Page 23 of Wicked Ends (Hellions of Hade Harbor #4)
Arianna
Marcus was here.
Marcus was here at The Clutch, and I could feel his dark eyes on me. I tried to concentrate on the story Sally was telling, but my mind was absent, sitting instead with the darkly handsome man at the back.
Sally sang a song loudly with her friend, Misty. Then Wade sang. He was in good spirits and more than a little drunk when he made his way back to the booth.
“Okay, music prodigy, you’re up next.”
“I can’t sing!”
“There’s a keyboard over there,” Misty pointed out.
I shook my head. “I’d rather just drink and listen to you guys.’”
“Boring!” Bill announced and slapped the table. “Here’s the songbook. Choose something to sing. You’ve got to.”
“Let’s let some other people have a chance,” I protested meekly. Fucking hell, I felt on display enough already with Marcus glaring at me from across the bar, never mind getting up and singing a song on stage. Nope, it wasn’t happening.
“I’m going to the ladies’ room.” I subtly pushed the songbook away from Bill and slid out of the booth.
Sally got up as well. “I’ll come with, you can never be careful enough in The Clutch.”
She linked her arm around mine, and we started in the direction of the bathrooms.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if you’re not careful, you’ll come home with a biker boyfriend.” She grinned at me and then stopped abruptly.
A man sat at the bar, just before the back hallway with the bathrooms. He had one leg stretched out and perched against the wall, blocking access to the hallway. He also seemed vaguely familiar.
“What do you want, Maddox?” Sally asked the guy, in a far more demanding tone than I’d ever dare use on a guy who looked like that.
He was handsome, arrestingly so, in an escaped felon kind of way.
So, this was Kenna’s hot and dangerous brother?
The family photo Kenna had recently showed me didn’t do him justice.
“Could ask you the same thing, Sal. This place isn’t for you, and you know it. Why are you here?”
Sally rolled her eyes. “Because there’s no law against it, and it’s my birthday. Go kick rocks or whatever it is that guys like you do for fun.”
“You couldn’t keep up with what guys like me do for fun, cupcake. Let me know if you want to find out.”
Sally’s eyes flashed hotly, and she shook her head slowly. “We both know you’re all talk, Maddox. You value your life too much. Now, run along back to Cole.”
She waved her fingers in a dismissive gesture and tugged me forward when Maddox moved his leg.
“Who the hell was that?”
“My brother’s best friend. The hierarchy around here goes like this… at the top, the pres position, we have Cole Bailey. His second is Maddox… Mad Maddox they call him, and believe me, he lives up to that nickname. Then there’s my brother, Gage. They’ve all been best friends since they were kids.”
“Okay, that’s a lot,” I said, trying to keep the names straight. The only one I’d heard before was Cole, because he was Marcus’ older brother. There seemed to be a surplus of dangerous men in Hade Harbor.
“So, your brother’s in the MC?”
Sally nodded. “Since he was a teenager. It pretty much saved his life, actually. He was going down a…” she blew out a breath, “dark path.”
“And now?”
“Oh, he’s still on that path, but he has company,” she quipped and disappeared into a bathroom stall.
I used the restroom and washed my hands. The cool water helped cut through the heat crowding my head. I was tipsy, I was hot and itchy in my jacket, and my guard was low thanks to the evening’s fun atmosphere and company.
I was too tense all the time. My habit of hiding myself and staying invisible was being challenged here every day, and maybe that was okay. It was setting my nerves on edge, but I had to get used to it.
I stared at myself in the mirror and took my suit jacket off. Today, I had a simple black sleeveless top that tucked into my skirt. I hadn’t planned to remove the jacket, but it was too damn hot to keep it on.
Sally whistled as she joined me at the mirror. “Nice. Definitely more bar appropriate. Oh, while I have you alone… be careful around Wade. I know he’s handsome and smart and only a bit full of himself…”
“Just a bit?” I burst out.
Sally laughed. “Okay, maybe a lot, but some women find him really charming… I’m talking half of his classes, and he’s been there and done that with far too many starry-eyed English majors to be taken seriously. The man’s a player.”
“He’s slept with his students?” I asked.
Sally nodded. “Understatement.”
“How old is he?” I wondered.
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure, mid-thirties to early forties, maybe? He’s on the tenure track, so safe to say older than us.”
“How come he doesn’t get fired?”
