Kissing Madeline (Dearest #3) (2 page)

I see him through the crack in the door, sitting on the edge of the bed with his fingers threaded through her dark hair. Their faces are in shadow, but his head motions yes as she bobs up and down in his lap.

She pauses to look up at him. “Can we do it like we did yesterday?”

He moans. “Yeah, baby, just like yesterday.”

The skank crawls up the bed, and he follows, straddling her chest. She reaches up and grabs the metal headboard as Jacob directs himself into her mouth.

Nausea twists in my stomach.

Yesterday, my boyfriend and this girl had sex in his bed. Just before I had sex with him in his bed.

I cover my mouth, fighting hard not to vomit because, yesterday, we had unprotected sex. When I thought he was monogamous and the man I would marry, I let him put his dirty dick in me.

All at once, my life doesn’t make sense. Tonight should be about my future and planning a life with someone I thought loved me. I’m such a fool. Ignoring the rumors he was promiscuous, I let my guard down with him, let myself believe his lies about being with lots of girls simply because he hadn’t found the right one. And he let me believe I was it. His forever.

As I watch this woman deep-throat Jacob, the hurt and pain dissipate, and all I feel is rage. Blinding, white-hot, I-might-kill-someone rage. My hands move like I’m on autopilot, my training kicking in. I’m barely aware of my phone shaking in front of me as my finger slides across the screen to activate the camera.

I push the red button. A few seconds is all I get, but it’s exactly what I need to remind myself of my stupidity. Because I know he’ll lie. He’ll twist this around until I can’t see straight, and he’ll somehow get me to think this is my fault.

No, this is on him, and I want to remember every ounce of humiliation so I never repeat this mistake again.

The cocksucker pauses to ask where they’ll hook up once I move in, and he tells her they’ll do it in the locker room at the gym. Classy.

I turned down date after date so this jerkoff could cheat on me.

Tucking my phone back into my jacket, I stomp past them and dump the shit out of his gym bag before I yank open drawers and toss my clothes in.

“Shit. Shit. It’s Maddie,” he mumbles. “Baby, what are you doing?”

“Fuck you, asshole.” I storm into the bathroom and grab my makeup. When I emerge, Jacob is pushing the girl away, and I see her face for the first time.

“Oh my God. This just gets better.” Staring at Kimmy the cage girl, I can’t believe I got this whole thing so wrong.

“Baby, this isn’t what it looks like,” he stammers.

My knuckles turn white as I grip my bag. “Really? So your dick magically landed in her mouth? What an interesting phenomenon.”

I take the keychain he gave me with a miniature boxing glove and chuck it at his head.

“Kimmy, now you don’t have to blow him at the gym. He’s all yours.”

CHAPTER TWO

- Maddie -

When the door opens, Sheri laughs. “Maddie, you have a key. You don’t need to knock.”

I shrug, and my messenger bag slides down my arm, dragging my blouse with it. Tugging up my shirt so I’m not flashing her, I blow my bangs out of my face. “It felt like the right thing to do. I’m your guest. Your very grateful guest.”

“No, you’re my roommate. None of this guest shit.”

Smiling weakly, I acquiesce, but only so she’ll stop arguing because we both know she’s not charging me anything close to half the rent. She lives in a luxury brownstone in Boston’s Back Bay, something I could never afford in my wildest dreams. But my friend caught wind that I needed a place to stay since I had already given my notice for my old apartment, and she all but demanded I move in.

I’ve been here before, but I’m still a little awed by her condo. Dark, polished hardwood floors draw my eyes to an enormous brick fireplace, which is flanked by sleek modern furniture. It’s sophisticated and elegant, and about a million times better than my futon fold-out bed and cinderblock book shelves.

There’s only one thing missing from the view.

“You moved my boxes.” Because, holy crap, that was a lot to move.

“I had a little help. My neighbor stopped by, and he lent a hand. Speaking of that hot man—”

“You went through too much trouble. I could have done it.” When I brought over my moving boxes last weekend, I was afraid I’d get a ticket for double-parking the small van I’d rented out front, so I just left everything in the corner of her living room.

