by A. L. Woods
Glancing down at the flesh of my crimson-stained knuckles, I knew without a doubt that I had gone too far.
I inched forward, but Raquel glared at me, her upper lip curled back, baring her teeth.
“Don’t,” she warned.
I held up my hands in an effort to pacify her and remind her that I was the harmless guy with whom she’d spent the evening. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Yes,” she hissed, cutting me off. “You did.”
Words escaped me, her stare expunging the veil that had blurred my vision. She wasn’t wrong, I had meant to. I just hadn’t meant to not stop. Pain set off an ache that I felt in my hand as well as in my chest.
Although those two aches weren’t related to one another.
She broke our eye contact and rose to her feet. “Can you stand up, Tobias?” she asked, tapping the tip of his foot with her own to summon his attention.
He managed a nod, pushing himself to his full stature. His legs careened forward, windmilling, but before I could catch him, Raquel was in front him absorbing his weight, her back turned to me.
His arms went around her waist, circling her tightly so her face was buried in his chest. Their bodies postured together in a way that I suspected was all too familiar. I was the outlier here. He leveled his one-eyed stare at me, his grin slow and calculated. He looked down at his hands that were firmly fixed around her, drawing my attention to his action of lifting his right hand away from her, the movement so subtle she didn’t notice.
And he flipped me off.
“Oh, you fucking—”
“Sean,” Raquel snapped, turning in Cash’s embrace to look at me in horror. “What the fuck is the matter with you? Can you stop comparing dick sizes with him for one minute?”
My teeth ground together. There was no point in telling her about Cash’s theatrics or his goading. He was playing it up, and calling him out on it further wasn’t going to do me any favors, not right now—and that pissed me the fuck off.
He was getting away with it.
“Help me get him into my car,” she commanded.
“What?” I snapped, my face growing ashen. I didn’t want him in a car with her; that played right into his game. I glanced back at my busted knuckles, the urge to strike him down once more and leave him in a ditch somewhere curled my fingers into my palm, my splintered knuckles howling in protest.
“He can’t drive,” she said, hoisting him upward, then releasing her hold on him. Cash’s body swayed for a moment, and then, like a chainsaw through the trunk of a tree, he careened forward with a flair for drama so on point, he deserved an Oscar for his performance.
What made me sick, though, was the realization that Raquel would always be there to catch him. It didn’t matter how viciously he betrayed her or how badly he hurt her. How much he tormented her or destroyed her spirit. She would be there to absorb the brunt of his fall. She would continue to take the abuse because it was all she had ever known.
His claws were so entrenched in her that she didn’t even realize it. She was blind to his antics, woefully ignorant to his game. He would bury her alongside him. He represented all the things she had run away from, and she didn’t even see it because he was familiar—as if he was her home.
“I hope you realize that he’s playing you,” I sniffed, the cool air soothing on my lungs as I smoothed my hands through my hair, needing to do something with my itching fingers.
“This isn’t the fucking time for that theory, Slim.”
We were back in Slim territory? My stomach sank. The last few hours of the evening fled from my reverie, escaping me like they had never occurred at all, a fantasy of what could have been leaving me.
“He can walk.”
“You hit him in the fucking face six times. He can barely stand,” she shouted, her face pinching with rage. “Don’t be a prick and help me. I think he might have a concussion.”
The only one who was concussed here was her and her shit memory. It was as if she’d forgotten everything she’d told me. Everything we had experienced together this evening. The moment felt as though someone had waved a hand over her memory like a Jedi Master and she had forgotten it all. It wouldn’t matter what I said or did.
Raquel’s infuriated reaction solidified everything for me.
I was witnessing a truth that I hadn’t wanted to see because I had been so wrapped up in the idea of what we could be.
The Sean who normally drove me demanded I help her, but it was Slim that had me turning on my heel and walking away from both of them. I ignored the flurry of curses that she flung at my back, didn’t meet her eyes when I climbed into the driver’s side of my idling car and pulled out of the parking lot. I opened the window a sliver to get her scent out of the cabin and out of my thoughts, cold air drifting in and pushing out what was left of her presence.
Whether she wanted to see it or not, it was plain and obvious to me; they were made for each other. I just hated that it had cost me so much to realize I would never be able to compete with that—so, I was done before this thing between her and me ever had a chance to grow into something more.
And that realization hurt worse than the state of my knuckles.
CHAPTER THREE
I watched Sean’s rear lights disappear out of the parking lot from over my shoulder, the car getting lost to the spanning coniferous trees that clustered the street The Advocate was on. I grappled with my shock that he had left me to clean up a situation he had partially caused. Why had I let Sean get out of the car in the first place? What the fuck had I honestly expected with that kind of testosterone? For them to clutch hands and sing themselves into a truce like it was a damn Disney movie? My mind screamed at my own idiocy. Cash was not an alpha male by any means, but in Sean’s presence he had turned into one, all snapping jaws and puffed chest. Sean was all male swagger and prowess. His existence would piss me off, too, if I was in Cash’s situation.
I should have dealt with this myself. It might have been less of a bloodbath.
