by Zoey Parker
She had to get away from him.
Breaking the silence, she tried to make her voice heard as the wind went past them. It was a little hard for him to hear her at first, and she had to repeat herself.
“Pull over.”
She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure that the look he had on was blazing. It didn’t take that long for him to retort something back at her, saying, “No.”
The answer was simple, and it just pissed her off all the more. That one word made her remember exactly what kind of problems she had with Darren Saylor, and she wasn’t just going to sit around and put up with this. Especially not now, even if – and it was a big if – a small part of her liked it.
“If you don’t pull over and let me off, I’m going to jump,” she countered.
He didn’t seem like he believed her, so she started to wiggle. She positioned herself like she was about to jump, and waited just seconds for the motorcycle to come to a halt. He began to turn to her even as he slowed down, though, and she knew it was coming:
The talk.
She didn’t let it happen.
He could try to come up with any excuses he wanted. None of them would work on her. She really wanted to be with him; she could feel her body almost singing when it was near him, like her skin was desperate to be in contact with his. She couldn’t forgive him so easily for everything that had just happened to her, though – could she?
There was no way. As soon as the motorcycle slowed down beside a curb she hopped off. She wasn’t sure what part of the city she was in right now, but she didn’t really care. She felt his arm move like he was trying to hold onto her, to keep her from leaving him, but he was too slow. Her feet hit the sidewalk, and she turned to start walking.
His hand grabbed at her wrist, though, and he pulled her to him. She couldn’t walk away, but it wasn’t like she was putting that much effort into it. Still, though, she didn’t turn around to face him. She knew it would drive him crazy.
“Look at me.”
She tried to drag it out for as long as she could. She heard him rise up from the bike, like he was making as if to go to her. Turning around before he could grab her chin and make her look at him, so she still retained some semblance of power, she glared at him. She had no idea what was going through his head right now.
Still, she looked at him. It felt like her eyes were starting to water and she couldn’t understand why. Why was he having such a profound impact on her? She couldn’t even put together the words to properly ask herself that question, but she knew the answer. She was in love with him.
The sunlight was dim and dwindling, as the day fell closer to night than to the afternoon. Her eyes felt like they were starting to water at the edges, and no thin veil of sass was going to be able to keep that from Darren if he went looking.
She looked at his chest, instead of his eyes. It made things easier for her somehow.
But now that she was looking at him, it seemed like he was doing just about everything in his power to keep from actually saying anything to her.
“Well?” She pulled her hand away from him, and she was only a little bit sad to see that he didn’t hold onto her like she’d wished he might have. She crossed both of her arms over her chest. She was aware that doing this made her cleavage a little more noticeable – in their escape from that warehouse, her shirt had fallen just a little bit loose – but that was for the better. Just because she was mad at him didn’t mean she couldn’t be attracted to him, and he was surely still attracted to her.
Still, he didn’t say anything. Until finally: “Are you trying to tell me you’re leaving?” The tone in his voice was the uplifted smile she was looking for, but it still hurt her not to see it.
That was exactly what she was trying to say; she just wasn’t sure how to put the words together, and he’d gone ahead and put them in that way that made everything seem so much worse than it actually was.
“You left me.”
“I did it because I thought it was in your best interest.” His words were sweet, but the way he said it was arrogant – like he knew what was best for her, and like he knew that she would love him taking control like that. She did.
He turned back to his motorcycle. The bike was still in place like it was getting ready to take flight again, and he set the pedal down so it couldn’t escape. He didn’t look at Victoria the entire time, and being ignored was what made her want his attention even more. They both knew this – and he knew that she wouldn’t run away just because his back was turned.
The cursing started just as he knelt, and he turned his head over his shoulder to look at Victoria.
“Fuck’s sake, V.” He shook his head. He smiled a little, but it hurt him to see her so upset. She clearly hated him. So now he couldn’t even begin to tell her how he felt. If he didn’t, though, things were just going to get worse for the two of them, and he might even end up losing her for good.
“What?”
The same was true for her. She didn’t know where this was going; she didn’t even know if he cared, even though she really wanted him to.
“You act like I just left you because I wanted to.”
“Didn’t you?” She raised her eyes to his, having noticed for a while now that he was looking at her. That didn’t mean she needed to return his gaze until she wanted to do it, though, and she wasn’t going to play his game. He could play hers, or they would play nothing at all.
