Slow Burn

by K. Bromberg

  “Confused constantly? My dick begging for more, but my head saying back the fuck up?” The quiet amusement in his voice tells me he gets it, understands where my head’s at right now.

  “Basically.” I scrub my hands over my face. “This is so messed-up.”

  “Yep. And if I wasn’t feeling your pain, I’d be laughing at you too.” I glare at him. “You, pussy perplexed? It’s just too fucking comical for words.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Thank you. I believe I will be getting just that later tonight while you’re here crying in your beer. It’s easier all around if you just admit the Haddie Hex is in full effect.” I roll my eyes at him but stop when he clinks the neck of his beer against mine. “Voodoo, bro. Don’t knock it till you try it.”

  “Ha. Now you’re all for it when a year ago you fought it every step of the way.”

  “Fought it until I realized a voodoo pussy is a grown man’s Lucky Charms.”

  Why the hell is he talking about cereal? “Come again?”

  His flashes me a grin. “Magically delicious.”

  I don’t even fight the laugh that falls from my mouth. Colton Donavan at his finest. “You are so fucked in the head.”

  “And your point is …?”

  “My point is … you’re right. About all of it.”

  His laugh fades as his eyes meet mine over his bottle of beer. “Life hasn’t been easy for her this past year.” His statement is completely matter-of-fact, and as much as I know he’s right, it still fucking sucks. All of this.

  “True”—I bob my head in agreement, synapses trying to fire through the alcohol-induced haze—“but I just don’t get it. Why tell me there’s something between us and then tell me she’d rather have someone else?”

  “And you believe her about the someone else?”

  I look at Colton and try to process the look he’s giving me. His eyes are apologizing, telling me something…. Vague hints of what it might be float in the far-off distance, but I can’t seem to pull them close enough to comprehend. “Her words were about as clear as fucking Crisco.”

  Colton laughs at my pain and the fact that Crisco is anything but clear. Sounded good, anyway.

  “Fuck! All I know is that she said she was working things out with Dante, wanted to give it another shot.”

  “The roommate, the ex-boyfriend?” The startled look on his face rivals how I feel. “Well, all I know is that she’s going through a lot of shit right now and—”

  “What shit?” I immediately recall the look Colton was giving me moments ago. What was he apologizing for? For the fact that Haddie is blowing me off or because he knows something I don’t? “Colton—”

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t wonder boy himself.” The voice off to my right snaps my mind from Colton and ignites my temper like a blowtorch lighting a candle.

  “The ex?” Colton’s voice is low and even as he asks me the question. His eyes tell me to calm the fuck down but his posture says, Fuck off, Dante. Game on.

  “Dante.” I nod my head without even looking at him, knowing if I do that urge I had earlier to push someone else around will come back tenfold. I glance over to Colton and see him checking Dante out, his hand sliding up to the neck of the empty beer bottle in his hand, just in case.

  Gotta love a friend who’s willing to break a longneck for you to have your back.

  “Why are you over here crying in your beer? Is it cuz you fucked the fight out of our little filly?”

  Now that comment has me raising my eyes to meet Dante’s. The warning I flash is met with a matching dare from him. Who the fuck does this guy think he is, and what the hell is he talking about?

  Doesn’t matter. None of it matters except he just disrespected her, and that’s all I need to know.

  You don’t disrespect women. Ever. Whether you’re sleeping with them or not.

  “Leave it,” the king of hot tempers warns from his place across from me in the booth.

  “I’ve got this,” I tell Colton as the adrenaline begins to surge through me, my mind fixating on the asshole and how he deserves everything that’s coming to him if he keeps this shit up.

  Dante’s laugh mocks me. “Apparently you don’t got this.” I’m already sliding out of the booth when he makes the comment. “You might want to brush up on your skills because when I was with Haddie the other night, she sure as hell couldn’t get enough. More I believe was her word of choice.”

  My mind flashes back to Haddie on the kitchen table at the farmhouse, telling me, More, and my synapses don’t need to fire because I don’t even need to think.

