Trapp #2
“A conniving schemer,” Trapp had answered easily.
“Someone exactly like my brother. Fucking stars, Adi. My brother Grayson has been scheming since he could walk. And literally since I was born, I’ve been his number two.
Schemes against our older brother, schemes against our parents, teachers, you name it.
He has this insane vendetta against this shifter he used to work with that’s three years old, at least. Actively scheming right now, in his forties.
He’s trying to buy enough stock in the parent corporation that owns the guy’s co-op to get a place on the board just so that he can evict him.
He’s been combing through every single case the guy has ever blinked at to find a reason to get him disbarred.
Scheming isn’t fucking new to me. If you had told me, we could have planted your bad notes together. ”
Adriana looked stunned. He could tell she didn’t know what to do with that information. Trapp blew out a hard breath, knowing it was his turn.
“I’m sorry I turned people against you. I was hurt, but that doesn’t excuse what I did.
And I hate how easily I was able to do it.
” Trapp had trailed off, disliking the weight on his chest just considering that year of med school.
“My grandfather used to be mayor here, did you know that? After he was forcibly retired, he lived with us for a few years when we were young, before my dad had put him in a care facility. He was such a bad person. Fucking terrible. He was cruel and abusive and a bully, and I promised myself I would never be anything like that . . . that’s part of why I left my residency.
It was just so easy to manipulate people.
To make them like me, to make space for myself wherever I went.
I didn’t know who I was there, and I didn’t like who I could have become.
I didn’t want to be anything like him. But then I wound up acting like him anyway. ”
They were both quiet for a long while after that, as she returned the thawing bag of vegetables to the freezer.
Returning to her chair, she kicked off her shoes and folded her legs beneath her.
Trapp smiled softly. It was such an unconscious thing, absently making herself at home in his space, so different from Julia’s regimented routine of shoes at the door, keys on the table, coat on the hook, before even taking a breath.
He liked that she made herself comfortable in his space.
“How long were you married?” Her expression was miserable. Trapp choked out a hard laugh, her eyes raising to his, narrowing almost immediately.
“Calm down. I was married for like ten minutes. It took twice as long to dissolve as the marriage lasted, I think.”
Her face had twisted up in a scowl, one that was so intimately familiar, it took his breath away. “You are so full of shit. You were together with her for like two years at school! Here I am, sincerely spilling my guts to you and—”
“Adi, I am not even joking,” he continued, laughing.
“I almost got disowned over it. If you listen to the way my father tells it, every wrong turn my life has taken can be attributed to that relationship. Do you know I didn’t even go to my first residency pick because of us?
I didn’t even go to my fucking third pick.
We wound up at the only option that had a couples match program, and I hated everything about it.
Human city, human hospital. We never saw each other.
We were on opposite rotations the whole time.
I suggested getting married because I thought .
. . Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.
That it would give me a reason to stay? I was already half out the door; then I left the program, and overnight we had nothing in common, nothing to talk about.
All of a sudden I was home when she was home, and we both hated that.
When I say things fell apart immediately, I mean immediately.
My dad wanted to kill me. My brother was living on the other side of the country, and he had to play mediator between us for like three months.
I was sleeping on his couch before I came home. ”
“Yeah, well . . . she was a mean cunt anyways. Your dad is probably right.”
He hunched against the pain, unable to stop his laughter, wheezing as he clutched his ribs. “I guess. If only I hadn’t been in that relationship.”
He had continued to laugh and moan, but Adriana had looked away, her face tight as his laughter faded and the quiet sat between them once more. After a moment, she relocated to the sofa again, unable to keep still, using the pretext of examining the abrasions on his knuckles as she did so.
“We never would have worked, Trapp.” That small voice again, barely a whisper, her eyes downcast. “We both know that. I do, at least. If he didn’t like perfect Leelee VanderCunt, imagine what your dad would have said when you brought home a pack bitch.
A coyote. They would have pulled you out of school so fast, your family’s name would have fallen off the library atrium. ”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“Yes, it would have,” she insisted, her voice full of heat.
