Ready to Love

by Franca Storm

  “Write about it in your diary.”

  He cocks an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re seriously shutting me down here?”

  “She’s in the band.”

  He rolls his eyes. And then he leans forward and lowers his voice as he tells me, “That stuck up, prim and proper princess thing is just an act. She likes it dirty—real dirty. She—”

  I hold up my hand. “Stop.”

  A sudden buzzing on the table interrupts us. I glance at the phone vibrating on the edge of the table. Nicki’s phone. She left it here last night when she’d called Chloe to let her know that everything was okay between her and me after the incident at the pub.

  I scramble to silence the annoying noise before it wakes her up.

  The buzzing stops before I get the chance to figure out how to shut it down. Just as I breathe a sigh of relief it starts up again. Come on!

  I flip open the phone and it stops immediately. The damn thing opens right into a text. Shit, she must have it on open-to-answer mode. Now she’s gonna think I read her messages.

  I’m about to just close it when something catches my eye. The phone number. I know it well. It’s burned into my memory. It was Nicki’s home number. Now it’s just her mom’s. Her mom is messaging her? I can’t help myself; I read the message: Please stop ignoring me, Nicola. This is important. You need to listen to me. Call me back ASAP.

  “John?” Mitch says.

  “You’re good at this shit. Can you mark this thing as unread?” I ask, worriedly. She’s gonna kill me if she knows I read it. She’ll think I’m interfering again when it comes to her mom. I can’t believe that bitch is contacting her. That’s never a good thing. The question is: why? Nicki doesn’t need her bullshit. She hasn’t moved past what happened with her mom. A few weeks back was proof of that. The way she’d reacted when her mom had called her by going to that frat party and getting wasted and putting herself in danger.

  “John, I doubt I can do that. It’s a text message, not an email,” Mitch cautions me, although he snatches the phone from me anyway.

  “Try. And hurry.”

  “Christ. Calm down,” he says, scrolling through her phone and doing God knows what.

  “Any reason why you’re going through my phone, Mitch?”

  He looks up from the phone, his face white as a sheet. He looks guilty as sin. Oh, great job, buddy. I twist my body around on my chair to see Nicki standing right behind me. She grips my chair and leans in to kiss me.

  “Hey,” she says, in that cute little shy way of hers. And then she focuses her attention back on Mitch. She raises her eyebrows.

  Shit. “He was—” I begin. But he cuts me off.

  “Your phone was going off. I was trying to turn it off when I accidentally opened a new text. I’m trying to…make it look like that didn’t happen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Wow, okay. Relax. I believe you,” she says, holding out her hand for the phone.

  Mitch hands it to her. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Of course. It’s just a phone. It’s not like you were reading my diary,” she says with a chuckle.

  Yeah, right. If she’d caught me with it, we’d be in a hell of a fight right now. But she just lets Mitch off? Lucky bastard. “You have a diary?” I ask, reaching for her free hand and squeezing it gently. She looks at me curiously. “What?”

  “Just not used to you looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh God. Cut it out,” Mitch complains. “Puppy dog eyes, man,” he tells me.

  I laugh and rub my thumb in small circles over the back of her hand. She gasps, her eyelashes start fluttering rapidly, and she blushes beet red. Lately, since things started getting sexual between us, I’ve noticed that’s her turned on look. So damn cute.

  She tries to move away, but I grab her hips and pull her onto my lap, needing her closer. I tighten my arm around her waist possessively.

  “John,” she complains, eyeing Mitch uncomfortably.

  I ignore her, cuz I’m not ready to lose the contact with her yet. I pick up where we left off a second ago. “So, about this diary. You don’t have one.”

  She ruffles my hair and tells me. “You think you know me so well.”

  “Oh, I do.” I lean into her ear and whisper, “Especially after last night.”

  Mitch clears his throat noisily. “Seriously?” he grunts.

  “Sorry,” Nicki says. She snatches up his coffee cup and takes a sip, before putting it down and opening her phone to read her message.

