Rachel
I had no right to be angry.
Although not having a right to feel a certain way and actually controlling how I felt were two different things. I tried in earnest to disguise my bitterness after class the next day. As usual, I’d waited for the room to empty before going down to speak to Caine. I’d held an extra-help session before class, and he liked to keep the sign-in sheet to see who was making an effort. I handed it to him.
“You were late.”
“No, I wasn’t. I got here right on time.”
“I was referring to the extra-help session.”
The session hadn’t even been held in a building Caine taught in. And I was barely late.
“I was literally two minutes late. And you’re checking up on me?”
He stared at me. “I don’t like lateness. Maybe you should plan to start the sessions later if you have to work late or whatever.”
It was the or whatever that let me see past the blank mask he wore.
I squinted. “Were you looking for me this morning for a reason or just checking up on me?”
“Just be on time, Rachel.”
“Answer my question.”
Caine had turned away from me as he packed up his bag, but he stopped to look at me. His eyes were dark. “Not here. I can tell this conversation is not going to be one I should have in my classroom.”
“Fine. Then where would you like to have it?”
He lifted his bag off his desk. “I prefer not to at all.”
I folded my arms across my chest and raised my voice. “So you’re done with me, then? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Because I prefer direct. If we’re done fucking, you can just say so.”
We had a mini stare off, and I knew I was pushing his tolerance to the max. I also didn’t give a flying shit.
“Seven o’clock,” he said. “I’ll come by your place after my last class.”
“I work day shift until eight tonight. I’ll come to your place after.”
I had no idea what had possessed me to say that. Why would I want to drive from Manhattan back to Brooklyn upset in the middle of the night? But my emotions felt so uncontrollable, I’d grasped for anything to have some semblance of control.
“Fine. But I’ll pick you up. I don’t want you driving at night tired.”
Surprisingly, the rest of the day flew by. O’Leary’s was busy, and working with Charlie rather than Ava meant I didn’t have to talk about my life all day long. A little before seven, I was in the rear of the adjoining dining room talking to a couple who were regulars when my attention was diverted. I spotted Caine walking in. My heart started to race.
I was fooling myself trying to pretend I wasn’t going to be hurt when he reminded me what we’d had was purely sex. All the logic in the world couldn’t stop my heart from falling.
After I checked in on my tables and let the last straggling customers know they’d need to settle up at the bar, I went over to Caine. Charlie was standing nearby.
“You remember Caine, Charlie, right?”
Charlie extended his hand. “The Professor. West, right?”
Caine shook. “That’s right.”
“Got a middle name?”
Caine’s brows furrowed, but he answered anyway. “I do. Maxwell—my father’s name. Why?”
Charlie eyed me. “No reason. Just like to know who my girl is spending time with.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ignore Charlie. He was a cop for twenty years. Everyone’s a suspect until they’re proven innocent. I’m going to go change. I’ll be right back.”
The car ride to Caine’s was quiet and awkward. Since the way he handled the stick shift stirred me in places I didn’t want to be stirred, I spent most of the time looking out the window. When we arrived at Caine’s building, he came around to open my door, but I was already halfway out. He frowned and took my elbow to help steady me as I lifted from the tiny, low car. More silence ensued on the elevator up to his apartment. It wasn’t until we were inside that either of us spoke.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’ll take a water.” I kneeled to greet Murphy, who seemed to sense the tension between us and actually listened when Caine snapped at him.
“Down, boy.”
Caine brought me a bottle of water and himself a glass of red wine. Again, I was staring out the window. I’d had the entire day to think about what I was going to say, but since the time had come, all my pent-up anger and frustration had disappeared. I was just sad and felt defeated and tired.
I sighed and continued to stare off into the city lights. “I didn’t invite Davis to come to O’Leary’s. We didn’t have plans or anything.”
“I know.”
My eyes moved to Caine in the reflection. He stood behind me. “How do you know?”
“Because you wouldn’t do that. You’re not the type of woman who hops out of bed with one man in the morning and goes out with another.”
I turned to face him. He didn’t back up or give me any room. “So why did you leave, if you knew that?”
He looked me straight in the eyes. “Because you’re better off with him than me.”
