Chelsea Fine - Best Kind of Broken

I’m dead serious here. If I don’t get a hot shower tomorrow, I really will pee on his bed. Or at least find a cat to come pee on his bed. But either way, there will be urine on his sheets and I won’t feel bad about it.

The impish smile grows. “I can think of better things for you to do in my bed, Pix.”

Silence.

If his plan was to make me uncomfortable by flirting with me, it totally backfired. Because the second those words left Levi’s mouth, his body stiffened in awareness and the space between us became electric. So now we’re staring at each other’s lips and we’re both breathing heavier than necessary, and neither of us is really dressed.

I shift in my towel and feel the material slip a bit as I pull my eyes from his mouth and try to coax my face into a look of something less come-and-get-me and more ew-you’re-pathetic.

I’m gearing up for my comeback—which will be brilliant and kick-ass as soon as I nail it down—when his eyes drop to my chest, and all the air leaves the room.

He’s not looking at my cleavage.

He’s looking at the raised red scar peeking out from the top of my towel. The scar that cuts diagonally across my torso, running from my left hip bone to the top of my right breast. The scar I normally keep hidden under strategic shirts and dresses.

It’s hideous and jagged, but I don’t hide my scar because it’s ugly. I hide it because it’s a reminder of pain and loss. And Levi’s eyes are fixated on it.

Pain. Loss.

My heart starts to pound and I no longer care that my shower was cold or that we have weird sexual tension. I don’t care about Levi’s forearm muscles or the way the bathroom smells like his soap.

I care about my scar and what it means. It hurts me. It hurts him.

It’s the only thing we still have in common, the only thing we absolutely avoid, and now it’s glaring at us—marked on my skin in permanent red, rising along with each of my breaths.

The horror in his eyes has me hollowed out and helpless, and I have no words. Unable to speak, I numbly turn and head down the hall to my room, shutting myself inside a millisecond before my body starts to shake. I lean against the door and try to take a deep breath.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

I hear Levi’s bedroom door slam closed with a heavy thud, and the vibration runs down the wall and shakes against my back.

He’s not fine.

I’m not fine.

Fuck.

I clench my fists until my arms are shaking. I want to hit something, and I want to scream. God, do I want to scream.

Fuck.

I shove my hands in my hair. I grit my teeth. I stare at nothing.

I slam my fist into the wall and throw my weight behind it, welcoming the sharp sting that smacks against my knuckles and travels up my arm. I punch the wall again and this time the plaster cracks, giving me an odd sense of satisfaction. Another punch and the drywall gives way, leaving a hole, as crimson streaks of blood run between my fingers. I beat at the wall until the pain catches up with me and my fist begins to ache and throb.

Standing back, I rub my uninjured hand across my mouth and survey the destruction. A giant black hole stares back at me as a few leftover pieces of bloodstained drywall crumble to the floor.

Ellen is going to be pissed I broke the wall. But hell.

I’m the fucking handyman.

I avoid Levi for the rest of the week and he avoids me too. The only real benefit of all the avoidance is the abundance of hot water every morning. Either Levi has decided he no longer needs showers or he’s taking them when I’m not around.

I should be happy about this.

I’m not.

Looking into the bathroom mirror, I frown as a blonde curl falls in my face. I didn’t straighten my hair after my hot shower this morning, so now it’s back to its natural state of wavy chaos. I haven’t worn my hair curly in nearly a year, so the weightlessness of my untamed waves feels foreign as I run a flat iron down my locks until there are no more curls.

My phone beeps on the counter and I look at the screen. Crap. Another text from Matt. I keep forgetting to call him back.

Are we still on for tonight?

Yep! I text back, making sure to add a smiley face. I really suck at the whole keeping in touch thing.

It’s Saturday night and I have plans to meet Jenna and Matt in Tempe to go bar hopping. I spent all week looking forward to ditching the inn, but for some reason I’m no longer excited about leaving.

Rummaging around in my makeup bag, I find my eyeliner and lean over the sink as I carefully start applying it. I hate putting makeup on. I find it to be a waste of time and, frankly, a bit dangerous. Like right now, all it would take is a minor hand cramp for me to poke myself in the eye and render myself permanently blind. Who the hell cares if my eyes are lined in black or green or chicken poop? No one, that’s who.

“Hey, you,” comes a silky voice behind me.

Jenna, my heavily tattooed college dorm mate, enters the bathroom wearing skintight pants and a black shirt that shows off the caramel skin of her flat stomach. Her dark brown hair is straightened and pulled back into a long, sleek ponytail. Her eyes are shadowed in dark purple, she’s got a spiked bracelet on her left wrist, and every piercing she has—including her nose and the seven holes running up each ear—is filled with either a diamond stud or a small black hoop.

Jenna always looks like an angry rock star.

She steps out of her shoes and climbs onto the bathroom counter with the grace of a jaguar before sitting cross-legged beside the sink. “Miss me?”

I lower the eyeliner and look around in confusion. “Where did you come from?”

“Yes,” she says. “Your answer is supposed to be, ‘Yes, Jenna. I missed you like crazy and I wish we were still living together.’ ”

When the semester ended, Jenna got to move into a fancy apartment with two of her cousins, while I got to shack up in the hallway of frigid water and awkward tension. So not fair.

“Yes, Jenna. I missed you like crazy,” I repeat. “Now, where did you come from?”

“The girl at the front desk told me you’d be up here,” she says. “She also told me the woman in room three is a lush and that someone named Earl has a foot fetish. Chatty lass, that one.”

“You have no idea.” I return to lining my eyes with the sharp stick of potential blindness. “But why did you drive all the way out here? I thought I was meeting you in Tempe.”

She shrugs. “I thought I would pick you up so you wouldn’t have to drive. And besides, I wanted to check out your new place.” Her eyes cruise around the bathroom. “So this is where you live?”

“Yep. I sleep in the bathtub.”

“Nice.” She nods. “And where does the handyman sleep?”

I shoot her a look. “Please tell me you didn’t come all the way out here to meet Levi.”

“I didn’t come all the way out here to meet Levi.”

“Jenna.”

“Oh, come on,” she pleads. “He’s like this mythical creature from your past that you keep hidden away. He’s like a puzzle to me. A jigsaw puzzle. One that’s missing like four pieces and the picture guide that goes on the box. I must meet this puzzle.”