Slow Burn

by K. Bromberg

  Fuck a duck.

  My eyes flash up to his, and he sees that I realize I had an audience when I was outside. “Yep.” He nods his head. “I came home in the middle of the action. Sorry, but no man is going to pass up watching a porno going on in his backyard.” He takes a step closer to me as my anger bristles from the invasion of my privacy.

  Yes, I had sex outside, but it was in my backyard, and the only line of sight we were in was from my own house. If it was in any other capacity, I might actually be turned on from the idea of being watched, but Dante’s disdainful approach is making me ill at ease. I curse myself for my carelessness.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t watch for long. Just enough to remind me how fucking hot you are …” My teeth grit when he chuckles again. “Fuck, babe, you gave me a stellar visual. Do you have any clue how fucking hard that made me? A man’s gotta get off, and, God,” he groans as his free hand cups his crotch and adjusts himself, “I could really use the help since you’re standing there like a goddamn vacant motel room waiting to get occupied.”

  Is he fucking serious? I may be overwhelmed with everything, but I’m not stupid enough to fall for this. And as much as I hate his comment, I also welcome the fire it sparks inside of me.

  Hell if I’m not looking for a good fight right now. Anything to occupy my mind and push away everything from the day.

  Bring it on.

  “Sorry, but this isn’t the Sleazy 8 Motel you’re used to. I don’t rent my room by the hour.”

  “Oh, now, there you go, insulting me when you know damn fucking well that I last much more than an hour when I’m renting your room out.” He winks at me with a lopsided grin as he enters the kitchen and pulls another beer from the refrigerator. The hiss of the top coming off fills the silence between us.

  “No vacancy. Not now. Not ever.” I quirk an eyebrow at him, knowing damn well our playful banter has the possibility of turning ugly real quick when it comes to Dante.

  His grin is slow and arrogant, eyebrows raised, eyes taunting me. “Mm-mm-mm. We’ll just have to see about that,” he says, taking another step closer and concentrating on what to say next. “He doesn’t deserve you, Had. He isn’t what you need. Look how fast he bailed after he fucked you … or I should say, you fucked him. Man, you ride a mean cock.” He winks at me as he reaches down to adjust himself, and I watch him, study him, to try to see if he’s joking here or if asshole-I’ve-been-drinking Dante is about to make an appearance.

  He lifts his beer to his lips and downs it in one long swallow, all the while his eyes remain on me. He sets the bottle down with force, the sound echoing through the room, before he closes the final space between us so that he’s standing well inside my personal space.

  Warning bells ring softly in the back of my head, but I shake them off. I’ve been here with Dante before, know I can handle him. Nothing a swift knee to the crotch to prove a point can’t fix since he’s most likely drunk enough that his reflexes are delayed.

  “Well, I’m glad I could provide this evening’s entertainment for you,” I say, trying to defuse the situation. And then I say to myself, “Fuck it.” He most definitely was an asshole for watching us, for taunting me over it. “It’s interesting, though, that you’re so full of criticism, and yet you hid inside, instead of coming out and proving just how much better you are than Becks. You tell me I’m not the same girl you used to know, but I’m thinking you’re not the same guy, either.” I love watching the irritation settle over his features as he tries not to react to my goading. “It’s called growing up, in case you haven’t reached that phase yet.”

  I take a step to the right, but his hand flashes out and grips my upper arm. He steps into me, his alcohol-laced breath hitting the side of my cheek as I stare straight ahead instead of turning my head to meet his eyes.

  “You have no business being with him.” He grates the words out.

  “Well, here’s where you realize that I don’t give a flying fuck what you think. It’s none of your goddamn business how I live my life and what I’m doing. You lost that right when you walked out, leaving me high and dry. I thought we’d already established this fact, no?”

  “It’s not my business, but it’s everyone else’s in the neighborhood’s who can hear you making him come in your backyard? C’mon, Had, I deserve better than that.” He presses his body up against mine, but unlike with Becks, I feel absolutely nothing.

