Page 2 of Hell Bent

“Uh …” I said. “I’m not sure what the style’s called. Slim but not tight? Kind of plain? Oh, yeah. Sheath. It’s a sheath. My mother picked it out. She enjoys weddings, and I’m not into them much.”

She blinked at me out of her turquoise eyes. “Yourmother?”

“I’d have been stumped otherwise,” I tried to explain. “No wedding daydreams growing up. She doesn’t trust me to do it right. She didn’t much like this dress, for example.”

“But it’sgorgeous,”Sabrina said.

“I know, right?” I said, liking her. “My grandmother was my approver on this one, and she’s a whole different story.” I ignored Brian telling Ned how much he had on UConn winning the title, and giving Ned all his picks for the pool. In detail. No way Iowa State was beating North Carolina State this year, though. I’m just saying.

Sebastian

I was outside waiting for my Uber when the four of them came through the doors. The asshole was still talking. I didn’t want to look, because I didn’t need more aggravation in my life, and then I did.

It was the brunette. Well, the brunette and the dress. I’d noticed her during dinner, because she had one of those old-fashioned faces. All kinds of forehead, huge brown eyes, long straight nose, kissable mouth. She looked soft and sweet andclassy, like a portrait in an art gallery of some aristocratic lady, except for the sardonic expression I’d caught on her earlier. Mismatch there.

And the dress? The dress was deep red, long-sleeved, and high-necked, but it was made of stretchy stuff, and now that I could see all of it, I was noticing the sort of gathering it had, right there at the hips, coming together at the crotch. I mean, thecrotch.Then she turned around, and it was gathered like that at the back, too. She wasn’t real big either up top or down below, but she still had a great ass, and that defined waist that says “woman” all the way. I may have stared a little, not least because she was wearing red suede shoes with the kind of catch-my-breath heels a man appreciated, and the woman hadlegs.Well, calves, because I couldn’t see her thighs. But I wouldn’t have minded. I wasn’t really in the market, but still.

The other woman, the blonde, was a knockout—cheekbones, model body, and thin, like the guy had said, except in the breast department—but then, so were the two women who’d come over from the bar in hopes of a free dinner and whatever else they’d been looking for. A few years ago, that would’ve suited me fine, but I wasn’t very social these days, and besides, how flattering is it to be sought out for your job and not your wonderful self?

Your future is yours to create,I told myself, but it wasn’t necessarily comforting, because that was exactly the problem. That I was four months into my second NFL season, and I was about the oldest near-rookie ever. Thirty-one, in fact. At soccer, I wasn’t a rookie. I was a washout.

I trust my body. I trust my mind. I trust my resilience. I trust my honesty.Back to the team hotel well before eleven, read a little, and bed. That was how you determined your own fate. It was all about the habits.

I was telling myself that when the asshole said, “Where’s the valet? I thought this place was supposed to have service,”to which the woman in red answered, when nobody else did, “Presumably getting somebody else’s car.” She inclined her head at me in a regal sort of way, and I smiled a bit despite myself and inclined my head back and didn’t mention the Uber.

“From where?” the guy said. “Siberia?”

“It’s San Francisco,” the brunette answered. “Not a whole lot of parking spots.”

The blonde burst out suddenly with, “I can’t find my phone. Shoot. I think I left it in there. Was it in the ladies’ room? Did I have it when I came back from there, Alix?” That one was directed at the brunette.

“Less talking, more getting,” the asshole said. “Hurry up, though, unless you want to get home by yourself.”

“I thought I was driving,” the blonde said.

“What?” the asshole said. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been drinking, she means,” the brunette—Alix—said. The late-November chill had to be hitting her, because all she had on over that dress was one of those short, fuzzy jackets that barely hit a woman’s waist, but she wasn’t shivering, whereas the blonde was hunched into her coat.

“I’m fine to drive,” the asshole said. “Hurry up and get your phone, Sabrina.”

Alix was tapping on her phone. “Uber,” she told the guy she was with, who’d barely said a word all through dinner. Not one of nature’s alpha males. “You can share it if you like, Sabrina.”

“What the hell?” the asshole said. “I said I’m driving. I drove us here, and I’ll take us home.”

“I don’t drink and drive,” Alix said. Her voice was low. Throaty, I’d call it. “Or drive with anybody who does.” She didn’t say “Sorry,” the way most women would have, just put it out there.

“That’s—” the asshole started to say, when there was ayelp from the blonde, who’d gone down in a heap. “Slippery,” she gasped from down on the ground. “Icy, or something.”

“It is not icy,” the asshole said. “It’s San Francisco. Man, you can’t evenwalk.”He laughed. I was pretty tired of that laugh.

The other man just stood there like the kind of guy whose reaction time is measured in seconds, so I took a few steps and put down a hand for the blonde. I wasn’t quick enough, though, because the brunette—Alix—was already hauling her to her feet, saying, “It’s got to be in the thirties out here. Newsflash, Brian. Women’s heels have fewer points of contact with the ground, and you’re tipped forward, off balance. Are you OK, Sabrina?”

“I—think so,” the blonde said. “My ankle, though …”

“I’m going in to look for your phone,” Alix said. “After that, I’ll call for an Uber,” she told the stand-and-stare guy, who I guessed was her date. “You probably want to check her ankle, Brian.”

“And do what?” he asked. The other guy wasstilljust standing there.