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They moved toward the door.
*****
It was almost seven by the time Crash got back home. He rolled down the street. When he got to within fifty feet of the building, the sensor on his bike activated the garage door, and it began rolling slowly up. He rolled inside and parked the bike. He was pulling his phone out to call Shannon to send down the elevator, when he heard her yell down the shaft. “Crash?”
He slid his phone back in his pocket, moving toward it. “Yeah,” he yelled back up. A moment later, the elevator began descending. He climbed on and rode back up. Leaning against the elevator bars, he rubbed the back of his neck. Damn, he was beat. A nice hot shower sounded fucking great. He shook out his hand, flexing it. His knuckles were cut, but the bleeding had stopped a while ago. Now the joints just ached. It had been a pleasure to teach Artie a well-deserved lesson. Arrogant prick.
The elevator jerked to a stop, and he pulled the gate open. He didn’t get two steps into the loft, when something caught his eye, and he turned his head to the right. His sculpture. Uncovered. Fuck.
His head turned back, searching out Shannon. She was sitting at the bar painting her nails. He walked over to her, taking a deep breath and blowing it out. He stopped next to her. One hand on the back of her barstool, one on the counter next to her. She paused, the little brush thing hovering over her nail, and turned to look up at him.
“You got a nosey streak?” he asked.
Her eyes moved past him to the sculpture, and then back to his face. “It’s beautiful, Crash. Did you make it?”
“Think, maybe, if I’d wanted you to see it, I’d have shown it to you?”
“Crash-”
Walking away from her, he opened the refrigerator and grabbed out a beer. Turning, he spotted a skillet sitting on top of the stove. He lifted the lid and looked at the cold, unappetizing goo inside. Mac and cheese. In a skillet. What the hell did she do, fry it? He dropped the lid back down with a bang and headed toward the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower.” He walked in that direction and came to a jarring halt as he passed his bedroom. It took him a second, and then he realized what was wrong. The paperclips were gone. What the hell? He stalked back to the kitchen. Shannon looked up at him with a questioning frown. “What did you do with the paperclips?”
She rolled her eyes. “I took them down. They were paperclips, for God’s sake.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you take them down?”
“They snagged my sweater. Why? What’s the big deal? They were just paperclips!”
He slammed his beer bottle down on the island. “The big deal, Shannon, is that a little five-year-old girl made those for me. Cole’s daughter, Melissa.” He watched her mouth part in surprise, but he didn’t care. “The big deal is, they weren’t yours to take down. The big deal is, Shannon, I don’t give a fuck if they snagged your damn sweater. ‘Cause, clue in, Princess, the whole world doesn’t revolve around you!” With that, he walked back to the bathroom and slammed the door. Fuck, he wanted to strangle her. This was a bad idea. Having her here. He was going to kill her before this was through. He stalked to the shower and flipped it on. Then he began stripping his clothes off.
Climbing under the steaming spray, Crash dialed the jets to high and let the pulsing water beat against the aching muscles of his back. He thought about Shannon prying into his things, snooping where her nose didn’t belong.
Seeing his art.
Let it go, man, he told himself. Resting his palm on the slate tile, he dropped his head and let the hot water sooth the tension out of the back of his neck and shoulders. When he thought about Melissa’s precious little gift to him all waded up in a heap in the trash, he wanted to put his fist through the tile. He needed to calm himself the fuck down. He couldn’t even look at Shannon in the mood he was in now. He breathed deep, trying to let go of the anger.
He knew there was more than just the immediate anger eating at him right now. It was having her here, in his place, in his things, in his life. He hadn’t let any chick in, not like that, not since Erin. And that’d been a long fucking time ago. Yeah, sure, he had women. A lot of women, a few he’d even brought home, but not many. And none of them had ever been in his place alone, without him here. They came, he fucked them, and then he got them gone.
This had been a mistake. Bringing her here. He should have never volunteered for this. But it was too late now. He was stuck with her. He was just gonna have to lay down the law to her and get through this somehow.
Shannon heard the shower come on. She sat stunned at the bar, thinking about how pissed he was. Oh, sure, he hadn’t blown up. He’d mostly kept his cool, but he was pissed. More than that. She’d hurt him, somehow. Her eyes strayed to the beautiful sculpture. He hadn’t wanted her to see it. Why? It was beautiful. He had to know that. She guessed it was a piece of him, he didn’t want to share with her. And he had a right to that. She’d been wrong to pry.
And the paperclips.
Dear God, she’d acted like…like the thoughtless bitch he must see her as. Usually, she could care less what other people thought of her. But for some reason, this bothered her. She had to fix this, and she’d never cared about fixing anything before. She found herself sliding off the barstool and walking into the bedroom. Grabbing the waded ball of clips out of the wastebasket, she sat on the bed. They were a tangled mess, but she could fix it. It’d probably take her days, and it would be easier to just buy a new box and string them together. But she couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right. They wouldn’t mean anything to him. She stared down at the clips. Not like these did.
&
nbsp; She got to work. She had half of one strand untangled when he came out of the bathroom. Looking up, she froze. He walked into the bedroom with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips, his fist clenching it around him below the waist. His hair was slicked back, wet from the shower.
“Get out,” he snapped.
She looked up at him, dazed.
“Unless you want to sit there and watch me dress, get the fuck out.”
