Gable (14 page)

He looked at me grimly pursing his lips together. “They were together, Mia and Coop. They’d been seeing each other behind Gable’s back for a while. He didn’t find that out until a month after they died then it all hit him hard.” Loch leaned back in his chair and took in a deep breath letting it out slowly. “Makes sense, though. Riley was more her type, clean-cut, studying to be a lawyer. He went to UDub too, so I guess it was convenient for them.” He shrugged.

“God,” I whispered. Oh, Gable. When I’d written to him about Hayden and Ivy cheating behind my back, he’d known exactly what I’d been talking about since he’d lost his girlfriend and best friend all at once too. Oh, God. 

“Yeah. He was pretty torn up.” He stretched out more in his chair and looked at me and it was uncanny how much he looked like his brother, but I noticed that his eyes were a little darker than Gable’s. “So that’s why I said that his only seeing you is a big deal. He hasn’t dated anyone seriously since they died. I mean, his bedroom has had a revolving door on it for a while. My brothers and I used to make bets on what hair color would come out of his room each morning.”

My eyebrows came together. “Hair color?”

“You know, the girls and whether they’d be blond, red, brunette. Long, short. I made fifty bucks one week.”

Dear God.

He chuckled at the look I must’ve had on my face. “He’s calmed down a lot this year, though.”

This year? Dear God!

“But he seems to really be into you. Talked about you some. Zeke, Ryker and I were hoping he’s finally settling down some.”

“He talks about me?” I asked. “What does he say?”

“I don’t know, just things like you went to a movie and on the ghost tour.” He shrugged a shoulder then sat up in his chair putting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands together. “But I’m telling you, that’s huge for him.” He looked at his watch. “Hey, I need to get to class. Look, don’t tell him we talked. He’d kick my ass if he knew.” He stood and so did I.

“Thank you, Loch. I really appreciate it. I won’t say a word,” I promised. He smiled then left me standing there kind of in shock. “He talks about me,” I mumbled as I walked toward the door.

According to Loch, that was a big deal. Huge. And it made me feel good that Gable did care for me, that maybe I wasn’t the pathetic doormat for him that I’d felt like at times. But, God, he’d been through so much pain. My heart ached for him as I walked across campus heading to my car, knowing that the reason he probably didn’t want to get close to me was because he didn’t want to get hurt again.

And I knew I’d have to make sure that didn’t happen.

~*~*~*~

Oh, but Mr. Gable Powers was in fine form that night at work.

On this awesome Wednesday evening, the night before the party, he was back to his old assholish ways when all I wanted to do was give him a big hug for all he’d gone through with his girlfriend and best friend. Wonderful.

I brought my first order to him, and saw he was leaning on his forearms on the counter seemingly flirting with a redhead who wore an emerald green dress that showed lots of cleavage and hit her at mid-thigh as she sat at the bar with her legs crossed. She had on four-inch expensive looking emerald green suede stilettos and she looked to be in her forties. Don’t get me wrong, she was gorgeous and all—big boobs, shapely legs—but what the fuck? When I walked up, Gable popped a cherry in his mouth as he pushed off a forearm and stood, grinned at her, a little too suggestively for my taste I might add, then looked at me with a smirk and said, “What can I do you for, Scout?” Then he chuckled at his comment and winked at me.

Asshole.

I handed him my order ticket, trying hard to keep the hurt off my face, but I’m not sure if I succeeded. I was hurt because he hadn’t talked to me since last Friday when he’d given me a spectacular orgasm, hurt because he hadn’t wanted to stay the night with me, hurt because he hadn’t bothered to answer my text I’d sent on Sunday, but, hurt worse because, by God, he’d taken the time to talk to his pen pal who was really the real me but not. Oh, hell, you know what I mean. Shit.

And now I was hurt because he was talking to this woman.

“Scout?” the redhead said glancing over at me. “That’s an unusual name.” Then she smiled at me.

Great. She was nice. Couldn’t be a bitch so I could be one right back to her. Of course not. So I gave her a small smile in return then turned my back to her so she wouldn’t engage me anymore because I was afraid I’d say something rude.

When Gable had filled my tray with my order, he flashed his lopsided grin at me, winked again and as I picked up the tray, the woman spoke to him. “Okay, so you were telling me about the corbelled arch on your grandparents’ courtyard. Are you sure it’s not bonded? What kind of stone is in the voussoir?”

And she was smart and into architecture so they had something in common. Great again.

I walked away going to different tables to fill their orders, the whole time trying to reign in my jealousy at the fact that he could go five days without talking to me but could chat away with some gorgeous random woman at the bar.

And that pissed me off but good.

But I guessed he didn’t owe me anything because what even the hell were we? We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend (or does climaxing on a guy’s hand automatically make it so?) I huffed out a frustrated laugh at that making my patrons look at me strangely. Whatever.

As I continued setting drinks down, I wondered if Gable was seeing other women. Loch said he wasn’t but how did he know for sure. I mean, we hadn’t said we were exclusive so he could’ve been seeing them just not bringing them home for his brothers to witness.

And the last thing I thought about as I took orders from a family of five was that if Gable didn’t know I was his pen pal, then he kind of
was
cheating on me since he wanted to meet
her,
who was really me but not,
and
he said he wanted to fuck her but he obviously didn’t want to fuck me.

Oh.

My.

God.

Forget about the spa treatment. I was all in for seeing a shrink then checking into a padded room when the semester was over. Ugh.

So the rest of the night stunk to high heaven because Red stayed at the bar the entire time chatting Gable up, and every time I had an order filled, he and I didn’t have a chance to talk (which was probably good because it wouldn’t have been pretty on my part anyway), but he
would
give me sexy looks and wink at me. What did that mean?

