Scarlet Disaster by Colette Rhodes
Chapter 11
“I’d like to go home now,” I murmured, impressed that I kept my voice even as my face burned with embarrassment. I didn’t even know why I was embarrassed.
I wasn’t ashamed of my past, but I liked to control the way I brought it up because it was kind of an awkward topic. Frank had just thrown the name ‘Scarlet’ out there like that, inviting a whole bunch of uncomfortable questions. What an asshole.
What a day of asshole men and their asshole pushy behavior.
To be fair, I was the one who had stupidly claimed Nate was my boyfriend, he was just taking it way more seriously than I expected him to. I couldn’t even be mad that I was all keyed up now, because the impromptu makeout session had been my idea too. I was mad that he’d interrupted my spite date, and I had wanted to work him up to give him a taste of what he’d never have again. But in my head, I knew how stupid that was. Nate had run out on me. I doubted he was sitting around wishing for a do-over.
However annoyed I was with him, I was more mad at Frank. I was trying to play it off like I didn’t care, but his presence in Fairbanks had unnerved me, especially since he’d shown up with “friends” who acted more like bodyguards. But I’d been alone with Frank a bunch of times, I’d even let him tie me up in bed, and nothing bad had happened. Unnerving me was probably his whole point.
Maybe his persistence was just his twisted way of wooing me? He’d give up and go home when I ignored him. It was probably wishful thinking, but I was going to wishfully think it anyway.
“I’ll go pay,” Gabriel announced, shaking his head when I attempted to object. I’d been the one to invite him out tonight—out of spite—and then had somehow ended up making out with his friend right in front of him, which was… fucking terrible, actually. Oh my god, I should send him an apology fruit basket or something. Maybe I was the biggest asshole here tonight.
“Come back to my place. Stay with us,” Nate pleaded quietly. “You already know the guys. Even better.”
“Still no,” I replied resolutely, shaking my head. Okay, I’d given him extremely mixed messages by sticking my tongue in his mouth. I could own that, but Nate had followed me here. Frank and his friends might have too, but them being here could have just been a coincidence. There was nothing coincidental about Nate showing up here tonight. He hadn’t even pretended there was! Absolutely shameless.
My gut told me that Nate’s stalking was less sinister than Frank’s stalking, but my gut was also stupid. I wasn’t about to go stay at his house. That was how the girls in the horror films always died.
“Come on, Red,” Brooks said, jumping on the bandwagon. “Just until the Wolf of Wall Street leaves town.”
I snorted at the apt comparison. “Frank is more persistent than I initially thought, I’ll admit that, but I really don’t think he’s dangerous to me,” I told them, inching back into the spot Gabriel had vacated to put some much needed space between me and Nate. I was all too aware of how his tongue had felt, and then I started remembering how good it felt in other places. And then I remembered he fucked my brains out and ran away with his tail between his legs. The spot on my neck where he’d almost bitten me felt like it was pulsing with the memory.
“If he wanted to hurt me, he had plenty of opportunities to when I visited him in New York a few weeks ago,” I continued. “But he didn’t. Frank is just a rich guy, throwing his money around and showing me that he can turn up on my doorstep because he’s that fucking fancy, you know? You’re making it into a bigger deal than it is.”
That was my story, and I was fucking sticking to it. No need to panic. Nothing to make a big deal about. Definitely no temptation to backtrack on all the progress I’d made and fall back into old habits. No siree.
I expected Nate to complain again, but it was Brooks who opened his mouth to argue, a far more serious expression on his face than I was used to seeing from him. I scooted backwards and escaped out of the booth before they could gang up on me, frustrated with this argument.
It was nice they wanted to keep me safe—I guess?—but I knew Frank, and they didn’t. He hadn’t even asked me to stay in New York, which shouldn’t still bug me considering he was a lying psycho, but it pricked at my pride nonetheless. Surely, if he had any nefarious plans, he’d have tried to keep me close by rather than letting me leave the state?
Gabriel materialized at my side after paying, as I rudely made a beeline for the door, grabbing my coat on the way out.
“I’m sorry, this was the worst spite date ever,” I said with a grimace.