  “Let go.” I snap the words out, liking the predicament less and less by the moment. I try to shrug out of his grasp and find myself pushed against the wall with some force.

  “Uh-uh,” he grunts from the motion, his face closing in on mine again until his mouth is at my ear and his body is flanking mine. “Since you seem to be handing it out like it’s free, I might as well get my piece of your pie.”

  Warning bells sound louder now, and I’m trying hard to keep the panic from reaching my eyes. But I’ve got my wits about me enough to know that I’m alone in my house with a man who can clearly overpower me, so as much as I want to make my move right now, I need to make sure I time it perfectly. The unease I feel tickling at the base of my neck tells me I might only get one shot at this.

  “Have another beer and keep dreaming and it might happen in like … hmm … never.” I laugh at the words, trying to portray confidence that I don’t really have. I ignore his last comment, not wanting to get into any discussion about what he wants from me with our bodies pressed against each other’s.

  “Oh, sweet Haddie,” he murmurs, causing my breath to hitch at Becks’s pet name for me. “What? It’s okay for him to call you that but not me?” He reaches up to trail a finger down my cheek. I fight the shiver of revulsion that courses through me from his unwanted and intrinsically intimate touch. “C’mon … let’s quit dancing around this—you leading me on, turning me on, kissing me, then pushing me away. I mean, shit, I’ve always appreciated a chick that’s hard to get, but it’s not like I haven’t had you before, right? So why the game, babe? Because I’m done playing it and ready to take what I came here for.”

  His comment confuses me, until the myriad feelings inside me collide with one another, until they vaguely start to make sense to me. Startled, I drop my head back and meet his eyes for the first time when the realization hits me. Am I that fucking dumb? Have I been so preoccupied with Becks and then the test and the biopsy results that I didn’t see it all along? And then add to that that the few times Dante and I kissed I was unknowingly fanning the flames of his reason for coming back here: to get back together with me.

  If he had shown up like this months ago, I probably would have brushed his mistakes under the rug and given him a second chance. But now—now there’s Becks. And whatever it is we are, I know it feels like it has the potential to be a hell of a lot stronger than what Dante and I were.

  The sound of Dante sucking in his breath pulls me back to the present, where the expectant look on his face tells me he’s dead serious.

  There will be no taking of anything from me unless it’s my fist in his face.

  “Dante, I think it’s time for you to leave.” My pulse begins to pound in my ears now as he stares at me, jaw clenched, eyes boring into mine, and the muscles of his shoulders and neck rigid with tension. I watch indecision flicker through them as I try to keep my breath even and body language nondefensive.

  “Just like that, huh?” The derision lacing his voice is almost tangible. “I think it’s only fair that I get a fighting chance. You’ve fucked him. Now, you’ll fuck me, and then you can make an educated decision as to who makes you come harder. Simple as that.”

  I struggle with the right words to tell him he’s high as a kite if he thinks I’m having sex with him. Even if I’d wanted to, the oh so romantic way he just informed me I was going to fuck him would have had me locking down my crotch like a bank vault.

  “You’ve got another think coming if you think that fancy line’s going to work on me, Teller.” I try to keep my warning light, jo
king, but I let him know I’m not game with his plan.

  He laughs low and soft again, and there’s just enough edge to it that my throat constricts as I try to swallow. “I think you misunderstand me. I’m not asking you to fuck me. I’m telling you you’re going to. No one turns me down, least of all you….” His voice trails off as he digs his fingers a bit tighter on my arms and leans in so his lips brush over my ear. My nerves are invigorated by his words, my eyes flickering over the room, looking at the dish on the table a few feet from me where my cell sits, beside a vase and my keys. “I’ve been more than patient as you’ve led me on, teased me, taunted me, all the while getting off with him. Well, now it’s my turn to have my say.”

  “Well, if this is your way of having your say, you’re going about it all wrong, Dante. Thanks, but no, thanks.”

