Alex snorted and glanced over at her. “Did he get you off? I think that’s what Piper’s trying to ask.”
“No, that’s not…” Rusty raised a brow at Piper, and her sister flopped back in her seat. “Okay, well, yes, but not only that. Rusty is more vulnerable than she lets on, and I just want to make sure he treated her like he should, like she deserves.”
“I am in this car, you know. And despite what you think, I’m not some virginally challenged Pollyanna.” But if she didn’t give them something now they’d harass her all damn night. They loved her, they worried about her, and as annoying as it could be sometimes, she wouldn’t change it for the world. “But yes, he treated me right. He didn’t emotionally scar me with his giant penis, and miracle of all miracles, despite the years of celibacy, we were all wrong…my hymen hasn’t regrown.”
Alex snorted beside her. “Well, thank fuck for that.”
Rusty turned to look at her sister in the backseat. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was.”
Piper started giggling, but Alex wasn’t quite so polite. She gave up trying to hold it together and busted a gut laughing.
When Alex finally shut the hell up, she gave Rusty a light jab in the arm. “Maybe you could call him later, no way he’d turn down a booty call.”
The idea appealed, she couldn’t deny it. She’d thought of Reid all day, could still feel the man between her thighs. She was tender after their night together, but in a good way, in a way that made it impossible to think of anything other than what they’d done.
“I don’t know.” She grinned over at Alex, who had stopped at a red light.
“No more waiting, remember,” Piper added.
But Alex wasn’t looking at her. She was staring out the window, eyes locked on something across the street. “Motherfucker,” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she answered quickly, too quickly. “When’s the goddamned light going to change?”
Rusty followed her friend’s gaze toward the Seascape Hotel. Reid’s Plymouth was parked out front, waiting for a valet by the looks of it. The man himself stood beside it, dressed in jeans and a dark gray button-down, looking gorgeous as ever. A beautiful brunette stood beside him, laughing at something he said, then he flung an arm around her shoulders and they headed inside.
Piper reached forward and wrapped her fingers around her bicep. “Rusty, there could be a perfectly good explanation for it. I’m sure it’s not what you think.”
No, it was exactly what she thought. God, how could she have been so stupid? A horn blasted behind them several times. Alex cursed and slammed her foot on the gas.
“Rusty?” Piper shuffled forward in her seat. “Don’t freak out, not until you’ve talked to him.”
“I’m not gonna freak out, Piper.” No, she was too numb to do anything but stare woodenly out the window. Too numb to think. And she sure as hell wasn’t ready to dwell on why she wasn’t enough, why she was never enough. Why besides her brother and the two women in this car, everyone else saw her as nothing but an empty shell. That because of a genetic fluke that made her some kind of ideal, a fantasy, they assumed there was nothing else.
Alex cursed and beat the crap out of the steering wheel. Then the car wrenched to the right, and they came to a stop outside a gas station.
Her friend looked over at her, determination shining in her eyes. “No, we’re not going to freak out. We’re going to get even.” Then she climbed out of the car and stomped inside. A few minutes later, she returned with her arms full of toilet paper rolls. She made three more trips, filling the trunk with what had to be every roll in the store, then slammed it shut and climbed behind the wheel. “Address,” Alex said, eyes narrowed, steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.
Rusty turned to Alex and rattled off the address, then hung on as they peeled out of the gas station.
Yeah, TP-ing someone’s place was juvenile, but right then she needed to do something, anything to get back at him. Because it fucking hurt.
Her stomach curled into a heavy knot, and she clutched the door handle in a grip tight enough to cause pain, afraid she’d shatter into a million pieces if she didn’t hold on for all she was worth. Afraid she’d crumble to dust from the inside out. She never thought anything could feel worse than that night after her senior prom, but she was wrong. This was so much worse.
Seeing him with another woman—God, it cut, so damn deep, more than it should, but she’d fallen for the asshole hook, line, and sinker. Idiot.
A short time later, they were parked in front of Reid’s house, unloading toilet paper onto his driveway. Since he was currently holed up at the Seascape Hotel screwing someone else, and fences on either side made his place nice and private, they were free to decorate to their hearts’ content.
Alex loaded up with rolls. “I’ll take the back. Piper you get the garden and the garage. Rusty, you take the front of the house and the lawn.”
Piper nodded, a grim expression on her face. “Let’s do this.”
They knew better than to throw sympathy at her, knew how much she hated that. There would be no crying jag while listening to sad songs, and no eating her body weight in chocolate. That was not her, not how she dealt with crap when it was flung her way. The fact that these women knew that, were prepared to vandalize someone’s house for her, with her, and actually came up with the idea just to make her feel better? Well, it meant everything. These women meant everything to her. Always had, always would.
Rusty grabbed some rolls, shut her mind down, and got to work, putting extra effort into the task.
The entire front of his house had a curtain of white toilet paper hanging from it by the time she finished, matching the attached garage Piper had taken care of. She was aggressively hurling rolls over his small patch of carefully maintained lawn when lights hit them from behind, full beam, followed by the deep rumble of an idling engine. An engine she knew all too well.
