She looked surprised at my words, but for some reason it was important that she know. I didn’t want her getting the wrong impression of me. “What do your parents do?” she asked.
“Invest other people’s money, and skim pieces of it,” I replied. “And, apparently, pay off their kids instead of raising them.”
I sounded harsh again, but it was the truth.
“So you don’t get along with them,” Evie said.
“They hate me,” I clarified. “They think I’m a disappointment and a waste of space.” They weren’t wrong, but it didn’t mean they had a claim on any of my mental real estate. Not after they way they’d abandoned Andrew for the crime of getting into an accident and not being whole anymore. I really didn’t care what they thought of me, but fuck with Andrew and as far as I’m concerned, you’re done.
“Who’s Andrew?” Evie asked.
I stared at her in surprise. It was like she’d read my mind. Or had I spoken aloud? I was pretty sure I hadn’t. “How do you know about Andrew?” It came out hostile, but I couldn’t help it.
She looked taken aback. “The jacket you lent me,” she said. “It had a business card in the pocket. Andrew Mason, programmer.”
Now the alarm bells were going off like crazy. I wanted to get on a plane and take off again. But I calmed myself. It was okay if she knew his name, after all. It was just a name. “Andrew is my brother,” I admitted—more than I’d admitted to any other woman I’d been with, no matter what dirty things we did in bed, or how many times. I’d never even said Andrew’s name to a single one of them.
Evie put down her cereal bowl, which she’d cleaned out. “And?” she prompted.
No. I had nothing else. Just saying his name had been like wrenching a rib out of my chest, listening to it snap. “And nothing,” I said.
“Do you get along with him?” she prodded.
The back of my neck was sweating. “We get along fine,” I said. “Do I get to ask the questions now?”
She didn’t look finished, but she said, “Okay.”
“Did you just fuck me to get back at Bank Boy?”
She stared at me, her lips parted in shock.
I wasn’t sure why I had asked that. Partly because of the Andrew questions—I needed to shut her down, regain control.
But part of me actually wanted to know the answer. Whether I was the nearest convenient dick for her. Whether she was slumming it for revenge.
Because if she was slumming it, I needed to know now. I didn’t ask myself why.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said, her voice getting tight with anger. “He’s not here to watch us. And he already thought we were—”
“Not literally,” I said. “In your head. You know what I mean. Did you fuck me to get back at him in your head?”
She let out an exhale of breath, like I’d shoved her in the stomach. Her cheekbones were red again, anger and sex mixed together, and I felt my cock wake up again beneath the throw pillow. He’d gone to sleep when we talked about my family. “You have some nerve, asking me that,” she said. “You told me to fuck someone the first night we met. You said it would make me feel better.”
“And did it?”
That hurt her for a second—I hadn’t meant it to, but it did. Her jaw went tight and her lip quivered. Then she said, “Nick, if you don’t shut up I’m about to throw my cereal bowl at you.”
Great. Now I was an asshole. Usually I didn’t care, but this was Evie. “It’s just a question,” I said. “I want to know.”
“You want to know?” she said, her voice getting higher, more wound up. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t fuck people, all right? I don’t just do it. Some people do, but not me, not anymore. And I’ve had the worst week of my life, and you drive me completely crazy. What we did tonight—I’ve never done that. Not ever. Maybe it’s routine to you, but it wasn’t to me. It was something, but I don’t know what, and I’ll probably obsess about it for weeks while you forget about it tomorrow. That’s it, all right? That’s all I know.”
She didn’t think that was an answer, but it was. My mind stopped at those two words, not anymore. So she wasn’t as square as she tried to be, redhead Evie. Just like I’d suspected. But whatever she’d done in the past, I didn’t care. Not even a little.
I had my work cut out for me. I put down my bowl and tossed away the throw pillow. “You think that was routine?” I said, as her gaze dropped. “That’s what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think!” Her anger was mixed with lust now, and maybe a little fear. Not of me, but of herself. “I mean, you have a drawer full of condoms—and maybe you were trying to get back at—”
“Do not,” I said, my voice a low warning. “Do not say that name. I do not want to fucking hear it ever again. Now, take that blanket off and open your legs.”