Flirting with Sin Read Online Free Page B

“one hour I plan to be well on my way to drunk off my ass. And stay that way for at least two days.” Long enough to get through this terrible anniversary.
    “Okay.” She paused. Retreated a hesitant step. “Do you plan on trashing the room?”
    He snorted. Cocked an eyebrow. “I hate to ruin the image of me you have on your laptop wallpaper, but I’m not a raging or even fun drunk. Just a pathetic one.”
    Not waiting for her reply, he turned and headed toward his bedroom, closing the door behind him. Minutes later, he’d dug the several bottles of Vodka he’d brought with him for just this occasion from his suitcase and settled on the bed, back propped against the headboard.
    He didn’t bother with a glass, but drank straight from the source. The burn, the numbing—he welcomed them both. And, after more gulps, he embraced the floating, too.
    Soon, he wouldn’t feel anything. Wouldn’t think. Wouldn’t be able to do anything but sink into an alcohol-drenched abyss.
    And that moment couldn’t get here fast enough.
    Ari weaved and shuffled into the living room area in a one-man waltz. He snickered at the idea. Yeah, he could bump and grind with the best of ʼem, but dancing? So not his forte. Funny, he could only accomplish the two-step and slide while shitfaced.
    Why had he come out here again? He paused in the middle of the room. Hell, I don’t remember . Scrubbing his hands over his face, he aimed his feet in the direction of the couch but, somehow, ended parking his ass on the floor in front of the windows.
    Before him, the moon brushed the mountains, trees and lake with a pearl coat of paint. Stark. Breathtaking. Lonely.
    Quiet. So damn quiet.
    Usually, Vodka silenced the memories, the pain, the guilt. Usually. But not tonight.
    Tonight the memories rattled and clanked in his head like ghosts in an attic, refusing to be exorcised. Or at least hushed for another year. The images—of Caro, of him and Caro together, of her car crushed like a tin can—flashed in his brain. Flashed. Flashed. Flashed. So blinding, he held the back of his hand to his eyes as if he could block their glaring light.
    Groaning, he clutched his head and sprawled on the floor, laid out by the weight of the past. Of the burden of grief. Of the shame.
    From the moment he’d glimpsed Caro Roberts in the hallway of their California high school their junior year, he’d fallen in love. Plummeted. Like a fucking boulder. She’d been an angel in jeans and a tank top with her platinum blonde hair and green eyes. All she’d been missing were wings. She’d been the opposite of him, of his world. While he’d grown up in a mansion with material wealth but an absentee father and an emotionally and physically frail mother, Caro had been raised in a Leave it to Beaver sitcom, complete with two very involved, loving parents from a firmly middle-class background. A kind, laughing and caring virgin who didn’t smoke or drink had no business with a brooding, angry seventeen year-old who’d had his first cigarette and shot of whiskey at thirteen, and first fuck a year later.
    Yet, she’d loved him back.
    His mother had just died, and Caro had been his savior, bringing light into a world gone dark with loss and anger. They’d been inseparable. Even when his father returned on a more regular basis once he’d discovered the band his until-then-neglected sons fronted was actually good and could resuscitate his dying career. Even when local fame grew to regional, then national, and finally international fame. Even when touring and appearances and studio time meant more separation.
    Caro had stuck beside him. And he’d repaid her love by being shitfaced in a club when she’d gasped her last breath.
    The two times he’d been most helpless, most powerless in his life had been with the two women he’d adored above all others; his mother and Caro.
    He’d been unable to give either woman what they’d longed for most. Laleh—his father, home being