  My well of emotions has run empty, and so I meet him stare for stare, refuse to back down because fuck if I’m going to let him push me around. He can take the first flight to hell before I’d willingly hop into bed with him.

  His hand on my arm flexes as he attempts to deal with the rejection. He goes to speak and then stops, does it again, and then before I can react, his mouth is on mine.

  I don’t even let the shock register before I’m shoving against him, my knee coming up and making contact. He grunts when I connect, his lips off mine as he doubles over in pain, the sound of his misery filling the house. I think I hear son of a bitch or maybe him calling me a bitch. I don’t know, and I don’t care because that pull of Dante Teller that’s always been irrefutable to me is no more.

  All I see now is a manipulative prick who didn’t have the balls just to come out and tell me he wanted me back. And then went about trying to prove his point in completely the wrong way. Force? Is he fucking kidding me? Who is this man?

  Being a badass is one thing. Being an asshole is another.

  I rush to the table and grab the phone, my fingers dialing without thought. “Please leave Dante or I’m pushing SEND right now on nine-one-one.”

  He looks up at me, face red, teeth clenched, but disbelief still in his bloodshot eyes. I know he’s had run-ins with the law before, and this is the last thing he’d want. I step forward and pick his keys up from the hall table and take my house key off the ring before throwing them at him. They hit his shoulder and fall to the ground as he keeps groaning.

  “Get out!” I scream at him as the adrenaline starts to fire now that I’m away from him and can physically react to the threats he threw at me.

  He grabs his keys with one hand, his other still on his crotch. It takes a minute, but he hobbles to the front door and fumbles with the handle for a moment before opening it up.

  “I’ll have your shit on the porch later tonight for you to collect.”

  As he walks out, I hear my name as a murmur on his lips, and his tone sounds almost apologetic. A little too fucking late for that. I know he cares about me, know we had something once, but anything there could have been, he just killed by trying to force himself on me, and I think he knows it.

  His lack of a fight tells me.

  He tries to straighten up, his eyes meeting mine, and I see the apology there, but I don’t say another word as I slam the door shut and flip the dead bolt. The minute it’s closed, I sag with my back against the door, my body shaking so badly, I slide down until I’m sitting on the floor.

  I sit there for some time, so many emotions ebbing and flowing that by the time I bring myself to get up, I’m spent emotionally and physically. I drop the phone from my hand and realize that my other is unknowingly and out of habit examining the breast opposite it.

  It always comes back to this. No matter how perfect or how imperfect the person or the situation in my life, at the end of the day, the fate I’m waiting to be dealt is still there, hanging over my head.

  Chapter 25

  “Had, I’m here. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Rylee pulls her sunglasses from her eyes and angles herself so that she can face me. “Something’s up with all the cryptic answers you gave me on where we’re going, why you need me here.”

  I look at my oldest friend and know I need the support and levelheadedness she’ll bring me. “I need you not to be upset with me because I’m already being eaten by guilt for hiding this from you … but just know I had the best intentions for why I didn’t tell you.” I watch the emotions flicker over her face and am reminded of Becks last night, her reaction similar to his in so many ways that I swallow down the double dose of guilt the sight brings me.

  I can see her mind working, can tell she’s withholding the questions fleeting through her eyes, and appreciate her biting her tongue and keeping her need-to-plan-everything-the-hell-out ass quiet. She nods her head at me and says, “Okay.” Her eyebrows narrow as she reaches out and squeezes my hand. “You know I’ll hold your hand through anything, even negative blood test results,” she says, infusing her positivity into a situation she misunderstands.

  “Thank you …” My voice trails off, and it’s all I can say because if I lead her on any further, then I’m just being more of an asshole than I already have been. I have enough on my conscience, and I don’t need to weigh it down any more. “But this is more than a negative blood test result.”

  Her body visibly jars from the suggestion in my comment, fingers squeezing my hand, a gasp of air inhaled. “Had …?”

