That poor bastard. His life was as big a train wreck as mine.
After making plans to head to Seattle with the crew later, I decided I was going to do it.
I was going to go to George’s funeral.
After all, I didn’t need to be hit on the head with a hammer at that point to realized that life was too precious and precarious not to give her…and us…one last try.
Every nerve ending I’d tried to numb flared to life as soon as I saw her. She was draped in black. So much different than the last time. Then, she’d been naked. My mouth was on her tit, and I knew she was mine. My dick stirred to life at the memory of her body.
The first hit is the most potent, I told myself. Surely, it’ll get easier after this.
April hadn’t been back to work at the Mine since George had passed. I’d texted and left a message offering my condolences, but she never responded. Not that I’d really expected her to. There’d been only silence since that fateful text.
All the subtle details I’d missed before finally seeped in through the layers of denial. I’d been all in, but clearly she hadn’t been. I’d thought about going over to her apartment or out to her mom’s plenty, but Mel seemed to be always hovering around and talking me out of it. She gave me updates I didn’t want to hear, mostly about how April and James were patching things up.
I pulled my lip ring between my teeth tugging a little harder than necessary making my eyes water. I should’ve paid better attention when I’d had her. April had warned me from the beginning that when the husband came back, it would be over between us. She’d certainly been telling the truth about that.
I watched her chin lower as she accepted comfort from someone I didn’t recognize before moving toward the coffin that was raised up and ready to be lowered into the ground. I noticed how frail she seemed barely able to carry the weight of her grief. She was thinner, too. Maybe it was just the dress. But what surprised me the most was the lack of tears. Her expression was completely blank until she placed a white rose on the casket, grimacing with the movement as if her pain was more than just emotional.
The bastard. He’d probably hurt her again. Working things out my ass. The thought that James might be hurting her again made me feel ill. But what could I do about it? You couldn’t help someone who wouldn’t let you. But on the other hand who else even knew what she was suffering? Who else knew? I was here. I had to try to talk to her. I couldn’t just stand back and do nothing.
“Don’t man.” Sager pulled me back as soon as I moved forward. He and I had come to understand each other even better since April had left me and Mel had kicked him to the curb. Misery loved a full playpen for sure, and after that chilling news about War’s mom at the engagement party I doubted we were the only ones in the group reexamining our priorities.
“Let me go,” I growled, trying to shake him off. I wanted a confrontation. As if I needed another reason to want to wreak havoc on James.
“Be smart,” Sager cautioned. “It’s her father’s funeral. There’s still a ton of people left for the graveside service. How’s she gonna react if you bust in all angry and throwing punches?”
That was just it. I didn’t know. I had no idea whether she would be happy, sad, or indifferent to my appearance. All the evidence pointed toward the latter, but at least I’d have my closure. Maybe then I could move on.
Sager stayed with me until nearly everyone had left. He wished me luck and told me he’d see me later. As I crossed the street, a car nearly plowed into me. Asshole driving laid on his horn. Yeah, life was bloody fragile. Thanks, Universe. I already got that memo. By the time I jogged over to her she was stepping into a minivan in the parking lot.
“April,” I called.
Her head whipped around, her beautiful eyes flipping through an array of emotions in such rapid succession that I only caught the last one, the fear as her husband came around the vehicle and put his hand possessively on her shoulder.
The bastard still had her cowering, and that was enough of a reason for me to hurt him. I went straight at him, shoving him backward into the hood pleased to knock the smug look off his face.
“Whoa, cool it,” her mother demanded climbing out of the minivan just as James came up swinging. “This is my husband’s funeral. Show some respect.”
My gaze swung to April. “He’s hurt you, hasn’t he? I can tell. What’d he do to you this time?”
“Nothing.” April paled. “He’s done nothing.”
I noticed James edging closer.
Mrs. Barrie’s eyes narrowed. “Is that true?” she asked her daughter touching her on the arm. “You’re ok, aren’t you? Why would he suggest something like that?”
“I don’t know.” April shook her head. But why was I the only one who noticed that she was favoring her left side?
“She’s lying.” I looked James straight in the eye, daring the bastard to deny it. “This guy gets off on her pain. I’ve seen the bruises.”
Her mom gasped.
“You’re out of your mind,” James snapped. “You’re so desperate you’ll say anything to get her back. But that’s not happening. You need to go.” He lifted his chin and two huge dark suited goons I’d missed bled out of the shadows. Before I had a chance to react they grabbed my arms and dragged me backward.
“April,” I shouted, and she flinched. I saw something flicker in her eyes as she looked at me that I wanted to believe meant she gave a damn.
Say something, Kitten. Please, right now, before it’s too late. Say you belong with me that you can’t stay with him anymore. That you need me as bloody much as I need you.
Her lips parted as if she’d heard my plea and was going to answer, but then James latched onto her arm and pulled her away. It busted something up inside when I saw her lean against him like maybe she wanted to be there.
