Chapter 15
Pervert
MITCHELL
Five. Six. Seven…
I huffed out air, the cold metal rim and net hooks of the basketball hoop carving pain into my palms with each chin-up.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen…
I made it to twenty-five before my arms turned into noodles.
Not my worst, not my best.
Not a fucking breath of relief from the flashbacks of feeling Winona against me.
MITCHELL: I’m sorry
MITCHELL: Winona. Just tell me you got home okay.
I’d sent that text right after she’d run away, after she didn’t respond to my wild shouts out the front door or my calls.
I’d watched her on the camera, careening down my driveway at a clip.
She’d narrowly missed hitting the driver coming up with the takeout I’d ordered for us, a pathetic attempt at keeping her there just a little longer.
I was sorely tempted to drive out after her, but I knew I’d probably do more harm than good that way. Instead, I’d called Sal and told her to scan the radio waves for any accident or ambulance. There was nothing. Quince Valley was a sleepy town at night, thank God.
I didn’t text again that night. I sensed I’d make things inexorably worse by not leaving her alone after everything that had gone down that night.
But I did the next.
MITCHELL: Winona, I was an ass. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.
MITCHELL: Is your hand okay?
I’d gone for bandages when she ran upstairs. They were still sitting on the kitchen counter.
She didn’t answer. I wasn’t surprised. She didn’t answer the next day, either, when I reminded her to get her hand looked at.
It wasn’t until that night that I clued in. She’d blocked me.
I’d had to block plenty of people in my life, usually after dates Sal insisted I go on invariably left me feeling emptier than before. Most of those women had men salivating over them, and the ones I’d had to block were either unwilling to accept or even enraged at my polite rejections.
But I’d never been blocked before, at least not as far as I knew.
I wrote Winona anyway. I was that unhinged over her.
MITCHELL: Thank you, Winona. For helping me believe I might finish my book.
MITCHELL: For reminding me there’s still good in this world.
Jesus, I was corny. I wrote her lots more than that.
A line of poetry, from this book I kept by my nightstand.
The color of an oriole I’d seen in the trees by the pool.
The name of a dog my dad brought home in a bout of generosity when I was eight, and took to the pound a month later when she chewed up one of his best shoes.
I told her all kinds of cheesy-ass things I’d never told anyone else. She wasn’t really there.
A week after that, my brother Conrad called from Seattle. We were normally close, seeing as we lived in the same city. I’d missed him. His son Artie even more. I ended up telling him about Winona. Not every gory detail, but the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“Mitchie,” he said. “Remember that time Mom got you that dragon series?
I'd forgotten about that. I’d worn a knight costume to school for a full month, until Dad came back from some trip he’d been on and lost his shit on Mom about it.
I still tried to get all the kids at school to role play the best scenes with me for months afterward.
I came home in tears when someone finally told me it was stupid. I lost friends over it.
“You were obsessed, Mitchie. When you get really into something, you kind of lose your head a little. You crashed out and moved to Vermont to write a fucking book, for fuck’s sake. It’s not healthy.”
He wasn’t wrong. Yes, I could get single-minded. But it wasn’t always bad.
“That’s how I built my company,” I reminded him. Obsessive, laser focus on a project I believed in.
“You handed LoupTeq to your assistant when you left."
“Sal’s perfectly capable. And she’s only holding onto it until the acquisition.
” I hadn’t told him the reason for the acquisition was because a secret arm of the company was doing cutting-edge and skirting-the-bounds-of-legal work around developing an Alzheimer’s cure.
That was the only reason I was coming back to do the deal.
It was personal to me. And to my brothers.
“You don’t always smother things into oblivion, Mitchie. But sometimes you do. So be careful.”
A beat passed. “Fuck you,” I said finally. “How’s Mom?”
“Fuck you too. And she’s okay. No better than when you left. No worse either.”
I wanted to ask if she asked about me. I visited her every other day when I was at home. But I knew from the silence he knew the question. And I knew the answer. Most days, she had no idea who either of us was.
“Call us once in a while, would you?” Conrad asked. “Artie misses you.”
At least someone did.
Three nights later, after another grueling workout, I cut across the basketball court in the glow of a seven o’clock sunset.
It was getting darker sooner each night, the crisp of fall in the air.