  Mitch and I exchange a worried glance.

  I hear her grunt with annoyance and then flip her phone closed. Her body tenses in my arms.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. Of course, I already damn well know. That bitch mother of hers.

  “Nothing,” she says, turning her head to look at me and flashing me a smile that I know is fake. Her gaze wavers as she lies straight to my face, “Nothing to worry about.”

  She struggles in my hold. “I have to go.”

  “What?”

  “John!” she complains, “Let go.”

  I pull my arm away and she slides off my lap.

  “You’re leaving? Right now?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  I push back my chair and grab hold of her arm to stop her escape. “Stay. We’ll go out for breakfast.”

  She leans in and whispers so that Mitch can’t hear. “Last night meant a lot to me. There’s just something I need to do. We’ll go out later okay?”

  Does she really think I don’t know what the something-I-need-to-do is? She’s gonna go deal with her mom and I don’t want her to. Fuck, but short of tying her down right now, I can’t exactly stop her and there’s no way she’ll let me come along. She knows how much hatred there is between me and her mom. “Fine,” I grunt. “Later then.”

  She kisses me quickly on the cheek before hurrying out of the apartment.

  “Fuck,” I mutter. Be careful, baby.

  Chapter 27

  ~John~

  “Are you listening?” Mitch demands, slapping my arm as we walk over to my truck in the parking lot.

  “Shit. Yeah, I’m listening.”

  He steps into my path, folding his arms across his chest. “Then what did I say?”

  “Something about…the movie. Yeah, something about the movie.”

  He smiles with amusement. “Yeah, but that’s a lucky fucking guess. I said; it’s been too long. We’ve been ignoring our pact lately.”

  Our pact is that we see every single superhero movie that comes out together on the opening weekend. No one else. No women. Just us. We’ve had the pact since the first year of college. “We have,” I agree.

  “Yeah, we have. So no talking about girls and no thinking about them either. Yeah?”

  I nod, but what he’s asking is easier said than done right now. I’m worried about Nicki and this thing with her mom. I can’t get it out of my head until she finally texts me to let me know she’s okay. But Mitch is right. The two of us haven’t hung out for a while so I need to keep my mind here and not elsewhere.

  “So the movie and then we hit the pub?” I ask.

  He smiles. “Sounds good.”

  As we make our way across the parking lot, he tells me, “I checked the band website and we’re getting some good traffic now. Ever since we uploaded those demos.”

  That gets my full attention. “Good. I’m working on getting us some non-campus gigs too. We need more exposure outside of college. We’ve done all we’re gonna do around here.”

  “Sweet. Like the city circuits?”

  “Exactly.”

  We reach my truck. I pull out my keys and disable the alarm. As I reach the driver’s side, something stops me. A note on the windshield, held there by the wipers. What the hell? I snatch it up. It’s folded with just my name on the front. I open it and read: Johnny boy. The truck was just foreplay. This isn’t over. I warned you not to cross
me.

  “Come on.” How persistent is this psycho?

  Mitch snatches the note out of my hand. “Shit. There’ve been rumors going around about Axel being a complete head case since we walked onto campus, but here’s the proof.” He hands the note back to me. “What do you wanna do?”

  I haul open the driver’s door and gesture to the passenger side. “Get in. We’re gonna make a pit stop before the movie.”

  ***

  I wait patiently for someone to answer the door to the frat house.

  “You seem…calm,” Mitch says from beside me.

  “I am.”

  Before he can say another word, the door is opened by Blake. “John. This is…a surprise.”

  “Where’s Axel?” I demand. I might be calm enough right now to actually take the time to knock on the door rather than kicking the damned thing in, but there’s a limit. And making small talk is beyond that.

  “Why?” Blake asks. I can see the concern all over his face. I’m not surprised, seeing as though every time Axel and I are anywhere near each other, we fight.

  “This is why,” I say, shoving Axel’s note at him.

