Reckless

Chapter 35

Toni paused outside the door to Spencer's building, scanning the buttons on the outdated intercom system. Spencer's name wasn't listed on his buzzer, but given that she knew his apartment number, it was easy enough for her to figure out which button would alert him to her presence. Toni lifted her hand, her finger grazing the faded white button without enough pressure to actually press it in. She pulled her hand back, wiping her palm against the outside of her thigh before she balled her hand up into a nervous fist.

Unwanted flashes of her ex invaded her thoughts. Toni fell out of love with Fletcher, if what she felt towards him could really be described as love, long before the event that ultimately drove her to file for divorce. But catching him in the act with another woman still stung. It wounded her pride more than her heart. Toni felt foolish and stupid, to have let a man treat her with such blatant disregard. She told herself she never should have trusted him. He was a textbook narcissist. If she was really the skilled profiler her FBI file claimed she was, Toni felt like she should have been able to suss out his true intentions within the first ten minutes. Everything Fletcher did to her, deep down she felt like she deserved it for being stupid enough to trust him.

Toni stared at Spencer's buzzer as she repeated what she'd been telling herself the entire drive over to his apartment. Spencer was nothing like her ex. He would never cheat on her. The connection they shared was genuine, something rare and beautiful. But her internal monologue did nothing to ease the suspicions that were creeping in around the corners of her mind. Spencer was answering her texts with single word responses. He evaded all her questions about where he'd been and what he was doing for the last week with the skill of a mountain goat. But it was really the way he was now avoiding her phone calls that propelled her across town to stand outside his apartment building.

Toni stepped back as the door to the apartment building swung outward. She caught it, holding it open for the elderly woman that was dragging an empty portable shopping cart along with her. The woman smiled and boobed her head in thanks as she passed, leaving Toni standing alone in the open entryway. Toni glanced inside the building, only hesitating for a moment before she darted inside. She took the stairs up, avoiding the ancient creaking elevator. It wasn't until she was standing outside Spencer's apartment that she began to question her actions.

"What the hell am I doing here?," Toni grumbled. If Spencer was with another woman, she wasn't even sure if she wanted to catch him. Just the thought of it made her feel like her entire chest was about to cave in. And if there was some reasonable explanation for his distant behavior, Toni knew she was about to make herself look like a total lunatic. There was no good outcome to the action she was about to take.

"Maybe he's just not interested," she whispered, considering another possibility. She was always straightforward about her feelings. But Toni learned the hard way over the years that her lack of interest in playing romantic games didn't stop men from playing with her. Maybe Spencer was never interested in a serious relationship with her. He seemed like he was, but Toni thought it was possible that he was simply putting on a show in order to bed her. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a man treated her that way.

"Just knock," Toni told herself. "Don't be a pussy, you already came all the way over here." Whatever was going on with Spencer, Toni suddenly decided that she'd rather just know what it was. Sort of like ripping a bandaid off.

Toni lifted her hand. But before she could bring her knuckles down against Spencer's door, she heard a strange thump from inside the apartment. Toni leaned closer to the door. The thump was followed by a second, louder thump that sounded suspiciously like a body hitting the floor. Then Toni heard Spencer's voice. He was screaming the word stop.

All Toni's suspicions flew from her mind, quickly replaced by terror. She'd been so quick to suspect ill intentions on Spencer's part, but now it seemed he was being held hostage in his own apartment. The possibility that Peter Lewis took Spencer, like he took Benny, flooded her body with a surge of adrenaline. Toni reached for her gun, still in the holster since she drove directly from headquarters over to Spencer's apartment. With her weapon cradled properly in her hand, she stepped back and delivered a hard kick to Spencer's apartment door. Toni's foot landed perfectly, popping the door open without much damage to the frame. She could hear her own heart pounding in her ears as she darted into the apartment.

The last time she was in Spencer's apartment was the night they met, six years ago. The place looked about the same as she remembered, though the odor of water and wet paper hung heavy in the air. It was obvious that there'd been some sort of struggle. Ripped up books and papers were scattered everywhere. The coffee table in front of the leather couch was knocked over, its contents scattered across the faded area rug. Toni pressed forward, moving towards the sound of a struggle. She was expecting to find Spencer engaged in a physical altercation. But she wasn't expecting his opponent to be an elderly woman in a pink house dress.