This situation exemplified that.
My spine protested under the brunt of Cash’s weight. I walked him backward until he was sitting on the hood of my car again. Another injured groan escaped him, his hands resting on his knees, his breaths wheezing.
I took our separation as an opportunity to assess the damage. I hadn’t been prepared to deal with Cash tonight. Why did he have to come here? He was a thief of fucking joy. I hadn’t wanted to see him today. I hadn’t wanted to see anyone, or I hadn’t until Sean appeared—the only person I subconsciously wanted to see. His presence had given me a reprieve and a glimmer of hope and perspective to which I had never before been privy. It flipped everything this day represented upside down on its head, and I never wanted to go back to living the way I had before.
And then Cash did what Cash does. He heaved like a wrecking ball and with one fell swoop, he sent everything tumbling to the ground in a cloud of destruction.
“Cherry,” Cash murmured, glancing up at me through one eye, the other being swollen closed. “Give me a hug.”
I frowned at that. “What for?”
“It’s been a long day for me, between this and Holly’s anniversary.”
Me.
As if my sister’s death had the same effect on him as it did on me.
“C’mere,” he insisted, holding out a hand. I glanced at the open palm he held toward me, the wave of his insistent fingers. The skin there was smooth and unmarred. It lacked the calluses men got from years of physical labor. His fingers weren’t long and wide, they were short and skinny, a reflection of his full-time job of doing nothing.
I remained where I was. “I’m good.”
He blew out a breath, tempering his frustrations. He lowered his arms, rubbing his palms on the inside of his thighs in a way that told me whatever he said next was going to piss me off. So, I cut him off before he even had the chance to speak.
“Why are you here?”
“Holly.”
/> “Holly Jane is dead,” I painfully stated, my hands balling into fists at my sides. He looked wounded at my word choice, and I fought the twinge of anguish that twisted my insides like a hot blade that had been plunged in my stomach. “We both need to try to move on with our lives.”
“Who are you?” His laugh was dry, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I didn’t like his appraisal, the way his eyes swept over me as if he was looking for the fray on the thread that made up my need for a chance to live. If he found it, I was fucked. He would pull on the fiber until my resolve unraveled in a pool at his feet.
I wouldn’t let him do that to me, not when I had experienced my first sliver of peace. “I haven’t been living, Cash. My life’s been on hold for ten years, and—”
“And now you’re getting fucked by someone else and you see the light?” he scoffed, rubbing the dried blood from the corners of his mouth.
My head snapped back. “Excuse me?”
“What’s he like, Cherry?” he asked, spitting bloodied phlegm to the ground. “Does he fuck you so hard that you can’t even spare a day to mourn your sister with me?”
I staggered back as though he had slapped me, my head spinning. How dare he use the tragedy of my sister’s death to try to shame and manipulate me into being docile and obedient.
He had been spending too much time with Dom; he was getting too cocky. “Go to hell, Cash.”
He was on his feet before I could even process the movement, the levy that contained all my thoughts spilling open at what he was inferring. Was I forgetting Holly because of Sean?
No. That wasn’t it. I was making room in my heart to feel other emotions. I wasn’t forgetting my sister. I could never forget her.
Cash’s hands circled my biceps, pulling me to him. My stomach heaved at the connection. He was suddenly full of strength after appearing beaten. I shrugged him away, my face growing weary with mistrust as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
“How are you even standing right now?” I demanded, my anger burning my insides. “Ten minutes ago, you couldn’t stand upright.”
With the smugness of a TV evangelist who had just convinced a megachurch of people that he had the ability to heal the sick, Cash lifted his hands in a shrug. “All better.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You picked me,” he stated with an ease that was on par with telling me that the temperature tomorrow would reach a high of forty-nine degrees. “That’s why you came to my side.”
Picked him? That’s what he thought that was?
“I came to your side because you acted like you’d been fucking knocked out,” I spat. “I didn’t pick you.”
“Don’t be like that,” he said, grabbing me by the elbow.
Familiarity lit up my brain at the touch. When Sean did that, it set off a kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach. When Cash did it, it made me feel sick. “Oh my God,” I hissed, shoving him off, my eyes wide with horror as I clapped a hand to my mouth. “You were playing it up.”
He shrugged noncommittally, giving me a pointed look that told me I knew better than to trust him. “Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“You are a piece of shit.”
“And what the fuck does that make you?” he all but growled at me. “You’re running around with some guy that you’ve known what, ten minutes? You made me wait a year to fuck you again.”
My eyes tapered at his allegation. I wasn’t going to indulge him with a response. Instead I turned and stalked toward my car.
Cash’s laugh slammed into me, sinking a knife into my gut. “You can have all your fun, Cherry. Just remember that you can’t escape who you are.”
I stopped, craning my head over my shoulder, my breaths coming at me hard and fast. “Oh, yeah? What am I?” My stare narrowed at him, imploring him to speak. But Cash just leered at me like he didn’t recognize me anymore, and somehow that made what he said next feel worse.
