Damaged: Bad Boy Romance Read online

  He walked over to the shelves. Looked through them idly. A voice came through the speakers. "The library will be closing in fifteen minutes," it said. "Please make your approach to the checkout desk."

  He recognized the book from the photo on the Wikipedia page, pulled it off the shelf. Looked over it. IT didn't seem that unusual. That had been a word they kept using in one article he'd skimmed. 'Unusual.' Unorthodox, unconventional… but it was just a book, as far as he could tell. He tucked it under an arm.

  Dana's voice had faded at some point. The kids had started dispersing. He started towards the back. The librarian–junior librarian, he guessed–had a short stack of books under her arm, and she was headed the same place he was: the front. Evan smiled at her.

  "You've got a very good reading voice, when you're not getting frustrated with assholes."

  Her tone was back to the flat one that she had used with him since he'd met her the first time. "Well, I suppose that's going to be the closest you'll get to anything else, so I'm glad you enjoyed it."

  "I read a little of your book."

  "My book?" She raised an eyebrow.

  Evan held the book up.

  "Yeah? Sure you did."

  "It was so interesting," he lied, in his best honest voice. Evan had never been a bad liar. At least, nobody had thought so enough to say it to his face.

  Apparently there was a first time for everything. "Sure. You don't have to pretend, you know. You can just tell me you want into my pants."

  "Will that work?"

  "No. Neither will lying." She gave him a sharp look before adding, "Idiot."

  Seven

  Evan's eyebrows knit together; it had been twenty minutes, and he still had no idea what he was going to do at that point. The more that he put into it, the more that he wanted to win. There was something to that, he knew. Someone would probably call him a male chauvinist for it, or something. He would probably deserve it, he admitted.

  Then again, his entire life he'd been acting like someone who people who used the phrase would call a 'male chauvinist' and so far, it hadn't led him all that far wrong. The only thing that was different now was the fact that he had more going on than his desire to get his dick wet.

  He wasn't sure what he wanted, at that point. At first it had been talking to a pretty girl, and he'd been distracted by that little bit. Add the bet in, and it was practically all-consuming. But as time went on there was more and more going into the soup. If he hadn't been sure why he was interested to start, he was sure not certain now.

  So instead he looked down at the book that sat in his passenger-side. Pulled into a diner. The sign said 'seat yourself' so he did. Then he cracked the spine, and flipped quickly through the book.

  When they said 'unusual' he wasn't sure what that might have meant. As it went on though, he was quickly starting to realize precisely how unusual a book could be while still having pages, without popup pictures or noise boxes. It was just a book, but it was as unusual as anything he could imagine.

  Then he turned back to the first page, and he started to read. He almost made it out of chapter two by the time he settled up his bill, and he was no closer to understanding what the fuck he was reading.

  But it was her favorite, and if he was going to untie the knot of her life, and find a chink in that armor of hers, then it was going to be in this book. Over the past ten days he had spent almost twenty hours between trying to find her and trying to chat her up. The least he could do was settle in and do a little studying.

  He dropped the book into his passenger seat again, marked with the receipt that they'd given him when he checked out.

  He read the thing until late in the day. He'd always been a quick reader. This was no exception, but once things started to get wild, Evan knew that it was going to take some time. Still, he dug in. He dug in before classes in the morning, during breakfast. When he was cooling off from his morning run, he read the thing. And by God, he read it between classes, after classes, and when he was done, two weeks had barely passed since the bet started. He closed the book.

  He pinched his lips together and closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He'd read the book to find the answer to questions he couldn't put into words. To understand Dana better, and maybe, if he was lucky, to figure out what she liked.

  Well, he had a good idea what she liked, now. House of Leaves, as it turned out, was a very particular niche. It was a complicated little book, and it spoke volumes about someone who would claim it was their favorite.

  But more than that, more than anything, it raised a thousand more questions. He'd hoped it would simplify things, in the way that abstractions so often do.

  Instead, it had convinced him that there was plenty of complexity to cope with. Complexity that he didn't know how to address, and was certain to hold a thousand pitfalls.

  It didn't make him want to sit down and try to re-read the book. At least that much, he was thankful for. He didn't have another four days of obsessing over the damn thing. He had to get moving on finishing up the bet, and he had to do it soon. But he wasn't sure how he was supposed to move forward from this.

  There was one thing, though, that he knew he could do. Another way to move things forward with her. He had to return the book some time in the next week and a half, and he knew precisely where to find Dana when she wasn't drinking her whiskey and Dew.

  So he hopped in the car. He drove it like an old man. A thousand people had told him so. Something about having all that power below the hood was nice. He guessed that the same people who thought that his attitude towards women was distasteful would find the thing to be an expression of masculinity.

  Sure it was. Not as much as the weight training, of course, or the running, or the hair cut. Definitely not as much as the sex. But he liked the look of the car because it looked like a man's car. That didn't mean that he needed to be driving it around like some kind of NASCAR driver. He went as fast as he had to, and no faster. It was that simple.