  He grabs hold of it and scans it quickly. He blows out a breath and shakes his head. “Unbelievable. Look, I’ll talk to him, John. Okay?” He hands it back to me.

  “That won’t do it.”

  “I can’t let you in here to use one of my guys as a punching bag. You know that.”

  “I’m here to talk.”

  He seems stunned. He looks at Mitch. “Do you believe it?”

  Mitch nods. “He’s actually calm right now. This isn’t fight mode with him.”

  I cock an eyebrow at Blake. “See? Let me in, man.”

  “He’s out on the patio,” he says, finally stepping aside.

  I nod and stride into the house with Mitch following close behind.

  “Mitch stays with you the entire time!” Blake calls out.

  I raise my hand in the air. “You got it.”

  With Mitch right behind me, I push through the patio doors at the rear of the kitchen and into the backyard where, sure enough, Axel is sitting reading a newspaper and drinking from a bottle of scotch beside his half-empty glass on a patio table.

  I pull out the chair opposite him, spin it around and straddle it backwards, glaring at the fucker while Mitch hangs back to give me some room.

  Axel smirks at me as he looks up. “Johnny boy.”

  I drop the note onto his newspaper. “It is over. This thing between us is done. We’re even.”

  “Even?” he asks, amused. “You attacked me twice, beat the shit out of my friends, stole my girl and humiliated me.”

  “And you’ve come at me more than enough to make us even, Craven.”

  He leans back in his chair and studies me. “Shit, you’re afraid, aren’t you?”

  “What?” I snap. “No one’s afraid of you.”

  “Not of me. Of what you might do.”

  “You talk a lot of shit.”

  He smiles. “Since this little feud escalated, I’ve looked into you, Johnny boy.” He leans across the table, his eyes boring into mine. “Didn’t you almost kill a man once?”

  Hearing those words, having that awful day thrown in my face so out of the blue like this, really catches me off guard. I can’t keep the shock and pain from my face. His eyes flash with victory as he notices. I attempt a recovery, clearing my suddenly dry throat as I tell him, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You couldn’t control it could you? That nasty temper of yours? You were prepared to kill a man. Now that’s fucked up. Tell me; how did he survive? Did she stop you?”

  My eyes narrow. “You little shit.”

  His hand grips mine suddenly. Roughly, his pretty boy nails digging into my skin. I growl low in my throat. But I don’t make a move. I can’t. I can’t risk it.

  “What’s the matter? Pull your hand away,” he challenges.

  “Axel. Stop!” Mitch commands, coming closer.

  Axel ignores him and tells me, “You can’t, can you? You can’t just walk away, because that would be submitting; allowing someone else to have power over you. But you also can’t react, because one shot isn’t enough. You’re afraid you won’t be able to stop. And so here we are with you frozen in place trying to fight yourself.”

  Before I can get a word out, Mitch intervenes and rips Axel’s hand off mine. He grabs me by the shoulders and hauls me out of the chair, because I’m sinking under the weight of Axel’s words. The guy has done his research. He’s just outlined my worst fears.

  “He’s stopped plenty of times with you,” Mitch says.

  “But it takes a hell of a lot of effort,” Axel fires back. “More than any normal person needs. He has a problem and he knows it.”

  “This conversation is over,” Mitch tells him.

  But Axel isn’t the least bit deterred, cuz he knows he has me on the ropes now.

  “Tell me, John. What happens when she makes you lose your temper? Will you be able to control yourself? It’s a split second reaction, isn’t it? How can you guarantee it?”

  “I would never hurt her, you fuck!”

  “John, let’s go. Ignore him,” Mitch urges, pulling me away.

  “You’re the same as him, John. The same as Greg,” Axel calls out.

  I stop in my tracks, resisting Mitch’s pull.

  “That’s right. I know everything. As you know, money can buy you anything. In my case: information. In yours: no jail time for almost killing a man who is just like you.”

