Roxy (Pandemic Sorrow #3)

by Stevie J. Cole

  I turned into the gravel lot and shoved my car into park. Jag and I had sat in silence for the last five minutes of the drive to this hole-in-the-wall dive bar. I had been a complete bitch to him and he’d taken it, which made me feel like shit. I had no reason to be an ass to him, but I was hurting and confused, and really, I had no business leaving my house, or being around anyone.

  We shoved our way through the crowd, and, after I’d pretty much demanded that he not get high that night, we ordered our drinks. People were, of course, staring at us as we made our way through the thick crowd to find a table on the side of the bar. Jag couldn’t go anywhere without people noticing him. Sitting down at the rickety table, I noticed how anxious he seemed. That air of confidence he carried was diluted. He was out of his element, and I think maybe he felt vulnerable away from the safety of the elite clubs he frequented. For a moment I thought maybe all the staring made him as uncomfortable as it did me; for a split second, it seemed like maybe he didn’t eat up his fame like he pretended to.

  Jag took a drink, sticking his tongue out and gagging at the cheap mixture.

  “Stop being such a diva,” I teased.

  “I’m not a diva,” he said, and swiped his hair from his face.

  Just when I had managed to calm down a little and push away the fact that it was the anniversary of my brother’s death, the band came out.

  This is what I did every year. Come watch the band my brother was once a part of play a tribute to him. I usually sat at the same table, far removed from everyone else so no one could see me. I would sit there, alone, and wallow in sorrow. I never should have brought Jag with me. It was too much. I had let him into a part of me that no one else belonged in. This was my hell. My way of torture.

  A few people clapped and screamed when Theo, the lead singer, grabbed the mic. “This date,” Theo hung his head, his scraggly brown hair covering his face as he drew in a few calming breaths. “It holds a lot of bad memories. It was two years ago today that I lost one of my best friends, Sean Slade. He was our guitarist, and I miss him every fucking day. Roxy, I know you’re here. Love you like you’re my sister. I miss you. Sean wrote this for you, Rox.”

  When Theo mentioned Sean I tried to fight back the hurt, but that didn’t last long. I could feel Jag looking at me, and when I made the mistake of glancing over at him, it was obvious he was worried. That made things worse, it solidified that I had every right to be upset.

  After the first two lines I jumped out of the chair, almost knocking it over as I ran toward the bathroom. I needed to purge this pain. I needed to be alone.

  Time doesn’t do shit to make the loss hurt less, all it does it give you time to separate the pain from yourself. I snaked through the narrow hallway littered with people who were laughing, drinking; everyone there was happy, and I wasn’t.

  I pushed open the restroom door, finally letting the tears free. I entered a stall, slamming the door shut and locking it. I just needed to cry, I just needed to grieve for a few minutes. I should have just told Jag that I didn’t want to do anything because I’d been nothing but a major bitch to him, and now here I was, hiding in a filthy bar bathroom, sobbing.

  That song they had just played, my brother had written for me. He had played it for the first time two days before he died. After he’d played it, he said he wrote it as a promise to always be there for me, to always remember why he needed to stay sober—to protect me and Layla.

  Sean had meant that, but he didn’t own his life. Addiction did, and addiction stole my brother from me. It stole my father, my childhood. The grip drugs have on people ruined my life.

  A loud, guttural cry forced its way up my throat and I crumpled against the cold metal frame of the stall. What I hated more than anything was that every time I thought of Sean, I could only manage to see that image of him dead in his bed, and that hurt because I couldn’t remember him any other way. I’d forgotten what his smile looked like, and only had a vague memory of how his laugh sounded. The fact that I had forgotten those things made me feel so fucking guilty and angry.

  I’d been crying so hard that I had reached that point where it was hard to catch a good breath, almost like a three-year-old who had been pitching a tantrum Sometimes I wondered whether these breakdowns were really depression, or if they were just tantrums because I felt so cheated that I’d lost all the people I loved.

  I heard the door swing open, and the bustling noise and garbled music from the bar flooded in for a second.

