by J. L. Beck
Carpet with intercut designs woven through it lined the floors. Gold, black, red, and white painted the walls from floor to ceiling. Smoke filled the air as I held back a cough that so desperately wanted to escape. In the center of the room was an abundance of every table game known to man, but it was the craps table that caught my attention. They were surrounded by people three rows deep dropping chips on every square available. Laughter and clanking of glasses surrounded me, breaking through the overwhelming sound of coins hitting metal as people tried their luck at the slot machines.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away. I was in a trance, the flashiness of the casino putting me under its spell. A glimpse of a fiery red mass in front of my eyes yanked me from the lure of this place as I realized Tegan was walking away. Oh, no she didn’t.
“Where are you going?” I all but yelled in Tegan’s ear as I pulled her back toward me, gripping her by her arm. She glanced at me, an irritated look etched upon her face, before she headed toward a room off to the side. A nervous quake developed in my stomach. I hadn’t been in this town for years, let alone seen any of my old classmates, and now I was about to see most of them, including Caroline.
I had changed so much. I wasn’t who I used to be, and I didn’t know if people would realize that or not. I was already here and there was no way around it now. That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous, though.
“The ballroom is over here.” She trudged forward, not even caring that I still had a grip on her. She was on a mission, the anger in her eyes far more dangerous than I thought, and in all honesty, it scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
“How do you know that?” I said accusingly. She turned to me staring at me blankly as she pointed at one of the bright signs with an arrow pointing in the direction we were going. The sign read BALLROOM in bright red letters, Caroline’s Birthday Bash written underneath it. “Sorry.” I shrugged, automatically feeling like an ass and hating I was the reason for the distance between us. She sneered, pulling away from me as I walked a ways behind her, watching the carpeted floor turn to white elegant marble.
The vibrations of the music thumped through the floor as we grew closer and closer to the ballroom. Servers came in and out of the room like a revolving door as I glanced at every available entrance and exit surrounding us. Doors lined the hallway on both sides that matched the doors at the end of the hall. I wanted to investigate, find out what or who was behind them but couldn’t leave Tegan alone yet. Her safety was a priority rather she wanted it be or not, so I needed to make sure she would be fine once inside the ballroom.
My eyes trained ahead as we made it to the door. With one single glance back at me, Tegan pushed through the doors. Music blared around us, strobe lights shown on us as my senses heightened. Everything going on was too fucking much and caused irritation to run wildly through me. The noise. The lights. All distractions that only made it harder for me to focus further pissed me off.
“I don’t see her,” I said in Tegan’s ear. She shuddered against my chest, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the situation we were in or because I stirred something so much more in her.
“That’s because you aren’t looking hard enough.” Her voice was neutral as she slightly turned her head before walking over to the bar. There was a parade of people staring at her, at both of us. We looked out of place—or at least I did.
As I followed her, my eyes landed on a chick who was dancing on the bar. Her ass was swaying to Jay Z’s Holy Grail, and as she turned around and smiled at Tegan, I knew right then Caroline had in fact turned into a stripper. Her hair was flowing down her back, which, might I add, was completely exposed. She was covered in a sheen of sweat as she stepped off the bar and down onto the ground.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here? I see running off once wasn’t good enough. Had to come back and finish her off, huh?” That was Caroline’s best insult. Hell, it was probably her only one, and if that were the case, not much had changed.
“Nice to see you, too.” I ignored her comments and smiled. I wasn’t here for her. I was here for Tegan. Whatever happened to her and her party didn’t matter to me. I didn’t give one fuck.
“I missed you. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to talk to you much.”
Tegan chimed in, sending a death glare over to me. I dismissed her look as if I didn’t see it at all and took a step away from her and Caroline, the sweaty stripper. I couldn’t help but chuckle at that—Caroline was one hot fucking mess. Glancing back for good measure, I could see Tegan smile and her eyes twinkled under the lights as her conversation with Caroline grew longer.
This is what you can’t give her. You’ll never be this kind of man. God, my fucking conscience was a major pain in the ass tonight.
Forcing myself out of my own thoughts, I scanned the floor. There were men and women everywhere. People I thought I knew and people who I had never seen before. I guess, even when you are a stripper, you tend to have a lot of ‘friends.’
“Fancy meeting you here.” His voice was like acid to my skin. I would much rather drink it than have to deal with him. Turning around, I looked at Tony dead in the eyes before taking him in. He was wearing a suit and tie. This shady motherfucker was in a suit and fucking tie. Who the fuck wore a suit and tie to a function like this?
I looked around, apparently every fucking male here.
“Likewise,” I simply said, averting my eyes back to Tegan. I wouldn’t lose her tonight. Losing her could put her in danger, and no way would I let that happen. I couldn’t.
“You know she was in all kinds of trouble before you came along. Hell, I think she’s in deeper now that you’re here.” He laughed sharply, but it wasn’t like he found something funny. He was mocking me.
My jaw ticked as I found myself clenching my fists. I had to tell myself it wasn’t worth it, that he wasn’t worth the pain I wanted to deliver to him. That at the end of the day, he was one of Tegan’s friends, and that no matter what I thought about him or how I felt about her, beating the ever loving shit out of him wouldn’t be good for either one of us. It would only show how much his fucking comments were getting to me.