Thirty minutes before my shift was over, I decided I was done, so over everything. I figured I’d still go to the party tomorrow night, reveal myself to Gable, have a few drinks with Amy and Bodhi then get the hell out of there, writing Gable off as a loss. Yep. I’d just go back to my original plan which was not getting involved with him in the first place. Sounded good.

Ten minutes before my shift was over, I saw Red get up to leave and watched as Gable walked her out, and forgetting my awesome plan of writing him off, I felt my head explode at seeing him go with her. I looked around for Natalie but had to wait until she finished taking orders at a table then I walked with her to the kitchen and said, “Watch my section, please. I’ll be right back.”

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” I muttered as I semi-stomped through the place toward the front door.

When I got outside, I looked around and didn’t see anyone. There were no cars leaving and I wasn’t sure if Red could’ve left that quickly, so I walked through the parking lot like a damned creeper, checking every car to see if they were inside any of them doing God knew what. When I found that every car was empty, even his (which I just
knew
would have the windows fogged over because she’d be straddling his lap while he gave
her
a spectacular orgasm but it didn’t), a thought hit me. And then my heart was in my damned throat as I jogged to the back knowing I’d see him have Red pressed against the back of the bar kissing her and telling her that she tasted good. And that made me furious.

I rounded the corner, fists clenched, ready to chew some serious ass then break up with him, even if we weren’t officially together and I know you can’t break up with someone you were never with but what the fuck ever, that was my plan, but that’s when I saw him standing at the steps smoking a cigarette. And Red was nowhere to be seen.

I came up short, my heart in my throat thunking back to its original spot in my chest as I watched him take a drag and blow out the smoke. And feeling like an ass for thinking the worst in him, I quietly turned to go back the way I’d come and sneak back inside without his seeing me, but my stealth was all for naught.

“What’s up, Priss?” he questioned making me stop.

Shit.

I turned around knowing I’d been caught and walked toward him slowly trying to think of a lie.

“Uh, I was just checking to make sure the, uh, the, uh, Dumpster wasn’t full.” Yeah, that sounded good.

“And you went out the front instead of the back?” he asked, taking another drag before blowing the smoke out of his nose. How he made that look sexy, I have no idea, but he damned sure did.

God, I was seriously screwed with this man.

“Um, Glen’s mopping and I didn’t want to walk across the wet floor,” I answered lamely.

“Uh huh.” He flicked the butt to the side and walked toward me, stalked really, as if I were his prey, his eyes shining and intense on mine. Gah. “I think you might’ve been jealous that I was talking to Dr. Miller and you thought you’d catch me back here with her.”

Dr. Miller? Oh, man, she was probably a professor from one of his architect classes. Shit. Shit!

As I watched him approach, I gave an almost imperceptible shake of my head in answer to his question then tried hard to appear as innocent as I could, hoping that was a tad bit of amusement I saw in his eyes as he stared me down. When he reached me, he just kept walking making me back up until I hit the wall then he put both hands to either side of my head and bent down to get in my face. “I think that’s exactly what you thought.”

Now I couldn’t look him in the eye as I chewed on the inside of my lip, too embarrassed that he’d seen right through me.

“Am I right?” he asked, his eyes narrowed and piercing mine when I made the mistake of looking back at him, and I saw that all amusement was now replaced with not a small amount of pissed off.

Yikes.

At his question, I bit my lips and nodded, doing this not enthusiastically, mind you.

He shoved off the wall with his hands. “That’s what I thought,” he mumbled then turned to go back inside.

Wait. What?

I took a step after him and asked, “Well, what was I supposed to think?”

He turned and stared at me for a moment then said, “I’m with you, Scout,” as if that explained everything.

I huffed at that, frowning at him. What the heck did that mean? So I asked him. “What does that mean?”

The muscles in his jaws were jumping as he kept looking at me. “It means I’m
with
you, Scout.”

“You’re with me…” I mumbled, looking down at my sneakers, shaking my head in confusion.

“Yeah.”

I looked back up at him. “I don’t know what that means, Gable.”

Then he moved so fast I could only gasp as he pushed me against the wall again, his body pressing hard into mine, his hand wrapping in the back of my hair and tilting my head to the side as his mouth came slamming down on mine.

Whoa.

He kissed me hard as if proving a point and when he pulled away, I was left standing there breathing hard looking up at him as he scowled down at me.

“Get it now?” he spat.

Uh, no. I didn’t. And why was he so angry? God, why was everything so confusing when it came to him?

I shook my head and it seemed to exasperate him.

“No?” he asked, all out of patience, hands on hips looking at me in disbelief.

I shook my head again as I bit my lip, not knowing what was going on here.

It was his turn to shake his head as he stepped back into me. “I’m
with
you,” he muttered that puzzling decree again, then took my chin in his fingers and leaned down touching his lips to mine softly as if to make up for the punishing kiss he’d just given me. He pulled away to look at me, his honey eyes smoldering into mine, then mine dropped to his chest where my hands rested. The next thing I knew, he lifted my chin again coming back in for another kiss, and I guess he was finished being gentle because this kiss went off-the-charts scorching hot in about one-point-two seconds as our tongues twirled together which made my stomach flutter like crazy.

His hands were everywhere on me then, one sliding beneath my short jersey where it stopped just under the swell of my breast and his thumb began sliding over my nipple making me shiver. His other hand slid down to cup my butt, jerking me hard into his hips as he groaned into my mouth.

I too got caught up in the kiss, my leg curling around the back of one of his, my hands going up to where my fingers threaded into his hair, tugging, holding him tighter to me. I was so lost to him, so lost
in
him, that when he suddenly tore his lips from mine, pulling back to look intensely down at me, and the expression I saw was one of almost anguish covering his face, I was completely baffled.