My slumped shoulders squared. “You have no say in who I’m with. You can’t just pass me off to someone else when you’re done.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Rachel.”
“You know what? Screw you.”
“Rachel—”
His tone was a warning. But I was the one who should’ve been warning him. Because suddenly, I was infuriated. My frustration had morphed into anger. It pissed me the hell off that he was standing there so calm. It wasn’t fair that he wasn’t upset. I needed him to be hurt like I was.
“Don’t Rachel me! You’re right. I am better off with Davis. At least he’s honest with me about how he feels. And he was pretty good in bed, too.”
Caine’s jaw clenched. “Are you done?”
“No, I’m not done. I’m just getting started. I think I’ll fuck beanie boy, too. Maybe he can draw some better nudes after seeing the real thing up close and personal.”
His voice was tight. “Now are you done? Because if you’d shut the fuck up for a minute, I’d like to get a word in edgewise.”
My eyes widened. “Did you just tell me to shut the fuck up?”
Caine’s head lowered so we were eye to eye. He spoke through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to hear about you fucking other men. So, yes, shut the fuck up for a minute already.”
“I will not. I can—”
Caine cut me off with a growl and then…his mouth crushed to mine. My gasp of shock was swallowed up by his kiss. His hands came up to cup my cheeks, and he growled again as he tilted my head to where he wanted it, deepening the kiss. My gut reaction was to fight, push away from his grip and run in the opposite direction. But that thought fled the second his tongue scooped inside and found mine. Instead, I kissed him back with all the pent-up anger inside me.
My arms wrapped around his neck, and I tugged at his hair as I clung to him. Caine gripped my thighs, lifting me off the ground as he backed me against the cold glass window. He guided my legs around his waist and groaned when he pressed between them. The sound made everything else disappear.
There was no yelling.
There was no telling me I was better off with another man.
There was only me and him—and this kiss.
This kiss.
Us.
We couldn’t get close enough. Our limbs entangled, his hard body keeping mine in place. We were hungry for each other. I had no fight left in me. My head was spinning, and I was unable to form a coherent thought when our wild kiss finally broke.
Caine was panting, his voice hoarse. “Can you keep quiet for just a minute now?”
I managed to nod.
“Good.” His grip on me tightened, but he pulled back enough to look in my eyes. “I said you were better off with him than me. But you didn’t let me finish.”
I held my breath, waiting to hear the rest.
Caine looked away in thought. “I left last night, thinking it was the right thing to do. I’ve never had a relationship longer than a few months, and I fuck up everything good around me.”
“But you don’t—”
Caine covered my lips with two fingers, silencing me. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Opening them, he chuckled. “God, you really never shut the fuck up.” Then he leaned his forehead against mine. “Let me finish.”
I nodded.
“You might be better off with him than me, but I’m a selfish bastard. And I’m selfish enough to not walk away when I should and to ask you to be with me until I fuck it up so badly that you run the other way.”
Looking into his eyes, I realized he believed every word he was saying. For whatever reason, he thought he wasn’t worthy of a chance—that things would inevitably end badly. A gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach warned me I was going to get hurt, but I tamped it down.
“Will you tell me why you think you’re going to fuck things up?”
“It’s just history, Rachel.”
“So we’ll learn from it. But I can’t do that if I don’t know what there is to avoid.”
Caine looked back and forth between my eyes. “You’ll tell that douchebag you’re not interested?”
My brows drew. “Douchebag?”
“Your roomie. Davis.”
I didn’t bother to tell him I’d already planned on telling Davis I wasn’t interested. Let him think it was his victory. “Yes.”
“Fine. We’ll talk later.”
Of course, I immediately started to protest. “Later? Why can’t—”
Caine silenced me with a kiss. Again.
Later works.
I listened to Caine’s heartbeat as my head rested on his chest.
“In high school, I had a girlfriend for a few months. I cheated on her.”
His voice was low, and I had to move my ear away from his heart to be able to hear. Turning my head, I rested my chin atop my hands. The room was dark, although my eyes had adjusted enough to see him as he spoke. We were both naked, and I was feeling pretty content.