  So he got to Dana's library almost five minutes slower than if he'd gone ten over, but he wasn't interested in trying to test speed records, and he wasn't interested in getting a speeding ticket.

  He slid into a spot near the front; the place seemed practically empty. He glanced at the flier board as he walked it, since it was posted so prominently. They had a movie night, like most libraries seemed to. It was nothing he wanted to see, and if her choice of books was any indication, it was nothing that Dana was excited about either.

  So he walked past the counter, over to the little flag that read 'line forms here.' Dana had a stack of books in front of her and her head down. She scanned them, one after the other, not bothering to look up. Her hands moved automatically. The older woman was nowhere to be seen, though Evan guessed that she was in the back.

  Finally, when the stack had shrunk down to a quarter of its original size, Dana did look up. If she was surprised to see him, she didn't show it this time.

  "Decided it wasn't for you, huh?"

  Evan shrugged. "I'm a fast reader," he countered.

  "Yeah? What did you think?"

  He looked at her a long moment, let his eyes glide down to the cover.

  "You want my honest opinion?"

  "Yeah. Since you read it, and all." She didn't need to use the word 'liar' to get the message across.

  "Honestly? I thought it was pretentious as all hell. But that's just me."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

  "But I'm glad you told me you liked it," Evan followed through. "Because now I feel like I know a little bit about you."

  "What's that? That I'm pretentious?"

  Evan gave her his best smile. She didn't react to it, but she waited to hear his response, which was an improvement. "That you like thinking about stuff," he said finally. "I was wondering if you wanted to tell me what you liked about it so much over coffee."

  Eight

  Evan watched the expression on Dana's face. It had been a whil
e since he'd questioned himself about women. He had good instincts, and he knew it. Which made it all that much more upsetting that he was second guessing himself at all. Something in his gut told him that he had come off as perhaps a bit brutish and maybe a little stupid.

  Was now the time to surprise her, or the time to keep her comfortable? His mouth twitched. She stirred her coffee. "Did you have trouble following it?"

  "Trouble? I don't know. Not really. There was a lot of it, though. Maybe I missed something."

  "What was so confusing about it, then?"

  "I didn't think it was confusing. I said it came off super pretentious. The whole thing is academic jerking off. And before you go off, I'm not saying that because all academics is jerking off. But it's practically footnote porn."

  "Fair enough," she said. Apparently, Evan thought, he had decided to go for the surprise approach. The way she leaned in towards him, it seemed like it might actually be working, which was more than a little surprising, given the rest of her demeanor. Then again, the way she acted, she probably thought that nothing ever surprised her. "But was it interesting?"

  "It made it sound like it would be interesting to watch the movie the whole thing is talking about."

  "Which isn't real."

  "Obviously. The big issue at work here is that there's no way to make that film. See, putting a ton of black on the screen, it doesn't actually work to suggest that you're in a place so big that you can't see the walls. It just looks like some asshole forgot to turn the lights on."

  She pinched her lips to hide a smile. He saw the corners lift, and then saw them forced back into uniformity. It was almost cute. He relaxed back and took a sip of his water. It was cold and crisp. Better than he remembered. Water always was.

  "You don't seem like a big time film student."

  "I've seen a few movies," Evan answered. "I've never had anything to say, so I'm not exactly trying to make them."

  "That doesn't sound like the sort of thing that someone who's gone to the local multiplex, and seen three of the Fast and the Furious movies, would say."

  "Then I've seen a few more than my fair share of movies. What do you want me to say? I never wrote a three-hundred page treatise on the thematic elements of The Artist."

  "No? Could be neat."

  "Ready? Here's my thesis: Change is scary. It's easy to fight it but it's hard to win."

  "It's punchy. I like it."

  "Well, that's not really my line of work, so…"

  "What's your line of work?"

  Evan's teeth clicked together. "Right now? I'm a full-time student."

  "And when that's over?"

  "I'm going into politics," he said. He waited for her expression to change. Now it was Evan's turn to be surprised. She didn't look particularly different. He wasn't about to talk shop with her. It would be a wild assumption to figure that they had much in common on that front.

  "Ah, okay," Dana said. She had a perfectly flat expression, but the tone of her voice said that she was being sarcastic. Whether it was intended to be funny or biting, Evan couldn't be sure. "You're less about jerking off for hundreds of pages of literature, and more about jerking off for hundreds of pages of legal texts?"

  It was Evan's turn to try to hide his smile. His failure was halfway-intentional. It created an image of who he was as a person, and part of that image was pretending to be embarrassed about it.

  "Something like that."

  "Fair enough. Let's have a real talk, Mr. Politician."

  "Real talk about what?"

  "Why are you chasing me down like this? You going to check my immigration papers?"

  "Why? You got them with you?"

  She laughed. "I'll see if I can dig them out of the family archives. I'm sixth generation, the most recent entry into the country. The Carpenter clan has, it's told, been a fixture around here for generations. But hey, if it'll keep me from getting shipped back to some shitsville in rural England, I'll go looking for you."

  Evan leaned in. "Because I was teasing you. As a joke, right?"

  "Pretty far for a joke."