He knew this. They both knew this. His eyes gleamed in the dim light of the sun, and she saw them in a way she never had before. Darren was used to hiding away all traces of the fact that he had feelings. Letting someone in to see them was an entirely new thing completely, and it was intense for both of them. His eyes almost didn’t look human; the feelings he had were damn near visible in his irises, and for a second Victoria had her breath stolen away.
Then her sense came back to her, but the stone wall she'd built around this herself was quickly crumbling away, and she couldn’t keep it up for long. She had to have her answers no matter what – she wasn’t just going to accept this. She was still hurt that he had left her. And while it was great that he had saved her, she was pretty sure she could’ve done that by herself. It would’ve at least saved her some of the mental anguish.
He reached a hand out to her, dragging his palm lightly across her arm. It was barely a touch at all, and he was worried she would pull away from him as he touched her. She didn’t.
“No.” He shook his head.
Seeing him vulnerable was making her believe everything he said to her, which was good. She needed to. As much as she hated having to cope with this, she knew that the alternative wouldn’t be any better. She couldn’t live without Darren. Whatever had happened between the two of them had bonded them together, and she couldn’t imagine just being without him.
She tried to hide her smirk.
She was enjoying letting him make a fool out of himself, and this probably wasn’t something he was likely to do again any time soon. As soon as he noticed that they were both okay, he was going to go back to his usual tough guy veneer.
“V,” he continued. His eyes were getting a little watery, too, and Victoria’s heart pounded at the idea that he might actually…cry? “Look –”
This was too much.
She’d liked it at first, but now the parts of her that felt vindicated just felt sad and maybe even a little guilty. At the same time, she just felt like this entire thing was becoming some kind of train wreck.
“Don’t make an ass of yourself, Darren,” she said. The roles were switching now, but she liked it. If he was going to go sob and cry to her, then she was going to have to play a tougher hand. It might just make him go back to his usual self. The usual Darren was insufferable, but it was still infinitely better than the Darren that was a sobbing, shaking mess. She didn’t want to see that Darren, not right now. Not out here on the street where anyone could see them – that was supposed to happen in privacy.
/> She struggled to keep her mind from wandering back to the bedroom. There was a time for that, and this wasn’t it. That wasn’t an issue, though – as soon as she spoke, Darren looked like he forced himself to pull things together. And then his expression changed. It wasn’t like he was hurt, no, he looked…
Like he was enjoying it.
“You act like you didn’t love it.”
Her eyes instantly went to his eyebrows, checking to see if he had one raised. He did.
“And if I claimed not to?” His hand wasn’t anywhere near her now, and she longed for him to at least be touching her in some way.
“Then I’d ask you how you plan on dealing with this mess by yourself.” His hands still weren’t making a move as if to get near her. “Because you can't deny that it is a mess.”
She also couldn’t deny that she was considering just making do with everything that had been thrown at her, and leaving on her own. Maybe she would stay in the city, maybe she wouldn’t. Either way, it seemed like things weren’t working out for her the way she wanted them to, and Darren couldn’t help. The way he was looking at her – and talking to her – made it seem like he thought he could, though.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
His words brought her back down to earth.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but – “
She didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying. She was focused on staring at a building just ahead of her. Her shoulders started to shake; she was afraid that she would start to cry. This wasn’t a good time to cry – and it probably wasn’t the best move to cry around Darren – but he was making her emotional, and she had to find a way to express it. And tears might do that.
She stared at the lines painted up and down the wall, waiting for him to reach out and touch her. He had to. She wasn’t sure how she would feel if he didn’t.
She didn’t have to worry about it. He moved closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and bringing her to him. It was almost like a hug; it would have been one if he’d just pulled her to him a little more, letting their bodies join. Instead, he just held onto her. The act was vulnerable without being too vulnerable, and it was comforting.
This was too weird.
She pulled away from him, and he immediately had a question for her, but she couldn’t even process it. She wasn’t in the mood to hear it. They were dragging this out too much. They needed to find a way to just get out what they needed to say, but there was no conceivable way they’d be able to pull that off with just words. There was only one thing she could do.
“Shut up and kiss me.”
His lips found hers as soon as the words left her mouth, the heat of his kiss rocking through her and making its way down her body. She curled her toes and reached for him, needing more of him. This kiss was everything that needed to be said between them, and everything that tried to bridge the issues they were having.
Victoria felt part of her heart lift up with him as they kissed. She put both of her arms around him, and he put one of his hands behind her head. Inching his fingers into her hair, he pushed her closer to him. His lips found hers again after a small slip, falling away from the crush of the kiss to say, “Let’s go for a drink.”