She got in the van without saying anything, and it was James who looked back over his shoulder, his triumphant eyes declaring his victory, his buddies saying the rest in a way that got his point across and left me with my own bruises to remind me in case I forgot.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dizzy
“Why’d you bring me here?” Missy Rivera asked me with a puzzled frown. “I thought we were going to go back to your hotel.”
“No, I changed my mind.” The same way War had changed his mind and slammed the door on the extracurricular group activity we’d planned for the girls earlier at Miriam’s birthday party. Granted, the mini orgy had been mostly my idea, but my heart hadn’t been in it. Quite frankly, neither had my dick. Both seemed to be working in concert to sabotage every plan I came up with to try to get over April.
Being back in Southside and attending Bryan’s sister’s party with old high school friends like Missy was messing with my head, too, making me think about things I’d rather not remember.
I ran a frustrated hand through my hair as I surveyed my old lady’s apartment, the one Lace and I had survived in until CPS moved us out. The place she lived until she died, her body nothing but an overdosed shell.
The same ratty old couch sat in the center of the room. Same trash. Same needles. Same discarded drug paraphernalia. I don’t know what I came expecting to find. There weren’t any answers here. The entire abandoned building was condemned and scheduled to be imploded, razed to the ground to be replaced with new public housing. The old building was just too messed up to be salvageable.
Like me.
The soles of my boots crunched on the broken glass as I walked through the space that had been my home as a kid. Scenes from the past haunted my mind.
“But why? I wanna stay with you. I’m scared.”
“You can’t, Lace. Stay here.” I shoved her into the cabinet under the sink. “Don’t make a sound, and don’t come out till I get you.”
“Ok.” My five year old sister had looked up at me, her amber eyes round and filled with tears as I closed the door on her.
My old lady’s pimp and his buddies were tw
isted bastards, but at least I’d kept the horror far away from Lace’s innocent ears and eyes.
I managed to protect her then.
But it was ripping me up inside that I couldn’t save April now.
I turned back to Missy. “Let’s get out of here.” My voice was rough reflecting my inner turmoil. “I’ll take you somewhere to get something to eat. I don’t know why I came here.”
“I do,” she said softly.
“Yeah?” I raised an inquiring brow.
She nodded. “I grew up in a place just like this, not far from here.” She looked away. “No matter how far or how fast you run, you can never escape your past.”
I had to agree. Only with April I believed that it could be different. I thought with her I could be someone better. Guess I’d been wrong. She’d rejected me along with that fantasy. In the end, you could take the boy out of Southside, but you couldn’t take Southside out of the boy.
• • •
April
I clicked out of the entertainment website, my throat so tight it hurt like hell. Of course he’d moved on. I should have expected it. What I shouldn’t have done was go looking for proof of it.
Don’t cry, I told myself. You’ve done enough of that lately.
So you got taken in by a handsome face and pretty words. You aren’t the first, and seeing Dizzy with his arm around that beautiful blue eyed brunette, I knew I wouldn’t be the last, either.
At some point I had to stop dreaming about faith and magic and a guy with a sexy grin swooping in to save me. George had it wrong. The key to getting what you wanted wasn’t to be found within some esoteric belief system, but in working the angles and stacking the deck to your own advantage the way my husband did.
“April?” I heard James call from the living room as the front door slammed behind him. “Get in here!”
Shit. I quickly cleared the history on the computer and rose from my chair, hurrying down the hall and into the living room.
“Yes. What do you need?” I pulled my hair back into a ponytail.
“Get me the paper shredder.” He placed his laptop on the coffee table. “And then get me something to eat, and make enough for three. Smith and Lorenzo are coming over.”
“Ok.” I went to the bedroom and brought out the shredder we kept next to the computer desk. He didn’t acknowledge me as I set it on the floor beside him. His brow was furrowed, and his face was glowing from the reflection of the computer screen. I went on to the kitchen and made up sandwiches, the extent of my culinary skills, and was just pulling out a few beers when I heard him let his buddies in.
I noticed their expressions were all serious and that they stopped talking when I placed the food and plates in front of them. Wondering what was up, I glanced a little too long at James’ computer screen.
“April,” James grabbed my hand. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing, I…”
“None of this stuff concerns you,” he cut me off. “Why don’t you go back to the bedroom? Call Tan. Tell him you’re ready to go back to work.”
Immediate joy shot through my body, but I kept my expression neutral. “Alright.” I started toward the bedroom, but he had more to say.
“You stay away from Lowell, or he’s a dead man.”
The joy turned to dread.
“Smith and Lorenzo will go with you to make sure you don’t forget. You understand?”
I turned back around, the blank mask in place, the one that more and more felt like it reflected the real me. “Yes, I do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
April
“I don’t understand.” John gave me a look that told me he wasn’t happy with the turn my story had taken at the end. “Why’d Daniel take Astral back to her parents?”
“That just stinks!” Michael was more direct with his response. He bounced on my mom’s couch and folded his arms over his chest.
I sighed, fiddling with the end of my ponytail. I’d finished the story, but that was the only productive thing I’d done in weeks. I understood how they felt. Sometimes life, like in stories, takes unexpected and unwanted turns.
