Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(97)

“Anyway, I’m sorry. I forgot he had the key. I didn’t expect him to come over.”

Cory shrugged, his expression dark. “Does it really matter?”

“I guess not.”

“I expected to hate him. I was ready to hate him. But…”

“He’s not hate-able,” I finished.

“No, he’s not. But you told me he knew I was here.” Again, no anger. His tone was dull and heavy, like a deep bruise. “Why did you lie?”

“I don’t know. Because I wanted you to think he knew.” I laughed scornfully at myself. “Because I wanted to keep everything on the up and up.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter, either. It’s my fault too. I never told you how I…but then I don’t want to make things hard on you.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I’d give anything to know what you’re thinking right now. What we do next.”

“I’m thinking I’ve done enough damage, to my relationship with Drew and…God knows what you must think of me.”

“Alex…”

“My parents took a short trip to Palm Springs, but they get back late tonight. I’ll move in with them, to my old room there tomorrow morning, early, before the CPS inspection. I should have done that in the first place.”

An expression of pain flitted across Cory’s face, and then was gone again, so quickly I thought I must have imagined it.

“Yeah, okay,” he said and shouldered his bag. “I gotta get going.”

“Good luck,” I said, my voice hardly a whisper.

He didn’t say anything. I flinched when he shut the door as if he’d slammed it, the sound was just as loud and final.





Chapter Thirty-Five


Cory



I climbed into truck and slammed the heel of my hand into wheel. “Fucking coward. You should have told her.” The tires squealed as I tore down the street.

But what I’d said—or started to say before I lost my backbone—was that the last thing I wanted to do was complicate her life with my baggage. It’s up to her. I’m in no position…

I hated how weak that made me and nearly turned the truck around to go back, to throw open the door and take her in my arms and tell her that I wanted more. To show her that I wanted more than the ravenous passion of last night. I wanted everything. With her.

But she didn’t feel the same. She must not have, not after the way she’d spoken this morning. She regretted the damage done to her and Drew, and had said so, point blank.

But last night…

I inhaled, brought it all back, savored it. We hadn’t done much talking. No, mostly we’d just f*cked all night and it would have been perfect if she were really and truly mine. But last night was like the night we had in the bank—stolen time. Not real life. A parenthesis, she’d once called it.

But last night, there had been a handful of times in which something more than base lust had seeped between the cracks of our physical gymnastics. I know I gave myself away once or twice, especially when I kissed her. I kissed her with my heart as much as my mouth, kissing her instead of speaking all the words I couldn’t say. But she gave herself away too. Or at least I thought she had.

Once, she lay on her stomach with me atop her, blanketing her, my body covering hers with as much skin-to-skin contact as I could manage without crushing her. My face was buried in her hair—still damp from the shower. My lips and teeth grazed the soft, pale skin of her shoulder, which seemed to glow in the moonlight streaming in from the window. I had one hand beneath her, pleasuring her as I f*cked her, the other hand entwined in hers as we made the headboard bang.

And Alexandra…her face was turned on the pillow so that I could see her profile of perfect beauty in the dimness. Her eyes closed in ecstasy that looked almost like pain, and it was my name she breathed. Over and over again. Every exhale, every thrust, my name. Cory, Cory, Cory…Until, at the very last, she was screaming it, crying out for release, begging me to fall over the edge with her. I don’t think she even knew what she was saying, but hell, that made it even better. She was lost in the pleasure, drunk and drowning in it, and it was my name that floated to the surface. I had left her bed early that morning with the slimmest hope that it meant something.

I was wrong.

An angry honking came from the car behind me, jarring me from my reverie. The light was green and I drove on, kept the truck on course, to the testing facility in Norwalk, wondering when, precisely, I’d lost my backbone.

I arrived at the offices on time, and approached the front desk where other potential future contractors were picking up their testing material.

“Cory Bishop,” I told the guy at the table.

The man, a lumberjack-looking guy of middle years, flipped through a clipboard. “I don’t see your name here.” He swiveled to the computer screen beside him. “Spell it.”

A pang of dread settled into my gut as I spelled my name, and wasn’t surprised at all—not one f*cking bit—when the man frowned under his scraggly beard and said, “Looks like your application is incomplete.”

“Incomplete?” I said. “I was fingerprinted, I paid the $665 bucks. I was given a test day. Today.”

“The six-sixty-five is probably why you got the date. But it says here a notice that you were missing some stuff was sent to an address in Culver City. Yours?”