Page 66 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
He paused in the doorway to the bedroom. I felt him looking me over, felt the weight of his gaze, felt the air grow thick with tension. Still I refused to turn. He moved slowly toward me. The mattress dipped with his weight. I heard a deep, quiet sigh, then the sound of rustling fabric. I wasn’t sure if he was undressing, but I damn well was sure I wasn’t going to turn around and look.
Then he was beside me, pressing the warm length of his body against mine.
His knees drew up. A heavy arm settled across me and squeezed. I felt his nose in my hair, his lips brush the nape of my neck. When I realized he was spooning me after being out all night with her, I almost grabbed the clock off the nightstand and beat him to death with it.
The fucking. Nerve.
He whispered, “Talk to me, baby.”
He smelled like cigarettes.
“Those whores of yours threatened to gut me, but it looks like you’ve got them beat.”
His voice dropped even lower. “Don’t say that. Please.”
“Which part? About your whores?” I knew I was being a bitch. I also knew no woman in her right mind would blame me.
A desperate edge came into his voice. “They’re not mine. They just hang out with the band sometimes. A.J. likes to keep them around, but they’re just . . . window dressing. They don’t mean anything.”
Words. Semantics. The man was a grand master at saying pretty things in order to dodge all the ugly underneath. He hadn’t even bothered to address the important part of what I’d said to him.
“Kat—”
“Where did you go, Nico? Where have you been all night?”
A beat of silence. C’mon, superstar, I thought bitterly. You’ve had plenty of time to concoct a really fantastic cover story. Let’s hear what you came up with.
His quiet exhalation stirred the hair on my neck. “Avery was the situation that Brody was talkin’ about. She showed up here, high as shit, screamin’.”
A shade of hostility faded from me. He was telling the truth, so far, at least.
“Then what?”
“Then I took her back to rehab.”
That’s all he said. I started silently screaming. And? For the other ten hours? But I didn’t break. I just waited, breathing shallowly, rigid as a plank.
He rose up on an elbow and looked down at me. I stared at the ceiling, refusing to get sucked into his penetrating gaze.
“Do you believe me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice, Kat.”
“You’re giving me nothing to go on.”
“Nothin’ except trust, you mean.”
God, that made me furious, throwing that in my face. Had this whole insistence on having trust been a setup for situations just like this? So I was supposed to, what, feel bad for asking questions? For wanting to know what was going on?
Screw that. Screw that to the one millionth power.
“Let me ask you a question, Nico. I’d like to find out if you have a good answer for me, because I can’t figure it out. What’s the difference between trust . . . and blind, stupid faith?”
It was a while before he answered. Finally, in a voice whiskey rough and breaking, he said, “Love.”
I gasped. Tears pricked my eyes. “That is so unfair!”
