Page 121 of The Player

“Just put your clothes on.”

Oh, this bitch was naked?

The questions just kept coming. Was this why he hadn’t picked up? Had they just slept together? Was that why her clothes were off? He’d sworn he ended things with that girl. Had that been a lie? None of it made sense. He kept telling her to get out, and she was still naked in his room. In her man’s room. On the one night Nicole had flown all this way to be with him.

Phallon was crying now. “Please don’t do this. Please. I love you. I’ve always loved you. You know that. You know you do.”

“Phallon, let go.”

Nicole let go of her suitcase right outside his door. It wasn’t even shut all the way. Something on the floor was propping it open a couple of inches, and through the gap came a smell she would’ve known anywhere. Victoria’s Secret Rapture, sweet and heavy, the same cloud that girl had left behind at Waldenbooks the day Nicole met Drew.

Right on the other side, Phallon was still begging. “Look at me. Just look at me.”

Nicole put both hands on the door and shoved.

It flew back and hit the wall, and Drew’s head whipped around. He looked straight at her.

In the light from the bathroom, Phallon was hanging off his neck in nothing but a man’s white dress shirt. His shirt. Her legs were bare all the way up, and her hair was teased big and messy, and the shirt was hanging open with nothing under it. Drew had her by the arms, and he’d turned his face away from her as far as it would go. There was a smear of dark red lipstick on his jaw, right at the corner of his mouth.

Nicole couldn’t feel her hands.

“Nicole.” He shoved Phallon off him, hard. She went backward and landed on the carpet beside the bed with the shirt flying open. Then he started toward Nicole, but his legs went sideways on him. His hip hit the dresser, and he grabbed the edge of it and held on. His collar was pulled crooked, his sleeves were shoved up past his elbows, and his eyes were bloodshot and glassy.

And his face. Oh my God, his face. He had a cut high on his cheekbone, an ugly red line that was still bleeding, and he’d smeared blood down that whole side where he’d wiped at it. Blood on his cheek, and that girl’s lipstick on his jaw.

Phallon had made him bleed.

“Baby. Baby, I didn’t do anything.” He was slurring. “She was already in here. I swear to God, Nicole. I didn’t do anything with her.”

He reeked of liquor, and Drew didn’t drink. She’d never once seen him with anything stronger than a bottle of water. Now he was hanging on to a dresser in a room that smelled like another woman, with that woman’s lipstick on his face, swearing to God.

Her daddy had sworn too. Nicole had believed him. She still did. But believing him hadn’t kept Gina’s face off the cover of that tabloid, right next to his.

“Nicole. Please. Just listen to me.”

But Phallon was getting up, one hand on the mattress and the other holding Drew’s shirt closed over her chest. Her mascara was running, her lipstick was smeared halfway to her chin, and her mouth was hanging open, like she was the one who’d walked in on something.

Something in Nicole snapped clean in half. She was across the room before Phallon got her feet under her. “You put your hands on him?” She grabbed a fistful of that blond hair and pulled.

Phallon screamed. Both her hands flew up to Nicole’s wrist, clawing at it. “Get off me! Get the fuck off me!”

“You hit him?” Nicole hauled her up by the hair until Phallon was on her feet, then slapped her across the face with everything she had. “You cut his fucking face?”

Phallon swung wild and raked her nails across the back of Nicole’s hand, and Nicole didn’t even feel it. She hit her again, with her fist this time, and felt that one all the way up her arm.

It wasn’t just for Drew, and she knew it. That one was for the quad, and Phallon telling her Drew would stick with his own. It was for every hour she’d been stuck in the Birmingham airport, and the plane she’d been sitting on while they called Tariq’s name. It was for that cab, and his phone ringing and ringing, and Phallon laid up in his bed in his shirt the whole damn time. And it was for every girl who’d ever waited outside a locker room or a hotel bar for somebody else’s man, and every woman who’d had to smile and act like she didn’t see them.

“Nicole!” Drew yelled somewhere behind her.

They crashed into the chair, and it went over sideways. Phallon was twisting and kicking, and Nicole went right with her.

“Let go of me!” Phallon yelled.

“Now you want somebody to let go?”

“Nicole, stop!” He was right there now, standing over them with both hands in his hair and swaying, like his brain was a step behind his eyes.

Nicole pulled back and punched her again, right in the mouth, and Phallon’s head snapped sideways.