“None of his conquests have ever complained about him, and he doesn’t play favorites in class or give good grades depending on how good they are in bed, I guess. That’s all it takes for the board to turn a blind eye when you’re a well-off, good-looking white man in a town like Hade Harbor.”
I stared at her in the mirror, guilt burning through me. Little did she know I’d done the same.
“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I like the guy, but he’s left a string of broken hearts in his wake. I’d feel the same way if it were an office he’d slept his way through. It’s disrespectful.”
I nodded and swallowed the knot of tension in my throat. Sally didn’t seem to take as much issue with student/professor relationships as I did. Maybe that was because she had no idea that I’d made the same mistake as Wade, in this very bar, less than a week ago.
Sally smacked her lips together and passed me another tube of lipstick, this one a dark-red lip stain.
“Try it. I think it’ll look great on you.”
I slicked it on, past arguing with her. I was starting to see that what Sally wanted, she got, and I was okay with it. Tonight had been worlds better than sitting at the Night Owl watching the grainy TV and worrying about tomorrow.
Sally’s phone rang, and she answered, indicating to me that she was heading back out. She left, and I finished applying the lip stain before stepping back from the mirror and studying myself.
My cheeks were flushed and my eyes bright. The lip stain was bold, bolder than anything I’d ever worn before, but I liked it.
“Pretty as a picture, birthday girl… too bad it’s going to get all messed up.”
I jumped at Marcus’ deep voice. My gaze flew to the door, which he’d apparently just come in through and closed behind him, leaning on it for good measure.
“What are you doing? This is the ladies’ room,” I pointed out lamely, like the rules might protect me from him.
“I might ask you the same thing… what are you doing? You were supposed to be waiting for me after school.” He sauntered forward.
I backed away, quickly coming up against a hand dryer.
“No. You asked me to, I never agreed,” I argued back.
He nodded slowly. “So, that whole spiel about how you’d do anything I needed to get over the trauma of being taken advantage of was BS? Good of you to admit it up front and get it out of the way… Why don’t you be real with me, Ari?”
“It wasn’t BS, and what is being real with you?” I demanded.
He was backing me toward an open stall, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Admit that you want me now, as much as you wanted me that night… and all this fucking student-professor forbidden shit is a way to try and keep yourself in line, play it safe.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want you.” I was a fucking liar.
Being this close to him, I could smell that intoxicating scent of his, like clean vanilla with a hint of leather and spice.
Something unique to this man that had my head spinning.
It was a chemical thing. Something about him spoke to something inside me on a primitive level, and it was completely inappropriate.
“Don’t lie to me, or I’ll be forced to prove you wrong,” Marcus said, still advancing.
The worry and anger I’d been bottling up all day rushed up my throat, and my control snapped.
“Fine. I’m lying. I’m a fucking liar but I’m also a fucking coward—I’m scared. I’m scared all the time.”
My wretched confession stopped Marcus in his tracks for a second. A frown pressed across his brow.
“What are you scared of?” he asked.
I let out a bitter laugh. “Everything. You, me… people from the past. The future. You name it, and I’m scared of it.
” I shoved a hand through my hair. Damn it.
The drinks from dinner were wearing off fast but had left me unfiltered and tired of pretending to be okay. I wasn’t okay. I was far from okay.
A tear fell and rolled down my cheek. Great, now I was crying.
I shook my head, trying to get a grip, but I was falling, and there was nothing to stop me.
“I don’t want to get in trouble or get tarred and feathered for doing something wrong. I can’t lose this job.” My voice cracked with repressed emotion. “I can’t lose it because I have nowhere else to go and no money to go there, okay?”
“And yet you offered to quit and leave town if I wanted you to,” Marcus pointed out.
He was close now, having advanced while I was fighting to keep my sanity intact.
“Because you’re a student, and I’m the professor, and I have an obligation toward you. I wanted to do the right thing,” I murmured.
His finger brushed the tear from my cheek. “Even if it cost you?”
Another trail of tears slipped down my cheek, and he caught them.
“That’s exactly when you should do the right thing, when it’s hard. That’s when it matters the most,” I whispered.
His chest pressed against mine, and the open stall was right behind me. I swayed into him. He was so strong and broad, and so fucking magnetic, it was hard to look away. He tucked a stray hair behind my ear, and something in that simple move was so caring, my heart clenched hard.
“I don’t want to be one of those professors who takes advantage of their impressionable students. They’re creeps, foul?—”
“And that’s not you, so drop it.”