“The trouble she is in has nothing to do with me at all. Her trouble and I, we don’t connect in any way, shape, or form.” I had to force myself to have control. To keep my voice calm and my hands to myself. To keep my eyes on her, trained on her pink shirt, and dark faded blue jeans that molded her ass just right.
“Not what I have heard. Caroline told me all about you. Why don’t you just go back to wherever it is you came from? None of us want you here. It’s obvious that you didn’t even want to be here until you found out about her.”
He talked about Tegan like her being here was a secret. Like it was something I hadn’t expected and only served to push me a little further into losing control. Losing control and smashing his fucking face in for thinking he knew anything about me or Tegan.
“Caroline has never liked me, so her talking shit about me doesn’t really faze me. Secondly, whatever my past is with Tegan doesn’t concern you.” I narrowed my eyes at him and kept my voice firm. I didn’t give a fuck who he was, he wasn’t going to get away with playing this fucking game with me. Friend to Tegan or not, I would end him.
“Your past with Tegan concerns me because I plan on making her my future.” His words altered every single thought that had formed in my mind. A zing went down my spine as a fire developed in my belly. Before I could talk myself down, I lurched at him unable to resist the desire any longer.
My fist connected with his face and my mind went blank. I drifted to a time when I had Tegan as my own. When I didn’t have so many fucking obligations. When the only thing that mattered was she and I.
Chapter Sixteen
Devon
“I can’t deal with it anymore. One minute, everything is okay, and then the next, you’re so distant. It scares me.” She was huddled on the bench outside of the school. Fresh tears had filled her eyes, an emotion I h
ad yet to see from her. Sadness.
“Everything is okay. I just have a lot on my plate right now. I have a lot of people wanting things from me. I have to follow rules, Teg. I have to make the right choices. That’s all that is different. Nothing has changed between us,” I said softly as I caressed her hand. She was so beautiful and she was mine. Tegan was my world, and I would do whatever I could to get out of this shitty town and do better for the two of us.
She sniffled as her eyes glazed over. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to ever be with someone else, and I don’t want you to be full of regrets when it comes to us one day, years from now. I just want you. Now and then. I don’t ever want someone else to say I’m their future, Dev.”
She never even faltered as she spoke those words with so much emotion. I could feel them beating with my heart. She had to have been thinking about this very moment, about our unknowing future. At this realization, my heart sank to my stomach. If she was thinking this very thing, then she was second guessing everything that made us who we were.
“Are you saying you think I’m going to leave you? That someday I might regret my own actions?” I was in a state of shock.
“No… I’m just saying someday things might not be this way and if they are, I don’t want you to regret losing me.”
“Teg, I won’t…”
“He had a gun on him,” I could hear Caroline say. Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. My head throbbed, and for a moment, I had to remember what the fuck was going on. The carpeted floor was beneath my body. I was on the ground? Why the fuck was I on the ground?
“Don’t worry, Caroline. He isn’t our problem. I’m not worried about some gun-wielding boy. He isn’t anything to us.” Tony’s voice met my ears. What the hell were these two doing together?
“What about Tegan? We can’t let her know that we’re together.” It was obvious what she was concerned with. If Tony and Caroline were both in here, then where the fuck was Tegan, and what the hell happened to me?
All I could remember was seeing red when Tony mentioned something about Tegan being his future. My fist connecting with his face and the pleasure that ran through me as I caused him pain. Someone had to break up our scuffle. Someone had to pull me off.
“Tegan isn’t your problem. She’s mine,” he all but growled, which caused me to sit up from the spot they had thrown my unconscious body. I watched as a man in an all black suit, dark shades, and an earpiece in his ear stepped toward me, blocking any advance I would have on taking Tony down.
Then everything came back to me all at once.
The commotion I had caused. The guard that came out of nowhere. He telling me something, but I couldn’t hear him because I was so far gone. My anger swallowing up all coherent thought as I grabbed Tony by the lapels of his suit jacket. This fucker was going to pay. That was my last thought before I felt something hard followed by a sharp pain in my temple, black spots clouding my vision.
The guard. That big motherfucker must’ve knocked me out with something.
“Problem? I wouldn’t call her a problem. She’s just a woman who got caught up in some bad shit. You know? Wrong place, wrong time,” I interrupted them, my voice weak from blacking out. My head was pounding even harder as I shoved off the floor and came to a standing position gripping onto the wall for support.
Tony turned to face me, a smile on his face that made me want to lurch at him again. “Welcome back to the world.” His voice was far from welcoming. I reached to the back of my jacket for my gun but came up empty. Fuck.
“Looking for this?” He taunted me as he waved my Glock 9mm around in his hand. Knots formed in my stomach. I had no gun and no idea where Tegan was. Both of which I needed in order to get the fuck out of this place because there was no way I was leaving without her. I would fuck up everything in my way before I left without her.
