Down for Her Read online

  “She was one of our friends…or his friends, I should say. I thought she was my friend.”

  “That’s shitty.”

  I nod, trying not to let it all come flooding in again, but it’s hard to keep the memories at bay. “We were all friends—this group of us, like five couples. We hung at each other’s houses all the time. Those New York shopping trips I mentioned earlier today? She was a part of those. She was a part of everything.”

  “And the whole time, she was with him?”

  “Yeah. I’m like, why not just go be together? She’s married, but she and her husband don’t have kids or anything.” I go to take a drink from my cup, but it’s empty.

  “Are they together now?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I say, realizing that statement is becoming true.

  “What about your ex? How’s he handling you leaving?”

  I inhale a deep breath. “I don’t know. He keeps texting. I get the feeling he thinks this is just a little bump in the road.”

  “How do you feel?”

  I think carefully before responding, wanting to make sure I get my wording correct, not only for Brett’s sake but for my own. “Relieved.”

  He lifts his eyebrows, waiting for me to elaborate, but I’m not sure I want to get into the rest right now. I duck under the water, unable to take the humiliation anymore. While I’m under there, the degradation of five years of bullshit hits a crescendo, and something inside of me snaps.

  9

  Brett

  When Kylie emerges from the water, she closes the distance between us. I hold my position steady, but I have to admit, she’s throwing me off guard.

  Smoothing her dripping hair out of her face, she says, “What’s wrong, super stud?”

  I try not to chuckle at her choice of wording. Sometimes she’s like a girl from a different era…like she’s been in a storm shelter for fifty years and was just recently released. Hmm, she is from Oklahoma…

  She flicks me on the shoulder. “You like being the one to make the moves, don’t you? You like being the cat who chases the skunk.”

  “Excuse me?” I ask.

  “You don’t know Pepé Le Pew?”

  “Pepper what?”

  “From Bugs Bunny.”

  “I know Bugs Bunny,” I say, remembering watching it on that classic cartoon channel. “Matthew loved Speedy Gonzalez.”

  She points at me. “That’s me. Speedy Gonzalez, running from you, the skunk.”

  I lift my chin. “Who said I was chasing anything?”

  “That’s what I thought,” she says, giving me a little splash.

  “Are you drunk?” I ask, because I really can’t tell if she is or not.

  She runs her finger through the water. “I’m fluffy. There’s a big difference between drunk and fluffy.”

  This makes me grin. “Oh, yeah? What’s the difference?”

  “If I were drunk, I couldn’t do this.”

  She goes underwater and stands on her hands, holding the position steady. I can’t help myself, so I grab her ankles and tug her body up. She parts her legs and somehow they get wrapped around my waist. I’m honestly not sure if I did it or if she did, but either way, it feels good to have them bound around me. She comes up out of the water, laughing as her legs tighten their grip on my waist.

  I can’t help laughing with her. “Definitely drunk,” I say as a tease. I’m not sure a drunk person could have held that handstand like she did.

  “I’m not,” she says, resting her hands on my shoulders. “I’m just enjoying myself.” She gazes into my eyes and it’s so tough to read her. She’s not over-the-top flirty like the other girls I’m usually with who give me those unmistakable fuck-me eyes. She genuinely seems to just be having a good time. She hops down off of me and goes over to the side of the pool, checking her cup. “I’ve only had two margaritas. I’d have to be a super lightweight to get drunk off that.”

  I run her words from a few minutes back through my head and flick some water at her. “What did you mean by that’s what I thought?” I say.

  She finally gives up on her cup and leans against the side of the pool. “You talk a big game, flirting and making these vague suggestions to me, but I bet you anything if I were to pull you into your bed with me tonight, you’d go all gentlemanly on me.”

  I have to laugh, the word being so absurd. “Would not.”

  “Oh, yes, you would. You’re terrible at this whole bad-boy thing.”

  “Bad boy,” I say, shaking my head. I lean back on the side of the pool like I own the place, playing up to this role she’s created for me. Why the fuck not.

  “I know your kind,” she says. “Just enough edge to you to make the girls pant. You want them to think you don’t care, but you care.”

  I roll my eyes at her, shaking my head like she’s full of nonsense.

  “If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be sleeping on your couch. You’d be making me sleep there.”

  “Who says I slept on the couch? You don’t know where I slept last night.”

  “I know you’d love me to think you had some amazing threesome or something. But I know you were probably out helping some old lady cross the street.”

  “That would take me all night?”

  She gauges me. “You were prepping food in a soup kitchen or making repairs on an old house for someone…building schools for underserved communities.”

  “I’m sorry to crush your image of me, but I’ve never done any of those things.”

  She points at me. “But you did help a homeless girl who had nowhere to stay. Don’t even try to deny it.”

  “I told a hot girl she could sleep in my bed. I’m hardly expecting the medal of honor.”

  She smiles at me as she runs her fingers through the water, making little waves.

