by A. J. Downey
In her spare time Bibi sings Karaoke and hangs around on film sets with child actors. Having the the firm belief that no one can be too weird or too funny, she happily admits that most of her favorite people and characters are both.
Also by Bibi Rizer
Electrify Me: A New Adult Novella
Objectify Me: A New Adult Romance
The Obsidian Stairway: The City of Dark Pleasures – Book I
The Amber Columns: The City of Dark Pleasures – Book II Conquests: An Anthology of Smoldering Viking Romance
The Shield Maiden’s Revenge
Morag’s Honor
By Bibi Rizer and Gabrielle Prendergast
Cover Your Dreams: Tips for Indie Authors to Help Them Get a Book Cover They Love
Stubborn
Emma Lee
The sun beat down on my black leather jacket as I turned my unpainted chopper into a small parking lot. Hardly anyone came up to Cooper’s Point during the day. The bluff overlooked a small lake surrounded by cottages and beach houses, mostly owned by rich people like the bitch on the back of my bike. Speaking of Prescott, his hands rested inside the pockets of my leather riding jacket. I liked them there.
I thought about riding down the paved walking path in defiance of the sign specifically telling me not to. Down that path, we’d find picnic benches, overlook spots, and waterfalls. We’d have to hike a fair distance to find a place random hikers wouldn’t run across us.
“Fuck it,” I muttered inside my helmet. I steered the bike onto the path and noticed Prescott stiffen in the not-fun way. He had rules for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so that didn’t surprise me. Worried about running people over, I took the bike down and around slow and easy. Even so, I hit a few tiny bumps and heard something rattling under the seat. I’d tighten the chassis bolts when we got home.
We passed several rest areas before I chose one and turned off the path. I parked the bike on grass, next to a picnic table. Trees surrounded the spot and blocked most of the view. We’d be able to see the sunset from here, but not the water. Since the only thing I wanted to look at climbed off the back of my bike as soon as I dropped the kickstand, I didn’t care.
Prescott yanked his helmet off and fixed me with an exasperated look. “You know, they usually don’t want motorcycles on these walkways for a reason.”
Dumping my lid on the picnic table, I ran a hand through my long red hair and grinned at him. “Yep. That’s why it took so long to get here. You can hike all the way back if you want. I’ll ride.”
He sighed and set our lunch out. We’d stopped at a deli on the way here. Another layer of Prescott revealed: he liked plain food. Not for the first time since I met him yesterday, I had doubts about anything between us lasting long. This time, though, they fluttered in my belly. For some reason.
I sat across from him at the table and watched him take control of the bag. His recently dumped fiancee had trained him too well to do everything, ask for nothing, and not whine. Granted, I didn’t want to listen to whining, but the idea of a silent slave made me want to murder that woman.
He slid my California rolls, jalapeño salsa, and lime tortilla chips to me, keeping his ham sandwich and potato chips. His gaze flicked from his meal to mine, then up to me. When he said nothing and unwrapped his sandwich, I suspected he didn’t know how to ask the question on his tongue.
That didn’t bother me. I could think of better things to do with his tongue. As we sat in silence—I couldn’t decide if it managed to be comfortable or not—I wondered if this would be a beginning or an end. My belly fluttered again. I fed it to make it shut up.
Prescott held up the engagement ring he’d liberated from his former fiancee an hour ago. The gold band sported a big rock with a bunch of little ones arranged around it in curves. With a smaller center stone, I’d call it tasteful and elegant. The huge diamond made it garish.
“I wonder if I can return this to the store.”
“Did you buy it?”
“Yes. She picked it out and sent me to the store. I forked over a small fortune for this thing.”
I shrugged. Part of me wanted to snatch it out of his hand and slide it on my own finger. Apparently, I had more in common with his Ice Queen than I wanted to admit. “You can always keep it as a reminder of what happens when you let other people tell you what to do.”
“Expensive reminder.”
“Some lessons are like that.”