  "Teasing girls is never just a joke," Evan added, and pulled back straight in his seat as the waiter brought food. "But the thing is, I couldn't get you out of my head. I don't want to put too fine a point on this, Dana Carpenter, but I don't get distracted by girls."

  "They get distracted by you?"

  "Maybe, if they want. My point is, you're a surprise."

  He was surprised at how much he meant all of what he was saying. He was more surprised that she wasn't immediately calling him full of shit. Sometimes things worked out, he supposed.

  "So…what, then?"

  "You're an itch, Dana. An itch I couldn't scratch."

  "And now you want to scratch the itch?"

  "You're obviously not interested," Evan said. "But it's not a want, is it? It's a gotta. I might not ever be able to scratch the itch you give me, but I gotta try, don't I?"

  She wanted him to think she wasn't interested, he knew. That was part of it. Dana was a woman who had been uninterested in every single thing that had come her way her entire life. Maybe it was an attitude thing, where she thought cool kids weren't into anything. Maybe she was right.

  But she was interested. He could see it, under the mask. She was having more trouble hiding it the more time went on.

  "Fine," she said. "Just for you, I'll let you scratch your itch."

  Evan blinked. Maybe she didn't realize what she'd said. Or maybe she was getting ready to pull the rug out from under him. He didn't dare believe that things were going to work out as well as she made it sound like it could.

  "What's that mean?"

  "I'll give you a chance to wow me. Friday night, you can pick me up after work, take me by my apartment to get changed, and I'll give you one date."

  "Good night kiss at the end?"

  She smiled. This time her attempt to hide it was considerably less effective. "We'll see how the date goes, Mr. Mayor."

  Nine

  Evan went through the plan again. It had to go perfectly. Thirty days was forever, but when you wanted to make something happen, and it took two weeks to get your first attempt, it was almost no time at all. He let out a breath.

  If he didn't make it all the way tonight, then it wasn't the end of the world. He'd have more attempts. But if he botched the date, if it was anything less than perfection on a plate, then there was a better than nothing chance that he wasn't going to be able to get a second shot.

  He let out a breath and eased the car out of the parking lot, and made the last half-mile to the library. The lot was no more full than it ever was, and he pulled into the first non-handicapped spot. It was empty. He turned the ignition off and looked down at the clock on the dash as it turned off.

  There was five minutes before they closed. How long it was going to be until Dana got out, he wasn't sure of. But it was going to be fine. He repeated it a few more times to himself, as if it was suddenly going to make him feel better to know. He had to figure out something, sooner or later. He simply had to.

  He texted that he was outside, and she couldn't miss him. Then he sat on the hood and watched the sky turn black. There were stars out, but he couldn't see them well. Just one or two, at first, the very brightest. As he looked, they came out more and more. It reminded him, in a sickly sort of way, of looking at Dana. The more that he looked into her, the more that he saw worth looking at.

  "Hey," she said. "See you got the good spot."

  "We riding together, or separate?"

  "Separate. Follow me to the apartment, and then I'll just grab a quick shower and a change of clothes. What kind of thing should I wear?"

  Evan made a show of looking her over, like he had to think very hard. "I don't know. What's the skimpiest–"

  He looked up and laughed. She rolled her eyes, which he took to mean that she liked it regardless of what she meant by it. "I'm serious."

  "Wear what you want. You want to wear w
hat you've got on, we can just go straight there."

  "I'd rather change."

  "Then lead the way," Evan said. He gestured to the empty lot. "I'll follow you, like you said. Hell, I followed you this far, right?"

  "Don't remind me," Dana told him. She was smiling.

  He followed her. Stepped out of the car. She invited him into the apartment. He didn't take it as an invitation, though she might have meant it as one. Sometimes you ought to be clear about what you want in life. Evan always knew better than to try to be coy when it came to the opposite sex.

  He settled onto her couch and waited. He heard the sound of her shower come on. He tried not to think too hard about it. It had been longer than he'd realized since the last time that he'd been able to busy himself with the fairer sex. The idea that he was going to walk around full-mast wasn't something that he was looking forward to. It would be the polar opposite of a perfect date, unless she was so endeared to it that she jumped on him right then and there.

  "One more minute," she called out. He shivered gently and sucked a breath in. He heard the doorknob turn and stood up. She still had her hair up in a towel, but she was dressed otherwise.

  He couldn't help noticing how deep the neck of her shirt dipped. Couldn't help noticing that when she moved just right she showed off a tight midriff that would have been appealing on any woman. He could help how he reacted to it, and if it wasn't what he usually did, that didn't mean he struggled to keep himself reserved about it.

  "You look good," he said.

  "Yeah? You think so?"

  "Good enough to eat." He allowed himself one indulgence, stepping past the boundaries of what anyone would call 'personal space.' She didn't push him away. He looked down at her.

  Dana had never been a woman who struck him as just like all the others. Oh, sure. She was a type. Nobody is wholly original. But he could read her face like a book in that moment. If he wanted her, there was a good chance that he'd have her, if he tried something right there. But it wasn't a sure thing.