Damaged: Bad Boy Romance Read online

"Wait," Evan said. She was already starting to push herself up. "One thing."

  "Why should I wait?"

  "I'll cover your tab," Evan offered. "Just one question."

  "One question?" She raised an eyebrow and scowled at him. "Okay, then. Shoot."

  He looked at her a long moment. Looked at her bag. It was big. The spine of a book stuck out. "Your favorite book."

  She looked back at him, and for a moment, he thought she might just punch him in the face. Or maybe refuse to answer. Something played out in her mind. A thought that he wanted to know. He hadn't been interested in her, at first.

  He felt his teeth start to itch. And yet, still she waited to answer. He realized that he hadn't wanted something so badly in a while, as he wanted to get his answer. And yet, he realized, it meant nothing to him, at the same time. He just wanted to make her tell him. It would be a chink in the armor. A way to prove that he could find it.

  "House of Leaves," she said. "Anything else?"

  "No," he said. "Not if it bothers you."

  He hadn't heard of it. He tried to picture such a book. He guessed that it was some sort of literary fiction thing. Something that he wouldn't have liked. He guessed, at least.

  "Do what you want," she said. It was the most positive she'd been towards him the whole time, and he knew in his gut that it was going to be the most positive she was going to be. Which meant that there was only one thing to be done. Anything else, and he'd end up nothing more than regretting it.

  He smiled, and nodded, and turned towards the bar. "I'll pick up the girl's tab," he said. The bartender shrugged, printed off a receipt, and handed it to him. He handed it back, wrapped around a plastic debit card, signed when he was asked, and turned to Colin and Jesse.

  And he tried his best to ignore the question in his head.

  Four

  In the morning, the three of them, separately, picked up the pieces of the night before. Well, at least, mostly-separate. Evan hadn't given it the effort it deserved. Whatever it was that had been bothering him, kept bothering him. The whole night, and he couldn't explain one bit of it. He let out a long breath and shook his head. He wasn't even hung over, which told him more than he wanted to hear about how distracted he'd been.

  Still, it was a Friday. There was always Saturday to really get himself fucked up. Colin, meanwhile, hadn't done any better for himself. Evan shuffled out of his room, towards the kitchen. It was only a coincidence that it happened to walk him right past the couch, where Colin had his teeth grit together tight and his hand pressed so hard into his chest that Evan knew it was going to leave a mark.

  He slipped his slippers on as he moved onto the tile floor, dropped a serving spoon full of coffee grounds into the machine, and hit the button to start it perc'ing. He tried to be quiet, but the noise must have been enough to wake Colin up, because he had his eyes open when Evan came back around.

  "You're welcome to some of the coffee in the pot," he said. He said it most mornings; the occasional morning, he didn't make any coffee at all.

  "No thanks," Colin said. "I don't drink the stuff."

  He said that most mornings, too.

  Evan shuffled into the bathroom, pulled off his shirt from the night before, and stretched tall. Pulled his toothbrush out of the holder and started in on his teeth. He had the shower running a moment later, spat the toothpaste out of his mouth, and stepped inside.

  It wasn't much of a routine; he'd heard of people who went for 3-mile runs every day before the sun was up. Evan woke whenever he woke, made coffee, brushed his teeth, and showered.

  Still, it gave him time to think. Maybe the people who needed to run, needed more time to think than he did. Today was a running day, he groused to himself as he finished up, turned the shower off, and stepped out.

  He'd spent the whole time trying to get himself out of the funk that he'd slipped into the night before. And it hadn't helped one iota. He clicked his teeth together, and slipped into some fresh clothes.

  "Yo, Evan." He froze as he stepped out the door, one leg still planted in the only bathroom in the apartment. Which, for one bedroom, was plenty. For a bedroom and a couch, it could get frustrating.

  "Something up?" Evan's eyebrows were practically at his hairline.

  "What was up with you last night? You were acting weird all night."

