Chapter 6
Ryan
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
I shot upright as a rhythmic pounding began on the other side of the wall above my bed, jerking me out of a sound sleep. I was completely disoriented for a few seconds as I tried to focus my eyes and looked around the dim, unfamiliar space.
When I caught the low rumble of Mitch’s voice in the next room, it all came back to me.
The hotel. Las Vegas. The strip club. The fucking lap dance.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
This time the sounds were followed by a loud groan, and then an annoyingly high-pitched squeal.
I flung my hand out and felt around for my phone on the nightstand so I could check the time, glaring at the numbers glowing up at me from the screen.
Three-twenty-seven in the damned morning and that asshole and whatever woman he hooked up with were making enough noise to wake every guest on this floor.
Un-fucking-believable.
As the sound of Mitch’s headboard hitting the wall picked up its tempo, the groans and squeals got louder.
I snorted in disgust, then flopped back down onto the pillow and tapped at the phone screen, searching for my white-noise app so I could drown out the sounds of the live sex show going on in the other room.
Way too many seconds later, the drone of a whirring fan filled my room, and I turned the volume on my phone up and laid it on the mattress next to my pillow to get the maximum effect.
I could still hear a faint banging from the headboard, but I could no longer hear them, so I was thankful to be spared that much, at least. I’d heard Mitch having sex countless times when the three of us had shared an apartment in college, and it hadn’t seemed like a big deal back then.
We’d all been guilty of it on occasion, especially with the paper-thin walls in the shitty apartment we’d lived in.
Now, I was too old to put up with that shit.
I had to resist the urge to pound my fist on the wall and tell him to pull out, send her home, and go the fuck to sleep.
I shifted on to my side and bunched up the pillow under my cheek, then made a conscious effort to relax.
The final day of the tournament was starting in a little over four hours, and it had been well after one o’clock before I’d managed to fall asleep.
At this rate, I’d be dragging ass in the morning.
I closed my eyes, and my thoughts drifted to Melanie. I was swamped by a wave of guilt as I remembered what had happened last night.
I had intended to call her as soon as I got back to the hotel, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I was afraid she would hear the guilt in my voice.
I had no idea how to explain what had happened, knowing how much it would hurt her.
Instead, I’d thrown back a few shots of whiskey, courtesy of the room’s mini bar, and then stood under a steaming hot shower, scrubbing myself from head to toe as if I could erase all traces of the last two hours or so of my life.
All the while, I’d racked my brain for a way to make it up to her, then decided to take her to Kirby’s for dinner Monday night.
We hadn’t been there in a year or two, maybe even three.
We’d been celebrating our anniversary the last time we’d gone, and we could celebrate my eight hundred dollar win at the slot machine now.
Of course, with the prices at Kirby’s, I’d spend a good chunk of those winnings to pay the bill, but it would be well worth it to have a nice night out with her.
I frowned into the darkness as I tried to remember the last time we’d gone out, just the two of us.
For years, we’d made it a priority to have date night at least once a month, if not more, but for the last couple of years we’d just been too busy.
Too busy for date night, and apparently too busy to realize we’d been missing it, and I didn’t like that thought one damned bit.
Dinner at Kirby’s was definitely going to be on the agenda.
The thumping on the wall got faster and louder, and I reached out to turn up the volume on my phone again to muffle it.
Moments later, I heard the woman screaming and moaning, the over-the-top sounds sounding so much like a low-budget porn star that I knew she just had to be faking it – followed by Mitch giving a long, deep grunt that I could just make out over the whirring sound coming from my speaker.
The god-awful thumping stopped then, and I sighed in relief and hoped like hell that they didn’t go for round two. I left the white noise app running just in case.
At some point, I drifted off to sleep again, waking in the morning when the front door of the suite slammed shut with a hard bang that seemed to rattle the walls. Fucking hell, did no one have a clue about hotel decorum and consideration for others?
Mitch knocked on my door a few seconds later, calling through it to ask if I was awake yet.
I lifted my head from the pillow and glared so hard at the closed door that I was surprised Mitch didn’t burst into flames on the other side of it.
