Break Me (Corrupted Hearts Book 2) Page 6

  “I’m sorry, that came out wrong,” he said with a grimace. “I just meant . . . I remember you.” He held out his hand. “Let’s start over. I’m Chad.”

  “Nice to see you again, Chad,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “We were in Advanced Calculus together,” he said. “For a short time, anyway.”

  I remembered the class. I’d found it incredibly dull and remedial. The other kids had hated me, the twelve-year-old usurper in their high school. They’d glued my locker shut and locked me in the janitor’s closet. Not exactly The Best Years of My Life.

  “So what are you up to now?” he asked, accepting his drink from the bartender. Something clear in a short glass.

  I dearly wanted to say, “I head up a secret government agency that uses cutting-edge software to predict criminal and terrorist behavior.” But that would be blowing my security clearance and employment contract to smithereens.

  “I develop software,” I said, which was generic enough for people to get the gist that I did-something-with-computers. “What about you?”

  “Insurance,” he replied. “I’m in town for a convention and came a few days early to spend time with a buddy of mine from college.” He motioned to where a man stood chatting animatedly with two women. “He lives here.”

  My skill level at small talk was somewhere around the region of my skill level at softball. I knew the basic mechanics and what was supposed to happen, but I never could get it quite right. Nonetheless, I tried.

  “So . . . insurance,” I said. “Not exactly rocket science, right?” I gave a little laugh and he grimaced. Uh-oh. That hadn’t been right then. “I meant, it must be nice to have an occupation that isn’t cognitively demanding.” By the look on his face, I’d just made it worse. Crap. I took a big gulp of my drink. Damn small talk. I hated it.

  “I’m sure I deserved that,” Chad said with a half smile. “We weren’t exactly kind to you the short time you attended Marian.”

  I shrugged. “It’s in the past. Children can be cruel.”

  “Well,” he said, “for all the shitty things that people did to you at Marian, let me formally apologize for myself and on behalf of everyone else who isn’t as fortunate to run into you as I am.”

  Chad had a sheepish smile, but his eyes were sincere. It wasn’t often in life when an apology was forthcoming from someone who’d wronged you years before, and I appreciated it.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I accept.”

  “Can I buy you a drink to seal our newfound acquaintance?”

  I realized my drink was gone. I must’ve sucked it down while trying to figure out small talk. “Yes. That would be nice.”

  The bartender made another of the sweet-tangy drinks for me. I was feeling much more relaxed now, which had the unexpected effect of enhancing my efforts at making small talk. It helped that Chad was easier to talk to than many people I encountered.

  “You really turned out . . . just gorgeous,” Chad said with a smile. “Wow.”

  That was surprising to hear and I couldn’t stop the grin on my face. It was a new thing for me, compliments on my physical appearance. Jackson didn’t say much about how I looked usually, unless I was dressed inappropriately, like last night. Not that I was vain enough to need that—my sense of self-worth was just fine, thank you very much—but the part of me that had Mia fix my hair and makeup tonight purred like a kitten.

  “Hey, can I take a picture with you?” he asked. “I saw you’re seeing Jackson Cooper, so not only are you successful and beautiful, you’re famous.” He was grinning when he said it, which I took to mean he was teasing me.

  “Oh, I’m not famous,” I said hastily, but he was already holding up his phone for a selfie. He slung his arm over my shoulders and I had time for my quick show-my-teeth grimace as he snapped a photo.

  “There you are!” Bonnie had come to rescue me, thank God. She tugged on my arm. “C’mon. I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Bye, Chad,” I tossed over my shoulder.

  “I’ll tag you,” he called back as Bonnie hauled us both through the crowd to the ladies’ room.

  Bonnie disappeared into a stall and I pulled out my phone. It was still ten minutes until midnight, but it didn’t hurt to check the website. They might’ve released the trailer early.

  “Are you having a good time?” Bonnie asked when she came out. She adjusted her skirt and washed her hands.

