I should be more upset about my future prospects being so bleak but I just can’t seem to give a crap these days.
Holly groans, “Would you at least try to look like you’re having fun, please?”
“But I’m not having fun, Hols. I’m watching a bunch of bogan dickheads chugging beer-bongs while avoiding watching you be mauled by your boyfriend. No offense, Coop.”
The boyfriend in question is Cooper Ryan, the hot bartender that Holly got lucky with at the Sugartown Hotel a few weeks back—and he’s recently become a permanent fixture in my best friend’s life which is fine by me because he’s sweet, he treats her right and he gives me Holly-free time enough to wallow in my misery. He swings his head out from the hollow of her neck and smiles at me. “None taken. I do maul. I should really cut back but I’m just a stupid, beer-chugging dickhead unable to resist her charms.”
“Well, they say awareness is the first step.” I smile back, but it’s as weak and horribly disingenuous as they always are lately.
“Aww, Cooooop.” Holly reaches up on tiptoes to kiss him. “Do you have any idea how much I want to tie you up and screw your brains out when you say things like that?”
“I have some idea,” he mutters into her ear.
I roll my eyes. “Would you two get a room, already? You’re making the other bogans nauseas.”
“Ha! Now you know what it was like when you and Eli-” Holly begins but her eyes double in size as she realises she almost named ‘he who shall not be named’. “Shit, Ana, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Hols. I’m going to go grab a drink. Why don’t you two go grab a room, or the backseat of Coop’s car, or any other semi secluded place to ... um ... get busy, and I’ll meet you back here in fifteen?” I tease, but I’m only half joking about the sex. At least if they get it out of their system now, we won’t be run off the road because Holly decides she’d rather jump on Coop’s gearstick than get us home in one piece.
“Ana?” Holly starts.
I shrug her off with a wave. “I’m fine Hols, just thirsty.”
“I love you my little slutsky!” she yells, just loud enough to draw the attention of everyone around us, in true Holly fashion.
I laugh and make my way over to the bonfire, which oddly enough is where the eskies with all the combustible liquor are. Because nothing says inconspicuous like an illegal twenty-foot bonfire that can be seen from space. Idiots.
I pull out a bottle of Stella Artois and think of Elijah. I wonder where he is and if he’s thinking of me, too. Earlier, I saw Nicole and her evil minions, so at least I know he’s not fucking her up against a wall somewhere. My heart thuds against my chest as I think back to that night. A part of me hates him so much for making me witness that because never in a million years would I wish the same fate upon him. I love him too much, which makes me think that, despite his declaration, he didn’t love me at all.
I flip the bottle cap off my beer and take a long hearty swig, which almost comes straight back up when I open my eyes and see Scott standing before me.
“Hey, Blondie. Rough night?”
“And it just got worse.”
“Ouch.” He raises his own beer in a toast and gives me that stupid half-smile that used to turn me to complete mush but now kind of makes me want to punch him in the face. “You really know how to wound a guy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He reaches into the nearest esky and pulls out two more Stellas. “You wanna take a walk with me?”
“Why would I do that, Scott?”
He shrugs. “Payback for drinking all my beer?”
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was yours,” I mutter, as I avoid meeting his eyes. Though I despise him, his eyes are still kind of pretty to look at. In fact, all of him is pretty to look at. Not as pretty as Elijah, but pretty, none the less.
Annnnnd now I know I’ve had too much to drink.
I run a mental tally in my head—one vodka and cranberry at Holly’s house and one and a half beers since we arrived. It’s not much, but it’s enough for a lightweight like me. Still, I’m in a reckless, poisonous mood, so despite the buzz I have going, I feel like it’s not enough.
Weirdly, Scott must pick up on that because he says, “Come on, I have some hard stuff in the car and you look like you could use a stiff drink.”
“What kind of hard stuff?”
“Tequila.”
“To-kill-ya! Awesome! Lead the way.”