  "I wasn't acting weird," he countered. He moved back towards the kitchen, got his kitchen slippers on, and poured a cup of coffee into a mug shaped like a frog. He poured a little too much sugar in, stirred with a knife, and carried it back out into the room.

  "Don't lie to me."

  "I'm not lying."

  "What happened with that girl?"

  Evan decided that his eyebrows had been raised prematurely, and lifted one back up. "Girl?"

  "That one you were talking to. Looked like you had your eye on her."

  "You don't win them all," Evan said. "She wasn't there to get picked up, so I didn't bother trying."

  Colin's lips twisted into a smile. "So you're saying there are girls who would resist your charms?"

  Evan opened his mouth to respond. Obviously there were. But that wasn't something he was desperate to go around advertising if he could help it.

  "I mean… sure," he said. "There are some girls I wouldn't go that far out of my way for."

  "Yeah? You paid out twenty bucks just to talk to her."

  Evan didn't bother to correct him, but after the tip it had been closer to thirty. "What's your point?"

  "I think you're beat. I think you can't get her."

  "Of course I could have gotten her. Maybe not last night, but eventually, if I wanted her, I'd have her."

  "Fine," Colin said. "Get her."

  "I don't see why I would. I didn't pursue it last night, why would I pursue it now?"

  "I could make it interesting."

  "What, like a bet?"

  "Don't be silly," Colin said. "Of course a bet. Now, what do you say?"

  "What are you offering?"

  Colin's jaw set in a hard, almost cruel smile.

  "If you win, then I'll have Dad talk to Senator Burke about giving you a job."

  Evan's lips pursed. Burke was a big up-and-comer. There was a lot to like about a possible connection.

  "Nah," Evan said finally. He hoped he wasn't betraying the fact that he was already salivating at the deal. The secret to negotiating, he told himself in his father's voice, was to be willing to walk away.

  "And I'll pay your student loans. One hundred percent."

  That was too much. Evan almost said so. "And if I lose? I mean, pretending that's even on the map."

  "If you lose, you have to forego sex for a month. And if I bring someone home, you clear out of here, the whole month."

  "That's all?"

  "No," he said. "Not all. You wear a dress."

  "Okay?" Evan shook his head, a confused smile apparent across it. "I mean, that's a little weird, but I can get over it."

  "To the Rose Bowl."

  Evan's eyes rolled, but he couldn't quite banish the thought from his head. It was a bet, and the stakes were high. He could win a lot, but he could also lose a fair bit. That photo, when it came out in the future, put a hard cap on his political aspirations.

  Still, it was an intriguing idea. Too intriguing to pass up, he had to admit.

  "What? You scared?"

  "Not everybody's going to be living on a trust fund the rest of their life, Colin," Evan said. "So yeah, I'm scared of plenty."

  "Chickening out?"

  "I'm scared of getting cancer. Hit by a bus. I'm scared of showing up to a test without having studied in my underwear. But a little bet like this? Not even a little."

  Evan held his hand out. "Call it a bet."

  Colin's hand slapped against his, but his fingers clapped shut around Evan's hand. "It's a bet, then. Time frame?"

  "I don't know, what's fair?"

  "A month," Colin said. "Thirty."

  "For what?"
/>   "Sex," Colin said.

  "Then I guess I'd better get started," Evan said. He was starting to doubt. After all, he didn't even have the girl's name.

  Not that he was panicked. Not yet, anyway.

  Five

  Evan let out a long, low breath. There wasn't a lot to go on with this. But a month was a month, and he was ready to try to stretch his abilities. It was the first time he'd tried to find someone without knowing a single thing about them, except what they looked like. It was going to be interesting, that much he knew.

  The first step, he figured, was to go back to the bar. They were closed, but he knew the owner, and it wasn't that hard to get him on the phone. Once he was on the phone, it wasn't that hard to talk him into giving what he knew. It wasn't much.