  I just react.

  I collide with Dante, moving at full force. I don’t even bother throwing a punch, don’t even think about it because I want the fucker on the ground. And he’s solid, but so am I, when I connect. Our momentum forces us into the table behind him.

  Glass breaking and shouts from afar barely register as we fall to the ground cussing at each other. He gets in the first punch as we scramble for positioning, and I feel the connection, hear the whoosh of air as it escapes my lungs from the kidney punch but don’t feel a goddamn thing. I’m so amped up from the past week that my churning emotions manifest in the impact of my fist as I gain top position.

  The connection of my fist against his gut feels like a small weight is lifted from my shoulders. And fuck does it feel good.

  He lands one.

  I land one.

  He cusses me out in between our fists flying. I don’t even hear what he’s saying because all I think is Keep opening your mouth and give me access to knock those perfect teeth of yours out.

  But the feeling of impact as I land a punch is fleeting because my mind keeps fixating on the fact that he was with Haddie the other night. That she asked him for more when she hasn’t asked me for anything but to leave.

  I see red. Can’t see anything else because my mind is so preoccupied with Haddie, with the idea that this asshole touched her.

  It’s Colton’s harsh call of my name that breaks through my hypnotic fog of anger. It’s his hands I fight off as they try to pull me away from Dante. And I struggle against him, even when I come to my senses and realize that Dante is securely pinned beneath me, face splattered with the same blood staining my knuckles.

  “Goddamn it, Becks! Get off him.” Colton’s strong enough that his arms wrapped around my shoulders prevent me from continuing. “They’re gonna call the cops if you don’t break it up.”

  I grunt in agreement, my breath too labored and my head too filled with rage to answer him. I’d take the cuffs in an instant if it meant that Dante was properly put in his place.

  “You sure?” he asks me, and I nod before he releases his hold on my arms.

  And God strike me dead for lying to my best friend, but the minute he lets my arms go, my fist connects with Dante’s jaw again. The sound of my knuckles hitting him ricochets through my head in a satisfying crunch.

  “Fuckin’ A, Becks!” Colton’s arms are back around me, and this time I struggle even harder, wanting to finish the job. He’s successful in pulling me off Dante, and even as I struggle with Colton, I can still see Dante sitting up, using his torn shirt to wipe some blood from the corner of his mouth. “Calm down.”

  “Let me go!” I argue, ready to lay one on Colton too if need be to get him to release me.

  “Goddamn it, quit fighting me, will ya? They’re calling the cops, dude.” He yanks me up and backward, and I struggle away from him now that I’m on my feet and Dante’s retreated. “Christ! Calm the fuck down.”

  “I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch.” I’m so wrapped up inside my own head right now, so deafened by the buzzing anger, that I don’t even hear him.

  “Killing him’s not going to get rid of her cancer, dude.”

  But I sure as fuck hear that.

  I feel like everything stops—then there’s the quick intake of air as Colton realizes what he’s just told me—but my head doesn’t want to belie
ve it.

  “What did you just say?” The quiet disbelief in my voice is no rival for the rage vibrating through me. I turn my body now to face my oldest friend. I recognize the apology in his eyes, see acknowledgment of the deceit in his body language, and I’m fucking floored. “You knew?”

  “Becks.” It’s that soothing tone that I hate.

  “You knew?” I ask again, my voice escalating as I take a step toward him, hands fisted, jaw clenched.

  “She doesn’t want anyone to know. No one.” He emphasizes the last words so I can hear that he was torn over keeping it from me, but my rational mind isn’t listening.

  My irrational side sure as fuck is, though.

  “So that was a slip?” I shout at him as I take another step closer. “You only told me—let it slip—to calm me the fuck down?”

  He laughs softly, glancing at the space between us and then back at me. “Calm is not quite the word I’d use about you right now.” He takes a step forward as I grit my teeth because being angry at him means I don’t have to process what he’s just told me.

  Haddie has cancer.