“I disagree,” Gabriel replied kindly, his smooth accent making me a little tingly. “This is the best spite date I’ve ever been on.”
“You’re actually calling it a spite date?” Nate deadpanned from behind us. “Rub salt in my wound, why don’t you?”
“Savage. I like it,” Brooks chuckled. I shot him a smile over my shoulder as we exited the bar to show him I appreciated his moral support, and he grinned back at me. Dangerous. Brooks had a delightful smile.
“Let me guess,” Nate sighed heavily. “You’re going to drive home alone.”
“Obviously,” I sang, already walking through the parking lot. I was trying to be sassy and put a little swing in my step, because I was a baddie and I didn’t need no man, but it was hard as fuck to strut on ice. I slipped, and would have definitely bailed if Gabriel hadn’t wrapped an arm around my waist just in time.
He pulled me close to his body, and I pressed my hands against his chest, fisting his sweater while my heart rate returned to normal.
“Are you okay, querida?” Gabriel asked in a low voice, his smile languid and relaxed. His eyes dropped to my lips, which I was guessing were bare of lipstick after Nate’s attention. Yikes, Lou. You just made out with his friend. Relax.
“Guess I’m just swooning,” I teased, smoothing over the creases I’d just put in his sweater before running my hands down to his forearms to steady myself. Mostly to steady myself. Well, a little bit to steady myself and mostly because I was a perv. Those biceps. Gabriel was packing some big ol’ guns under that classy knitwear.
I forced myself to take a step, glancing discreetly at Nate, expecting to see him looking furious, or at least surprised, but he just looked the same level of tense and agitated as he had ever since Frank had shown up. Well, okay then.
“We’re going to follow you home to make sure you get there okay. Is that alright, Red?” Brooks asked, giving me a charming smile. I appreciated that he was polite about shoehorning into my life under the guise of “protection”. It made it a lot easier to stomach.
“If I say no, will you not follow me home, or will you just follow from further away?”
“Shh,” Brooks replied with a boyish grin. “It’s early days. Let’s try to keep the mystery alive.”
He really was trouble in the best kind of way, which was a dangerous line of thought. Friends. We’re just friends.
“Well, uh, thanks for the weirdest date ever,” I said to all three of them, refusing to make eye contact with Nate after telling him repeatedly that I hated him, then licking him like a fucking popsicle in front of his friends.
“Perhaps we could have a do-over without the extra guests?” Gabriel suggested. I chanced a quick glance at Nate, and found him gaping at Gabriel in disbelief while Brooks laughed. Awkward.
“I’ll message you,” I assured Gabriel, climbing into my car as fast as I could to escape answering. I wasn’t even entirely sure it was a serious question. Surely he wasn’t asking me on a date right in front of Nate after everything. “Goodnight!”
Why had I ever left my basement? I could be spending my days orgasming for cash and not dealing with this sudden influx of testosterone disrupting every aspect of my life.
* * *
After being out for a few hours, the lingering paint smell seemed a lot more offensive than it had when I’d left the house. I took off my outer layers at the door and stripped out of the rest on the way to my bedroom, relying on the moonlight filtering in from outside to illuminate the space.
With each layer I pulled off, the more Brooks’ Thailand plan sounded appealing, even if he was a tad… full on. Regardless, I wanted to do yoga on the beach as the sun rose, wearing my tiniest crop top and short shorts, and post pictures of myself on the ‘gram. Then I wanted to change into my bikini and jump in the ocean for my daily swim, and occasionally wear a coverup during the day when I absolutely had to.
That was the life I was meant to be living. Though Frank drama and Nate drama aside, tonight was actually fun. I never really got to just… go out with friends, like a normal person in their twenties? Even when Ria had lived here, she was the biggest homebody I’d ever met. We went out once in New York, but in general we were way more likely to order takeout and binge watch a series than go to a bar.
If I ignored the fact that I’d had sex with one of them and that theoretically that had been a date—with a different guy who was also his friend—then it had been a fun way to spend an evening.
Still feeling a little keyed up from… well, everything, I changed into my comfiest lime green flannel PJs, shoved my hair up in a messy bun, and took off my makeup before curling up in bed with my laptop to watch old episodes of Friends until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.
