Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ATHENA
My hand shook as I set the drink down as calmly as I could. I blinked a few times, because surely—surely—this wasn’t what I thought it was. This … I … I had to be seeing things. Was that really Charlie with Nadia?
Almost as if he knew I was watching him, Charlie looked over at me.
And it truly sank in that what I was seeing was real.
His face contorted from shock to confusion. When Nadia wrapped her arm around his and pressed her tits against his biceps, I shoved back my chair and shuffled back on my feet, unable to take my eyes off him.
I … this … he was really here.
Tears welled up in my eyes until they burned. Pain shot through my chest. I turned around and ran away as fast as I could.
“Athena!” Charlie shouted behind me. “Wait up! It’s not what it looks like.”
But I didn’t care what it looked like. I cared about what I had seen with my very two eyes.
Charlie is out at a sex club with Nadia.
I pushed through the crowd of people, ran through the lobby, and slipped out into the cold before anyone could try to stop me. My legs moved faster than my mind could really, truly process what was going on.
What was I even thinking?! Of course he would be here with her. They were going to record a porno together. Charlie wouldn’t have brought her back to the apartment. He would’ve hidden her from me.
My eyes burned, and my chest tightened.
Why had I believed that Charlie would be different from every other guy? All he wanted from me was some pussy. I was just an easy friend he could sleep with, one he had taken advantage of, knowing that I enjoyed watching his videos.
Rain poured down around me as I ran down the sidewalk, blindly making turns at corners and not keeping track of where the hell I was going. All I knew was that I needed to get as far away from there as possible.
The January cold seared my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around myself because I had forgotten my coat back at Radiant and continued to weave around people when they exited restaurants and bars in the city.
“Woah, whoa, whoa,” someone said, catching my waist and pulling me underneath a door awning to keep me out of the rain. “Where are you running off to? It’s pouring outside, and you don’t even have a coat on.”
I sniffled and wiped my cheeks, lifting my gaze to see Derek.
“Oh, um …” I said, my voice hoarse. “Nowhere.”
He took my face in his hands and lifted it. “Are you crying?”
“No!”
“What’s wrong?” Derek asked, searching my face and not letting me go.
I opened and closed my mouth a handful of times, not being able to utter a single word until, finally, the only word that I was able to get out of my mouth was a measly, a broken … “Charlie.”
“Did he do something to you?” Derek asked.
“No, I’m just …” I stared at him, trying to hold back the tears because I didn’t know him like that and Charlie and I … we weren’t even a thing. “I just …” I opened my mouth, expecting to finish my sentence, but a sob escaped it.
I slapped a hand over my mouth to muffle the noise. I needed to get out of here.
But before I could twirl around and run back out onto the rainy sidewalk, Derek wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I tensed in his arms—because this wasn’t right; Charlie had told me to stay away from him—but his hug felt so good.
My arms wrapped around his torso, and I pulled him tight to me, crying into his shoulder. I probably looked so stupid—I sure as hell felt it—but Charlie … I had thought we were … I had been so naive, so stupid!
Charlie was at a sex club, about to film a scene with Nadia.
And right after we had sex this morning …
“Thanks,” I said once I finally pulled away. “But I should get home.”
Could I even go back home?! Did I want to face Charlie right now? Honestly, not really.
Maybe Sun would let me sleep over at her place again. Heather and Sierra both lived with Hector and Steven, so they didn’t even have an apartment together anymore. Which really only left Sun’s place and my place.
But I had left Sun at Radiant. She was probably with Maya and Russ or the girls.
“How are you getting home?” Derek asked.
I pursed my lips. “I’ll walk. It’s just a few”—dozen—“blocks.”
“No, it’s not.” Derek pulled keys out of his pocket. “I’ll drive you.”
After eyeing the keys and wondering if this really was a good idea—Charlie had warned me to stay away from him, but I was such a mess right now that I didn’t even know how to get back to Radiant from here, and I’d left my coat there—I nodded.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Just home.”
His lips curled into a soft smile—the warm kind Charlie usually had with me. “Where else would I take you?”
Once I shrugged, he grabbed my hand and led me to the car right on the street, opening the door for me to slip into the passenger seat. I sat down and smoothed out my bottoms, which were soaked through from the rain.
Derek sat in the driver’s seat and started the car. “Where were you?”
“At a bar,” I whispered.
“Downtown?” he hummed. “Which one? I’ve only been to Radiant and a couple others.”
“You’ve been to Radiant?” I asked to keep my mind off Charlie.
“A few times,” he murmured, glancing over at me when we stopped at a red light. “You?”
“That’s, um”—I gulped and looked out my window—“where I just came from.”
“You were at Radiant?” he asked with a chuckle.
I looked over at him. “What’s so funny about that?”
“You’re too innocent for a sex club,” he said. “When I left you this morning, your cheeks were about as red as your ass would be if you had gone to Radiant with me tonight.”
Suddenly, warmth spread through my body. I pressed my thighs together, and Derek definitely noticed. The thought of being hurt in any way didn’t get me all hot and bothered, but another guy thinking I was attractive in that way did.
Especially if Derek preferred to flirt with me rather than Nadia.
“Why were you at Radiant?”
To make Charlie jealous, and I ended up getting my heart broken.
“My friends brought me,” I said.
“And you ran out, crying about Charlie?”
Shit, I forgot I’d cried his name.
“Um …” I started, shuffling my legs together. “Yeah.”
“You tried to make him jealous and saw him there with someone else?”
I snapped my gaze over to him. “How’d you—”
“If you want to make him jealous, be with someone he doesn’t like.”
“He likes everyone …” Except you. “What are you suggesting?”
Derek drew his thumb across the leather steering wheel. “You know what I mean.”
My heart pounded so loudly that I could hear it in my ears, but the thought of dating Derek to make Charlie jealous seemed to fly out the window as soon as Derek drove underground into the parking lot underneath my apartment building.
He parked in a visitor spot and shut off his car, but I didn’t even attempt to leave the car. My legs bounced against my hands, and I swallowed hard. What would I say to Charlie? He knew I had seen him there.
Honestly, I didn’t care that he had been at the club—all of our friends went there—but he was there with her. Maybe he even took her back to our apartment. What would I do if she was in the middle of my living room, riding Charlie on our couch?
Had she been at our place before? Maybe. And if she had, there was no doubt that he fucked her on every inch of the place. She was so pretty that no man would ever resist her, not even Charlie.
“I’m sorry for making you drive all this way,” I whispered. “But I can’t go up there. Not now.”
“Where do you want me to take you?”
“Anywhere,” I said, tears burning my eyes again. “I don’t care. Anywhere but here.”