Sometimes you just had to stop wishing for things that would never happen and just deal.
That was when I set aside the childish notions, making the choice to get on with my life, leaving the fragments of my heart on the living room floor alongside the pieces of my useless cell phone.
Day by day hour by hour I waded through a life that seemed even emptier than before, clinging to my mom and my brothers, the three who never let me down and who I could always count on to be my bright beacons.
James remained the same, a genuine bully to the core. He hadn’t physically hurt me since the night he told me the truth about Dizzy. After that initial display of violence, he only verbally bullied me. When he failed to get the response he was seeking, he gradually lost interest in torturing me. Except when Dizzy had shown up at the funeral. That had rekindled his ire, and he’d given me a reminder that night. Sickened by his renewed attention, I’d showered three times trying to cleanse myself of his taint. I think he believed he’d beaten me. But I knew something that he didn’t.
There was more than one type of bravery. And surviving was mine.
I was really good at it, and that was the way I’d decided to end my story. That was the choice Astral had made. John and Michael would come to understand that eventually.
• • •
Dizzy
I blocked the bitch’s hand before she could put it on me. “No offense, baby. I’ll get you off, but no touching the junk or we’re done.”
“Alright, Duffy,” she slurred in an irritatingly mood killing voice. She wobbled unsteadily in her bright red fuck me heels.
Tonight I was embracing my inner darkness, covering up in it like some scratchy bed bug infested blanket from a seedy by the hour motel.
I don’t know why I’d fought it so long. Except that with April, I’d felt clean for once. Now I was about to hop back into the smelly dumpster of my true life.
This is what you are, I told myself. What you’ll always be. Garbage I was and to garbage I would return like the crack whore that spawned me.
It was stupid to make a play for Shaina Bentley when I’d gone down to Seattle the weekend of War’s mother’s funeral. Shaina wasn’t interested, and I hadn’t been either, not really. It was a dick move, doomed to fail from the start. Like everything else I’d tried to get over April. I had started to be desperate by then.
War was desperate, too, but in a serious long term way when it came to the star of Pinky Swear. He was here. In Vancouver. He’d come right away when I told him his love interest was filming up here, hanging out at the Mine, and getting into all sorts of trouble. He was acting like a man totally possessed, like a guy who’d finally found the real deal. Exactly the way I had been with April.
The bitch with the skirt hitched over her hips wiggled her bony ass to get my attention in the tight quarters of the Mine’s restroom stall. Sighing, I rolled on the condom. The door rattled behind me. “Busy,” I growled glancing over my shoulder and meeting an all too familiar pair of startled jade eyes.
“Shit!” she exclaimed, spinning around.
I knew it was just wishful thinking on my part, but I could have sworn I’d seen more than just a flicker of surprise in her gaze.
“C’mon, Duffy,” the skank squirmed again like she had pubic lice, which was probably the case. “What’s wrong?”
Too many things to list. “Sorry, baby.” I peeled off the condom and tucked my rapidly deflating dick back into my pants. “I just remembered something I forgot.”
She tugged down her skirt and turned, giving me a pouty drunken look. “Oh, yeah. What’s that?”
“That I don’t want you. No offense.”
I left her behind, and saw April just exiting the adjacent restroom. I sped up and grabbed her arm, spinning her around. “What’s you’re hurry? I asked cruelly. “I thought you liked to wa
tch? Or maybe you wanna take a more active role? For old times’ sake?”
Her cheeks flagged with red, and her eyes flashed with the kind of fire I hadn’t seen since we had our thing. I liked that so much better than the indifferent routine she’d given me earlier when she’d started her shift. I’d come to the Mine well aware that tonight was her first night back. Maybe in the recesses of my fucked up mind, I hadn’t really wanted to get laid tonight. Maybe I’d just wanted her to catch me. To be jealous maybe.
“Why the hell not?” I prodded. “Could be magic?” I brought her hand down to my dick that’d gotten hard the minute I’d gotten close enough to catch a whiff of her familiar floral scent. She yanked her arm back, looking nervous as shit as she glanced up and down the crowded hall.
“For you, maybe. I’m over it.” She turned away from me like she was the offended party, and it pissed me the hell off.
I caught her again and got her up against the wall. “I think that’s a lie. You wanna play it that way? Fine.” She squirmed against me, her hands in the center of my chest, and fuck me because I liked them there. I missed that body and that spirit of hers. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and that was all the additional encouragement I needed to be more of an asshole.
I took her mouth and from the first touch of her satiny lips, I was gone, her taste making me remember all the things I’d tried like hell to forget.
She whimpered and her fingers wadded up my shirt, not to push me away, but to pull me closer. She clung to me like she didn’t want to let me go, jumped up, and wrapped her sexy legs around my waist like a vise.
“Get a room,” some grunt in the restroom line called sarcastically, and it was like the green light switched to red. She released me, smoothed a hand over my shirt, and tried to get away.
The Complete Tempest World Box Set Page 123