She waves me off. “It gave me an excuse to skip the gym. Besides, I had fun analyzing how you labeled your stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bathroom makeup and moisturizers. Winter bedding and thermal layers. News-writing textbooks and notes. Everything color-coded. Did you use a label maker?” She doesn’t wait for my response. “By the way, what was in the ‘bedroom nightstand’ box that started vibrating when I accidentally dropped it?” My mouth drops open, and her chuckle grows into full-blown laughter. “Hmm, let me guess. Jacob’s replacement.”

Clearing my throat, I shake my head, and with it, my embarrassment. “Jacob wishes he was as hung as the Power-Boy 3000 or that he gave me nearly as many orgasms.”

Her eyebrow raises. “The Power-Boy 3000? Where can I find one?”

“I bought it at my friend’s sex toy party.”

“We are
so
going to have one of those! Maybe when we wrap up this film.” Sheri works for her dad, who’s this big movie producer, so she travels a ton. It’s one of the reasons she wants a roommate. To keep an eye on her place when she’s gone. It would be so much easier for her to move to New York or LA, but she’s a Boston girl through and through and gets a little crazy at the mere mention of relocating.

After I change out of my work clothes and into a pair of jeans and a fitted v-neck t-shirt, Sheri suggests we check out a new bar that opened up down the street and grab a few drinks.

Twenty minutes later, we settle into a corner table in the dimly lit bar, and by the time we get our second round, the effects of the alcohol have me on the verge of crying into my beer. I never drink for a reason. I get too emotional. And right now, my heart feels heavy. “Sheri-berry, I really appreciate you taking me in.”

Her eyebrows raise. “You’re the first friend I ever made at BU. Of course I’d take you in.”

Sheri and I were roommates freshman year in the dorms at Boston University. We didn’t get along at first. I think she found me too uptight, and I found her to be too rich. I know that sounds terrible, but she’s a Park Avenue transplant, and growing up, I was a second-hand clothes kind of girl—not because I thought that was cool or because I watched too many old John Hughes films, but because we couldn’t afford more. But I eventually began to look beyond Sheri’s designer labels and French manicures to see a girl with a heart too big for her pixie-sized body.

Together, Sheri and I make for odd-looking friends. If she’s the size of a walnut, then I’m an oak tree. She’s petite and tan with cropped blonde hair and big blue eyes. I’m a little over five-eight with long black hair, pale skin and blue eyes. She looks like she waltzed off a movie set, and I look like a character from
Wicked
. But I love her, even if her whole body could fit into one leg of my jeans.

“Mads, I would totally sucker-punch Jacob’s gonads for you if I could. Is that douchebag still calling you?”

“Just once or twice a week now. I let them go to voicemail.”

She watches me, her frown growing. “How are you doing with everything?”

I take a quick sip of my beer to buy me a moment. “I’ll be honest. It’s been a rough few weeks.” Especially once I realized I had lost my apartment. Since I’d been planning to move in with Jacob, my old roommate had already found another living situation, and the landlord had found a new tenant, so I was doubly screwed. My fingers play with the corner of the wrapper on my beer. “Make that a rough month and four days.”

As much as I wish I could forget the date of our breakup, it coincided with getting my new job, making it that much tougher to block out.

But I have to look on the bright side. At least my tests came back negative. Because the first thing I did after our breakup was bolt to the clinic to make sure the asshole didn't give me something nasty.

Sheri scoots her chair closer and reaches over for a side hug. I drop my head onto her shoulder and sigh. I’m an only child, but if I had a sister, this is how I imagine she’d be. It’s times like this that I ache with more than the pain of losing Jacob. I miss my dad so much right now, my chest feels hollow.

“I realize you’re mending a broken heart, but I want you to know how psyched I am to have you as a roommate. I’m still pissed at you for ditching me sophomore year.”

