One moment Steven was dancing with me, the next he’s been tossed to the ground by his own boy, and seconds later he’s telling David, “my bad.”
“Hope. Diamond.” David growls cryptically, but his words don’t make sense, and I wonder if I even heard him right over the music.
Steven splays his palms in surrender. “Curse of death. Got it.”
What the actual fuck?
Chapter Twelve
David
I keep my glare trained on Bogart as he leaves the dance floor and makes his way to the bar, not that he needs any more fucking alcohol. Though I guess I shouldn’t really be talking, considering I’m just this side of shit-faced, myself.
I blow out a long-winded exhale, ignoring Reeve’s knowing smirk. Glad he’s fucking entertained. Fortunately, with the threat of violence dissipated, he turns and heads back to his lonely bar stool, probably disappointed at the lost opportunity to throw a few punches, even if it would have been at his own frat brother. But the idiot fucking deserved it.
The small cluster of people who stopped to watch the show fades back into the crowd, and even though the music never actually missed a beat, it feels like it’s only now returning to full volume.
I take one more second to gather myself before I meet Beth’s gaze, wishing I was even drunker right now.
Her deep blue eyes meet my mine dead-on, for once giving nothing away. I expected to find confusion or anger, or even accusation—something to prompt me on what to say next. I don’t know how to explain away my behavior if I don’t know what the fuck is going through her head.
But instead of some kind of judgment, Beth’s eyes hold only questions, demanding to know what’s going on—what the hell I was thinking.
“David…” I see the word on her lips, even if she says it too softly to hear over the music. But instead of knocking me from my trance, it just diverts my attention to her mouth.
Fuck, that mouth.
She was wearing some reddish lipstick or gloss or whatever-the-fuck when we left the apartment, but the night has worn it off, and they’re back to that perfect natural pink that always makes me think of that strawberry lava cake I had on vacation in Miami once—the one I could never find anywhere else. I bet those lips would taste just as fucking sweet.
And just as unobtainable.
I swallow hard, prying my eyes away from Beth’s mouth. My pulse is too fast, and I’m out of options. I don’t have any answers for her. I don’t even have answers for myself. At this point I’m so thrown off by the alcohol, or her fucking mouth, or both, that I barely even remember what got us here. But the fact remains that I don’t know what the fuck to say to her, so I don’t say anything at all.
I take a step forward, and then another, until I’m close enough that, if we were different people, if it were a different life, I could kiss her. And then I take one more.
Fuck it.
I hook my arm around her waist and haul her against me, enjoying her small gasp of surprise as I start moving to the beat. She unfreezes a half-moment later, her body melting into mine as my hips and hands—which I painstakingly keep in safe zones—guide her motion. I’m careful to leave a one-inch buffer between our lower bodies.
We’re too close for eye contact, my cheek brushing her temple with each movement, and it’s so much better than talking—especially about stupid fucking assholes who want to get their hands on her.
Stupid fucking assholes like me.
But while I may not be the guy for Beth, I’m certainly not the worst of them. I would never hurt her. Not intentionally, at least, and never physically. But there are others who would, and when I think about that piece of shit Brody, my arms tighten around her, my gut a familiar battleground for both the urge to keep her safe, and the one that wants to just keep her for myself.
Beth has called me overprotective lately, a complaint she used to reserve for Cap, and maybe she’s right…but he’s not here to look out for her.
Maybe if Liz had someone being a little overprotective of her, that motherfucking stalker wouldn’t have gotten her in such a vulnerable position. Maybe she wouldn’t be such a fucking mess right now. She definitely wouldn’t be out at a club with new “friends” she barely knows, wearing a dress that’s too skimpy even for my taste. And I have a soft spot for slutty dresses.
I was so surprised to see her here that I did a double take. I’d been so captivated by the way Beth’s body moved to the music, the way her face lit up with pure exhilaration when she really let herself go, that I didn’t even notice Liz walk right by me at first. But there she was, out for the first time since she was almost raped, dressed to the fucking nines like a night out on the town is her only worldly concern.
I’d tried texting Liz a couple of times over the past few weeks, but she’d never replied, and I took her showing up tonight as my chance to talk to her. So I told Reeve to pry his eyes from Lani’s ass and keep watch over Beth, and then made my way over to Liz.
I admit I felt guilty. Not just for my role in introducing her to Brody in the first place, but because while I do want to check on how she’s holding up, I also had an ulterior motive. Because I haven’t been entirely truthful with Beth about the status of the investigation.
My jaw clenches with frustration and my hands close around Beth’s waist, as if to remind me just what’s at stake if Brody stays free. Because the investigation is still “ongoing,” according to Detective Blunt—who finally started returning my calls when he realized that not doing so just led to me showing up to the precinct in person. But Brody is no closer to being arrested. Getting information about a campus rape investigation is like pulling fucking teeth, but I’ve managed to learn that the case is essentially at a standstill because “a witness isn’t cooperating.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant in a he-said/she-said sexual assault case. There are only two real witnesses, and I doubt they were counting on the fucking rapist’s cooperation to make the charges stick. Which means Liz is the uncooperative one.
It makes no fucking sense, and I need to get to the bottom of it. Liz is the only one who can get Brody off the goddamned streets.