  First, he'd seen the girl that Evan meant before, which was something. After all, the guy only owned the bar. He wasn't guaranteed by any means to be there every night. But the girl came in every few days, and while she wasn't the creme de la creme as far as women who went there, she was a good looking girl.

  More than that, her habits made it easy to recall her. She always got a Jack and Mountain Dew, which struck every single bartender as strange, but they didn't question it. It was enough to make her stand out the minute that he described the girl, and then described the drink, though.

  He figured that she'd probably be back in on Thursday. No, she didn't seem to have a boyfriend. She'd never really shown any interest in the guys there, though some had shown an interest in her. Hey, when are you going to get that twenty bucks back?

  Evan hung up the phone and frowned. He'd be able to find her, then. It was just a question of whether or not it was a worry that it might take him a matter of days to find her. He decided it wasn't, but only because the alternative was deciding that he was completely fucked.

  Five days later, and five fruitless trips to the club, he ran into her again. He still didn't know her name. But he knew that the bet had her filling his head, all the time. He was having trouble eating. Trouble sleeping. Hell, he hadn't brought anyone home in the entire time. The stakes were high, and he was down to barely more than three weeks to make it all happen. If she went out of town that week, then he was fucked.

  But he wasn't fucked. If anything, he was lucky. She came in wearing dancing shoes and a dress that said she intended to use them. It was not, however, a dress that said that she intended to be dancing with the intention of coming home with company. Evan clicked his teeth together and swallowed the rest of his drink. He hadn't started in on the alcohol yet, but that was just a matter of time.

  He'd never needed liquid courage to talk to women. This time, the stakes were high enough that he felt the adrenaline starting to pump through his body before he knew what was going on. The only thing he knew was that he had to bring her home, and if it wasn't tonight, he needed a way to reach her. Somehow.

  Evan gave the reader time to get settled in. She took it, whether she needed it or not. He watched. Same as last time, the girl behind the bar poured her two fingers of amber from the well, and then bright-green-yellow soda. He waited until she'd made a little headway on the drink before pushing himself up from the counter and sauntering over.

  "Hey again," he said. She looked over at him like she was surprised to hear that someone might have recognized her. "I think we met the other day."

  "Do I know you?"

  "I don't think so. But we talked for a minute, some time last week. I never got your name."

  "Then I wasn't drunk enough to fall for a pretty face," she said.

  "Who says that's all there is to me?"

  "No," she said, sourly. "There's the tight ass, too, right?"

  Evan turned halfway. "You think? I don't know. I've always thought it was a little flat."

  She wasn't drunk, and he could tell, but that didn't mean that she was willful enough to resist glancing down.

  "You're not that flat," she said. "For a guy."

  "Well, then, sure. I'm more than just a pretty face and a tight ass, you know."

  "What's that?"

  "I'm Evan," he said. "And the other thing to me is my rippling abs. But I don't show them off in public. It can cause problems."

  "What, every bimbo in eye shot passes out?"

  "You think you can resist?" Evan winked. He wanted her to think that he knew she could resist. There wasn't much point in trying to pretend that she was more than passing interested.

  "I can even resist trying it out," she said.

  "Can I at least get a name? I can't get you out of my head since last week."

  Her eyes slid off him, and onto her drink. She took another sip of amber and chased it. Then she looked at the alcohol like she was still tasting it, and still debating whether or not she liked it. If she was, then as far as Evan could tell, she should have had the debate sooner.

  "Another Coke?" Evan looked up. The bartender gave him a half-hearted smile. He gave her a half-hearted smile back.

  "Not right now, thanks. I'll let you know."

  The bartender nodded. He turned back to the girl who was still sitting, still looking at her drink.

  "Dana," she said. "My name's Dana."

  "What do you do, Dana?"

  "I blow off guys," she said. Her lips twisted up at the corners, like she'd said something very funny.

  "Sure, but I mean, you know. Some people have to have a job to support their art, you know? Like, I had to flip burgers to sustain my ability to suffocate a room with my ego before I went pro, you know? I figure it's probably the same way for you, am I right?"