Scott smiles, stuffs two beers in the pocket of his hoody and walks me over to his giant, dual cab, fifty-thousand dollar Toyota HiLux—which is just what every idiotic nineteen-year-old needs to be driving, especially when there’s alcohol involved—and fishes out the bottle of tequila before handing it to me. I’m so relieved I could kiss him, but I’ll settle instead for not punching him in the face.
Scott leads us to a small ravine, far enough away so we can no longer hear the noise of the party. He slides down the small embankment and sits on a patch of soft grass. I follow suit, though my descent is a little more awkward and I end up stumbling a few steps before backing up and plonking myself down next to him. We’re looking at nothing but row upon row of cut cane fields and there’s no other light but the moon—and yes, I am here with the McDoucheNozzle that basically told the whole town I was a giant slut, but it’s peaceful and Scott always was good at distracting me from reality.
I twist the cap off the tequila and take a hearty sip. It burns like nothing else going down but once it’s finally settled the warmth spreads through my tummy and it feels sort of nice, so I take another.
“Easy, tiger.” He takes the bottle from me and swallows back some of the contents. It must go down the wrong way, because he coughs and splutters and beats at his chest like a gorilla. “Holy shit that hurt, I now know why you call it to-kill-ya.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a virgin, Scott?”
He turns to me with his brow raised and an incredulous look upon his face. “You do know I went out with Nicole for a whole six weeks, don’t you?”
“Not the kind of virgin I was talking about, but thanks for the painful reminder of the fact you ditched me for boob-a-skank,” I say, and snatch the bottle back.
“Yeah, well, I was an idiot.”
“No argument there.”
“So, what’s the deal with you and gigantor?”
“Who?” I feign innocence, or ignorance—I can’t remember which, because I’m drunk, remember?
“You know, prison-tattooed, scary-arse gigantic motherfucker?”
“Oh, that gigantor.” I shake my head and sigh. “No deal. We broke up, he fucked Nicole and broke my heart.”
Scott raises the bottle and says, “To fucked up exes!”
“To home-wrecking sluts!” I salute as I take a swig.
Scott takes back the bottle and waves it in the air. “To wankers who don’t know a good thing when they have it.”
I snatch it back and say, “And to arseholes who break your heart,” before shooting him a dirty look and taking a long pull from the neck of the bottle.
By now my head is swimming. I’m pretty sure my fifteen minutes is up and I know I should get back to the party so Holly doesn’t worry, but I don’t feel like making the trek. I don’t feel like doing much of anything, actually, so I lie back on the grass and stare up at the stars.
“I like your to-kill-ya, Scott.” I hope he doesn’t notice how much I just slurred that sentence, and then I wonder why I care whether he knows I’m blind drunk or not. This fucker broke my heart, too. Granted, not as badly as Elijah, but he still did it. My inebriated brain at least has the sense to tell me that I didn’t love Scott like I love Elijah, and that just pisses me off and hurts my heart all over again. So I tell my heart to shut up by pulling Scott down beside me and pressing my mouth to his with a brutal, messy kiss.
It doesn’t take him long to catch up. In fact, within seconds he’s pawing at me and pulling me on top of him. His hand skims up under my shirt
and palms my boobs. For half a second I close my eyes and pretend it’s Elijah’s hand. There’s one very noticeable difference though: either Elijah possesses some innate, supernatural ability to instinctively know how to please women or he’s had an awful, awful lot of practise, because Scott’s hand pushing and prodding at my boobs feels more like a breast exam than anything Elijah ever did.
I go with it, though, because it feels better than thinking about how miserable I am, thinking about how much I miss him, and thinking about the fact that, although it’s been a month, the pain hasn’t lessened any and I don’t expect it will.
