CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DANIKA
I avoided him for a few days after that, but he was persistent, and even I knew that it wouldn’t last long.
It was the evening before a day I knew we both had off when I broke.
I found myself stalking him on Facebook. It was embarrassing, but I didn’t stop doing it, in fact spent hours going through his photos, wondering about every damn chick that he’d taken a picture with in the last two years, even knowing that most of them were likely just fans.
Finally, I found myself messaging him.
I told myself it was just boredom. The quiet time I’d once enjoyed alone in my house had suddenly turned into tedium for me, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Danika Markova: Want to hang out
tomorrow?
He didn’t respond, and that messed with me. It wasn’t what I’d come to expect from him. Was he getting bored with this whole messed up thing? I hated to think it, but that was where my mind immediately went.
When I realized I was acting desperate, I walked away from my computer.
I’d brought two portfolios home from work. I went through them, taking notes, feeling aimless, despite the fact I was doing a task that almost always drew me in.
When even work couldn’t distract me, I went to the market. I shopped for an hour for nothing, going up and down the aisle. I spent two hundred dollars on food, then wondered the entire way home what I would do with it all. I just didn’t eat this much. Some of it was canned, which would keep, but a lot of it was produce and meat.
I was still berating myself as I pulled up to my house. My heart started pounding when I saw a familiar black Challenger parked at the curb.
I was smiling as I got out of my car and met him in the driveway. “Hey, what’s up?”
He didn’t answer at first, instead helped me unload my groceries.
I thought his silence was strange. “Did you get my message earlier? About tomorrow?”
He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“Yeah. I’ve got plans.”
I blinked. This was different. I wasn’t accustomed to hearing no, not from him.
I shrugged. “Okay. That’s fine. No worries.”
“I’d cancel, but it’s a sponsored charity run. Nothing big, just a 5k, but all the press attached is going to take forever.
And there’s an after party. We do stuff like this all the time.” I really tried not to dwell on who the we was in that sentence. “It’s usually an all-day thing.
I could come by after.”
I nodded. “Yeah, whatever. I mean, call after, and we’ll figure it out.” I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t know if he didn’t want to invite me to participate or if he felt awkward asking me. Maybe he thought I couldn’t do something like that? He had to know that I could walk three miles. I had a limp, but I was still in good shape. I made sure to work my knee out every single day.
“Is it a serious 5k? I mean, strict runners only, or are there some slower participants?”
He sat on one of the barstools at my counter, his eyes steady on mine.
“Anything goes. It’s all to raise money for some local charities. I’m just going to bring some attention to it.” He swallowed. “You’re invited, if that’s something you could do, that you’d want to do. I didn’t want to pressure you or to come across like an insensitive prick. I know you do your stationary bike every day, and that you swim, but I wasn’t sure…”
I shrugged. “I can do it, but only if you want me to go. I don’t want to impose, and I don’t want to slow you down. You can, you know, feel free to run ahead of me.”
“You’re not imposing. I want you to go. And you won’t be slowing me down. It’s not that kind of a race. I won’t raise more money for charity if I finish faster.” There was a very long pause. “Mona will be there. All of the girls from the show will be.”
I rolled my eyes, none too pleased about seeing Mona, but it was certainly the lesser evil. At least he wouldn’t be spending the day with her without me now, with me at home alone on my day off.
“Do I need to sign up somewhere or do anything special?”
He shook his head. “I’ll get you signed up, and I’ll drive. I know where it is.
The only rule is that you have to wear white.”
I thought that was odd, but I went into my room and started going through my closet. “Tops and bottoms?” I called to him.
“If you can,” he answered from close behind me. “Just make sure it’s not any clothing you’re real attached to. It may not survive the day.”
“What, you going to rip it off me?” I shot him a sassy look, and he laughed how I loved, from deep in his chest.
“It’s quite possible.
I certainly
wouldn’t rule it out.”
I pulled up a pair of white track shorts and a white modified muscle shirt.
“These work?”
“Perfect.”
He didn’t stay long that night, which was disappointing, but I supposed it was good that at least one of us was showing some restraint.
“I’ll be by at eight to pick you up in the morning,” he told me as I walked him to his car.
He kissed me goodbye, pulling back quickly. “I need to go get some stuff done, and I know that if we get into this we’ll never stop.”
I nodded, stepping back. “Goodnight,” I murmured, then went back into the house without looking back. If he could pull away, I told myself, then so could I.
