Free Hollywood Hit by Maggie Marr Page A

head. Aside from Christina, that gaggle seemed to be the only group that knew anything about the words loyalty and trust.
    Nikki pulled her head from the steering wheel. She had to see Adam. She had to see Adam and end this, whatever it was, in person. She had to end it now, this instant before she lost her nerve or talked herself out of the righteous indignation that pulsed through her bloodstream. She pushed open her door, and the Toyota’s hinges shrieked in protest. Nikki slammed the car door and walked up the front stairs to Adam’s building. Once inside, the fluorescent bulb in the hall buzzed like an angry wasp. She stepped around an open trash bag toppling over with beer cans. Her hands grasped the metal doorknob, and without a knock she let herself into Adam’s apartment. The front of the apartment was empty of people. Nikki picked her way through the mess of too many people living in too small a space to Adam’s room.
    She should have texted. She should have called. She should have pounded on the front door of Adam’s apartment instead of turning the cool knob of his unlocked door because while she was hurt and angry, she wasn’t prepared for the sight before her.
    Three girls. And a man. And Adam. Naked. In Adam’s bed.
    Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the soot-stained window of Adam’s bedroom. Nikki stood in the doorway and listened to the multi-toned metronomic respiration of five sexy individuals wiped out from an active night. The room smelled like sex and sweat and passion. Tits and cocks lay at odd angles on the king-sized bed.
    A queasy, oily feeling settled in Nikki’s stomach. Adam barely washed his clothes; she doubted he washed his sheets. Not long before she had been in that bed. Granted, absent one, two, three, four, people—but she’d been in it.
    Nikki glanced into the full-length mirror beside her and peered into her stark, blue-ringed eyes that drooped with fatigue and sadness and even hints of fear. She didn’t have any room left for rage. She couldn’t muster any anger for Adam, but a thin layer of self-loathing filmed her skin. Who was she? What was she doing? Why was she here?
    There were no answers in her eyes.
    No earth-shaking revelations about herself or what she wanted or why she played like she knew what she was doing with her life. Over her shoulder, on the bed, sun glinted across the blond hair of the girl closest to Adam. Beside her was a lusciously exotic, darker-skinned creature with huge breasts and pierced nipples.
    This wasn’t Nikki’s scene. She was wild enough to move halfway across the country, wild enough to believe she knew enough to make movies, but she wasn’t wild enough for the rock star life. She would never pierce her nipples or her pussy. She would never be comfortable with multiple sex partners in one night. And right this moment, standing in the warm room with naked, nubile bodies, she felt certain that she would never be anything but a complete fuckup.
    Nikki grasped the doorjamb between the hall and Adam’s room. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to have sex with gangs of people. She didn’t want to have f&ffs with a man who, while good in bed, thought little more of her than one of many holes in which to shove his cock.
    The beautiful bodies intertwined perfectly. The light glimmered against different shades of skin. Marks of ink. Arms. Legs. Cocks. Oddly erotic, her gaze followed the flesh where one arm merged with a leg and a leg was slung over a torso and all of it merged into one brilliant picture of naked and perfect twenty-something skin.
    No. She didn’t want this. This picture, while beautiful in some weirdly free way, was not for Nikki. She wanted the forever after. She wanted the love story. She wanted the life that included one person—one man on whom she could rely. Even at twenty-two, Nikki knew in her heart that she was looking for something more than Adam could provide.
    Nikki turned away from the group on the bed.