Scott’s mouth covers mine with a sloppy insistent kiss, and suddenly I want to gag. He’s rock hard, pushing his hips into mine with bruising force, holding my hips down against him with one hand and my head with his other. I yank away, gulping in air as I raise myself up to a sitting position, but Scott’s stronger and he pulls me back down on top of him and then effortlessly rolls us so that I’m pinned to the ground by his body. I’m starting to see what a horrible idea coming out here with him was. I’m also beginning to realise just how much I must hate myself at this moment in my life to have absolutely no regard for my own safety or self-preservation. In fact, if Dharma had of walked up to me wielding a cute smile and a bottle of spirits, I likely would have tagged along behind him, too.
“Wait,” I say, as I attempt to sit up once more by shoving at his chest, but he pushes me down with a heavy palm splayed between my breasts. I’m feeling lightheaded and the pressure of him on top of me makes my tummy do weird flippy things, and not of the good variety. “Scott, stop. You’re hurting me.”
“Relax,” he whispers, nibbling on my ear.
Bile rises in my belly. I shove at him, more forcibly this time, and when he doesn’t move I lash out with my hands, gouging my nails down one side of his face. “I said stop, you arsehole!”
He sits back on his knees and presses his hand to his cheek. He’s bleeding. His eyes blaze with desire and hate, but I don’t give a crap. I waste no time getting to my feet and climbing up the embankment.
“Ana, get back here!”
“Fuck you!” I scream back. No sooner have the words left my mouth than I feel his arm slip around my waist and drag me backwards, down the embankment. His other hand covers my mouth and, even though I bite down on it as hard as I can, he gasps but doesn’t let go. I thrash and kick against him, all the while screaming into his palm as he lugs me further down the hill.
We’re not in the same spot as we were before. There’s no grass here, only a rocky patch of hard-packed earth. If we were in the same spot I’d consider using our abandoned tequila bottle as a weapon, but I can’t even see it—I can’t see anything on account of the dizziness and moonlight. Scott releases me—I don’t know why, I don’t question it—I simply run as fast as my uncoordinated body will take me. It’s not far enough though because before I can even reach the embankment he grabs my arm and pushes me to the ground. I hit the hard ground with a thud. Breath whooshes out of my lungs and my head lands hard enough that I feel both stunned and like I want to throw up my guts, all at once.
My vision goes dark. My skull feels like it’s been cleaved in half, like a watermelon. I think I feel Scott hovering over me. I try to lift my head but find I can’t. I can’t move without this roiling wave of nausea threatening to choke me. I feel his weight settle on top of me and hear him whisper, “I let you get away once, Ana. I’m not letting you get away a second time.”
“No.” I protest, but the blackness swallows me up completely.
* * *
I don’t know how long I’m out. It can’t be long because I wake to the tearing, searing pain of Scott pushing himself inside me. It’s so severe that for a heartbeat I’m stunned into stillness and then I begin to thrash—though I learn quickly that it only makes it worse. One hand is clamped tightly over my mouth and the other holds my arms down at the wrists as he unmercifully drives himself deeper and deeper inside me. I kick out with my legs, but there isn’t a whole lot I can do without causing myself even greater injury, so I merely lie there and wait for the right time to fight back as tears roll down my face to mix with the earth.
Every thrust inside me feels like a knife buried to the hilt. The burn and sting of tender flesh tearing, the crushing weight of his body against mine, I feel it all, until a short time later his rhythm lags. I think he must be close to coming because his eyes roll back in his head and I take that opportunity to use mine, like I should have in the beginning, and I head-butt him. It’s not as hard as I would have liked and it makes my own head throb horribly, but it’s enough to cause a distraction.
Scott tears his hand away from my mouth and cries out in a rage, “You fucking bitch!”
I scream for help. I buck and try to unseat him but all this works about as well as my head-butting skills because Scott uses his hands to hold me down and smiles, “You’re gonna regret that.”
He slams his elbow into my cheek and once again everything fades to black.
Elijah
I’ve been switching channels for well over an hour. The motel doesn’t have AUSTAR and what I can see of the screen is mostly just static fuzz, but I’m still watching it like it’s the most enthralling shit ever. I reach for the bottle on my bedside and swig back a mouthful of Johnnie Walker. Last week I spent so much God damn time drinking at the Sugartown Hotel that, when I wandered in earlier today to get some takeaways, the publican just handed me a bottle, took two hundred dollars from my wallet and I rode home with my new best friend Johnnie to make some bittersweet memories.