I was ready, dressed in white down to my shoes, my hair tied up in a messy ponytail, knee brace on, when he pulled up the next morning. I didn’t make him come to the door, going out to him before he could walk up to the house.
We met halfway, in my driveway. He looked so different, dressed all in white, in a V-neck T-shirt and athletic shorts.
Each piece had a small Cavendish Resort logo embroidered on it.
Even his shoes were white, and he was wearing a white sweatband.
“You’d look so preppy, if I couldn’t still see all of that ink.”
He grinned. “There’s a perfectly good explanation for why I’m dressed like this. You’ll see what it is when we get there.”
Before I could respond, he was bending down, lifting me into a tight hug that took my feet clear off the ground.
My arms wrapped around his neck.
I lifted my face and closed my eyes as his lips made their way to mine, wishing he’d shown up earlier, or stayed the night before, or something, anything to give us a few more stolen moments we could have had to feed this hunger enough to keep it at bay.
We were not in any way assuaging this need of ours. With every encounter, we only seemed to be making it more acute.
His lips became insistent, his hands grabbing my ass so he could keep me anchored while he ground hard against me.
It was a few drugging minutes before he tore himself away.
“Christ. Do you want me to f*ck you on your lawn, or was I misreading that?” I giggled as he set me down.
“You’re right. We can always just apologize to your neighbors later.” I backed up a few steps, warding him off with my hands. “One question. Is the race going to start without you, if you’re late?”
His breath whooshed out of him in a noisy, annoyed breath. “Not likely.”
“Is there any way we have time to run into my house and have a quickie, and still make it on time?”
“Not f*cking likely,” he growled, his mood darkening by the second.
“Okay then. Get in the car. We’ve got to go. You are not going to make everyone wait on you.”
He cursed his entire walk to the car, kept it up as he held my door open for me, and even for part of the drive there.
“You should have come early,” I told him.
“Well, thank you for the invitation, but it’s a little f*cking late.”
I laughed. I don’t know why, but I’d always gotten a kick out of grumpy Tristan.
I saw when we got there that everyone participating wore white. There was a huge banner at the starting line that read Color 5k for Charity, and I began to get an inkling of what I was in for.
“White, huh?” I shot him a look.
He grinned. “It’s fun. You’re going to love it. Trust me.”
Those were the strangest words.
Trust me, coming from him of all people. My head and my heart went to war when he said those words, even in a lighthearted way.
Because I wanted to trust him. A part of me needed to. I wanted to trust him with the best of me, the worst of me, and everything in between.
So much of me instinctively reached for that trust. Sometimes it felt like my very soul had cast its lot with him, and even in the years apart, it had clung to him, leaving the rest of me to wither.
But I had trusted him. Trusted my whole heart with him, and he’d crushed it into little tiny pieces, seemingly uncaring of the carnage he’d left in his wake.
But he’d changed.
It was hard to deny that the things about him that had destroyed me once had been transformed, or disappeared, or been left behind.
And so, the battle inside of me raged on, and that charming devil of a man just went about his life, smiling while he slowly broke down all of my defenses against him.
Defenses I’d worked hard for.
Defenses I’d earned.
It wasn’t fair, just as it wasn’t fair when he gave me a mischievous grin that made me melt, and I quickly lost my train of thought.
That was what I was dealing with.
I was outclassed and outgunned, and I was only realizing it when it was too late to do a damn thing about it.
A heart could only break so many times before the cause was lost.
We were separated once we got near the starting line. He was hosting the thing and had to wade into the center of the chaos, so I waved him on, hanging back.
I could do a 5k, I knew it. But I hated that I’d be the slowest one, and everyone knew why just by glancing at me. Even after years of dealing with it, it was a difficult pill to swallow.
Still, I swallowed it every day and did my best. Today was no different, just a bit more public.
There might have been people I knew there, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t look for anyone. I didn’t want to slow anyone down.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t come. It wasn’t like I’d really be spending time with Tristan. But it was also too late to back out.
Still, I briefly considered hailing a taxi and just cutting out.
For some reason I didn’t. For some reason I stayed.
I caught some glimpses of the spectacle that was Tristan and all of the girls from his show towards the front of the line.
The
assistant/showgirls
were
all
wearing white belly shirts and white hot pants, as they posed with him for photographers.
Briefly, I got close
enough to see him putting his arms around some of them for the pictures, and by them, I mean that one of them was Mona.
I got far away after that, wondering why
he
needed
to
have
ten
showgirl/assistants in his act, and why they all had to sport double Ds. It was depressing.