Chapter Twenty
Victoria
This was the last place in the world Victoria was expecting Darren to take her to, but when she thought about it, there was really no reason for her to be surprised. She hadn’t been to the bar in a while, and she was worried that her boss wasn’t going to be happy to see her. Even though it hadn’t really been so long since she’d been here, so much had happened since her last shift that she’d almost forgotten the bar’s name.
That didn’t mean she didn’t recognize the sign and the lights popping up all over the bar front, though. It felt like it had been months since her last visit, but the fact of the matter was that it had been only a week or so. It was the longest amount of time since she’d started working there that Victoria Parker had been away from this bar. Seeing it reminded her of everything that had happened, and of the fact that she had no job.
Her arms tightened around Darren's waist. She was behind him on the motorcycle again. She didn’t want to get up and run away, this time – but she was curious about what her old boss would have to say about it, and what her co-workers would think of her. Then she remembered that she didn’t have any co-workers, and that her boss had thrown her to the dogs to deal with all of this herself. If anything, it was primarily her boss’s fault that she even got stuck in this mess in the first place.
She squeezed Darren tight, trying to hug him before having to deal with this. She felt close to him, more attached. It probably had to do with the fact that he came back for her, and that he risked death doing it. She wasn’t mad anymore, and even the way the breeze tickled her hair as she rode on the back of the bike couldn’t faze her. Normally, it would bother her and she would struggle to force her hair to stay still. Now she didn’t really care; she felt close to Darren, and being so near to him was keeping her from being anxious.
If anything, the situation was kind of funny, in a really screwed up way. She didn’t think she would be able to deal with anything like this if it weren’t for Darren. And even though she was standing with Darren through this, this whole experience was only going to end up going one of two ways. Either she’d never be able to stomach anything like this ever again, and she’d become some type of sheltered woman. (She couldn’t picture this happening, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a possibility.) Or she would stop caring about pretty much anything, and just be able to go with the flow of things – like Darren did. This was probably what was going to happen, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
Darren hopped off of the bike first. Extending a hand to her in a show of overly dramatic gentlemanly manners, he pulled her up off of the bike without demanding that she make too much effort herself. She nudged at him playfully, hitting him in the side with her hip.
“I can do things myself, you know,” she said.
He retorted, “And here I thought I was the one going to save you like some kind of princess.”
“I could’ve gotten myself out of it,” she countered, taking his hand in hers after throwing her elbow out at him. “I just let you do it so it could help fuel your massive ego.”
He turned and shot her a look, one that was a combination of mock horror and pain mixed with one of complete arrogance – that is, the look he always wore. Then his face changed to something cornier, with the promise that he was about to say something lewd. No words escaped his mouth, although he did raise both of his eyebrows in an expression mimicking something that was maybe supposed to be sexual.
Pulling his hand away from hers, he stuck it on her back and pushed her forward a little.
“What was that for?”
“It was to get you to walk faster. You’re taking forever.”
Unsurprisingly, since it hadn’t really been as long as it felt, the inside of the bar was exactly the same as it had always been when she’d worked there.
While not as chaotic as when Darren got involved with things, there were still chairs strewn about. She spotted one overturned table in a corner of the room, several men around it. It didn’t look like the table had fallen due to a fight, though. One man sat casually with his legs up on another chair that had been put on his side, and the other three were continuing with business as usual. Beers were being chugged back. There was a faint smoky fog drifting through the air, one of an overdone bacon smoker and not of a cigarette; a half-eaten plate left at the bar told Victoria that some poor soul had gone ahead and ordered food from the bar without thinking about just what that could mean for the state of their insides.
Her eyes ventured to behind the bar, trying to think about what could’ve happened there since she left. There was one girl she’d seen a few times when she was leaving work after a shorter shift, but that girl wasn’t there, and Vict
oria wasn't expecting that woman to have been her replacement anyway. It didn’t look like there was actually a replacement for her at all. Nope – instead, she saw the sight of her old boss standing there behind the bar.
Marcus.
She’d only seen him a handful of times since he’d hired her. He hadn’t noticed her yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t see her eventually. While the bar was somewhat crowded, there were still gaps in the room as people made to move around. Her eyes followed the hazy tell-tale motions of some of the drunks. It wasn’t that late, but already people were gathering in here. She made a point to notice that while some of Darren’s friends were in here, very few of his club were. She suspected that had to do with the rescue mission they’d just gone and dealt with – her rescue mission.