  “You want to take a shot at me too, Becks?” He goads me, sacrificing himself so I don’t fly off the handle and take it all out on someone else. He lifts his chin and taps at it. “Right here, fucker. Dare you. But I bet your ass it’s not going to do a goddamn thing to help Haddie.”

  “Make me feel better, though.” I grumble the words at him, anger still riding high but the oh fuck aspect starting to take over.

  Colton judges me for a minute as I stand there stunned, fists loosening, mind scrambling to grasp the magnitude of what he’s just told me.

  Trying to understand how Had’s feeling. Why she doesn’t want me to know? The fear she’s facing alone.

  My friend approaches me, defense in his posture but sympathy in his eyes. He puts a hand on my shoulder and directs me toward the booth and then pushes me to sit down. “You didn’t tell me.” I say again, the only concept I’m choosing to grasp right now.

  He blows out a loud sigh as he sits across from me and motions to Viv with his hand to come near. “I know—it fucking blows—and I’m sorry, but, dude, I’m married now. I promised Ry. I was put in a fuck-all spot between you and her.”

  “And she is the one sucking your dick. I get it.” I say the words, knowing they’re crass and not caring because I’m still amped up on adrenaline.

  “Let me know when your mouth is done running and using up all your energy so I can kick your ass for talking about Rylee like that.” The warning is delivered loud and clear. “It seems to me you still have some fight left in you. I promise you I have a harder left than that fucker does,” he says, lifting his chin toward the other side of the bar, where Dante is nursing his bloody nose, the bouncer at his side, coaxing him out the door.

  “Sorry…. This whole thing blows…. I’m just …” Colton nods his head at me in acknowledgment, forgiveness laced with the guilt that’s eating at him reflected in his eyes. And it makes me feel a tad better to see it there. Like teeny tiny. I grab my right wrist with my left hand and flex it. The fucker hurts like a bitch from punching Dante.

  “Fuck.” He blows the word out, making it sound exactly how I feel.

  “What can I get you, boys?” Viv’s back and in front of us, trying to act like everything is normal—like the melee never happened—and I just hang my head, drowning in my own thoughts, too occupied to be embarrassed.

  “Macallan neat,” Colton says, my shoulders tensing at the significance of his request.

  “One shot for each of you, handsome?”

  “Two glasses, one bottle, please. And a bag of ice for his hand.”

  Both Viv and I raise our heads and look at Colton, her for the tip she might be getting and me because I don’t want to sit here and drink. I want Colton to drive me to Haddie’s. Like ten fucking minutes ago.

  “That’s pretty pricey for—”

  “Not a problem. Thanks,” Colton says with a flash of his “public” smile as he dismisses her.

  “Thanks, Wood, but I don’t want to drink anymore. I need you to bring me to see Haddie.” I start to stand, and Colton is up just as fast, his hand on my shoulder pushing me back down, before I can even get steady.

  “No can do, brother.” He gives my shoulder an extra shove before he sits back down. “First off, you’re drunk. Not a smart move to show up at her house right now. Alcohol makes you say shit, man … like profess your love when the last thing she wants to hear out of your mouth now is that you love her, … She’d think it’s out of pity, …”

  I keep staring at the table as Viv slides two glasses in front of us. She starts to pour, and Colton tells her thanks but takes the bottle and pours them himself so that we have privacy.

  He slides the bag of ice over to me, but I just look at it. I deserve the pain in my hand. Haddie has cancer. Her hurt’s going to be a whole lot worse. I wish a simple bag of ice could fix it for her.

  “… you telling her that means you’re only doing it because she’s sick. Not because you really feel that way.”

  I wince at the word sick and then blow out a breath, knowing he’s right … that the last thing she needs is me drunk and blubbering all over her. But, Christ, all I want to do right now is see her, touch her, talk to her.

  He pushes the glass in my hand and wraps my fingers around it when I don’t respond. But if I don’t drink, then I sober up faster, and get to see her that much sooner.

  “I already told her.” The words come out in a whisper as I stare at the Macallan in my glass. I don’t even realize I’ve said the words until Colton sputters beside me.