  “Hey…princess?” Jag’s voice was soft, uncertain.

  No, he did not come into the women’s restroom after me?

  I took a quick breath, trying to suck back my tears, and said nothing.

  “You okay?” I heard the slow clomp of his boots as he crossed the worn tile and stopped outside my stall. “I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be locked up in here alone and crying.”

  “I’m fine!” I growled, staring at the door. “Just go back to the table.”

  I drew in another breath, wiping the cold tears from my face and waiting on him to leave.

  “Nah. Can’t do that.”

  The door moved and I shook my head, groaning. “Why not?”

  “Because I like you.” He paused and I heard his fingers tap against the aluminum door. “And I don’t want you to cry.”

  That made a small smile tear at one side of my mouth. I’m not going to lie, the fact that he had come in there to check on me surprised me and made me feel like he really did care about me. He could have easily avoided the awkwardness of that entire ordeal by sitting at the table. He could have gone to the restroom and crammed as much coke as he could up his nose, but he was standing outside the stall trying his best to soothe me. As sweet as it was, I still just needed to be alone.

  “Well,” I sniffed a few times, “you’re just going to get raped whenever some girl comes in here and recognizes you.”

  I watched his feet from under the stall. The toe of his boot tapped the floor, and a small chuckle floated over the door. “Is that a fact?”

  “Yeah.” I peered through the small crack in the door and saw him staring in at me. A stray wisp of black hair fell down in front of his face as he adjusted his eye closer to the door.

  “Just go, Jag.” I was practically pleading for him to leave me alone.

  The door shook. “Just let me in.”

  “No. Go away!”

  I heard him groan, frustrated, and he said, “Fine.”

  I exhaled and leaned back against the wall. Instead of hearing the door open and the drone of bar noises creep inside, I heard footsteps coming back toward me. I heard something clink against the tile and looked down to find Jag’s fingers curling around the bottom of the stall. His face popped under as he pulled himself beneath the frame.

  I was shocked that he had just laid down on the floor in all his expensive designer clothes and dragged himself across a gritty concrete floor.

  “No.” I stared down at his face that now had an enormous grin plastered over it and shook my head. “No, you just didn’t!”

  “Yeah.” Jag braced himself with his hands and pushed up from the floor. “Yeah, I just did. I told you I didn’t like you crying.”

  Grabbing a string of toilet paper, I shot a disapproving glare at him as I wiped the tears away. I was embarrassed, and I don’t know why because I’m sure this little episode was nothing compared to the fits his diva ex-girlfriends threw. But I wasn’t a diva, and this wasn’t a fit over some superficial bullshit. I was broken. I was hurt. My soul had been ripped to shreds, shattered, tattered, and destroyed, and then I had attempted to bandage it all back up with tape. At that moment I didn’t care what he thought of this, I was honestly just glad I wasn’t alone.

  I could feel the tears welling up again as I furiously dabbed at my face.

  Jag grabbed the tissue from my hands. His lips lay straight across his face and his eyes softened. A small sigh crept from his lips, and he gently blotted the tears away f
rom underneath my eyes. Sweeping a damp piece of hair from my cheek, he leaned in closer and said, “Look, I know it hurts. It fucking sucks. Hell, it’s not fair. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry you lost him.”

  He’d figured out why I was in here? He’d caught that? He’d actually been paying attention to me when I talked to him? And he seemed genuinely concerned and like he knew how bad I hurt. That was almost too much because I had never felt like someone really cared or understood aside from Sean and Layla. My nostrils flared. I was trying to hold back the flood of tears wanting to let loose. Every muscle in my face gave out as I gave in to another loud, uncontrolled sob.

  “Oh, no.” Jag embraced me. “Please don’t do that. I’m not good with tears and all that shit, princess.”

  “Stop being nice to me. Damn it,” I whispered into his thick hair, fighting back the tears. His scent had grown familiar, and taking in a deep breath of him swathed me in a feeling of security, made me believe everything would be okay as long as he held me just like that.