  If this were any other girl, I’d already be in bed with her, but the fact that I’m having more fun than I should right now is a red flag to me that I need to pull back. “Besides, you’re off-limits to me. I couldn’t even hook up with you if I wanted to.”

  “If you wanted to, huh?” she says.

  “Yeah, if I wanted to.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because I work with you.”

  She glances around the pool at the people who’ve paired up, several couples—even a threesome looking like it’s getting underway. Damn, this group is like a bunch of rabbits in heat.

  “Yeah, because nobody breaks that rule, do they?” She peers around the pool. “What’s going on over there in that grotto?”

  She doesn’t give me a chance to answer, just ducks under the water and swims that way, her long legs pushing through the water, her blond hair loose around her like a mermaid. I try letting her go and not following, but as she peers into the grotto and then looks at me with wide eyes, dropping her jaw, I can’t help wanting to be with her as she discovers the place for the first time.

  I wade over there and take it in from her view—low lighting giving off an intimate vibe, small waves lapping the steps leading up to the hot tub, the strategically placed privacy cubbies.

  She wades in farther. “I thought this was a family resort.”

  “It is, but Robert knows that the moms and dads are the ones making the decisions about where they vacation each year. So he makes it where they want to come back as much as their kids do.”

  She meets my gaze. “Robert’s the guy who owns this place, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I guess I assumed she’d know that.

  She stares at me like she’s thinking about asking me something personal, but then she just glances around the grotto again. “I’m surprised this place closes at seven. It seems like such a nighttime vibe.”

  I pick up a beach ball that’s floated my way and knock it across the pool. “You’d be surprised. The moms and dads spend their days at this pool. This place makes them feel like different people. It’s an escape.”

  She nods, glancing aroun
d. “Nice. So you and Tori work with their kids while they come here?”

  “Us and some others. Simone’s our physical therapist.”

  “She mentioned that.” Her lips quirk up in a small smile. “I bet you all have a lot of patience.”

  “You have to have patience when you’re working with kids.”

  She walks up the stairs to the hot tub. “So you’re an occupational therapist for kids, and you’re telling me you’re a bad boy?”

  “I’m sure I didn’t say I was a bad boy.”

  She dips a toe in the water. “What’s the correct term then, player? Hookup king?”

  I roll my eyes. “This is getting old,” I say, but I’m not one bit tired of her.

  She sits on the edge of the hot tub, letting her feet dangle in. “You never did tell me how you got into occupational therapy for kids. I mean, I know you worked in games and then moved to Kids Company. But why OT?”

  I walk up the stairs and sit near her, careful not to get too close. I don’t like talking about Matthew to strangers, but she opened up to me, and that couldn’t have been easy. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to share a little. “That was more out of necessity than anything.”

  “What kind of necessity?”

  I scratch my forehead, my chest panging, but she’s not some girl I’m gonna sleep with then move on from. She seems like she might actually care about what I’ve got to say. “I knew someone who could use the help.”

  She considers me. “Your brother?”

  I’m surprised that she put it together, but then I remember telling her a little about Matthew in the ocean earlier. I look down at my hands and nod.

  “Does your brother have a diagnosis?”

  I huff a laugh. “Diagnoses are for kids with families who have money, or at least have their kids in schools with money. The school my brother and I went to struggled just to feed all the kids.” I get the feeling she never looked for her next meal to be provided by the school.

  She blinks. “I thought pretty much all schools in the United States were required to offer help for kids with special needs.”

  “Ours did, but our schools were so underfunded, unless there’s an obvious need, you really have to have someone to advocate for you. I was fourteen when Matthew was seven. I was never even in the same school as he was. I had no idea anything was really wrong until a teacher came to our house one day to talk to my mom about it all.”

  “That seems unusual—a teacher coming to your house.”

  I don’t want to badmouth my mother, so I just say, “It was an unusual situation. Of course, it did no good. My mom was dating this worthless dickhead at the time, and he told the woman to stay out of our business. That was the end of that.” The memory has me gritting my teeth.

  I dare a glance at her, and the look of pure heartbreak in her gaze makes my stomach roll. I shake it off and hop into the hot tub. “Fuck it.” I hold my hand out to her. “Come on in. The water feels good.” Reluctantly, she takes my hand, and I pull her in. “Did I lie?”

  She cups water with either hand and lets it drain into the tub. “You did not.”

  I meet her gaze, letting my hand brush hers. She doesn’t move it, so I take it in mine, my instincts working harder than my willpower. She’s lost her bravado, becoming shy and tentative. This is the moment I should pull her to me, taking charge of this situation and getting her to give herself to me for the night.

  “Hot tub time!” comes a shout from the opening of the grotto, where Simone, Bailey, Logan, and Isaac crash the moment, wading toward us. Kylie and I pull away as they all infiltrate the hot tub with stories from their walk…something about catching Buddy taking a whizz behind a bush, an image that definitely breaks the mood I had going with Kylie. It’s probably for the best, because if I were to have taken her to bed tonight, I’m not sure I could have walked away tomorrow.