He dropped the ring on the table and went quiet, crunching his chips. The rock landed where the sun made it sparkle. When he finished, he stuffed his garbage into the deli bag, then he took mine and did the same. We sat in silence. A breeze rustled through the trees. He looked anywhere but at me. I kept flicking my gaze to the ring.
The Conversation had to be coming. Something about the future would fall out of his mouth. Judging by his awkward fidgeting, he played it out in his head and wound up in a “so long and thanks for the sex” sort of place. I hoped he put it off longer, because I didn’t want to give him up yet.
He sucked in a breath. “Why did we come out here?”
“It’s a place I like to come sometimes, especially when I need to think. Thought I’d share it with you.”
He let a long silence hang. “No one’s ever given me a blow job before.”
When I ducked under his desk at work earlier, I’d already suspected as much. “Glad I could fix that for you.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Ready to hit something if he didn’t get to the point soon, I tapped my fingernails on the wood picnic table. “It’s not my favorite thing do, but I liked almost getting caught.”
He blushed and still wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if my boss saw you.”
“Stammer, blush, zip up your pants, and probably suffer through some sort of lecture about workplace propriety.”
His blush darkened. “You forgot the part where I get fired.”
“For that?” I shrugged. “Your boss would have to be a stiff-necked bitch to fire you for your first offense, especially when I don’t work there. No workplace harassment involved, so no harm, no foul.”
“I don’t think you understand how things work in the re— At a desk job.”
I had a feeling I knew what he meant, and it stung. Did I want to pick a fight? He’d changed his route without prompting, though he maybe saw my eyebrow climb. No, I didn’t want to push him too hard. Not while he was still trying to figure things out for himself, and not while I still wanted to fuck him. “Probably not.”
Another long, awkward pause made me stand and stretch. Though I didn’t do it to get his attention, he turned and watched. When I stopped and met his gaze, his eyes widened like he’d encountered a wild animal ready to rip his throat out. The guy had no idea what to do.
I had a thought to run as far away from him as I could get so I wouldn’t be sucked in while he self-destructed.
But I cared and had no idea why.
Surprise, surprise—Prescott broke eye contact first. He leaned over, bracing his arms on his thighs, and hung his head. Every inch of his body screamed defeat.
“What am I doing?”
I crossed my arms and watched him wallow in self-pity. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. “Whining inside your head like a little bitch.”
“Fuck you,” he snapped.
Smirking at his flash of backbone, I said, “Not now. You just want to hatefuck, and that’s no fun.”
His shoulders tightened. I resisted the urge to straddle him and rub them, thought I wasn’t sure why. Again with the confusion about this boy toy. He inspired too many contradictory feelings in me to understand. On the one hand, I wanted to protect him from running back to his Ice Queen or finding another bitch like her. On the other, I wanted to kick his ass until he took control and bent me over the table. Above all, I had the stupid want to keep him even though I knew it’d never work long term between us. Because it couldn’t.
Something a
bout his abs. Or his ass. Maybe his hands. No, his eyes. It was something in his soft brown eyes that spoke to me, about vulnerability and need and wanting. All the other stuff made for a pretty package, but his eyes sucked me in. When I looked into them, I had a weird urge to fix his problems for him.
And jump him.
“Look, I know shit is real for you right now. I can leave if you want.” The offer came with the fervent hope he’d demand I stay.
When he didn’t immediately reject my offer, I took a deep breath and forced myself to admit he might actually not be interested in me. I may only have been the spark jammed up his ass that he needed to shake up his life. My job done, he didn’t need me for anything else.
It hurt. More than I expected. He wasn’t the only one who needed to get their head screwed on straight.
“Maybe...” he said after far too long a silence, “maybe you could just take the bike up to the lot and park it properly?”
“Sure.” I didn’t trust myself to say more. My throat felt thick and I hated it. Boys weren’t supposed to affect me this much. Boys were for fucking until they got boring. Then you throw him away and get a new one. No regrets, no feelings, no lingering.
