Shredded - Wolff Tracy - Страница 46

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How easy they would be if I just stop fighting.

I’m tired. I’m so goddamn tired of fighting. And I don’t have to be. I could just stop right here. Right now.

I’ve told myself a million times that if I could just curl up and die, I would. I’ve held my father’s gun to my head, boarded down the most dangerous slopes I could find, driven way too fast down deserted roads on the ice in my SUV or on my bike. I’ve spent years playing Russian roulette with my life, doing the stupidest shit imaginable in an effort to just wipe myself out without actually committing suicide. Without taking the selfish way out.

So maybe this is it. Maybe all that shit has finally caught up to me and this is my moment. The one fucking situation I just can’t escape from.

It seems so easy, so perfect.

Especially since I don’t really have to do anything. I could just hang here a little while, let gravity do its thing. Nobody would know. Nobody but me, and I’m sure as shit not telling anyone.

My hand slips a little more, and I let it. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, will myself to just let go.

But Ophelia’s face flashes in front of my eyes, and my fingers refuse to budge. And I can’t make them. Can’t will them to no matter how much I want to. Suicide is a coward’s way out, and that’s one thing—maybe the only thing—I’m not. I’m an asshole, a loser, a careless, reckless freak who doesn’t give two shits about himself or anyone else, but I am not a coward.

Besides, killing myself is way too easy, and if there’s one thing I don’t deserve, it’s to get off easy. Not when April never had that option.

An image of her—of my sweet, adorable little sister in her powder-pink dress and tap shoes—dances in front of my eyes, so real that I swear I could touch it. But it’s just a mirage, just a hope that will never be realized, and I shove it down deep inside me, where it can fester some more.

My fingers are cramping up, and I know that in a minute, two at the outside, the choice is going to be out of my hands. Literally.

Fuck it. I reach out my left hand, skim it quickly over the rocks. I finally find a little indention about two feet above my head. It’s not much, but it’s slanted down and I can get fairly decent purchase with three of my fingers. So that’s what I do as I bend my knees and pull my feet up a few inches to try and find a place to rest them, too.

I encounter a tiny shelf a few inches to my right, put my foot on it, and push up as hard as I can. Then I reach up, find another handhold, and pull. Hands, feet. Hands, feet.

I do this three more times before I get to the top of the cliff. I pull myself over and collapse on the snow-covered ground. I turn my head, draw deep breaths into my lungs as the adrenaline finally stops rocketing through my veins, then roll over and stare up at the sky.

I start to laugh, deep, painful bellows—out of relief or agony or pure, unadulterated hysteria—I don’t know. But once I start, I can’t stop.

I don’t know how long I lie there staring up at the night sky, laughing my fucking ass off.

Long enough for the cold wet of the snow to seep through my jeans and sink into my bones.

Long enough for the stars to slowly fade away as the red and violet tendrils of dawn streak slowly across the sky.

More than long enough for thoughts of Ophelia to sneak back into my consciousness. An image of her, empty coffee cup in hand and green eyes sparking with triumph, flashes through my mind, and I stop laughing. Start wondering.

What’s she doing right now?

What’s she thinking about?

Then I snort at my own stupidity. It’s barely four-thirty in the morning. She’s sleeping, tucked up nice and snug and cozy in her bed. Another image works its way into my brain, this one of Ophelia in a sexy little nightie curled up under the covers. Or, better yet, sprawled across the bed, legs open and nightgown creeping up her thighs so I can see … everything.

Her blond hair spread out across the pillow.

Her creamy skin flushed pink with heat.

Her perfect tits straining against the tight lace of her gown while her pu—

Lust slams into me with all the finesse of a snowplow at high speed. In an instant I’m rock hard and ready, hands shaking with the force of the need ripping through me.

What the fuck?

I’m half frozen and minutes out of one of the deadliest situations I’ve ever been in, and still I want this girl so badly that I can barely breathe with it. I’ve had her—over and over and over again, I’ve had her—and still I’m tied up in knots because of her. Still I’m jonesing for more. There are a thousand girls out there I can tap with no more than a smile. What is it about Ophelia that makes me want her so bad?

Correction—what makes me want to fuck her so bad? Wanting her … that’s a whole different story, and one I refuse to have any part of. Not when it’s so easy for her to kick me out of her life.

A wolf howls in the distance, a long, sad, lonely sound that chills me in a way the frozen ground never could. I sit up, slowly push my shivering body to its feet, and begin to walk. With dawn slowly rising around me, it’s easy to see where the new trail—and climb—have taken me. I’m on Lost Canyon property, less than a mile from the first ski lift and the employee lodge.

I wonder if Ophelia really is sleeping or if she’s wide awake, too.

Once the thought enters my head, I can’t shake it. And even though I deliberately turn in the other direction, I find myself circling back round toward the lodge. Back toward her. It’s like there’s a string around my waist, one that draws me to her even when I want to be anywhere else.

I start to fight it, to turn around and go somewhere else, but in the end I’m standing in the hallway outside her door—someone must have left the outside door propped open for a midnight booty call who never showed—telling myself to walk away. To just walk away.

I don’t know how long I stand there, thinking, waiting, trying to figure out the right thing to do. Walk away or knock. Knock or walk away.

And in the end I do exactly what I always knew I would do, exactly what I have to do to stay sane.

I turn and walk away.

It’s a little after four-thirty in the morning when I finish folding the last of my laundry and start the long trek back up to my room with my laundry basket in front of my face. This is the perfect time to wash clothes—everyone’s asleep and I had all the machines to myself—but at the same time, it’s going to be a long day. The two hours of sleep I managed to grab aren’t going to do me much good come afternoon rush at the coffee bar.

I’m on the stairs, on the landing halfway between the second floor and the third, laundry basket in front of my face, when I bump into a solid wall of … something. For a second I freak out as images of Harvey flip through my head at lightning speed. But before I can do more than register my fear, two strong, cold hands reach out and grab my shoulders to steady me. And though I still can’t see who it is, I can tell from the way he’s touching me that it’s Z in front of me.

“Hey, Ophelia. You okay?” The heavy basket is gently removed from my arms and I find myself staring into the concerned blue of Z’s midnight eyes.

“I’m fine,” I tell him. Which is true, as long as you don’t count the fact that my heart is beating like a metronome on high. It’s as though being this close to him actually causes my body to completely wig out.

“You sure?” He’s got the basket balanced in one hand and the other wraps around my elbow as he guides me up the last of the stairs. “I didn’t hurt you?”

I smile at him. “I’m good, Z.”

He came. He came. I can’t believe he came. I can’t believe he came. Even though I didn’t want him to, even though I told him I needed space. He came anyway.

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