CHAPTER FIVE

ZZ: Where the fuck are you?

Rolling my eyes, I typed ZZ back a short text.

Me: Fuck you.

My phone buzzed again.

ZZ: Can’t. You ain’t here.

Me: I’ll be home later.

ZZ: Where the fuck are you?

Me: Since when do you care?

ZZ: Answer me.

“Fucker,” I hissed under my breath.

Narrowing my eyes, I glared down at my phone. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Angry, I punched in exactly two letters.

Me: No.

“Teg?”

My head shot up and I found Hayley, her husband Joe, and our mutual friends, Tara and her boyfriend Tim, and two of Joe’s douche canoe friends, Doug and—Scott? Skip? something with an S—all staring at me.

And Hayley looked seriously annoyed.

“What?” I asked, feeling pretty annoyed myself.

She gestured toward Scott or Skip. “I was just telling Steve how much you appreciate motorcycles and it just so happens that he has one.”

Whoopee. Like I fucking cared.

“Oh yeah?” I said, glancing at Steve. “What kind of ride?”

The douche canoe grinned at me, revealing two perfectly straight and glaringly white rows of teeth.

“A BMW,” he said. “R12—”

“A sports bike?” I interrupted, wrinkling up my nose. “How super gay for you.”

The table went quiet as everyone glanced uncomfortably at one another. Rolling my eyes, I stabbed a piece of tofu on my plate and shoved it in my mouth.

When I’d finished chewing and still no one had yet to speak, I glanced around the table. “What?” I asked. “Sport bikes are for pussies. True fucking story.”

Hayley let out a long-suffering sigh and Joe shook his head. Whatever. I shrugged again and went back to eating.

Exactly one extraordinarily painful half an hour later, I was finally on my way out the door, racing through the night with Hayley hot on my heels.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Are you trying to stay single forever?”

I picked up my speed, suddenly pissed off that both my work and my apartment were within walking distance of Hayley’s home.

“Tegen!” she shouted, breathing hard behind me. “I just want to see you happy!”

“I’m perfectly fucking happy!” I shouted over my shoulder. “In fact, the only thing I’m not happy about is you constantly trying to marry me off to Joe’s douchey friends!”

“You are not happy!” she shouted back. “You are so far from happy!”

Oh, hell no. How dare she?

I came skidding to a stop and spun around. Upon seeing my murderous expression, Hayley froze.

“Stop it,” I hissed. “You don’t get to judge me, you don’t even know the half of it, so you do not get to fucking judge me!”

“I don’t need to know any of it to know that ZZ is the problem! You’re like frozen or something, Teg! What’s the plan here? Are you going to marry him? Or are you just going to have meaningless sex forever? When are you going to really start living?”

I stared at her, fighting back the tears burning behind my eyes. I wasn’t frozen. I fucking wasn’t. I had a life here. I did. I fucking did.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

Hayley’s expression shifted from hard to kind. “Oh, Tegen, honey. Please, I just want you to be happy.”

Happy.

Who was I kidding? Even after all these years, I wasn’t ready to let go. Because if I were, if I really and truly were ready, I wouldn’t still be daydreaming about being on the back of a certain asshole’s bike. I wouldn’t be staring forlornly at passing motorcycles. And I wouldn’t be fucking a man who did nothing but remind me of a life I supposedly wanted to forget. Everything I’d left behind.

But most of all, because he reminded me of…

Shit.

Which meant it was probably time to start being honest with myself, meaning I would finally have to admit what my therapist had been trying to get me to concede for years now.

That ZZ wasn’t just a fill-in, he was a fill-in for something, for someone very specific.

Goddammit, I was still sitting on Cage’s bed the morning after he’d taken my virginity, my heart aching, looking up at him as he looked down at me and said, “It ain’t like that for me, baby.”

Even after all these years.

I left Hayley in the middle of the street staring sadly after me. When I got home, I found ZZ lounging on the couch in his boxers, his cell phone held to his ear with his shoulder, a bottle of Jack in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

I dropped my backpack by the door, kicked off my sandals, and began undressing. By the time I reached him, I was naked.

As I straddled his lap, he stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray and let the bottle fall to the floor. Cupping both my breasts, he squeezed them hard and twisted the soft flesh in his hands until I winced in pain.

“How many?” he asked the person on the other end of his phone call.

“Fuck that, Prez,” he continued. “I can handle it.”

“Fuck me,” I pleaded in a whisper, lowering my face to his, grinding my hips over his, feeling him grow hard as I did.

His grip on my breasts tightened and his dark eyes bored into mine, but he did nothing.

Aggravated, I pushed up and off him and dropped to my knees between his legs. Freeing him from his boxers, I took him into my mouth. ZZ threaded his fingers through my hair, digging into my scalp, grabbing fistfuls and pulling as hard as he could.

Yes. I needed this. Pain to make the pain go away.

“Prez,” ZZ said, sounding strained. “I don’t care how many years he’s been running shit through the Cali territories. If you send that motherfucker out here, I will put a fuckin’ bullet in him.”

Still working him with my mouth, I glanced up at him. He had to be talking about Ripper. Ripper had a house in Los Angeles.

“You think I give a motherfuck about him bein’ your son-in-law?” ZZ hissed. “I ain’t workin’ with him. Not fuckin’ now, not fuckin’ ever.”

I took more of him, worked him harder, lightly grazing him with my teeth, all the while watching him.

“Yeah, I fuckin’ got this shit,” he said hoarsely, looking down at me through hooded eyes. “Listen, Prez. I gotta go.”

Releasing my hair, he grabbed his phone and tossed it aside.

The next thing I knew his hips punched up, sending his dick down the back of my throat. Gagging and cursing, I pushed backward only to have him grab my upper arms and haul me up and onto his lap again.

“How was your date?” he sneered, smelling strongly of liquor.

“It wasn’t a date,” I shot back. “I was at Hayley’s.”

“Yeah?” he said, and laughed. “You expect me to believe she wasn’t tryin’ to hook your ass up with one of those dick-suckin’ friends of hers? Those fuckers who got pussies where their assholes should be?”

He kissed me before I could respond, a brutal kiss, all teeth, biting and sucking on my lips, popping blood vessels, and splitting skin. I closed my eyes, reveling in the pain. I wanted it rough tonight, to make me forget for a few minutes what the span of years could not.

I needed to focus on something, anything but the nagging memories.

I kissed him harder, this time plunging my tongue into his mouth, and a throaty, pleased growl erupted from the back of his throat. “We fuckin’ dirty tonight, baby?” he asked.

“Yes,” I mumbled against his mouth.

“Good,” he grunted, shoving me off him and face first onto the couch. Behind me, he pulled down his boxers and then he pushed against my backside.

“Break’s over,” he muttered.

“Make it hurt,” I whispered into the couch, letting my tears fall freely now that he couldn’t see me.

“Not a fuckin’ problem,” he whispered back.