  He pulled away, gripping my shoulders as he looked at me. “Stop making me like you,” he arched a brow and one side of his mouth curled up, “and I’ll stop being nice.”

  He trailed a fingertip down my cheekbone, and that sensation somehow comforted me. A single touch had never granted me so much relief, and in that instance I was terrified of what was happening between us. This moment had done nothing but make me fall for him even more; I felt like I had no control whatsoever over how I felt toward him, and I couldn’t afford to lose control because I couldn’t handle any more hurt.

  My defenses came up.

  I jerked one shoulder away from him, trying to sound sincere when I said, “I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me. I’m perfectly fine.”

  Jag shook his head and took my hand in his, stroking the inside of my palm with his calloused index finger. “I don’t feel sorry for you. I know how you feel. There’s a difference. And you can keep lying to yourself and pretending to be some badass, but I see through that.”

  “Jag—”

  He released my hand, moving his arm above my head and leaning in toward me, his palm groaning against the slick wall. “Want me to treat you the way I’d treat any other girl I had locked up in a restroom stall?” He inconspicuously bit down on his lower lip. And before I could tell him that I didn’t want to know how he treated other girls he slowly and seductively inched his face toward mine, his stare unfaltering and causing heat to spread through me in a matter of seconds.

  His full lip brushed over mine, and he was all that mattered; the pain had vanished.

  Placing a soft, innocent kiss to my lips he pulled away for a moment, then slammed his mouth over mine, hard, unforgiving. His hands rubbed roughly over my arms, then up my shoulder and neck. Just when my entire body grew weightless from his kiss, he pulled away.

  Every time he kissed me, it left me a little breathless, panting to fill my lungs with air. We stood there staring at each other. And there it was—pain.

  His eyes held more pain than I would have thought possible. When I didn’t know him, he seemed so untouchable. He came across like his life couldn’t have been better, but I could tell by looking in his eyes that was all a façade. .

  Pain is something no one could hide from me. No amount of money, of luxury—or in his case, fame—could hide what life has done to you when someone really looks into your eyes. And that right there made me beyond weak for this man I knew I had no business with.

  I thought I had no business with him, but honestly, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Looking back on it all, he was like my beautifully flawed counterpart. He was so broken, but so was I. Flawed perfection, something that doesn’t make any sense, and that’s exactly what this relationship was.

  Chapter 13

  I had spent every day with him.

  Every.

  Single.

  Day.

  For over a week.

  And we still hadn’t slept together. Days on end of spending every second with someone, of constant foreplay, of being mentally fucked while knowing physically you wouldn’t be, was enough to drive anyone mad.

  Jag kept telling me he wouldn’t sleep with me until I believed he liked me, and now I was being forced to believe he really wouldn’t. Every preconceived notion I’d held about this guy had been wrong. He surprised me every single day, shocked me, angered me, drove me mad in a way no one else ever had. And day by day he peeled back pieces of me no one else had ever cared to discover, and not once did he judge me.

  Twice that week I had gotten ready to go to work, and in the process Jag somehow talked me into calling in sick. And there I was, trying to leave to go back to my apartment so I could get ready, and Jag was begging me not to go.

  “Oh, come on, Roxy, don’t go.” He blocked the doorway with his ripped, shirtless body and stood before me with one of those wicked smiles that lifted the corners of his mouth.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest, huffing as I tapped my foot over the floor. “I have to. Unlike you, I need money. I have fifty dollars in my account.”

  “I’ll put money in your account. How much you want? Ten thousand? Fifteen?”

  “Jag!”

  He smiled, then rolled his bottom lip underneath his white teeth. “Okay, twenty. And I’ll even throw in some oral sex to sweeten the deal.” He placed his hands on my hips, digging his fingers into my sides as he leaned down and placed his warm lips on my neck.

  His tongue skirted over my flesh. The smooth texture of his studs rolled over me, the sensation creating a wave of chill bumps that rushed over my skin. I tilted my head to the side to better enjoy the way his mouth felt working down my neck while I fought to maintain control of the situation.