I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then stomped to the door wearing nothing but a scowl and my boxer briefs. I flung it open to find Mitch clad in one of the hotel’s robes, grabbing a bottle of water from the mini bar.
“I take it your friend just left?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged, upending the bottle and guzzling half of it down in one long gulp.
“Her ex called and was pissed because she was supposed to pick up their sick kid from his place in Henderson an hour ago. Said his girlfriend wanted to go out for breakfast and was giving him all kinds of shit over it, so Tangie had to haul ass to get there.”
Jesus, I felt sorry for that poor kid who was stuck with two people who sounded as if they’d never win the Parent of the Year award. The girlfriend clearly wasn’t any prize, either.
“I’m gonna hit the shower and then we can grab some breakfast on the way to the golf course. I worked up an appetite last night.” Mitch waggled his brows and grinned over his shoulder at me as he walked back into his room.
Resisting the urge to follow him and waterboard him under the spray of the shower, I turned on my heel and returned to my own room to get ready. Even though I’d had a long, thorough scrub last night, I showered again, still not feeling clean.
Once I was dressed, I started gathering up my shit.
The free passes Mitch had won covered the hotel until tomorrow morning, but since we both had to be back to work we needed to fly back tonight.
The plan was to stop by the hotel to grab our things as soon as the tournament ended, then get some dinner and head to the airport.
As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t get the hell out of this city fast enough.
I scooped up the small pile of dirty clothes that I’d managed to accumulate during the past two days, then tossed them in the suitcase lying open on the luggage rack in the corner.
Spotting the jeans and shirt from last night that I’d immediately stripped off, balled up, and angrily thrown in the corner when I’d returned from the club, I hesitated, then took a deep breath and picked them up off the floor before dropping them on top of the others.
Scanning the room to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I noticed my phone charger on the nightstand and zipped it into the outside pocket of the bag in case I needed it later at the airport.
Mitch’s bedroom door open as I walked back into my bathroom to gather my toiletries, and when I walked back into my room, he was leaning in the doorway with his hands shoved in his pockets, waiting for me.
“All packed and ready?”
I nodded, not sparing him a glance as I tucked my toiletry bag into the suitcase and zipped the whole thing shut.
“What sounds good for breakfast?”
I knew I should eat, but the thought of food right now just made my stomach turn.
“Get whatever you want, I’m not hungry.” My voice was surly, and he finally appeared to notice that I was pissed.
He pushed off the doorway and pulled his hands out of his pockets, holding them out in front of himself in a gesture that managed to look both defensive and apologetic.
“Listen, about last night,” he started, but I held up my hand in front of his face to cut him off.
“Don’t. Just fucking don’t,” I bit out through clenched teeth.
“I’ve only had a few hours of sleep – which was rudely interrupted by you and the porn star wannabe who just slammed out of here, by the way – and I’m not in the fucking mood to talk about the shitshow from last night.
Let’s just get ready and head out to the course. ”
Mitch reared back, looking a little shocked at my show of anger, and then nodded slowly. “All right, man. Whatever you say.”
I tried to relax my jaw since I was probably in danger of cracking a molar, then walked out of the suite before I said something I might regret.
He followed behind me, and we didn’t speak again until we were seated at the hotel’s restaurant.
Even then the conversation was unnaturally stilted, limited to what we were ordering and the logistics of the rest of the day.
We managed to get to the golf course and watch without further incident as Landon Brown won the final day of the tournament, but it damned sure wasn’t easy.
I was quiet and withdrawn, trying to work through what I was going to tell Melanie.
Mitch resorted to acting as if nothing were wrong, laughing and cracking jokes as he always did.
When I didn’t respond as I normally would he became irritated and surly himself, and by the time we got back to the hotel late that afternoon, the tension between us had gone from a simmer to a full-on rolling boil.
As soon as the suite door closed behind us, I went straight to my room to grab my bag.
Mitch followed close on my heels, despite my terse reminder that we had to leave so we could get some dinner before our flight.