  “I found a lump, Ry.” My voice is so soft, it’s barely audible, but I know she hears me because she nods her head for me to continue. “I had it biopsied a few days before you got back—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I can tell she’s hurt I didn’t confide in her but also love that she doesn’t address it because she knows this is much bigger than that.

  I lower my head and fight the tears that threaten from disappointing her before I answer. “I know you’re mad at me, but I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t bring myself to make you sad when you deserve all the happiness in the world. I mean, you’d just come back from your honeymoon. I wasn’t going to hit you with this.”

  Her eyes well with tears as she accepts the apology I haven’t managed to put into words. “So you had the biopsy …,” she says, turning the focus back on me. “Now, why are we here? Do you know something already or—”

  “No. Nothing. Results.” I’m reduced to one-word answers as the reality of what’s about to happen hits me. It’s almost as if telling Rylee has made this all real.

  Because she’s my person.

  We stare out the windows of the car for a moment in silence, watching the world around us move on while we think in slow motion. She squeezes my hand one more time and then opens the car door, leading the way, my nerves humming louder with each step we take.

  The waiting room is empty, and yet we still speak in hushed voices about nothing important. Eventually we fall silent, busying ourselves by repeatedly checking social media on our phones. And even though I don’t want him to, the only reason I keep checking is to see if Becks has messaged me. And how screwed-up is it that after the things I said last night, I’m just not sure whether I’m happy or sad about his lack of contact.

  We’re called back after about fifteen minutes and ushered into an office space, where we take a seat across the desk from Dr. Blakely. I make introductions between her and Rylee, and all the while a voice is screaming in my head, You hold my fate in your hands.

  After the niceties are over, Dr. Blakely folds her hands on her desk and looks at me, a soft yet strained smile gracing her lips but not easing the gravity in her expression. I know Rylee notices it too because she reaches over and links her fingers with mine.

  “As you know, when we biopsied the lump, there was a possibility of it coming back cancerous.”

  I grip Ry’s hand tightly because what’s coming next may make or break me. My ears buzz with noise, and my every nerve is on edge, waiting for the doctor to continue.

  “The results came back, Haddie, and I’m sorry to have to tell yo
u that we did find the tumor to be malignant.”

  I freeze—my heart, my hope, my breath—as my world comes crashing down around me. Fragments of my life, my possibilities, my future shatter as they hit the bottom of my empty emotional well, lost to the darkness I can’t see through. The buzzing grows so loud that I see her lips moving but can’t hear her over it. My chest constricts, the pain of drawing in a breath so goddamn difficult, I convince myself it has to be from the parasitic cancer eating at my breasts, invading my lungs, and holding them hostage too. My thoughts spiral out of control. Everything I thought I knew now seems foreign, unknown, scary as hell.

  It’s the lone sob that escapes from Rylee that snaps me back to the present. My tunnel vision zooms onto the sound even though I can’t tear my eyes from Dr. Blakely. Her lips have stopped moving, the concern for me evident in the tears that glisten in her eyes as she allows me to digest what she’s just told me.

  I’m not sure who is holding on tighter, Rylee or myself, but I hear the scrape of her chair and then feel her fighting out of my death grip. I release her hand reluctantly, only to feel her arm go immediately around my shoulders and pull me against the shuddering of her chest.

  I clench my jaw, tell myself to let go, to embrace the numbing cold that feels like it’s beginning to seep into my bones. I rein it in—everything that I can—and lock it away so that I can deal with it at another time.

  The time being never, but lying to myself is just par for the course right now, and frankly I might not be around to suffer the repercussions of my lies, so who the fuck cares?

  As I look back at Dr. Blakely, my voice is loaded with emotion I can’t seem to feel. “Can you please go back and start over because I kind of stopped processing after the word malignant?”

  She nods her head, glancing over to Rylee in a silent thank-you for her support, before bringing her eyes back to mine. “The pathology reports came back showing cancerous cells, and those reports in conjunction with the scans we did lead us to diagnose you with stage two.”