  “Fuck me, dude. I think we’re going to need another bottle of this shit.” He taps his glass against mine. “Bottoms up.”

  I’m on autopilot as I swallow the Scotch. It’s a shame to waste it on me right now. I don’t appreciate the taste or how damn smooth it is because all I keep thinking about is Haddie.

  The neck of the bottle clinks as Colton refills our glasses. “Breathe, brother,” he tells me, my fingers gripping the glass so hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter in my hand.

  “What am I … how am …” I blow out a breath in frustration because I can’t process the thoughts whipping through my mind fast enough.

  “Ry’s with her. She seems to be dealing, you know. She’s a tough chick, Daniels.”

  “Yeah, but fuck …” I can’t even speak in complete sentences. I toss back the second pour of the Macallan. This time the burn’s a little less, and the warmth’s a little more.

  “I know, Becks.” It’s all he can really say, and I appreciate the fact he’s not bullshitting me, telling me she’s going to be okay, telling me I’m a stupid fucker for going and falling for her.

  My eyes burn just as much as my throat right now. So many questions I want—no need—to ask her, and the one in the forefront is like a ghost that keeps slipping through my fingers. The alcohol dims my logic enough to figure out what the hell my subconscious is trying to tell me, but my mind isn’t grasping it.

  “She kicked Dante out last week.”

  Well, fuck. That works. I can’t think straight enough to figure it out. The question is just out of reach.

  “She’s not with him?”

  “Nah … kicked him out. He either was just fucking with you because he’s jealous or he really tried to get in her pants and she gave him the boot … and if that’s the case, I should have added a fist to his face too.”

  Relief rushes through me. And then confusion followed by anger again. She’s all alone? What the fuck? Shit’s being thrown at me so fast right now, I’m having a hard time coming to terms with any of it.

  And then it hits me like a goddamn bulldozer. She knew. She fucking knew that night. She was pushing me away, trying to protect me, choosing for me. Just like I told her not to.

  Well, fuck that.

  I shove up out of the booth again. My vision goes black, and the whole room pulls m
e into its tumultuous tornado of darkness and stars.

  “Woah. Easy. Easy.”

  I hear Colton’s voice. Feel his hands on me, but I can’t focus. The seat’s beneath my knees again, and my stomach lurches into my throat momentarily until I can swallow the bile and the gallon of alcohol back down.

  “I need to see her,” I plead with him. Because even though I’m so shit-faced I can’t stand, my stubborn stupidity keeps hitting me in the face over and over. How could I not have seen right through her and what she said to me? How could I have been such an idiot?

  “I know you do but not till the morning. You’re sleeping with me tonight,” he chuckles, trying to lighten the mood.

  “When hell freezes over.” I mutter, but just maybe it has because, holy shit, Haddie really is sick.

  “I think it already has, dude.”

  I snap my head up as fast as I can without making the earth tumble and fall around me again. “What?”

  He clinks his glass against mine and throws back the swallow of amber liquid. “You love her? What the fuck is up with that? I got you were dipping your wick, but now you want a permanent place to burn your candle?” He shakes his head and laughs before resting it back on the booth behind him.

  I can’t help the laugh that falls from my lips, grateful for his random humor right now. “Candle?”

  “Mm-hmm.” He’s buzzed enough now that he doesn’t continue the train of thought. Instead we fall back in silence, our eyes closed, heads fuzzy, and glasses empty. “Got quarter of a bottle left. We finish it off, get Sammy to drive us back to my place,” he says, referring to his bodyguard and sometime driver. “We’ll sleep it off, you’ll get a clearer head, and then you go see her tomorrow and fight like fuck to prove you want to be a part of her life. Sick or not sick.”

  I choke back the emotion clogging my throat, stunned by my best friend’s ability to know this is what I need to hear when he’s never been good with emotions or relationships.

  And from just hearing the word sick out loud in reference to Haddie.

  “Yeah.” The word is barely a sound as it passes past my lips.

  “She’s gonna beat this, Daniels.”