Page 33 of IOU

Wrong thing to say.

“Tucker and I weren’t a lie! He loved me!”

Okay, therapy time is over. It’s time to remind her why she’s in this situation—some tough love or the truth. “He bent your friend over your pink sheets and fucked her so hard that she bit the fabric and screamed out his name.”

She rears back, her plump lips forming an O. “Shut up! He did not!”

Maybe not on her pink sheets. They could be blue or some shit, but rest assured the bastard more than likely fucked her on Ainsley’s bed. She needs to let this dick go and get some sleep—hell, so we can both get some sleep. I need the girl from earlier. “While you were making him the perfect dinner, she was riding his cock in the back seat of her car.”

“Stop!”

I’m not going to stop. She needs to hate him or delete the fucking pictures, whatever the end game is here.

“While you were texting him that you couldn’t wait to see him, he was texting Tiffany with all the things he would to do her as soon as he got away from you.”

“No!”

The sobs that shake her entire body almost get me to stop, but the finger she moves to the screen, hovering over the picture, keeps me firm. “Press the button, Ainsley.”

“He loved me.” Her voice sounds defeated. I should feel better that she’s doing what I want—that she’s letting go, but instead of turning back, I ignore the pain that throbs behind my ribs. In the morning, if I have to search all day, I am finding her an apartment. I’m not doing this again.

“He might have loved you once, but he doesn’t anymore. He used you, Ainsley. He threw you away like last season’s Christmas sweater.”

I watch her chin quiver, and like a bastard, I keep going. “Press the button.” God, forgive me.

With one last scream of anguish, she jams her finger to the screen and deletes the picture. And then another one. And another. She’s so consumed with cursing her screen, she doesn’t even notice when I get up and leave.

Rumor has it he took all her belongings as collateral.

“Where’s all your shit?”

When I get back from lunch, Ainsley is sprawled across the sofa with a blanket and a stuffed—is that a sea lion? What the fuck is she doing with a stuffed sea lion?

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s been lying on the couch for the past three hours watching some aquarium reality show when she should be unpacking. See, my ass could not find her a fucking apartment, and to make matters worse, the favor I pulled only got me a “Dude, my dad said that girl is banned from nearly all the complexes around campus. It will take some time.” It was not the answer I was looking for, and that particular favor cost Mike, my mechanic and classmate, another goddamned IOU.

So I came home, ground out the news, told her to move in her shit, and then proceeded to toss my poker table and all my shit from the spare room into the living room where Ainsley has stayed, unmoving and grating on my last nerve.

“In my room,” she responds, never looking away from the TV.

I narrow my eyes, my cheek twitching in frustration. “There’s only three bags in your room.”

I know because I just looked while she did absolutely nothing. “I’m talking about your furniture. Where’s your bed?”

Logically, I know she didn’t move it in the past two hours, but shouldn’t she be making plans, or does her plan include sleeping on the floor? Honestly, at this point, I don’t care either way.

She presses pause on the TV like my questions are disrupting the riveting penguin walk currently transpiring on my fifty-five-inch screen. “I’m going out later to buy an air mattress.” She presses a button on the remote, and her program resumes.

Don’t get involved, Maverick. Who cares if she sleeps on an air mattress or the floor? Her favor is a place to stay, and it doesn’t include a feather top and box springs.

“What happened to your old bed? The one you slept on at your other apartment?” I briefly wonder if my mention of her ex fucking her roommate on it turned her off. Again, it doesn’t matter. She’s only staying long enough until Mike’s dad, a realtor, finds me what I need.

She pauses the show again, but this time she sits up and faces me. “I didn’t realize there would be an interview about what I sleep on. I thought our deal was for the room, not the shit in it.”

Her words are harsh and biting.

My dick twitches.

I contain a smile, scrubbing a hand over my mouth, and nod firmly. “True. Our deal is for a room that you don’t have the money for. ‘Yet.’” I quoted her words when I told her she would stay here for a few days. She was scared she would owe me another favor when she couldn’t pay half of the rent. I didn’t even mention rent. Our deal didn’t include money, just the place to stay, but since she was offering, I was willing to let it play out. Who am I to tell her not to be a decent person? Again, I make a living off fear, and that’s precisely what Ainsley needs right now.

---