  “Sure,” I automatically replied, knowing that was the expected response that would please her. The website was taking forever to come up. I really hoped the server wouldn’t overload. I was looking forward to seeing the trailer the second it was released. I opened Twitter and started searching. Jackpot. Someone had gotten ahold of the trailer early. It was already trending.

  “China!”

  “Just a sec,” I muttered, clicking links until I got to the trailer. It popped up and began playing. I squealed in excitement. “Come see!”

  She hurried over to me. “Is that Star—”

  “Shhhh!”

  We watched in rapt silence. Well, my silence was rapt. Bonnie was just quiet, watching over my shoulder until it finished.

  “The new trailer,” she said. “You should be happy, right?”

  I shook my head, disappointed. “I’m surprisingly let down. I find the continued trend of a female as the main protagonist with a male sidekick extremely irritating.”

  “You’re a woman. You should be glad they’re giving a girl the starring role in saving the universe.”

  “I’m not opposed to a female hero. I’m opposed to there being a female hero just for the sake of wanting to make her female. What does it contribute to the story?” I was busily tweeting as I talked. “If current mores and societal values, i.e., political correctness is allowed to influence the story being told, then it’s not really part of the Star Wars universe. It’s merely a reflection of ourselves. It wasn’t just Luke and the story of the Empire and the Jedi that made Star Wars such an epic tale, but the romance between Princess Leia and Han, and his story of redemption.”

  After an uncharacteristically long silence, I glanced up from my phone to see Bonnie surveying me, hands on her hips. “What?”

  “Can we get back to your Real Life problem, please? If you’re not sure you want to get serious with the first guy you have ever dated, then what’s the logical thing to do?”

  I frowned. “I don’t want to break up with him.”

  “I know, that’s not what I meant,” she said. “The only way to know if he’s The One is to expand the pool of candidates, right?”

  I considered it. The reasoning was sound, but . . . “I don’t know if Jackson would like—”

  “Jackson’s not here,” she interrupted. “I’m not saying you have to sleep with a slew of other men. Just . . . shop around.”

  I frowned. “‘Slew’ is an indeterminate number.” And sounded like a lot. More than a dozen? A baker’s dozen?

  She rolled her eyes. “C’mon. Let’s go expand your pool.”

  I would much rather have stayed hidden in the bathroom and tweeted more about the Star Wars trailer, but Bonnie was having none of it. She snatched my phone from me as we left the bathroom.

  “And I’ll hold on to this so you can devote your full attention to your experiment,” she said.

  “You’re being highly manipulative and bossy tonight,” I informed her. She stopped walking and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  “I know I am, but it’s just because I love you.” She slung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed, quickly letting go. She knew I got uncomfortable with displays of affection. She’d even tried to psychoanalyze it with me one time, but when she realized that I’d developed the aversion to physical affection about the same time as when my mother died, she dropped the subject.

  I was glad that same aversion didn’t preclude romantic, sexual touching, because that would be extremely inconvenient. I’d decided that my antipathy for touch only included platonic rela
tionships, which I had no doubt a psychologist would make hay from, not that I’d subject myself to psychoanalysis anytime soon. It always went back to the mother, right?

  Bonnie thrust a drink into my hand and set about introducing me to and chatting with no less than fifteen men. I counted. John, Mark, Lewis, Ron, Stephen (with a ph, I was told), Brian, Bryan, Camden, Harrison, David, Daniel, Tom and Thomas (not the same guy), Juan, and Bradley. Their occupations ranged from accountant to bartender, lawyer to artist (“My medium is whatever moves me at that moment.”), sales director to luxury car salesman. There was even a sous chef and arm model thrown in there somewhere. Bonnie put dibs on the arm model, but I just thought longingly of Jackson’s biceps and quads. And none of them interested me for more than a few passing minutes.

  I toughed it out for another hour. By then, I’d reached my limit on social interaction with strangers, “expanding my pool” or not. Fighting my way through the crowd to where Bonnie was, I hollered in her ear, “I’m going home now.”