To avoid facing him anymore, I hopped on my bike, revved the engine, and rode it up the path faster than I should have. Some lady in a shiny jogging suit glared at me even though I didn’t come close to hitting her. When I commandeered a parking space, I shut off the engine and glared at the handlebars with my eyes burning.
I thought about riding home without him. The drive would clear my head. Really. He could call a cab and go wherever he wanted. He’d show up at the garage anyway because he wanted to. We’d fuck and everything would be fine again.
Jesus, what kind of desperate cunt thinks a few hours of great sex will fix everything? This one, apparently. I needed to get home and fix his car so he wouldn’t stay just because he couldn’t leave.
Ten minutes later, I rode through a set of tight curves with that obnoxious rattle loud enough to be heard over engine noise and realized I hadn’t taken my helmet. Given all the wind in my face and how hard I squinted, I had no idea how I’d managed to ride so far without noticing. Too much stupid shit on my mind, I guess. I slowed and stuck to the shoulder, determined to neither crash nor hold up traffic.
Right when I decided to be a big girl and go back to get it, my front tire bounced in a pothole and metal squealed under me. Half the bike went sideways. My back hit the pavement. I curled my arms around my head and waited for the world to stop spinning. Brakes squealed. Rubber burned. The next thing I knew, I blinked up at the blue sky, watching a puffy white cloud drift between tall trees.
For several seconds, I felt nothing and had no thoughts. Then everything hurt, everywhere. My ears rang. I lay on the ground, afraid to move. If something didn’t work, I didn’t want to know about it.
The crash replayed in my head, in slow motion. Without checking the bike, I suspected a bolt or three must have broken. Since it was made from scrap and salvage, I knew things like that could happen. That was why I wore a helmet, a reinforced leather jacket, and jeans. Except the one time I forgot my helmet turned out to be the one time I actually had a major malfunction.
“Are you okay?” An older woman’s face interrupted my view and thoughts. Long blonde hair draped around her head, framing her in a halo.
I giggled at the idea of an angel hovering over me. “Maybe?”
“That doesn’t sound good,” a man said. “I’m calling for paramedics.”
The woman nodded and gave me a sympathetic smile. “You’re going to be fine. Um, your bike, though...”
“Three pieces?” I asked, sure it couldn’t be worse than that.
She cringed. “More like three hundred. It hit my car. And his car too.”
I swore and tried to get up. My fingers curled, my knees bent, but everything refused to obey me well enough to sit up. All I could manage was flopping like a goddamned turtle on its back, and it hurt like a motherfucker.
The woman held her hands out without touching me. “Maybe you should stay still. There’s blood under your head and on your neck. Not a lot, but some. Head injuries are a serious thing.”
Hearing that, I stopped flailing and sighed. “Can you call my dad and tell him I fucked up?”
“Only if you give me his number.”
“Oh.” Pawing at my jeans—while gritting my teeth against the agony—turned out to be a waste of effort. My fingers failed to find my pocket, let alone my phone. “Right back pocket,” I grumbled.
“They’re on their way,” the man said.
The woman pushed on my hip—sending agony shooting through my body—and groped my ass. Really, she dug my phone out of my pocket. When she held it up, I swore again. I’d smashed the fucking thing. My butt probably had shards of glass embedded in it.
“Just call the Grease Dragon Garage and tell them Angelfish crashed the chopper. Please.”
“Sure thing.” The woman stepped away, leaving me to stare up at the sky again.
I blinked and someone appeared like magic. The paramedic guy wore a blue jacket. I noticed his short hair and it reminded me of Prescott’s. Scotty had better shoulders than this guy. Better eyes too.
“She’s awake,” the paramedic told someone else.
Something stiff kept me from moving my head. The sky had been replaced by the inside of an ambulance. The gurney didn’t seem much softer than the road had. I tried to ask if someone called home, but something went wrong and my voice came out muffled and weird.
