Suddenly I don’t feel like doing much of anything except going home and trying to forget any of tonight even happened.
Try to forget about Trent Latham too, that’s for sure.
I mean… Maybe dad was right. Maybe he is just an asshole.
But that feeling. He was summoning you over to him with that huge finger of his.
I’ve had lots of ‘feelings’ in this life and most of them are pretty awful, I don’t see how this should pan out any different.
The stuffy doorman sniffs down his nose at me, barely caring as I leave and don’t plan on coming back.
As if on cue, the moment I step outside, there’s a crash of thunder and it starts to rain.
Great.
I get about halfway to where we left the car, resigning myself to walk straight past it, when I hear a car horn honk, startling me.
It’s a cab, and the driver asks if I need a ride.
“I just dropped a couple off at the reunion. You need a ride someplace?” he asks, looking up at the sky and then letting his eyes travel down my already soaked outfit.
“I can put a towel down,” he adds, making perfect sense.
“Sure,” I murmur. “Why not.”
I almost hope the rain on my face is disguising the mascara and tears I can feel starting to run, but after a few minutes, I couldn’t care less.
Chapter Six
Trent
I don’t expect Mike Wheatley to be over the moon to see me, but snatching Brooke away so soon isn’t playing fair.
It is supposed to be a social event after all.
Signaling her from a distance, I feel relief when she smiles. Receptive to the feeling I’m broadcasting, and if it’s anything like how I feel from her touch, I know I’m not imagining things.
But nothing worth having is easy to come by.
It’s in that same moment I’m beckoning her back over to me with my finger, that some drunk idiot almost falls over her, hands where they should never be.
That’s my cue to step in.
Her old man taking her to one side, maybe. But another man trying to lay a hand on what’s mine? No fucking way.
I recognize Butch Wilson long before I reach him.
He used to beat kids up and tell everyone it was me, which didn’t do anything for my image in high school and later in college.
He looks worse for wear, and not just from tonight’s drinks. He looks like a guy who’s fallen on hard times because of it, but it’s no excuse for acting like a sleaze.
In a single movement, I have him by the scruff and am helping him outside when the Dean is suddenly beside me, begging me to be discreet.
“You mean, don’t break his hands?” I growl, still mad that anyone would do something so stupid, but to Brooke especially.
“Precisely,” Dean Chambers grovels, making apologies to his fellow guests as they move aside.
“For the sake of our overseas friends too,” he adds, reminding me quietly that if he does well, I do well.
That old backscratching favor is like a god damned tattoo.
Very hard to erase once it’s applied.
By the time I get Butch outside, he’s flaked out anyway. Sitting him on a bench under some cover, I ask Dean Chambers if he can arrange a cab or have someone drive him home.
“I’ll have it seen to,” he clips and moves back inside, looking more like he’d rather deal with his conscious crowd than one drunk almost ruining the whole party.
Some lightning flashes silently and I observe the chill in the air before figuring old Butch Wilson isn’t going to bother anyone else tonight, so I head back in myself.
My eyes peeled as I look out for Brooke.
But the gods of test and challenge aren’t done with me yet.
I hear a whining, nasally voice followed by a high-pitched cackle.
Then I get a face full of way too much drug store perfume, followed by the icy claws of a stranger’s acrylic nails digging into my arm.
Looking down, I figure this might be the second drunk of the night, but no. She seems sober as a judge, which is frightening in itself.
I try to disengage from her, pulling my arm back. But she has a grip like iron.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Trent Latham,” she coos, making my skin crawl at the fact this person even knows who I am.
I’m sure she’s a nice enough person, despite the fact she looks like something that has a nozzle somewhere to inflate it.
But apart from really not being the kind of woman I’d like to have hanging off me on a good day, right now I have somewhere else I’d like to be.
With someone else.
“Look,” I tell her, stopping just long enough to try and ease her hands off me one more time.
“I’m really in a rush to meet someone else,” I tell her. “And I’m sorry, but I really don’t know who you are,” I add truthfully.