Toni appeared in the doorway just in time to see the woman deliver a stinging slap across Spencer's face. His head rocked to the side. Toni stood in the bathroom doorway, her mouth gaping open even as she tucked her gun away. Years of combat training gave her the ability to react quickly to almost any situation. But in this one, Toni was unsure of what to do. When the woman lifted her hand for the second time, Toni moved forward and caught her by the wrist, stopping her from slapping Spencer again.

"Toni?," Spencer gasped, unsure of how to react to her unexpected appearance in his bathroom.

Toni's only reply was to move between him and the woman in the pink nightgown. She backed the woman up a step, maneuvering her as gently as she could away and out of the room. Toni had to move carefully to avoid tripping on the junk that was scattered out across the floor. But she managed to deposit the woman on a nearby couch without incident.
"Stay here," Toni warned, silently praying that the woman would listen. She'd prefer not to restrain an elderly woman, especially one that she suspected was her boyfriend's mother, but if the angry old broad started swinging again she wouldn't leave Toni with much of a choice. "Spencer?," Toni asked. "Are you okay?"

Toni moved towards the bathroom. Spencer had lowered himself down onto the closed toilet lid. He was leaning forward with his face buried in his hands. From the tense stance of his body, Toni could tell he was holding back tears. She slowly edged closer, placing her hand gently on his shoulder. To her relief, he leaned into her touch.

"You weren't supposed to come here," he lamented. "I didn't want you to see this."

Toni rubbed her hand softly across his upper back. Her heart ached seeing him in such a state. "Just let me help," she pleaded. "What can I do to help you?"

Spencer paused for a moment, letting out a rattled sigh before he answered. "There's a bottle of little blue pills in the medicine cabinet," he said, gesturing towards the cupboard to the left of the bathroom sink. "Can you give one to my mom and see if you can get her into bed?"

Toni wasn't sure of her ability to complete this task without an issue, but she tried her best to look confident as she moved towards the cabinet and retrieved a valium from the top shelf. She held it carefully in her palm and she picked her way through the living room to get a glass of water. Thankfully, she located a plastic cup in the cupboard. She wasn't sure how volatile Spencer's mother was, but since she just saw the woman attack him, she wasn't eager to hand her anything that could be used as a weapon.

"Take this," Toni ordered, extending her open palm and the plastic cup of water to the disheveled woman in the pink nightgown. The woman looked like she wanted to object but Toni's tone left no room for argument. She pushed her hands closer to the woman, sighing internally when she took the pill from Toni's hand and swallowed it. The moment she saw the woman's throat bob, Toni glanced at her bare wrist. "Would you look at the time," she chirped. "How did it get so late? We better get you to bed."

It really wasn't late at all, being barely past dinnertime. But Toni guessed that the woman must have exhausted herself attacking Spencer, because she rose from the couch and let Toni guide her away into the nearest bedroom without complaint. She was walking on her own. But Toni stayed close, worried that the woman might trip in the items she destroyed and threw all over the apartment. Once the woman was safely deposited in her rumpled bed, Toni exited the room, clicking the door shut behind her. She closed the apartment door as well, securing it with the dead bolt since she damaged the regular knob on her way in.

"I'm sorry about your door," Toni offered, pausing in the bathroom door and offering Spencer a nervous smile. "I heard you scream and I thought Peter Fucking Lewis was in here."

Toni leaned down, wrapping her hand around Spencer's. She lifted his arm, guiding him up and off the closed toilet. Toni ushered him over to the couch, watching her step to avoid tripping on anything. Spencer was still refusing to make eye contact with her as she sunk down on the couch next to him.

"What are you doing here?," he asked. His tone was filled with more shame than accusation, but the question still made Toni squirm a little in her seat.

"I uh…," she stammered. She racked her brain for any reasonable excuse she could come up with for showing up when she wasn't invited and clearly wasn't wanted. "I was worried about you," she said, with a heavy sigh. That was true. But it wasn't the whole truth. "...and I thought you might be with another girl." The admission turned her tanned cheeks pink with embarrassment.

Spencer finally lifted his heavy head and looked at her. His brows were raised in confusion, like he wasn't sure exactly what she meant. "Another girl?," he repeated, giving Toni a questioning look. His hazel eyes were red rimmed, the thin skin underneath dark from lack of sleep. Toni felt awful for even thinking that he might have been sleeping around on her when he'd clearly been dealing with an actual family emergency.

"You weren't picking up my calls, so I thought someone else might be around," Toni admitted. It was her turn to avoid eye contact. She stared down at her lap, her bottom lip quivering as she fought to keep the emotion out of her voice. "I thought you were sleeping with another woman."

