The Mercenary Next Door (Rogues and Rescuers #2) - Lucy Leroux Page 0,30

had just dropped on the floor. It didn’t matter how many bottles of alcohol that young man brought over, it still didn’t give him a license to litter.

Stooping with a grunt, he picked up the trash. It was almost wedged under the door, but he yanked, and the bulk of it came out. Cursing the young, he added the fragment to the garbage bag he was carrying to the dumpster and headed down the stairs.

Chapter Twelve

Laila was trying to juggle the heavy grocery bag while checking her texts at the same time. The phone slipped out of her hand, clattering down the concrete stairs and hitting the wall with a cringe-worthy smack.

She put the bag down, then hurried to retrieve it.

“Oh, no,” she moaned. The screen was shattered, the display dark. A tentative attempt to restart it failed.

First, she had missed her bus and had to take the thirty-eight line that left her four blocks farther from home, and now this. The universe was trying to burst her bubble.

Well, it was going to have to try harder. She had been floating on cloud nine the entire day, reliving every detail of the night she had spent with Mason. In her mind, she’d savored the feel of his skin, the way his mouth tasted, the grip of his strong hands on her waist and thighs. All her daydreaming came with a price—she’d burned an entire tray of brownies and been reprimanded by the store manager. But even that had failed to deflate her.

And then she opened the door to her hallway, and her entire world came crashing down.

Mason had stood at the threshold of his apartment, shirtless and hair mussed, talking to a tall redheaded woman.

Laila heard the woman say, “I must have dropped them in your bedroom.” That was all she caught before the ringing in her ears overwhelmed her. She had just stood there like an idiot.

The redhead pushed past him. Mason glanced up, noticing Laila’s frozen form. His expression changed, the flash of guilt unmistakable.

Laila felt her heart break, busting wide open in her chest. It felt remarkably like a punch to the gut.

Wilting, she had felt herself shrinking as she turned away, not wanting to glance in Mason’s direction. She couldn’t handle seeing him kiss the woman goodbye.

Her blood roared in her ears as she made a break for her door. She closed it just as he started calling her name.

Dropping the grocery bag on the floor, Laila slid down the length of the door until she crumpled on the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Her head pounded, and she had trouble catching her breath. Laila pressed her hands to her face, trying to hold in the sobs that wanted to rip out of her chest.

Belatedly, she registered Mason knocking and calling out to her, but the sound was weirdly distant and tinny as if she were underwater.

That would explain the lack of oxygen. Laila couldn’t breathe. And she definitely couldn’t deal with him right now.

Mason could never see her like this. If she opened the door, there was no way she could hide her devastation. It would take months, maybe years, before she could look him in the eye and not want to burst into tears.

Laila was wrecked, all the hopes and dreams of the past year floating down like ashes. Stupid. So stupid. How could she have believed that night meant anything to him?

Holding her breath, she reached up behind her, flipping the button to lock the door. She had already slid the deadbolt, but that didn’t seem like enough.

Get away from the door.

Crawling on all fours, she made it to the couch, knocking her grocery bag over next to the door.

Ignoring the scattered produce, jars, and cans, Laila decided the couch wasn’t far enough. She staggered to the bed before remembering he had been there. His smell was still on the sheets.

There was no way she could lie there until she washed the bedding, or, better yet, burned it.

Laila turned to the couch, collapsing across it. She tugged one of the threadbare throw pillows over her head for good measure.

Not that it mattered. Sometime in the last few minutes, Mason had stopped knocking. The only sound was her too-loud heartbeat.

Calm. You have to calm down.

Some undefined amount of time later, Laila finally summoned the energy to get off the couch. Night had fallen outside her tiny window. The studio was dark. Red-eyed and puffy-faced, she flicked on the secondhand desk lamp on her side