“I know. I know the way people looked at me growing up, the way people treated us. The same way all of your rich friends treated me at Mercy. They didn’t know anything about me, but they knew I wasn’t one of you.
Like being poor was a stink I couldn’t wash away.
And that was enough. Wolves like you, like your dad, like your brother .
. . you don’t end up with pack bitches like me. We both know that.”
He cupped her face in his hand, the pad of his thumb catching another one of her tears as it slid down her face.
This was why she’d been so oblivious every single time he’d tried to get her attention in school, asking her to dinner, to parties, anything.
He’d always hated chasing, but he’d chased her hard.
She didn’t see anything beyond her assumptions, and other people proved her right often enough that she didn’t need to.
The edge of his nail traced over the apple of her cheek, across her jaw, following the full curve of her lower lip, tilting her face up until her eyes met his.
“My mom is from a pack, Adriana.”
For a long moment, neither had said a thing.
He continued to trace the angles of her face, watching the shock and misery dance in her eyes, wondering if she, too, was replaying that last year of school in her head and all of the years they had lost since.
When he leaned down to reach her mouth, she didn’t pull away.
Trapp realized this was the first time he’d kissed her in more than fifteen years that wasn’t tinged with anger or bitterness. It felt like coming home.
At least, until the pain in his head nearly paralyzed him, making him pull back sharply with a hiss. Fucking Grayson.
“You should lay down,” she said, immediately jumping back into doctor mode, easing his head back to the cushion, as if he were incapable of doing so without guidance. “In bed, I think. You don’t have enough neck support out here.”
Trapp let her help him up, let her lead him to the bedroom, as he directed the way.
If he acted a bit more feeble than he actually felt, he decided it could be forgiven.
As it was, it was hardly an act, his knees and ribs protesting the moment he stood.
Are you beat up or just getting old? Who can tell?
When she had carefully pulled back the covers on his bed, pushing him down to sit, he caught her hand.
“Stay?”
Her look was penetrating, searching his face as if she expected to see a hidden joke, waiting to become the punchline, nodding after a long moment. “But we’re not doing anything. Don’t get any funny ideas. You need rest.”
He had no complaints. When she climbed into the bed beside him, tucking under his arm, it was all he needed.
Now it was early morning, and his father was demanding his presence, when all he wanted to do was stay exactly where he was, with her, still snuggled under his arm.
He’d woken several times during the night, finding her in slightly different positions, always buried against him, her cheek pressed to his skin, snuggled beneath his arm, practically burrowed into his side.
At one point, she had been crying. He’d remained still and kept his breathing steady, not disclosing that he was awake, listening to her tearful snuffles against his skin, feeling the trembling of her arms and the wetness on his chest. He never wanted to see her cry again.
He could slip out without waking her, he decided. Hop on the trolley and have it out with his father, and maybe be home before she’d even woken. And if his dad wanted a piece of his bad attitude, Trapp had no doubt he still had some to give.
* * *
The last thing he expected, as the elevator doors pulled open on his father’s floor in the Main Street office, was laughter. Bright, gleeful laughter from Jack’s longtime executive assistant, Rhonda, punctuated by the baritone rumble of his father’s chuckle.
“Trapp! Go on, sit down. I’m going to make you a vanilla hazelnut latte.”
She seemed overjoyed at the prospect, and Trapp didn’t have the heart to tell her he wasn’t interested in anything from the Black Sheep Beanery.
He’d bypassed the coffee shop entirely, getting off the empty trolley around the block from his father’s office, slipping through an alley between the buildings, the same cut through they’d taken as kids to cut through downtown without notice.
He didn’t want to see anyone from the coffee shop, including its patrons, which meant he didn’t want to see anyone.
His father was sitting behind his desk, still chuckling, three separate coffee mugs sitting before him, as Trapp took his seat in one of the opposite chairs. When Rhonda came back into the office, just a few minutes later, she was giddy.