Spencer slid his arm along the back of the couch until he could circle Toni's shoulders with it. He pulled her against his chest, holding her there as he stroked his other hand down over her long dark hair.

"My mom isn't doing well. She doesn't like being here. She's confused about where she is. She's been screaming. A lot. I didn't want you to hear her," Spencer explained. He held Toni tighter, brushing his lips against her forehead before he spoke again. "Toni, I would never do that to you…" He paused, weighing his words before he allowed them to escape from his lips. "I've never slept with another woman in my life. And I have no intention of starting now."

Toni jerked back slightly, her eyes widening as she realized the magnitude of what Spencer just admitted to her. At first, she was convinced she must have heard him wrong. But his words from the night they met came drifting back to here. I've never done this before. At the time, she assumed he was talking about taking a woman home from a bar or bedding a stranger. Having a one night stand. But now, she wasn't so sure.

"You mean you've never had sex with anyone else, at all? Not ever?," she confirmed. Toni shook her head. "There's no way," she added, cocking her head slightly to the side as she added up their combined sexual experiences in her mind. Spencer was a little more reserved than her when it came to sex. But he didn't come off as inexperienced. On the contrary, he seemed like he knew exactly what he was doing and how to make her feel good. "It's… I mean you're… I mean…," she searched for a more polite way to say you fuck me like you know how. "You seem like you have experience." In fact, she assumed up until this point that he had a lot of experience. She knew he didn't have a lot of relationship experience, but that didn't necessarily equate to no sex. "How the hell do you know what you're doing if you've never done it before?," she questioned.

"Do I seem like I know what I'm doing?," he asked. Despite the altercation he just had with his mother, a smile was playing at the corners of his lips. Once he realized that Toni's hesitancy to believe him was due to how much she enjoyed sleeping with him and not because she thought he was weird or strange for his lack of sexual partners, it was hard not to take what she was saying as a compliment. It always seemed like she was enjoying herself when they were together, but he was still self conscious and uncertain if he was really doing enough to please her.

"Yes," Toni confirmed. "You do." Toni leaned back against the couch for a brief moment before she popped back upright. "I can't believe it," she announced, before collapsing back into the cushions and muttering a few expletives under her breath. She didn't doubt that what Spencer was telling her was the truth. But it was blowing her mind a little that the most memorable night of her life was with a virgin. She'd never been someone's first before.

"It doesn't bother you, does it?," Spencer asked. "That I've never been with anyone else?"

Toni turned her dark eyes towards him, peering up at him from under her lashes. "No," she declared. It didn't bother her at all. In fact, the more she thought about it, the hotter it was making her. It was making her self conscious about her own body count. It wasn't high by any means, but she'd certainly been with more than one man. "Does it bother you that I have?," she asked.

Spencer shook his head. He knew Toni was married before, and probably had other boyfriends before that. But they had nothing to do with his relationship with her. People craved companionship, it was part of basic human nature. Spencer didn't like the thought of her being with another man, but he would certainly never hold her past against her.

"That night with me was really your first time?," Toni asked, her voice dipping slightly lower in tone as she raked her eyes up and down the length of his body. The side of his face where his mother slapped him was still pink and his hair was a tousled mess, but it didn't detract from his appearance. "How… I mean… Was it what you were expecting?," she asked.

"I spent the last six years looking for you," Spencer answered, smiling when Toni leaned in close enough to press her lips against his. It had only been slightly less than a week since they'd seen each other last. But since it was the first significant amount of time they'd spent apart since they saw each other again, it felt like much longer. The soft press of her lips was like the snap of a match that lit the fire between them. His hold on her tightened, pulling her half into his lap as she parted his lips with her tongue.

When Toni pulled back for a breath of air, her curls were as wild as his. Spencer used his hand to smooth down the wild strands around her face. He dipped his head down to kiss her again, looking to continue what they'd already started on his couch in his bedroom. But Toni pulled back.

"I can't stay much longer, I've got to get home to see Romeo," she said, offering Spencer an apologetic smile. "But after he goes to bed, I can come back over."

Spencer glanced toward his mother's bedroom door. He was still nervous about her behavior. But she couldn't do much worse than what she already did. Toni saw her at her worst and she wasn't running for the door like Spencer feared. He cast one more hesitant glance towards the closed door before he nodded his head. "I'd like that."