“If you have to ask me that, you’re more fucked up than I thought.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“I’m going to be honest: I wouldn’t answer the phone for you, either,” Penelope said, holding up a maternity shirt against her chest, appraising herself in the trifold mirror. I had left Cash standing in the parking lot of The Advocate the night before and was grateful he hadn’t followed me. As soon as I was on the freeway, I had called Sean.
Initially, I’d been angry, ready to blast him for leaving me there—but when the call went to voicemail, I suspected I had lost my right to be angry somewhere between the moment I rushed to Cash’s side to check if he was okay and snapped at Sean that he had intended to beat the shit out of Cash.
My theory that Sean was pissed at me was solidified this morning when I called him again and he answered, but promptly hung up.
I sounded the alarm for reinforcements and was now at Nordstrom with Penelope, trying to find her a perfect “I’m pregnant” shirt to wear to Thanksgiving weekend at her parents’ home in Connecticut—coming up in just a couple of days—in hopes that they wouldn’t excommunicate her.
“You reacted like absolute shit,” she continued.
“Whose side are you on?” I uncharacteristically whined.
“Sean’s.”
“Some best friend you are.”
“Hey,” Penelope scolded, whirling around on the ball of her foot. “I told you to shed the hundred and eighty pounds of baggage Cash’s presence is in your life years ago. He’s not doing you any favors.”
I worried my bottom lip with my teeth. “He told me I couldn’t escape who I was.” It had been one of the thoughts that had kept me up last night.
“Oh, please.” Penelope waved the comment off. “If that’s true, then you would still be wearing those stupid flared jeans from our junior year.”
“Hey,” I protested, my mouth popping open. “Those jeans were amazing.”
“They were awful. The happiest day of my life was the day you tore an irreparable hole in the seam when you got drunk at O’Malley’s and fell off a barstool.” Penelope winced, as though reliving it, turning back to face the mirror.
“What do you think of this shirt?”
I glanced at the tan tartan peasant blouse she held up to her chest, her head tilted to the right. “If your intention is to look like a pilgrim, sure.”
She gave an aggrieved gasp, lowering the shirt away from her body. “I was going for virginal.”
“That ship sailed a long time ago, sweetheart,” I said with a whistle, raising my brows.
“You’re such a little bitch.”
I shrugged at that, watching as she broke into a fit of laughter and joining in. I had been in desperate need of Penelope’s sense of humor…and her wisdom.
“Take anything Cash says to you with a grain of salt. He’s cut from the same cloth as your mother. Blind Southie loyalty. You’re not like that, Kell,” she remarked, flitting her glassy made-up stare at me. “You’ve never been like that.”
My teeth grazed my lower lip once more while I considered what she had said. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t lived in that wretched neighborhood for so long, I had never stopped to consider that maybe I had changed a lot in a decade. Maybe Cash had said that purely to get a reaction out of me. I shifted my weight from side to side, pushing my hair out of my face with a sweep of my hand.
I could escape who I had been, what my family was, zip code or not. I had taken back dominion over my life, and I wasn’t playing his stupid little psychological game.
“Why were you so pissed at Sean for kicking Cash’s ass, anyway?” Penelope asked, interrupting my reflection as she approached another rack of shirts.
“I wasn’t pissed,” I said with a shake of my head, clearing the cobwebs. I hadn’t been pissed at him, not directly, anyway. I was put off by the whole situation, and it started with Cash showing up. I had anticipated the possibility that he would be waiting for me at my apartment when I got home, but his showi
ng up at my place of employment had shaken me. That coupled with Sean beating his face in—well, that hadn’t been part of the equation. I had thought at a minimum that Sean would wait until I could finish assessing Cash’s condition. I would have figured out that Cash was faking it eventually, but Sean just up and dipped like he wasn’t going to deal with this after coming down from the high of a fantastic night.
And that hurt. You learned a lot about people when they were backed into corners.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Penelope cut me off unknowingly as she fingered through a group of dark shirts.
“That’s not what Sean told Dougie,” she said, as if it was a fact. Her fingers froze against the shirts, her eyes widening to the size of a coffee saucer at what she had just said, her stare swinging my way. I was almost certain I could hear the pounding of her nervous heartbeat from where I stood.
“What did you say?” I questioned.
She looked at me as though considering whether or not I had heard what she had said.
I heard. She knew it. I knew it. Better she didn’t lie to me about it, given last week’s emotional debacle. Communication and all that shit, remember?
A breathy sigh escaped her. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything.” Her shoulders sagged with defeat. She pressed her fingers into her temple. “Stupid fucking baby brain.”
“Now, I’m pissed,” I scolded. “Dougie talked to him?” And she wasn’t going to tell me?
“They went for brunch this morning.” She groaned with frustration, her fingers gliding across the bridge of her slender nose. “He got back a few minutes before you showed up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She gave me a look that screamed “mercy” before she spoke. “We’re trying not to get involved, Kell.”
“Too bad.” I shook my head. “I’m in this fucking position because of you two playing cupid.” I gave her an uneasy stare as a pair of stroller-toting moms shot us a look of disdain.
