Isn't She Lovely (Redemption 0.5)(48)

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Just brought Steph’s DVDs back over. You know how she is about her movies.”

I see his hand move a little higher on her thigh as he says it. A thigh that’s covered in cargo fatigues.

Belatedly my eyes skim over the rest of her, and I see what I didn’t notice when I first came in: the boots, the tough-girl pants, one of those trademark tiny tanks, and the gray shit on her eyes. She’s been dabbling with pieces of her old self for the past few days—the boots, the nails, the pants—but apparently she decided to go all out tonight, because it’s the full-goth Stephanie.

It should make me want her less. It should remind me that it’s David who’s her type, not me.

But mostly I want to tell him to get his hands off her.

I take a sip of my beer and keep my face perfectly blank. “Stephanie, you have all your DVDs?”

Her eyes narrow at my casual tone. It’s like I said—she knows me. “Yeah.”

“Excellent,” I say with my best smile before turning to David. “Get the f*ck out.”

David may be a skinny artist type, but he’s apparently not a pushover, because he stands to face me and his expression is pissed.

Can’t say I blame him. I’m being a dick, but it’s my house, and this *’s hand was on Stephanie when he has another girlfriend—

Shit. At least I hope he has another girl. What if he broke it off with that Leah chick and wants Stephanie back?

The thought makes my beer taste like piss.

“Dude, can you give us a minute?” David asks, doing a far better job with manners than I am.

“For what?”

He ignores my question and turns to Stephanie. His eyes go sappy and pleading, and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what’s coming. The guy’s realized that he threw Stephanie over for a skank, and now he wants the good one back.

I no longer just want to ask him to leave. I want to throw him out on his hipster ass.

“Stephanie?” I ask.

She sucks in her cheeks and looks angry, but I can’t tell if she’s mad at me for acting like a possessive dick or at David for daring to touch her after cheating on her.

“You should go, David.”

I smile. She’s mad at David.

Then her blue eyes find mine, and I’m not entirely sure they won’t actually shoot poison darts at me. She’s definitely pissed at me too.

I rein in my caveman mood enough so that I don’t follow them to the front door, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t try to eavesdrop, just a little. But they’re whispering, and I can’t make out any words. Then the whispering stops altogether, and I strain to hear anything at all. Are they kissing? I force myself to go sit on the couch so that I don’t completely lose my shit. If they want to get back together, that’s their business.

Except damn. The very thought burns my throat.

I hear the front door click shut, and Stephanie stomps back into the living room, looking every bit as angry and mutinous as she did that day I first ran into her in the hallway. Only this time I’m pretty sure she’d stab me with her pens, rather than just drop them tamely into her little-kid backpack.

She doesn’t say a word as she rummages around in one of my cabinets and pulls out a bottle of bourbon. I raise an eyebrow. “Rough day?”

Stephanie manages to simultaneously pour a couple of fingers into a tumbler and give me the bird. She drops a few ice cubes into the glass. Whisky actually sounds perfect right now, but I know better than to ask her to pour me some when she’s in Ethan-must-die mode, so I set my barely touched beer aside and pour some for myself, sans ice.

She commandeers the couch after I get up, and I know I should give her space, but I live here too, so I sit next to her. Not close enough to touch, but closer than roommates would, considering there’s a half dozen other spots to sit in the room.

I expect her to give me a blistering lecture about respecting boundaries, and What the hell were you thinking? and You’re such a Neanderthal, but she’s just sitting there quietly, patiently, taking tiny sips of bourbon.

I can tell out of the corner of my eye that she’s watching me. Waiting for me to explain. Except I don’t have an explanation other than that I was jealous, and we both know that’s crazy, so I say the only other thing that comes to mind.

“Sorry.”

She lets out a little Stephanie snort before setting her glass aside and starting to untie her combat boots. I watch her fingers unwind the laces, and I want her to say something. Anything. I want her to say, No problem, Price, but more than that, I want her to tell me there’s nothing going on with that douche bag David.

I want her to tell me that she wants me to kiss her again.

Perhaps most of all, I want her to explain why she pushed me away from that kiss in the library in the first place. Because she was every bit as into it as I was. I could tell.

But maybe I have to give a little to get a little.

“My mom’s having an affair,” I say.

Well. That came out of nowhere. I’m suddenly remembering why I haven’t really touched whisky since the night of my twenty-first birthday several months back, when I got hammered and spent the rest of the day puking. But worse than the hangover, whisky makes me chatty. Disaster.

Her fingers falter for a second on her boot laces, but she doesn’t look up. “And?”