Trashed (Stripped 2)

“Are you locked into going to Mackinac this summer?”

I shake my head, the denim of his jeans scratching my cheek. “No. I said I was, but Ruthie has an internship here in the city this year, and I…I don’t know what I’m going to do. Mackinac wouldn’t be the same without her.”

Adam grabs the remote, clicks the TV off, and tugs at my shirt sleeve, a tacit request to sit up. I twist and tuck my feet under my thighs and sitting facing him.

“Come to L.A. with me.” He takes my hand as he says this, twining our fingers together.

“Um…what?” I blink several times. “I’m half-done with my master’s, Adam. I can’t move—”

“Just for the summer,” he interrupts.

“Oh.”

“At first, I mean.” He pauses. “My agent just sent me a script for a cop movie. It’s gonna be filmed here in Detroit starting in the fall. September or October, they’re thinking. It sounds like a good script. It’s not a big-budget action movie either, more of a cop drama. I want to try my hand at more serious acting roles, and this might be a good way to show my skill at things other than fight scenes and crazy stunts. In the meantime, I could just keep this apartment.”

“But this summer?” I prompt. It’s not that I don’t care about where his career goes, because I very much do, but I want to nail down what he’s asking me.

“This summer. Come back to L.A. Go to the premiere of Fulcrum with me.” He traces my cheekbone with a thumb. “Meet my family.”

I swallow hard and have to blink the dizziness away. “Where—um. Where would I stay?”

He frowns. “With…me?” This is said in a duh tone of voice. He touches my chin and tilts my face up so I’m looking at him. “Des. When I said I was going back to L.A., what did you think I was saying?”

I shrug miserably. “I don’t know.”

He has the gall to laugh. “Des. Seriously? Did you think filming would wrap and I’d just…what? Take off and leave? Like, see ya, I had fun?”

I get up and walk across the room, feeling angry and hurt that he’s laughing at me. “I don’t know, Adam!” I snap. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this…where we’re…I don’t know. Yeah, maybe I did think that. I mean, what, am I just supposed to assume you’d want me to move to L.A. with you? And how could I do that? I can’t transfer this late in my degree, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. And then what? After I’ve got my degree, what then? I don’t know! I don’t—I don’t know.”

Adam is behind me, arms wrapped around my waist, nose in my hair. “Breathe, baby. You don’t have to know any of that. I don’t know either. That’s how relationships work, Des. You have your life, I have mine. And somehow, we find a way to make your life and mine fit together, because we like the way life feels when we’re together. Right? Do you know that, at least?”

I lean back into him, let him support me. “Yes, I know that much.”

“Then that’s all you need. That’s all I need. The rest we take as it comes. We figure it out.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” He spins me. “So you’ll come to L.A. for the summer?”

I shrug. “Sure.”

I ignore the fear that comes with the rest of what he suggested: a big-ticket, high-profile premiere event, as his real official girlfriend, and, more scary yet, meeting his family.

“Good.” He tilts my face up, slants his mouth towards mine. “Now kiss me.”

“I taste like come,” I whisper in warning.

He just smirks, kisses me, sweeps his tongue through my mouth. “Sure do. But then, you kiss me when I taste like pussy, so I guess we’re even.”

I can’t help blushing and burying my face in his neck. “Does it make me dirty that I kind of like kissing you when you taste like me?”

He chuckles. “Yes, it does. It makes you a very dirty girl. I’ll have to remember that.”

I wonder what I just got myself into. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.

A lot.

I’m going to L.A. with Adam. I’m going to meet his family.

Shit.

Chapter 15

I thought maybe we’d go to his house after we landed in L.A., or maybe to a hotel, or something. I thought maybe Oliver would meet us there, or some other driver. I thought we’d do any number of things.

Instead, there was a tall black man in a fitted black suit standing beside a sleek red sports car, holding a sign that read A. Trenton. The man takes our four suitcases and piles them—improbably, it seems to me—into the trunk, hands Adam a key fob, and accepts a folded $100 bill. Adam holds the door and closes it behind me, and then climbs into the driver’s seat. He touches a button, pulls the shifter into gear, and then the car darts forward silently. There’s no roar of the engine, nor even a silky purr. Just…silence.

I glance at Adam. “What the hell kind of car is this? Is it electric?”

He grins. “Yep. It’s a Tesla. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“Where’s Oliver?”

“Miss him already?” Adam jokes. “Or is his driving that much better than mine?”

He has the car whipping between lanes, darting around one car and then another, doing easily eighty-five if not more. It’s certainly not what I expected when I thought of an electric car. It’s sleek and sexy looking, effortlessly powerful, and the interior is done in luxurious tan leather, with a huge touchscreen display where the radio and climate control would be.

“Just…maybe slow down a little?”

He only laughs. “Babe, this is L.A. Traffic will slow me down at some point. Besides, I’ve missed driving my car.”

I don’t ask where he was taking us. I should have. I really, really should have. But I don’t. We don’t head into downtown L.A., but up into the hills surrounding it. After a good hour’s drive spent in conversation interspersed with companionable silence, he pulls off the freeway and into a suburban area.

We go through a few stoplights, past a few shopping centers, palm trees lining the broad boulevards. It’s like a scene from every movie ever set in L.A., immediately familiar even though I’ve never been here. He turns into a quiet neighborhood and the houses aren’t the monster mansions I was expecting, but they are still fairly large. I mean, they’re still mansions compared to what I’m used to, but still.