1. Chapter One #2
But I did anyway, even if it was without their knowledge. We fell in love faster than lightening. It was beautiful, forbidden. But the thrill of sneaking out to see him, of letting him strip me naked in that old, creaking bed of his overshadowed my sanity.
I refused to see the chaos simmering under the surface. I looked past his faults and mistakes. After all, he loved me and I him.
It was Ethan and I and that was enough. Nothing else mattered.
Looking back, Ethan was also my escape from a marriage my status-hungry parents had arranged to Sebastian Clyne. Sebastian was wealthy and well-known among snobby social circles. I had no interest in marrying him.
The morning of that hideous marriage, I took a pregnancy test. The pregnancy was just the trigger I needed.
As soon as I saw those two red lines, I had fled with Ethan without a second thought.
Then things changed. I was pregnant with his baby and we were staying together in his cramped one-room apartment, living from hand to mouth.
My family had disowned me and Ethan had resorted to drinking and smoking to - in his words - get his mind off our dilemma. Then the insults came, the emotional abuse and the day he lifted a hand to my cheek.
That was when Ethan and I stopped being enough.
I push myself off the wall with a ragged exhale. I need a drink. A much-needed distraction.
Once I reenter the bar, I head straight for the counter and slump on one of the stools.
“Give me something,” I tell the bartender. He’s looking at me like he can see through me, and the flicker of concern in his eyes threatens tears in my own. “Anything. Just make it strong.”
“You got it.”
I glance back at Allison and co at the booth. It’s an extreme end away from where I am, so they can’t see me.
I almost feel bad for having another drink without them. But they’re not the kind of distraction I crave at the moment and they’re perceptive enough to know when all isn’t well with me.
Besides, what I need is a distraction. Not a reminder.
In minutes, the bartender slides a glass towards me. I don’t worry myself with trying to know what the contents are. I down it all in one go.
My eyes tightly screw shut as the toxic liquid flows into my system. It’s so strong and burns, but it burns in the most delicious way that has me requesting for another one.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I slide the glass back to the bartender who now has a proud smile on his face. “That’s too good. I need like two more of that.”
“Easy there, tiger.”
That is not the bartender’s voice.
I shift on my stool a little to meet twinkling, amused eyes that belong to Matthew Pierce. Even beneath the ever-changing lights in the bar, I can still notice the greens in his eyes and the thickness of his eyelashes.
His eyes are his most attractive feature, but I’ll never admit that to him.
His hair, a thick black crown on his head, is even messier than before. Like he’s been running his fingers through them all day long.
On any other person, it would look ridiculous. But it’s Matthew Pierce and as much as I hate to admit it, everything looks good on him.
I’m not in the mood to entertain his antics, since all we pretty much do when we cross paths – both at home and anywhere else – is engage in hate-fueled, meaningless banter (mostly from my part), with Jasmine being our pacifier.
Though I can’t rule out the fact that he gets off from annoying me. He starts arguments with me on purpose and likes to get under my skin just to see me red.
It’s similar to what Ethan does, except that oddly enough, I enjoy bantering and arguing with Matthew for no important reason. I like to get under his skin too, ruffle his feathers a bit and show him that he’s not all that.
The fact that we work in rival companies makes it better – or used to anyway. By tomorrow, we’ll be working as colleagues. I just hope we don’t have to cross paths every day.
It’s hard enough putting up with him as an infuriating neighbor.
I look away from him with a hard roll of my eyes. “What do you want?”
I throw my head back as I down the next shot. By the time I open my eyes, he’s sitting on the stool in front of me and ordering a drink.
His legs are so long that even with the distance between us, his knees graze mine. Every graze causes a tingle to skitter across my thighs and I can only blame the alcohol in my system for it.
“A drink,” he finally answers my question. “Which is what you’re also here for. Also, we both escaped our circles to be here, so I guess we do have something in common.”
“We have nothing in common, Matthew,” I retort. “And I didn’t escape. I just needed some air and – Is that lipstick on your face?”
His smile is smug. “Is it? I guess so.”
I scoff and look away. How typical of him.
He continues. “Clarissa bumped into me while we were all talking.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Of course, you didn’t.”
I glance at him. “And you didn’t think it was necessary to wipe it off?”
I hate the smirk that appears on his lips. “I thought you didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t. But you already yapped away and it’d be rude not to respond.”
“Does the lipstick bother you, Hailey?”
Warmth. There’s warmth on my cheeks, in my throat, beneath my skin. I scoff pretentiously.
I take too long to respond, but he’s already asking me another question.
“Would you rather it be your own lipstick?”
He’s looking at my mouth, at the bold red lipstick that coats my lips and stains the rim of my glass. If it were any other day, I would have replied to him with something sarcastic and witty.
But tonight, I’m speechless. Not even because I don’t know what to say, but because of how his eyes unabashedly scan me from my lips to my eyes and down to my body.
For the first time, he looks at me not as his best friend’s little sister, but as a woman he wants.
We’ve always traded nothing but playful banter, but tonight, something has shifted.
I felt it the moment our eyes met when he walked into the bar with his colleagues—an unspoken tension crackling between us.
Maybe, like me, he’s a little drunk too. That’s also what makes him look this good under the colorful lights.
Have his biceps always looked this huge? Have his lips always been this pink and lush? Is it just me or are we closer to each other now?
Matthew looks at me, awaiting my response with the tiniest grin on his lips. His knees graze mine and the sparks in my thighs join forces to create an unrelenting pulse in my sex.
My heartbeat skitters into high gear and my thighs tighten on their own.
That’s when I realize that the distraction I really need is sitting right in front of me.