I gasp. “I did not ditch you! As I recall, you wanted to live in West Campus, and I needed to be next to the Com School on East Campus for six a.m. call times.”

“Oh, yeah.” She chuckles and glances down, a serious expression crossing her face again. “I’m so sorry that dick hurt you, Mads. Are you okay? Really?”

“Mmm.” My eyes well with tears. “Aside from the fact that Jacob ruined my five-year plan?” I let myself think about the video on my phone, and the anger surfaces. This is what I have to hold on to because hatred is a more valuable emotion than grief.

Sheri’s mouth twists. But before she can say anything, I go on a rant. “I get that he was tempted to sleep with other women. They threw themselves at him wherever we went. And maybe I was a fool to think I had somehow tamed him. But what’s really been bothering me is how he…” I close my eyes and the scene flashes before me in graphic detail. Lowering my voice, I say, “How he talked to her.”

Show me how much you love my cock in your mouth.

I can’t say the words, but they ricochet in my head like a gunshot going off in a canyon.

Tilting my head so my hair falls forward to hide my face, I clear my throat. “He was never that way with me.”

“What do you mean he was never that way with you?”

How do I say this? God, this is humiliating. “He, uh, he was… careful with me. More… proper.”

“So he didn’t talk dirty.”

“It’s more than that. He treated me like he was afraid he’d offend me somehow. Here was this intimidating fighter, but he was surprisingly gentle and maybe… too respectful? Uh, that sounds terrible. Am I crazy that I wanted him to be rougher?”

She snorts. “Fuck, no. Rough is good. Rough rocks my world.”

“I guess I wonder if I was too anal for him.”

“Anal works for me too.”

I smack her in the shoulder. “You know what I mean. Like you said, I can be particular, and I can’t tell you how much I loathe sleeping on the wet spot. He hated how I’d bolt from bed the moment we were done, but I can’t have
that
dripping down my leg at two in the morning.”

Sheri giggles. “It’s totally his loss for not sexing you up properly. And so what if you like to clean up? To each her own.” She takes a sip of her beer and gives me a once-over. “Look, I know you had boyfriends before Jacob, but you definitely have this good-girl vibe. I wonder if he couldn’t get past that. You know, that whole Madonna-whore complex.”

“So I was the virgin and that woman in his bed was the whore?” Sheri nods reluctantly. “I guess that would explain why he had her deep-throating him like he was trying to reach her bellybutton through her esophagus.”

“Jacob might have been sleeping around, but he wanted to marry you, so maybe some part of him had to keep you pure.”

At this I laugh half-heartedly. “Pure. Right.” Had I not purchased a half-dozen see-through nighties for this man? What part of him thought I wanted to be pure? Did he need me to spell it out for him? I mean, he didn’t have to go all Christian Grey on me, but it’s like he never lost control when we were together. And isn’t that what every girl wants? To make her guy so crazy in lust he can’t control himself?

Damn, Jacob. Wasn’t the sex good enough? I thought he seemed satisfied. And I might not have always had an orgasm, but what girl who works sixty-five hours a week achieves the mighty O every time?

I’m so tempted to think this was my fault. That I drove him to be unfaithful. Because I worked too much or seemed preoccupied with my job. But he’s the one who strayed, and I’m not some broken-down girl who lives for her man’s approval. 

Screw that.
I tip my drink back to my lips. No, I dodged a bullet.

I recently read that over seventy percent of married men would have an affair if they knew their spouse would never find out. No, Jacob isn’t an anomaly, and I am not the problem. Men are.

After my internal pep talk, I’m feeling a little more resolved. I’m going to be okay as long as I keep reminding myself that men are the enemy. Especially good-looking men.

Sheri elbows me. “Don’t look now, but my favorite neighbor just strolled in.” Her eyes widen as she stares at someone behind me.

I twist in my seat, and my eyes bug out as I take in the small entourage at the other end of the restaurant. “
That’s
your neighbor? Daren Sloan?”