could just stare up at him in a mixture of apprehension and wonder when he tugged the cups down to fully expose me.

My breasts were on the large side considering that I was tall and lean. They were dusted with freckles just like the rest of me and crested with nipples that were the palest pink and, at the moment, puckered and not shying away from those black eyes. This was wrong. He was wrong, but I didn’t have the words or the will to rein it in.

“Pretty. At first I wasn’t sure, but now I can’t believe I missed it.”

“Bax.” It was a warning and a question all mixed together on air escaping from lungs that felt like they were squeezing shut. I wasn’t the most sexually experienced girl in the world, but I knew enough to know that I was restless and achy, feeling heated and light-headed, and he hadn’t even so much as kissed me. He was way more than I was ready to handle, and then he was sliding the button on my jeans out of the hole and my belly was sucking in.

“You have to stop.” Only the zipper followed down and my black cotton underwear that was in no way intended to be on display was suddenly just that. His eyes were like obsidian, his mouth was tight, and I wasn’t sure if the light sheen of sweat beading up on his shaved head was from battling back discomfort or from arousal. I could feel the press of an impressive erection through the denim that separated us, but he was moving slow and had said he had no intention of having sex. He was a liar, though, so I shifted and made a move to cover myself back up.

He used the hand that wasn’t holding his entire weight off of me to snatch my own as I pulled at my bra and the sides of my shirt. I tugged futilely to get him to let me go, but he forced my palm flat on my quivering stomach and trapped it between my skin and his palm. He smiled down at me, and it wasn’t nice. It was wicked and promised all kinds of dark and scary things. It made my breath catch in my throat and I was momentarily stunned enough that it didn’t register that he was dragging my much smaller hand across my belly, below the hollow of my hips, and into the waistband of my underwear.

I panicked a little—okay, a lot—when I realized his intent. I could feel that even though my head knew I shouldn’t be here with him, my body was all for it. I was slick across my own fingers, damp, warm, and pulsing. I saw something in his eyes flare. I struggled to pull away again and it just ended with a broken moan coming out of my throat as he actively forced both our hands farther into my pants and closer to the parts of me that were well aware of what a guy like Bax could offer.

“Tell me to stop.” His voice was low and lost somewhere in the haze of sexual intoxication he was spilling all over me.

“Stop . . .” It should’ve been harsh, sounding sure and defiant, but it wasn’t. It was raspy and breathy because he got my hand where he obviously wanted it and was making me stroke my clit while his thick digit went on a tour to find my G-spot.

“Mean it.” He rumbled the words against the side of my face, where I felt the soft brush of his damaged mouth. I had never experienced anything like this before. I couldn’t escape the drag and pull of it. I arched my back and moved my hand in tandem to his ministrations, never looking away from the velvet drape of his gaze.

I tossed my head to the side and he took advantage of the distraction to suck the tip of one breast into the scorching cavern of his mouth. I heaved up so hard that it drove his fingers harder into me and made me grind my own hand harder against aroused and ready-to-go flesh. This was out of control. I didn’t do things like this, especially not with guys like him, but when he switched his attention to the other breast and added another finger and growled at me to press down on my quivering little point of passion with my thumb, it was all over. I thrashed under him, forgot he was hurt, and used my unoccupied hand to claw at the back of his head where it was latched on to my breast. I lost it all . . . control, sanity, decorum, reality. It all went out the window and I was just a mass of nerve endings and boiling pleasure that couldn’t be contained. It spread all over us, across my hand and his, and I felt moisture build up in my eyes as I scrambled to catch my breath.

He pulled his head up and looked down at me, not with smirking satisfaction or any kind of gloating, but with longing and a hunger like I had never seen before.

“You are so sweet and tight and all shiny and new. Are you sure you’ve done this before?”

I yanked my hand free from where it was still lodged in my pants and put both palms on his chest to shove him off of me. He went, but not before swiping his lingering fingers over my clit one last time. It made me shiver and glare at him as I scrambled back into my clothes.

“I told you, Billy Clark when I was a teenager, and then there was a guy from the restaurant when I first moved here. I’m busy, and typically I’m not interested. We can’t all have strippers and hookers at our beck and call.”

He snorted and resumed his position on his back on the bed. I made a face when I saw that blood had worked through the bandage on his side.

“Sure you can. That’s what strippers and hookers are for. Come on, Copper-Top, I’m beat. Climb up here and go to sleep.”

I don’t know how he could just close his eyes and act like none of that had just happened. The front of his boxers was bulging and I could see a small wet circle on the fabric. I shoved frustrated hands through my hair.