The paramedic pulled an oxygen mask off my face. He didn’t look at me, and I couldn’t see what he fussed with. “Do you know your name?”
“Did anyone call my dad?”
“Not my department. Your name?”
“Angelfish.”
He arched an eyebrow and lifted a pen light, shining it in my eye. “How about the date?”
“Angelfish is my name,” I snapped. “And it’s whatever the fuck day it is. Like I keep track of that.”
The guy smirked. “What name is your health insurance under?”
“I don’t fucking have health insurance.”
“I see pain makes you cranky.”
Two days ago, I probably would have flirted with this guy under these circumstances. Today, I wanted to rip his fucking head off for no reason. Then again, maybe the throbbing ache in my left leg had something to do with it. Prescott’s eyes surged forward in my mind and I suspected I had another reason. One I ignored. It would go away.
“My leg hurts. Like, a lot. Kind of all of a sudden.”
He nodded like I’d just told him the sky is blue. “It’s broken. So is your arm. Can you feel that?”
Sure as shit, as soon as he told me, sharp stabs of pain lanced up my left arm. “I’m dying,” I groaned.
“Doubtful.” The asshole chuckled at me.
“Fuck off.”
Still grinning, he said, “I think I liked you better unconscious.”
“I know I liked you better unconscious.”
He laughed.
***
“Angelfish?” Dad’s voice rumbled through the open door of my examination room. Someone had already cut my jeans and jacket off, inspected me thoroughly, berated me for not wearing a helmet, and told me how lucky I was not to have my brains smeared all over the pavement. Duh. Oh, and the CT scan was tons of fun.
Pain meds in an IV drip made everything muted, including the lights. “In here,” I croaked. The temporary splints on my arm and leg—applied while they waited for the pain meds to kick in properly and the doc to have time—kept me from moving much. A cushion kept my weight off my butt after they pulled shards of my phone out, and bandages covered my neck and the left side of my face.
The rubber end of his steel cane thumped on the industrial tile. He stumped into the room and dropped into the chair beside the bed. His big hand covered mine and I focused on his face. The expression I saw reminded me of the time ri
ght after mom died—hard and tight. His hair somehow seemed whiter than its usual silver.
“I’m okay,” I said, wanting to reassure him.
He scowled. “You’re not okay. You crashed your goddamned bike. What the hell happened that you crashed your bike? And where the fuck is that new guy you’re banging?”
Not expecting his reaction, I blushed. The rush of blood to my head made me dizzy. “His name is Prescott.”
“Whatever,” Dad snapped. “Where is he?”
“He wasn’t on the bike.”
“Is that why you crashed? Because you couldn’t pull your head out of your ass over his dick? How did you even scrape up your face?”
“She wasn’t wearing a helmet.” My least favorite doctor ever walked in and looked down her nose at me. “She also won’t tell anyone her real name, and she’s terrible at following directions.”
“You weren’t...” Dad trailed off, his mouth opening and shutting in classic disbelief. Then he surged out of his chair, gripped the railing on the side of my bed, and leaned over to yell at me. “What the fuck, Angelfish? How many fucking times have I fucking told you to protect your fucking head so this shit doesn’t fucking happen?”
I flinched away from him and whimpered because bones moved that shouldn’t. Dad had never yelled at me before, not like this. His anger terrified me. He could crack almonds in his bare hands.
“Sir,” Dr. Bitchypants said with a stern look over her clipboard, “while I appreciate the subject of your rage, you need to calm down or I’m going to call security.”
Dad straightened with a fresh scowl. “Is she going to be fine?” he snarled.
“She has stitches already. Her CT scan was clear, so no concussion, but she does have two cracked ri—”
“I said, is she going to be fine?”
Dr. Bitchypants blinked and paused for a moment. “Yes, overall. None of her injuries are life-threatening, provided she takes care of herself.”
“Good.” Dad stormed out of the room, muttering, “I don’t want to deal with you.”