  10

  Kylie

  I wake up around ten, but the house is still quiet, so I brush my teeth, get dressed, and then head for the front door. Unlike yesterday morning, Brett is asleep on the couch…or at least he’s pretending to be.

  I try not to stare for too long, but it’s really hard. I feel like we turned a corner last night. I think he might have been getting ready to kiss me when the group came back from their walk. And I’m pretty sure I would have let him, silly girl I am. It’s so like me to be a pawn in the playbook of the first player I meet post-breakup.

  I set up my laptop in the business center to do the online orientation. I stupidly assumed this would be a short video I could watch at some point during my first week, but after reading through my welcome email to see where I needed to report in the morning, I realized this orientation was a bigger deal than I thought. Apparently, they don’t trust that you’ll watch the video on your own, so there’s a test at the end of it. I tried taking the test after watching the first ten minutes of the video, and I failed it, miserably.

  Two hours later, I’m still trying to get this thing finished. You have to take the test until you get it perfect, and I can’t get it right. Part of my problem could be that I keep drifting off during the video, thinking about Brett’s lips and the touch of his hand on mine in the hot tub last night.

  “Hey,” comes a guy’s voice. I look up to find Jack Massey standing there in gym shorts and a T-shirt.

  I sit back. “Hey,” I say, giving him a smile. There’s something comforting about Jack. He definitely reminds me of guys I’ve been around my whole life. While Brett is mysterious and all bad boyish, Jack is like my favorite blanket.

  “You do not look happy,” he says.

  “I’m just having trouble with this orientation video. What are you doing here?” I ask, glancing around the place.

  “I can’t keep away from the office. It’s connected through that lobby,” he says, pointing behind me. “What’s going on with the video?” he asks, sitting down beside me.

  “It’s working fine. Operator error,” I say. “I’m having focus issues, I guess.”

  “How can that be possible with the stimulating material in that thing?”

  I smile at him, rolling my eyes at myself.

  He points to my laptop. “May I?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  He flies through the test, hitting answers and arrowing through like a machine. I glance around, trying to be cool about this, but I’ve never cheated on anything in my life. He reaches the end of the test and the words Congratulations, you passed! fill the screen, and relief floods my chest. “You’ve saved my life.”

  He hands me the computer back. “It’s pretty easy when you’re the one who came up with the questions.”

  “So I can blame you for this?”

  “Sorry, Robert said to make it tough. He wants people to take it seriously.”

  “Now I feel guilty.”

  “Don’t. You’ve been working on this thing for like two hours.”

  I shift my body to face his. “How do you know that?”

  “I get an alert when a new hire logs into the test.”

  I frown at him. “So you knew I was here this whole time?”

  “Pretty much.”

  I consider him. “Did you come here just to help me with this?”

  He shrugs. “I went and lifted some weights first. When I never got the notification that you passed, I thought I’d come check on you.”

  I smile at him. “So you do this for all the new hires?”

  “Oh, hell no.”

  This makes me giggle, and then I straighten up. “I guess I’m really working that damsel-in-distress angle this weekend.”

  “Maybe I just wanted to say hi,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s flirting or just trying to be my friend.

  I look down at my laptop to avoid his gaze. “I heard some stories about you this weekend.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he says.

  “Mmm. The words teacher’s pet were used.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Hargrove said that about me? That�
��s a bit hypocritical.”

  “No, it wasn’t him. I was hanging out with some girls I met who work here.”

  “Ah. Well, I can’t really deny it. Robert’s been mentoring me since I was a junior in college. He came to Cornell to speak about resorts that are thinking outside the box, and I was so impressed with him I waited a half hour to meet him. We stayed in touch, and he offered me an internship. I’ve been working for him ever since.”

  “So he mentored both you and Brett at the same time?”

  “Hargrove’s story is a bit different from mine. He’s been working with Robert since he was sixteen.”

  “He mentioned that. He was working in games and then got interested in Kids Company.”

  “He was interested in Kids Company before he ever came to work here.” He looks at me and then shakes his head. “Sorry. Not my story to tell.”

  “Because of his brother,” I say, putting together that it was no accident that he happened upon Kids Company. My heart constricts as I think of him as a teenager trying to help his brother when the school system failed him.

  Jack narrows his gaze. “Yeah. I’m surprised he opened up to you about Matthew. Brett gets pissed if anyone even mentions his brother.” He huffs a laugh. “Damn, you hooked him fast.”

  “It’s not like that. We’re totally platonic,” I say, my neck sizzling.

  “You might be. He’s not if he’s talking to you about his brother.”

  I shift in my seat, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear, not sure what to say.

  “Robert took Brett under his wing because he appreciated his dedication to his brother and his tenacity to find this resort and get a job here doing whatever he could just to get his brother help. Services are free to family members of employees. Robert took me under his wing because of my detachment from my family and my ability to be cutthroat in business.”

  “I guess the two of you really are opposites.”

  He gives me a humorless smile. “Yeah, but I’m the stupid one. If I wanted a chance with you, I wouldn’t have told you what a great guy Hargrove is despite his façade.”