Dirty Little Secret

Chapter Twenty Two - Abandoned Clubs & Slimy Backstabbers

The next morning, instead of being awoken by the beams of sunlight shining through the hotel window and the chirping of Loons and Grebes from the San Francisco bay, I was disrupted from my nightly slumber by a rather loud banging to my face - literally.

"Would you stop that?" I snapped as I finally opened my eyes, just in time to see the pillow coming down at me with full force. I let out a small shriek and covered my face with my hands just as the pillow brushed against the tips of my knuckles before being tossed to the other side of the room.

"Finally, you're awake." Caden drawled, and I couldn't tell whether it was annoyance or amusement that laced his words.

"Good morning to you too." I grumbled sarcastically, snatching the pillow from under my head and aiming it at his face with the very little strength my body possessed in the early morning. What time was it anyway? "To what do I owe this lovely wakeup call?"

Instead of reaching its target, the pillow landed flatly before Caden's feet and it was only as I raked my eyes up from the pillow towards the cocky grin on his face that I realized that Caden was still very much shirtless, dressed in nothing but a pair of slacks that hung low on his hips. I licked my lips.

"I'm sorry princess, but I had to resort to drastic measures, you sleep like a rock." He grinned "Except for the fact that rocks don't drool and are a little less cute."

I gaped at him in disbelief, feeling my cheeks burn up though I wasn't sure which of the two comments had caused it. "I do not drool." I exclaimed in horror before reaching up to touch my cheeks only to feel a patch of dried saliva sticking to my right one.

Oh dear.

"Don't worry, it's a common side effect girls get from sleeping with me." Caden stated with a teasing smirk, running his hand through his hair and flexing his tattooed muscles as if knowing just the kind of effect it would have on me.

I swallowed away the lump in my throat and quickly ran my mind for a witty comeback, coming up completely blank. "Pfft, w-whatever." I huffed in annoyance and crossed my arms against my chest, drawing Caden's eyes towards said area.

My cheeks turned an even deeper crimson as his eyes lingered for a second too long, bringing memories of the previous night to the surface. I could feel myself squirm under his gaze as I momentarily relived the memory of his lips pressed to my neck and I unconsciously brought my fingertips up to the area. Caden followed the movement, his eyes now zeroing in on my throat before his expression turned dark"Can I have my shirt back?" He asked, the coldness suddenly having returned to his voice, and I couldn't help but think that while I had been reliving the memories of our tangled arms and heated kisses, he had been reliving those of our raised voices and weighed conversation.

Last night hadn't exactly ended on a happy note, it was foolish of me to forget that.

I momentarily allowed my thoughts to drift to the things he had said last night, something I had spent my time doing all of last night as I had waited for him to return to the room. It was kind of ironic if you thought about it, since that was all I had seemed to be doing since the night I had first met him. Wait. Wait for him to come around, wait for an explanation, thinking all of this time that there had to be some sort of reason as to why he was acting the way he was.

Now I knew.

We weren't so different after all, Caden and I. Hadn't I spent all of my life refusing to let people in? Telling myself that things like friends and boys could wait until after high school? Maybe even until after college? Never allowing myself to fully live life. I knew the pain of losing a loved one, of living with a ghost of the man I had once known, that aching, burning feeling of being abandoned by the one person who was supposed to be there for you through thick and thin. I had experienced it all, and so had he. The only real difference was that my walls weren't as high as his, that while he had managed to tear mine down to a pathetic little ruin, I had barely created a dent in his.