Page 16 of Taming Tesla

The way he said my name sounded strange. Heavy. Like he had a hard time pushing my name out of his mouth. Like he didn’t want to say it. That’s when I notice that he’s holding his phone.

And I know.

The video is out there. James released it somehow. It’s out there, and Patrick had seen it. Watched it even though he knew I didn’t want him to. He’d seen me.

The real me.

I turn away from him to lay on my back, my lungs so tight it feels like my ribcage is shrinking. Curling in on itself from the heat erupting across my chest. “When?” I say, gaze focused on a crack that runs up the middle of the ceiling. I’d asked when but what I really wanted to know is why. Why would he do that? Why would he watch a video of me getting fucked by some other guy? Why would he do that?

“Sometime during the night,” he says. “He must’ve left the hospital AMA or—”

Something about the way he was talking—detached. Distant—pushed me out of bed. I fling the covers back and scramble across the mattress. I have to get out of here. Away from him and the rote, impersonal sound of his voice.

Finding my robe, the only thing I was wearing when I came in here and threw myself at him last night, I pull it on, jamming my arms through the sleeves, fast and hard enough to pop their stitches. “Miranda’s coming over,” I mumble, catching sight of him from the corner of my eye. He’s got his head in his hands, phone gripped in his fingers like it’s some sort of weapon that can hurt us both.

“Cari...” he says my name again, but it sounds even heavier than before. Like the weight of it—the weight of us—is crushing him.

“I have to—” I don’t even finish what I’m saying, I just bolt out the door, the hallway stretched between his room and mine, looks like it goes on forever. Like it will take me years to find a safe place to hide.

I don’t even know he’s following me until I feel his hand on my arm and I’m spinning in the doorway to my room, my back suddenly pinned against the jam.

He looks miserable. Angry and sick. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want him to see me. I tried to pull away, but his hands are clamped around my arms. He isn’t going to let me go, so I close my eyes to make him go away and he sighs, the breath of it ruffling through my hair. “Cari, please look at me. Just—”

“Why?” I say, opening my eyes because the way he’s standing over me, talking to me, makes me feel like a fucking child. “Why?” I demand it this time, and we both know I’m not asking him why he wants me to look at him or why he chased me down the hall.

I’m asking why.

Patrick lets go of me like it hurts him to touch me and I am glad. I’m glad it hurts. “Why?” I say it again, and he stares at me like he doesn’t know, or if he does, he doesn’t want to say it out loud. This time I’m the one who reaches out to touch him, and I do it just so I can see him hurt.

“I didn’t—” He’s looking down at me with the expression on his face. The one that says I’m killing him. “I mean, I did, but not—”

“It wasn’t enough to fuck me—” I slide my hand down his abs, the muscles under my fingertips giving a hard flex like I’m stabbing him in the gut with something cold and sharp. “You wanted to watch me get fucked by someone else?” I push my hand past the waistband of his boxer briefs, stroking his cock, feeling it harden almost instantly against my hand. Watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he swallows the groan my hands on him produced. I can do that. I can make him hard. Make him want me. I know how to do that. “You know, we can do that if you want. We can—”

“Stop.” He yells at me, his hands streaking down my arms to grab me by the wrists, jerk my hands away from him. “Please, just... stop.” His tone softens and he holds me like that for a second, hard fingers circled my wrist, grinding the bones together like he wants to push me away but can’t quite manage it. “Don’t do this again.”

It’s almost exactly what he said to me the night of the storm. The night I goaded him into bending me over the pool table downstairs. Into treating me like every other guy, I’ve ever been with. “Why?” I whisper it this time, and I don’t even know what I’m asking anymore. What answer I’m looking for.

“It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care.”

“You don’t care about what?” I say, my tone so cold it burns my throat. “About the fact that I’m a whore who fucked her way through college or maybe about the fact that I let every guy I’ve ever been involved with shit on me and use me. Including you.” I’m doing it again. Pointing out to him that he’s no better than any other guy I’ve ever been with. That he treats me the same way they do. What I don’t say is that I’m doing it on purpose. Pushing him into it. Making him angry. Making it dirty so I can pretend, just for a little while that he’s no better than me.

His fingers go soft, but he’s still holding me away from him. Like he doesn’t trust me. Like I might be dangerous. “I thought…”

“You thought what, Patrick?” I laugh, and I can’t believe a sound so ugly is coming out of my mouth. “What did you think was happening here?”

“I love you.” He stares down at me, his expression caught somewhere between desperation and determination. “I love you, Cari.”

“No, you don’t,” I say, shaking my head at him. “You can’t.”

His fingers tighten for a second before letting go completely, letting my arms fall to my sides. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

“People like you and me don’t go together, Patrick,” I say, slipping through the doorway to stand on the other side of it.

“I don’t understand,” He says, taking a step back like he’s no longer wondering if I’m dangerous. Like he knows for a fact that I am.

“Yeah, you do.” I grip the doorknob so hard I can all but feel it buckle in my grasp. “Look…” I make myself say it because it’s the only thing left to do. He doesn’t want me to touch him because he sees me now. Not his friend or his roommate. Not the girl he hooked up with a few times and made breakfast for once. He sees me. The real me and it hurts so much I can’t breathe. “It was fun for a few days, but I’m kinda over this whole you and me thing.”

His face goes still and pale like I just spit on him. “You’re over it?”

“Yup,” I can’t breathe. I can’t feel past the pain in my chest. The way he’s looking at me. “This—whatever this is—is over,” I tell him. “I’ll have my stuff out by tomorrow.” I swing the door closed, watching him disappear behind it.

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