“You were young.”
“With her twenty-two-year-old sister.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Well, that still sounds like you were young. She was older and should have known better.”
“My first year of college, I met Abby. We’d been dating for about five months when I decided to take a semester off and go on tour with my band. We were opening for a band that wasn’t much bigger than us, but we thought we were going to be rock stars. That was my first experience with groupies. I didn’t technically cheat on her, I guess. After seven weeks on the road, I called her and said we should see other people. She thought I was just lonely, so a few nights later, she flew out to Seattle to surprise me and see our show. She caught a show alright, but it was backstage and involved me and two women.”
I wrinkled my nose. “You had a threesome?”
“I hadn’t even known Abby was there. Apparently when she walked in, one of the girls invited her to join us, but I was too busy to notice.”
“That’s kind of gross.”
“Abby got pissed, drank too much, and apparently fell walking up a flight of concrete stairs at her hotel. She rolled her ankle and broke her nose on the way down. Spent the night in the ER, and her parents had to fly out and get her the next morning. I didn’t even know she’d been in town until the following week.”
“That’s horrible. Although I’m not sure that was even your fault. It sounds like you tried to do the right thing by breaking it off with her.”
“Even if I try to do the right thing, I wind up fucking things up.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
Caine was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was pained. “My best friend Liam and I started our band when we were twelve. He was a pretty incredible songwriter. The only problem was, he did his best work wasted.”
“I’ve read that Dylan wrote most of his best work on heroin.”
“Yeah. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It’s not just a tagline to sell T-shirts. The year things really started to take off for our band, so did Liam’s drug hobby. At first he drank a few Red Bulls to stay up and play or write songs—eventually the Red Bulls turned into Adderall because it’s easier to take a pill, and we were playing gigs near college campuses, and students take that shit like it’s M&Ms. But the Adderall keeps you up for twenty-four hours, and you need to crash, so you take another pill to help you come down.”
“Are you talking about Liam or about you?”
“I dabbled, but nothing like Liam. At the time, I didn’t see it as clearly as I see it now. I guess I thought it was the norm. Me and the other guys didn’t even know how bad things were for a while. Then one night, we tried to wake him for a gig, and we couldn’t get him up. When the hospital pumped his stomach, there were so many drugs in there—and not just pills—it was a miracle he’d survived. I had no idea the Adderall had turned into coke and meth.”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
“Liam went to rehab the first time, and we went back to Red Bulls for a while after that. But it never lasted long. He’d build back up to out of control, and we’d drop him off at rehab. We got a recording contract offer during his last stint in rehab. I should’ve known it was too much for him to handle. Part of our deal was that we had to bring five new songs. That’s a lot of pressure on someone who’s just getting out of rehab.”
I already knew one of his band members died from an overdose. I didn’t want him to have to say it.
“I read about your friend when I Googled you after we first met. I’m so sorry.”
Caine was quiet for a long time. He shut his eyes, and when they opened, I could see them glistening, even in the dark.
I stroked his cheek. “You can’t control someone with addiction.”
“No. But I didn’t have to pile on the stress. We shouldn’t have taken the deal and put that on Liam.”
“Was Liam happy about the deal?”
“We all were. We were twenty-one with a record deal from a major label.”
“What happened wasn’t your fault. Addicts look for reasons to justify what they’re doing. If it wasn’t that, it would have been something else.”
Caine sighed. “I don’t have a good track record, Rachel. Even when I try to do the right thing, I fuck it up somehow. I haven’t told you about even half the bad choices I’ve made. About Liam’s girlfriend, who was too damn young to be on the road with a band, but I let it happen anyway. About when I was sixteen and met this girl—”
I’d heard enough. Just like he’d done to me earlier, I silenced him by pressing two fingers to his lips. “Shut the fuck up, Caine.”
He smiled through his sadness. “You wanted me to talk to you.”
I climbed up his body and straddled his hips. I’d been holding the sheet around me and let it fall to my sides. “Thank you for sharing with me.”
He gripped my waist and surprised me by lifting me up to my knees. Reaching down, he grabbed his cock and held it up, positioning it at my opening. “I’m not done sharing yet.”