Somewhere between the microwaved meal and some fucking stupid Kleenex commercial with puppies, that weirdly has me thinking about Sammy, I think about how much I’m missing Ana. I think about how much it hurts to know that while I’m at work she’s right across the street from me and I can’t bring myself to cross the road, fall to my knees and beg her for fucking forgiveness. I think about the fact that I’ve never met a more infuriating woman, and that I love her so goddamn much it hurts. And then I think about how angry I am that she won’t give this another chance and that, up until now, I’d never met a woman that’d have me sitting around in my room on a Friday night pining for her like a fuckin’ lost puppy.
This is bullshit, I think as I pull on my jeans and yank my jacket from the chair. Ana has made it clear she doesn’t want me. She made that perfectly fucking clear, and the only thing that brings me even the slightest bit of relief is burying myself inside someone else and pretending like Ana Belle doesn’t exist and my every waking thought isn’t consumed by her.
I run a hand through my hair and thumb my keys, hoping I don’t look too shitfaced to get laid. It’s 11.30 pm, but there’s still another half hour before the pub calls last drinks—that’s a whole twenty minutes to find someone to fuck.
I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say Ana won’t go back to the pub for a while. I’ve been there every night for the last three weeks and I’ve never seen her so much as set foot in the place. Not that I blame her; it’s not really where I want to be, either, with the memories of that fucked up night etched into the walls of the place. It’s just that Bob hasn’t been real friendly since I broke his daughter’s heart and the pub is really the only other place I can go to hold a conversation with another adult. Plus, anywhere with liquor is my favourite place to be these days.
Just as I’m reaching for the door I hear a soft knock from the other side. I open it and look at the girl standing on my doorstep, but what I’m seeing doesn’t make sense because Ana is standing on my doorstep looking like she got attacked by a fucking zombie horde.
Her blonde hair is dirty, one side of her face is swollen shut and her clothes are bloody and tattered. My heart hurts just looking at her. My head is spinning, trying to put together a puzzle without any of the goddamn pieces.
“What the fuck happened?”
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispers looking up at me with big roun
d eyes full of hurt.
I can barely breathe. I’m shaking with rage. I’m gonna kill someone. I’m gonna tear their fucking head clean off their shoulders.
I pull her into the room and she falls into my arms and then she falls apart. She sobs into my chest and all I can do is hold her tighter than I ever have and pray that I’m wrong about what I think happened. I’ve seen her cry before, I’ve been the cause of her tears too many times, but I’ve never seen her broken like this. She sounds like a wounded animal, and it’s killing me that she’s not talking.
“Ana, who did this to you?” I’m having trouble keeping a lid on my rage. I’m not good with tamping down my anger, and right now I wanna rip out someone’s fucking heart. Ana doesn’t answer, she just sobs harder.
I’m going fucking crazy wondering what happened to her, wondering who did this and how far they took it, wondering whose skull I have to beat in as payback.
“You gotta talk to me, baby girl,” I plead. “I’m going outta my mind not knowing what happened to you.”
And then she does. She tells me everything and I begin to wish she hadn’t. Every last detail, except for the name of the scumbag that did this, and my heart hurts so much you’d think I was the one who’d been held down and stripped of my virginity and my dignity.
“No. No. No,” I whisper, and slide down the end of the bed. I land hard on the floor with my back pressed against the ratty ensemble and bury my head in my hands as tears sting my eyes.
I know I should be holding it together better than what I am. I should be strong for her and take her in my arms and tell her that I’ll find a way to fix this, too, but I can’t. I haven’t seen her in weeks, at least not up close, but I quickly come to the realisation that this is my fault. That if I hadn’t fucked up so badly she would have been here with me instead of shitfaced at some party with the fucker who did this.
Born to Ride Page 84