Ugh, how could I not have realized Brooks and Gabriel were Nate’s roommates? All three of them were almost inhumanly beautiful. Naturally, they were friends. If there was one thing I’d learned from high school, it was that pretty people congregated together.
Ria was going to cry with laughter when I told her about this. Usually, these kinds of things happened to her. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand to message her, even though she probably wouldn’t see it. Ria’s place was so remote that she only got reception on her boyfriend Noah’s satellite phone, which was how I usually contacted her. It felt kind of weird to message him to chat about boys, though. Surely, she’d get regular service eventually and see a normal message? Cell service should exist everywhere. It was just a basic human right.
Me:
I just had the most bizarro date ever, somehow with three men but not actually with three men? It’s complicated and we must discuss it ASAP. Also, Frank showed up in Fairbanks. Boo.
A date with three men, ha.I wasn’t meant to be dating anybody! A traitorous voice in the back of my mind reminded me that Ria was now in a full-blown relationship with three men, but I pushed that thought down deep. I didn’t want a relationship anyway, and Nate was on my never-again list, but even aside from those minor details, what Ria had was not the norm. I still didn’t quite know how she’d pulled it off.
My phone remained silent, as I expected, and I tossed it to the side, hitting ‘play’ on my laptop to fill the silence. I could close my eyes and listen to Rachel and Monica banter, and pretend I had friends. Or I could listen to Ross whine incessantly and remember all the reasons I was better off single.
Now that I was alone, with nothing to distract me, my anxiety about Frank’s appearance in Fairbanks became a little more pressing. Anxiety and embarrassment. I hadn’t thought I’d ever see him again after I left New York, and now I felt a little naïve for not expecting him to use his extensive resources to track me down.
Would it even matter if I got on a plane tomorrow and flew to Phuket? He’d followed me here. What was stopping him from following me somewhere else when I left?
I was probably buying into Nate’s paranoia, but I looked up the requirements for a Protective Order against a stalker just in case, scanning the official court document apprehensively. My mom had been in trouble with the police constantly when I was growing up—mostly for theft—and I didn’t have many positive experiences with cops to draw from.
Besides, I couldn’t fill out the section on why Frank’s behavior made me afraid of physical injury or death, which was apparently a requirement for stalking. All Frank had really said was that he wanted to bring me back to New York and give me a generous monthly allowance. If I went down to the police station and told them that, they’d laugh in my face.
Even so, I couldn’t shake the questions about Nate and why he’d been so adamant that I go with him. I hadn’t given it a second thought when I’d told Frank that Nate was my boyfriend, it had just seemed like a convenient way to get him off my back. I had hoped he’d play along, but I definitely hadn’t expected him to get so tangled up in it that he thought I’d move in with him, even temporarily.
It was like he’d seen something sinister in Frank that had freaked him out, something I couldn’t see. So the guy was smarmy and confident in the way that rich, powerful men were. That was hardly the end of the world.
Had Nate always been so growly? His voice had a naturally rough quality, but it bordered on animalistic when he’d been trying to convince me I was in some kind of mysterious grave danger. Actually, he sounded pretty growly in bed too. Especially when he’d panicked and run away. Maybe that was just his panicky voice.
“Secrets are poison to a relationship, you know.”
Why had Frank said that? His reaction had been incredibly weird too, and the whole interaction between the three of us had left me unsettled. Nate had sworn they didn’t know each other, but they hadn’t acted like strangers meeting for the first time.
Stop it,I chastised, closing the stupid court document. Why was I even contemplating getting law enforcement involved? Frank was just a rich asshole who was throwing his weight around. He could have any woman he wanted! He probably found women through camming sites all the time. I doubted I was anyone special.
That realization was not great for my ego.
I shook my head to clear it, forcing myself to concentrate on the show. Tomorrow, I was going to take a bunch of clothes to Goodwill, list the furniture I didn’t still need online, and paint the entryway. I didn’t have time for stupid men talking in riddles in my driveway, making me second guess my sanity.
My agitated thoughts blended together with the laugh track from Friends, and I fell into a restless sleep filled with dreams of running through the forest, pursued by men with wolfish grins, not knowing which one was the one I needed to be afraid of.