  I snap and lunge across the table at him. “You piece of shit! Don’t you dare compare me to that asshole!”

  My hands are around his neck before I can even register it.

  “You’re just proving my point,” he chokes out.

  His words jolt me out of my suffocating state of rage and I loosen my grip. Mitch does the rest, wrapping his arms around my chest and pulling me back. I let him.

  “Be seeing you around, Johnny boy,” he shouts as we glare at one another before Mitch pulls me around the corner and back into the house.

  “I’m good. I’m good,” I tell him, holding up my hands.

  He releases me and I slump against the wall. I feel sick to my stomach. Axel really managed to get into my head. And I hate it. But what I hate more, what nags at me, is the fear that he could be right. How much control do I really have over myself? I almost killed Nicki’s stepfather, Greg. I didn’t want to stop. I was so far gone. If she hadn’t been there, I know I would’ve killed him.

  “Fuck,” I breathe, sliding down the wall and cradling my face in my hands.

  Mitch kneels beside me and lays his hand on my shoulder. “He was wrong about Nicki. You would never lay a hand on her. She’s everything to you. You don’t have it in you to hurt her. Please tell me you know that; that you know he was just fucking with you?”

  I know Mitch is right about that part. I would never hurt Nicki. But the rest? Can I control it around other people like my enemies; Axel and whoever else may cross me one day?

  I honestly don’t know. And it scares the shit out of me.

  Chapter 28

  ~Nicki~

  I draw in a calming breath as I walk into the diner right around the corner from where I used to live as a kid. Being in this neighborhood again is a painful shock to my system. It’s been two years since I last set foot anywhere near this run down hell hole. The day I’d stood on her doorstep and told her I never wanted to see or hear from her again; that I was going to college to work on building a better life for myself away from all of the shit of my childhood. A childhood that had very nearly killed me.

  “Nicola?” a nervous voice calls to me.

  I follow the all-too-familiar voice to see her standing there, bent over an empty table, the cloth in her hand frozen on its surface.

  “Mom,” I manage.

  As much as I’d told myself I was prepared for this, just the sight of her makes my skin
crawl.

  Although it’s only been two years, she looks a lot older. Her face is like hard leather now with so many wrinkles etched into her skin. Her eyes are empty, like all the light has gone out in them. She’s still dressing like a skank. Her white V-neck t-shirt is so low-cut that her boobs are almost spilling out of it. Her dirtied server apron is longer than her tiny denim skirt that’s revealing far too much when she bends over, giving the customers an eyeful. She’s still using the same ridiculous tactics to attract men; the usual sleazebags she hops into bed with hoping that they’ll actually take care of her. Not the way to make that happen, Mom.

  She straightens herself and nervously pats her platinum-blonde curls. She studies me intently for several seconds. I flinch under her gaze. I hate her looking at me. I shift my weight and adjust my black leather jacket before pulling one of my knee-high boots up on my jeans.

  She finally looks away and calls out to another server standing behind the counter, “I’m taking my break. Back in ten.”

  I turn around and walk out of the diner. Leaning against the wall, my arms folded across my chest in a much-needed defensive pose, I watch as she emerges.

  “Nicola—”

  “It’s Nicki,” I snap.

  She winces at my harsh tone and says, “I’m sorry. Nicki. I can’t believe you came down here. You came to see me.”

  “I didn’t come here for a social visit,” I correct her.

  “I’ve missed you,” she says, moving closer to me.

  “No. Stay where you are.”

  She gazes at me sadly and shakes her head. “Nicki, please.” Her voice is thick with pain.

  “No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to beg me to take it easy on you. After what you did to me, what you—”

  “I know!” she cries. “I know, Nicki. And I’m so sorry. I should’ve listened to you when you told me what he—”

  “Don’t!”

  “I need you to believe me.”

  “Why? So I can forgive you? Ease your guilty conscience? I don’t think so, Mom. I have to live with what you let him do to me every day. Do you know what that’s like? Do you?”