  Dana looked at Evan for a moment. Her smile didn't widen, but it distinctly didn't fade. She didn't look like a woman who held smiles very often, and not very long.

  "I work at a library," she said.

  "The one downtown?"

  She looked him up and down. Her body language was guarded, and she didn't express much. So the way that her jaw moved, even as subtle as it was, was like screaming that she'd decided that he would do.

  "No," she said.

  "Which one then?"

  "That's for me to know," she said, winking. "And for you to find out."

  Six

  Evan felt his stomach rumble. He looked down at the clock. Classes had run a little late, and now he was letting himself get distracted. He could have been doing just about anything right now. Just about anyone. Hell, if skipping eating until nine was his plan from the beginning, he could have been an established name on the football team, or joined up with ROTC and gotten his tuition reduced.

  But this was an exception. After all, what was a tuition reduction compared to getting his entire tuition covered? And of course, the connection that he could make… he let out a breath. The whole thing meant that he had to make special allowances. That was why he let the distraction dig in, and let himself focus on the task in front of him.

  He'd already hit two different libraries today. That made six between the day before and today. If class hadn't run late he might have made it all eight today. Short of going into the city, he was running out of options. And those would have to all come at once, because the city was a twenty minute drive all by itself. Compared to the way that suburbs packed them in, it represented an entire library out and an entire library back.

  He let out a breath and slid into the right-hand lane, flicked the signal. Turned into the driveway.

  The place was small, and from the outside, it looked shabby. He parked, stepped out. The sun was already starting to get low on the horizon. When he stepped inside he could hear a crowd of kids talking. There was a woman's voice over them, but they were making it hard to make out except that it was female and it was being drowned out almost completely.

  He smiled at the old woman behind the counter. She was sixty if she was a day, but he felt her eyes on him as he came in. Right before he turned away he thought that he saw her wink at him. He kept the chuckle to himself and turned to regard the rest of the building. He let out a breath and looke
d around.

  He found the kids, who were exactly as noisy as they sounded from the door, sitting in a group in the back corner of the little place. The building looked like it hadn't been updated since the woman behind the counter had come in. Maybe she was the last one to push for a renovation and actually get the board to listen to her, he thought. Still, someone needed to talk to these guys about it because it was an embarrassment.

  Then he turned, and as he got closer, recognized the voice a little better. When he saw her it only confirmed what he'd thought. He was staring right at Dana, who had a children's book open on her lap and was reading out loud. The kids didn't seem to be listening. Their mothers–they were all mothers, with only a couple of fathers there along with their wives–were watching patiently, as if the entire thing were a performance aimed at the adults rather than the children.

  Dana didn't see him right away; her eyes were on the book. She had a good reading voice, he thought. She had good cadence, and made the whole thing a lot more interesting than the kids in the audience had any right to hear. She was too good for them. A few at the front, though, seemed to be paying attention. He kept those three in the back of his mind as he crossed his arms and leaned against a heavy wooden shelf.

  The place had a smell of books. He liked it. He never liked libraries before. Then again, his experiences had never been particularly good before. Now he'd gotten interested looks from both the librarians at some point, and one of them he could almost agree to enjoying.

  When she looked up to survey the crowd, her expression was frustrated. So she kept her eyes on the front of it and smiled at them, and only flicked her eyes up a moment. And in that moment, she took in the whole crowd, and noticed the man standing behind the rest of the listeners.

  Her eyes met his for the space of a heartbeat. For that moment her expression shifted, like she'd been hit by a pang of surprise and maybe just a little bit of alarm. Then she hid it well, looked back at the kids, and forced that smile onto her face. It was a nice smile, but it was fake, and even Evan knew that. Still, he thought, it was better than nothing.

  He walked away. The sound of her voice, and the chaos of the kids who had no interest in hearing anyone read poetry to them but had been put there by parents who didn't seem to care what their childrens' interests were, echoed through the building.