Page 8 of Ruin

The words come out sharp, cutting, and I can tell from the look that flashes across her face that she is hurt by it, but fuck it. One of the few benefits of whiskey is that I give even less of a fuck than usual about other people’s feelings.

Lexi sprawls back, her grin crooked and sloppy, deliberately placing her head in my lap. She stares up at me with cracked red lips and eyes half-lidded.

“Why won’t you look at me?” she slurs.

“I am looking at you.”

Her makeup is smudged, and I count eight freckles on her forehead that I hadn’t noticed before. They’re the color of the roots of her hair, which she bleaches. Why do women do that? Cover themselves up, change who they are? Giovanna doesn’t. She’s fucking beautiful the way she is.

“You never look me in the eye,” she insists. “Always past me. My hair, my chin. Like I’m not even here. It’s weird.”

“Is it?”

I dart a glance up to her eyes, but it doesn’t feel right. Like staring into headlights. My attention falls to her thin lips, cracked and caked with a dark red lipstick. Gi never wears red lipstick. She would look great if she did, though.Her glossy black hair, her olive skin, her lips blood red and wrapped around my cock—

“See?”

“What?”

Lexi rolls her eyes and huffs. “I was just talking to you, and you’re looking right through me. Never at me. No wonder you never have a girlfriend.”

I’ve heard this about eye contact from other women before, but none that I care about, so I never felt the need to fix it. It’s uncomfortable, too intimate, cuts into my environmental awareness.

I start to catalogue the room. Exit routes. Potential weapons. The distance between me and the door. The weight distribution of Lexi on my lap and how quickly I could move her if I needed to. It’s automatic, like breathing, calming.

I don’t know what Lexi has been saying while my brain vacated my body, but I jerk to attention when I realize she’s sitting up and straddling me, sliding her hands to my neck as she tries to kiss me.

Fuck, I’m wasted. There’s two of her blurred in front of me.

I grab her wrists and push her back, glaring at her. “Stop.”

Lexi sighs. “What the fuck, Tommy? Why did you kiss me and bring me down here if you didn’t want to fuck?”

“I didn’t kiss you or bring you down here.” The words feel thick in my mouth, and everything is moving too slow and too fast at the same time.

“Well, we kissed and I’m here, so…” She leans into me again, her cracked red lips coming at me. I arch back, keeping a tight grip on her wrists, and push her back again.

“You kissed me and followed me down here. I let you in only because you said you had to use the bathroom.” Lexi stares at me, and I close my eyes for a moment, wishing she’d disappear. When I open them, I look up at the ceiling, hearing the irritation in my voice. “I’m going to let go of your wrists, and I want you to leave.”

She continues to watch me for a minute. “You’re in love with her.”

She says it as if it’s a truth I’m not aware of.

She continues. “She’s not in love with you.”

I wince like she slapped me. That’s a truth I was definitely not aware of. “Okay.”

I’m starting to lose my temper. I can feel it building: the heat that starts low and spreads, the rushing sound that gets steadily louder until it blots out everything else.

“She wants to fuck you, but she’s in love with Antonio.”

My eyes dart to hers and lock on. The headlight feeling again, but I power through it because I need to see if she’s lying. “And.”

She tosses her hair and presses her hands to my chest. I barely register it, even though I’m still holding her wrists. I need her to say more, and I need her to say it now.

“And he’s definitely in love with her. He’s been putting in the work: calling, texting, showing up. She likes the attention.”

She pauses and bats her eyelashes at me. Irritated, I look away, and she taps my jaw with her fingers, turning me back toward her. “Women like it when men pay them attention. Since you don’t do well with nuance, I’ll be straight up: I’d like you to pay attention to me.”