  “Just call in, princess. Don’t leave me,” he whispered in my ear before blowing a heated breath over it.

  Placing my hands firmly on his shoulders, I tried in vain to push him away. He laughed and tightened his grip on me.

  “I have to leave.”

  That hadn’t come out sounding as serious as I’d intended.

  “Nah, you really don’t,” he said.

  When he panted words like that right by my ear, everything inside of me stiffened and then quickly went limp.

  His lips swept over my jawline, and he let go of a soft groan.

  Now that hot throbbing sensation was building between my legs.

  “Mmm.” He placed his mouth over mine, the intoxicated taste of him loosening my body even further.

  With each swipe of his tongue, each soft movement of his mouth, little by little I lost my ability to reason.

  “Jag, I’ve got to go.” I was pleading because if he kept at me like that, I knew I would go nowhere, and so did he.

  He pulled away and stared at me. I watched his pupils dilate briefly as he studied each detail of my face. His thumb pressed down on my lip, then brushed over it before he gave me another short kiss. “How can you leave me when I’m begging you to stay? All I want right now is you. I want every second with you, and if you go to work, I can’t have that.”

  Another kiss, this one a little longer and harder than the last. His hands swept my hair up, releasing it as he moved away from my face. He softly sang the chorus to Eric Clapton’s “Layla,” substituting, of course, my name.

  His fingers trailed down my neck to my shoulders, then caressed gently down my arms. He stopped singing and took both my hands in his. “All I want is you. Not for sex. Just for you. You only live once…you really want to waste your time at that bar?”

  “I can’t lose my job.”

  “You won’t.” He paused momentarily and reached down into his pocket to get his phone. “Promise you won’t get mad?”

  I didn’t even have time to answer him before he had dialed a number, placed the phone to his ear, and walked across the room.

  I watched him run his hand over the back of his neck, his wavy hair shifting from the movement.

  “Yeah. Is Carlos there?
Yeah, yeah. Well, this is Jag Steele.”

  He turned and looked at me, a deep grin set on his face. “Yeah, the Jag Steele. I’m sure he won’t mind if you interrupt him for me.”

  Shit. Did he really just call my work? He’s gonna get me fired!

  My eyes pulsed open and I furiously shook my head and mouthed no.

  All Jag did was laugh and place his finger over his mouth to tell me to hush. Then he walked to me, planting another hot kiss on me. He left his hand on the side of my face, his thumb stroking over my jaw as he stared intently into my eyes.

  That look was unlike anything I’d ever seen. He looked determined, he looked possessive. He looked almost desperate to keep me there with him.

  That look scared me. It forced me to see that there was more between the two of us than I had allowed myself to acknowledge. There was something there. We had connected on a level that I had never experienced. It had only been a little less than two weeks, but it felt like this—like the two of us being together was how it should be.

  Dare I even suggest, it felt like fate?

  And fate had been nothing but a bitch to me. I knew I should run, but how do you run from fate?

  His hand was still laid sweetly on my cheek when Carlos came to the phone. Jag kept his eyes trained on me as he spoke into his cell. “Hey, yeah, Carlos. It’s Jag…yeah, man, real good, real good.” He fell silent, kissing me again as he responded to a question with an “mmm-hmm” over my lips. His hand slid down my neck to my collarbone, and then his fingers danced up my neck.

  His eyes remained locked on mine as his fingers deftly brushed through my hair.

  “Yeah. I can do that.” Jag held the phone between his ear and shoulder. “Well, hey, real quick, man. I’m kinda busy and needed to run something by you. You know you’ve got this bartender there, Roxy Slade…” Jag rolled his eyes. “No, man. She’s fine, she hasn’t pissed me off, not at all.” His eyes concentrated on his thumb, which was now sweeping over my lip. “I need you to let her outta work.”

  Jag grinned and narrowed his eyes on me. “I need her, that’s why. She’s standing here in front of me right now, and man, she keeps trying to leave to come into work, but I just can’t let her do that. You understand, right?”