  “Don’t go yet,” she implored, grabbing my arm. “It’s barely after one.”

  “I’m exhausted,” I said, which was true, but I was more mentally and emotionally tired than physically. I just wanted to curl up in my Star Wars pajamas and eat my Fig Newtons. “I’ll catch a cab and call you tomorrow.”

  She tried again to make me stay but I remained adamant until finally she handed over my phone and I trudged up the stairs back to the street, sucking in a lungful of fresh air. The drinks had made me sleepy, too, so that I was yawning by the time I reached the top . . . and stepped into a horde of people.

  Flashes went off from multiple areas, blinding me. Voices erupted in a cacophony as I was hemmed in from all sides.

  “China! Oh my God, it’s you! Will you take a selfie with me?”

  “China! I love you!”

  “. . . say hi to us, China . . .”

  “. . . autograph, just a quick one . . .”

  “China!” “China!”

  My name, called over and over. There had to be at least three dozen people all crowding around me, touching me, tugging at my hair and my dress.

  “Stop it!” I started to panic. I couldn’t move forward or back, I was stuck in one spot as they closed in, and the flashes documented it all. “Stop! Move back!” But no one listened. I didn’t even think they could hear me.

  Someone jostled me and an elbow flew up, knocking me in the face and my glasses to the ground. I saw stars, then nothing but dark blurs. My hair was pulled again and someone shoved into me, knocking me to the ground. I screamed in alarm, but there was so much noise. A foot landed in my gut, cutting me off midscream. I curled into as small a ball as I could, pulling my feet and arms in close and burying my head, hoping to not get hurt any worse.

  A waft of air and space cleared around me. I heard people yelling and the scuffle of feet against concrete. Suddenly, I was scooped in a man’s arms and lifted up. I didn’t know who my unlikely savior was, but I clung to his neck, feeling him striding away from the crowd. He slid me into the backseat of a car and followed me in. The slam of the door abruptly muffled the sounds from outside.

  My hair was a mess and all over. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of my face without my glasses and at the moment, I was crying too hard to see even that. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I was shaking. One strap of my dress had torn and I held the bodice up with one hand to preserve what little modesty I had left.

  “Shh, it’s okay. You’re okay.” Jackson’s voice soothed me, his hand stroking my hair. He moved slightly, then I felt him spread his suit jacket over my shoulders and tug it closed in front.

  It took several minutes before I could get my tears under control. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand before he gave me his pocket square. Using that instead, it came away streaked in black. Lovely. So not only had I lost my glasses and torn my dress, between the tangled hair and smeared makeup, I probably looked like a hysterical raccoon.

  “How did you find me?” I asked, my voice rough from crying.

  “Twitter,” he said. “Wil Wheaton retweeted you and then everything blew up. The Star Wars fanboys are having a war about what you tweeted. #BringBackHanAndLuke is trending. And all the female fans are hating on you and calling you antifeminist.”

  “But I didn’t post my location.”

  “You didn’t have to. Some guy posted a pic and tagged you, checking in here. I knew you were with Bonnie, but started to worry when his tweet started being retweeted. Then with all the Star Wars furor, I wanted to make sure you were okay, so I had Lance drive me over.”

  “A guy tagged me? Who?” Then I remembered. “Oh. Oh yeah. Chad.”

  Jackson’s brows raised. “Who’s Chad?”

  “A guy I went to high school with,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t thought a thing about it when he said he’d tag me. But giving away my exact location and a close-up photo of me had proven to have disastrous consequences.

  Jackson winced when he saw my face, taking the cloth from me and dabbing at my chin. The cloth came away with red stains. I hadn’t even realized I was bleeding. “I underestimated the public’s interest in you,” he said. “I’m sorry, China. I should’ve taken better care.”

  I was upset. My emotions were overtaking my logic at the moment, the panic of the sudden crowd love-attack still had me shaking. I was grateful Jackson had saved me, but anger bloomed that this situation had even happened. Logic said I shouldn’t be as angry as I was, but I couldn’t seem to help it. Since I had no other outlet for my anger and fear, I took it out on Jackson.