I didn’t like the progression of the seasons.
It meant going home, back to the life I’d left in Seattle, so starkly different from here.
Away from Winona, a woman I wanted to drink like whiskey, despite what my brother thought.
A woman who hated me enough she literally ran away from me. Blocked my number.
I dove into the pool to ease the ache in my arms, and the painful feeling in my chest that Conrad, fuck him, was right.
I was about to head to the pool house to shower as usual.
But when I picked up the clothes I’d been wearing, I cringed.
They were several feet from my nose, and still, the reek was untenable.
The cleaner had been by today, so I didn’t have anything in the pool house.
I headed up to my never-used bedroom, which I’d been avoiding.
The shampoo in the pool house shower didn’t smell like her.
Here, she was fucking everywhere. I got in and out as quickly as possible, and after getting dressed, gathered a stack of clean clothing to bring back downstairs.
But as I was leaving the closet, my eye caught something on the floor.
A glimpse of white under the chair by the window.
I crouched down and pulled the thing out, my stomach twisting as I realized what it was.
Winona’s bra. She’d run out so fast she’d left her bra here.
Fuck.
She probably thought I was a pervert who’d hung onto it instead of getting it back to her.
Or would having it sent back to her be weirder?
I should have gotten rid of it right away.
I guess I was a pervert, though, because I couldn’t let go of it.
I couldn’t do anything except hold it in my hand, every logical thought my brain lobbed at me dissolving into mush.
For a week, I’d taken Conrad’s words seriously. I’d forced myself not think of Winona. He was right. It wasn’t healthy, and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her with my obsession. I needed to move on, finish the book, and get back to real life.
But even before the call from Conrad, I’d been measured in that obsession, at least in one way: I’d kept my hands off myself when thinking about her.
I’d been austere as a fucking monk, because I didn’t want to be that guy.
I didn’t want that interaction I had with her to only be about the way she looked, or the way she'd felt in my arms. But here, gripping the lacy scrap of fabric Winona used to hold up those perfect wineglass tits? I was still a man. And she was still, I knew now, the sexiest woman I’d ever known. By a nautical fucking mile.
I groaned, rolling around so my back was pressed against the glass.
And goddammit, goddammit, I couldn’t stop myself from bringing the thing to my face.
The bra smelled faintly of chlorine. But it smelled of her, too.
It set every hair on my body to standing, a ripple of goosebumps traveling over my skin until the sensation transformed into a raw, virulent need.
I ripped the zipper down on my pants, releasing my throbbing dick.
With the garment in my hand, I dropped into the chair and allowed myself a stroke.
Then another. The soft scratch of the lace on my sensitive flesh was torture.
The loose slack of the fabric cups was worse.
All I could see was those voluminous tits.
I wanted them in my face; in reach of my tongue and greedy hands.
I’d bury myself in them as I bounced her on my cock.
I’d do it right here, too, in the dark of this room, with a view to where everything changed.
I switched the bra to my other hand, some last logical shred of my brain not wanting to sully it. Instead, I held it to my face like the pervert I was, while I pumped my fist in long, languid strokes, working myself until my balls tightened.
It didn’t take long.
I was just on the edge, Winona’s name in my throat, on my tongue, when I abruptly stopped.
Panting hard, I jerked my hand away, clapping it on the arm of the chair.
I made myself calm the fuck down. I thought of software and limp salad and icy ocean water until my dick deflated enough to zip up my pants. Then I got up, stuffed the bra in my pocket, and jogged downstairs.
I couldn’t do the smart thing with Winona. From the very beginning, I’d acted like a man who’d never met another human before around her.
Why stop now?
I punched the speed dial on my phone as I backed out of the massive garage at the back of the house.
“Mitchell, thank God you called me back,” Sal said, the phone not even ringing once.
“Not now,” I snapped. Sal had been calling me incessantly for the past two days. Whatever it was could wait. “I need my plumber’s address.”
A beat passed. “Mitchell, I think you’re going to want to—”
“Is it about the merger?”
“No, but—”
“Is anyone dead?”
She paused, and my heart hitched.
“No, no one’s dead. But I really think—”
“Then not fucking now, Sal. Whatever it is, I trust you to figure it out.”