Finally, I was standing without the support of the wall as I watched Caroline. She was hiding behind Tony, her body shielded. What a fucking coward! That bitch is one woman I wouldn’t think twice before laying out—especially seeing her for her true colors.
She called herself a fucking friend? Yea, some friend she is. There was always something off about Caroline, even back in high school. She always had this shady demeanor about her. It all made sense now though. Everything was becoming clear as day to me.
Tony knew far more than what he had told Teg, and whatever the fuck was going on, Caroline was in on it, too.
“I was, but it looks like you found it for me,” I joked, trying to cut the tension that was evident.
“Why do you have a gun, this one in particular? Why would someone like you... have a gun like this?” He was asking questions, but I knew he already had the answers. I couldn’t allow my cover to be blown all because I lost my shit. I needed to lie, and I needed to lie good.
“Dude, it’s a fucking weapon for protection. In case you hadn’t noticed, there are a lot of shady people living in this town. Sorry I want to take precautionary steps to protect myself,” I scoffed.
Tony smiled, covering up the ugliness in his eyes. He was thinking something entirely different. I’m almost positive whatever it was he was thinking he wasn’t far off. I was FBI. I was all about saving lives, but I was going to take this motherfucker down.
“Really? What kind of people you trying to protect yourself from? I heard about your parents. They’re a…” He paused, turning to look at Caroline over his shoulder. “Perplexing couple if I do say so myself.”
“Don’t they deal drugs and shit?” Caroline added. I wanted to feed her to the sharks. Don’t they deal drugs and shit? I mocked her in my mind. She would know more than anyone I was sure with stripping being her career of choice.
She was supposed to be Tegan’s best friend, which only meant one thing. Other than Tegan, she had to know about my past. That alone made her dangerous to me. She was a liability.
“Don’t know, don’t care.” I gritted my teeth with the words that left my mouth. I was forcing myself not to lose control again and act on my anger.
“Doesn’t matter really. What does matter is the fact that you attacked me over Tegan? Someone who hasn’t meant a fucking thing to you since you left this town all those years ago. You think you can come back here and act as if you own her? As if she belongs to you?” He stepped forward, leaving Caroline in her standing position as he made his way in front of me.
“What do you care?” I goaded him. I didn’t need to know his reason for wanting to know. I didn’t even fucking care. He didn’t know our past. He didn’t know my reason for breathing was Tegan, and he most definitely had no idea I had left this pathetic town to protect her. I gave up my love for her in return for her safety.
He leaned into me, the difference in our height noticeable. He was taller and had a good twenty pounds on me, but he wasn’t trained. He wasn’t an agent and just like before, he didn’t know what the fuck to expect from me.
“I care because I do. I stayed in the background and watched her love another guy with all the pieces of her heart that you broke when you left her. Then what happens? That same guy falls victim to gambling and drug use—being caught up in so much shit and ends up leaving her, just like you did. It was something she never saw coming, which made shit worse. What I found because of him was a girl broken, a girl who was unloved. I healed her, brought her back to life, and made her happy.”
He looked at me as if he knew the very reason I had left. As if I was the real problem in our broken love story.
“You ruined her. You thought I didn’t know who you were when you came in to rescue her like a damsel in distress, but you were wrong. I knew who you were, and I know what you’ll do to her again. Don’t ever throw a punch at me again, or I’ll do more than take a walk down memory fucking lane and take your protection. When you leave, and you will leave… She will become mine… again.” His voice was a whisper, but it wasn’t the strength of his voice that hit me.
It was hi
s words altogether.
He truthfully thought Tegan was his. He thought she belonged to him because he had safeguarded her while I was gone. Little did he know, I knew there was more to him. He was leading everyone to believe he was the good guy in all of this. A facade was really all he was.
“Whatever, cowboy. Just know I won’t walk away from her again. If you think for one fucking second I will leave her with the likes of you, then you have another thing coming. This time, when I leave, be warned Tegan will be leaving, too. A mongrel like you doesn’t deserve such a beautiful woman.” I was lying, and maybe he was aware of it, or maybe he wasn’t, but I would do anything I could to make him believe it. Tegan deserved more than just this. She deserved more than just an FBI agent on the run from his own fears, and God knows she deserved more than the likes of Tony.
“I don’t think… I know.” There was finality in his voice as he shoved my gun into my chest and turned on his heels, walking away with the guard behind him. His guard. I needed to find out who Tony really was. A cook in a fucking diner doesn’t have a guard following him. Caroline’s heels clicked across the marble flooring reminding me I needed to find Tegan.
Hiding my gun in its original place, I scrambled to find a door out of the room. There were tons and tons of halls. The floors and walls were colored in bright oranges and reds not helping to ease my pounding head at all.
My head continued to throb as music from the ballroom blared in the distance. Even though my body told me not to go through the doors, I did. I had a burning desire to make sure Tegan was okay.
Pushing through a crowd of people, I spotted her up on a table. She was dancing to a Justin Timberlake song that made my ears bleed.
“GET. DOWN. NOW.” I growled, gripping her by the ankle. Her attempts to shake my hand off were pointless only causing my hold on her to tighten. Her face turned down toward me, and I could tell she was about ready to backhand someone.