  “I could’ve been killed, you know,” I snapped, tears tightening my throat. “Or seriously hurt. I had no idea what I was walking into.”

  “I know—”

  “You don’t know,” I interrupted. “I’m not that big, Jackson. They knocked off my glasses. They tore my clothes.”

  “China, I’m sorry—”

  It was all suddenly too much. Too many people. Too much change. Nothing felt right or normal or comfortable. I was more anxious and stressed than I had been in years and I wanted nothing more than to be in my house, by myself, doing what I always did.

  “Take me home,” I interrupted him.

  “My house is closer.”

  “I don’t want to be in your house. I want to go home.”

  Lance was driving and I saw him glance in the rearview mirror at this. Jackson gave a stiff nod and Lance took the next left turn, heading west now instead of north.

  We rode in stilted silence for a few miles before Jackson spoke. “I know you want to get home, but I’d like to take you to the hospital to get checked out.”

  I was shaking my head before he was even through speaking. “I’m not going to the hospital. I’m fine.”

  “China—” he began.

  “One in twenty-five patients ends up with a hospital-acquired illness. Over one hundred thousand people die a year from infections contracted in hospitals or health care facilities. That’s more than car accidents and homicides combined.” I rattled off the statistics. “I’m fine. Just banged up a little.”

  My stomach ached where I’d been kicked and I hurt in various spots on my legs and arms from scrapes against the pavement. My head throbbed from hitting the ground and the pressure behind my eyes said I’d be feeling the loss of my glasses soon. But nothing was permanently damaged and last I’d heard, hospitals didn’t treat OCD.

  We pulled up to my townhouse and I was struggling to get out of the car before it had even stopped moving. Tomorrow I was going to hurt all over, I could tell already. Jackson was out and around before I’d succeeded, though, and took my arm to help me.

  “Who’s here?” he asked, distracting me from his touch.

  A car I knew very well sat in my driveway and I inwardly groaned. Why oh why did he have to keep bothering me outside of work? As if it wasn’t enough that I had to put up with him there, he couldn’t even give me the weekend without inflicting his pre
sence on me. Twice.

  “Somebody I work with,” I hedged. I hadn’t told Jackson that Clark and I were now working together. He knew Clark was black-op-for-hire and ex-Army intelligence. God only knew what he’d think my new job was if he found out about Clark being a part of it. “I’m fine. I can take it from here.” He needed to leave before Clark decided to make his presence known.

  As if my thoughts had conjured him, my front door flew open and Clark stepped out.

  One of my shoes was untied and I tripped when I took a step. I would have fallen flat on my face if Jackson hadn’t caught me. His jacket slipped off and I was left clutching my dress to my chest.

  “What the fuck happened?” Clark was on his way double-time, making it to my side in three seconds flat.

  “You,” Jackson said, in a tone that was anything but welcoming. “What are you doing here? And why were you in China’s house?”

  Well, shit.

  5

  “Good to see you, too, dickhead. Now answer my question. What the fuck happened to Mack?”

  I decided then and there that in my next employee review of Clark, I was going to recommend he attend a class on anger management. And I was definitely going to fail him on Gets Along Well With Others.

  “I got caught in the middle of a crowd,” I said, leaving it at that and forestalling whatever counter-insult Jackson was getting ready to hurl.

  Clark’s steel-blue gaze raked me from head to foot and I swallowed. My thin dress I clutched to my chest suddenly seemed inadequate armor. I shivered in the cold and Clark’s jaw went tight.

  “Come on, let’s get you inside,” Jackson said, moving me toward the front door.

  I put on the brakes. “I need some space, Jackson,” I said. Between last night’s party, Ralph the photographer following me around, and tonight’s fiasco, I was at the end of my tolerance for the changes to my life. “This is just . . . it’s too much right now.”

  “You’re upset,” he said, lowering his voice. Probably in the vain hope that Clark wouldn’t hear. “You aren’t thinking clearly.”