fourteen
rutledge
I tapped end with a fucking smile on my face.
Staring at my cell palmed in my hand, that smile faded. As if it was some kind of infectious substance, I quickly placed it in my back pocket.
She was so far under my skin I was surprised you couldn’t see her image. I couldn’t have her there. Did I want her there? Fuck yeah! I could feel the warmth, the sweetness that was all her soaking into my veins with every syllable that came from those lips. Fuck, her lips. So plump and every time she put the bottle to her mouth, I envisioned them wrapped around my cock. So fucking perfect.
But I didn’t deserve her kind of sweetness in my life.
I just needed to keep reminding myself of that shit and I should be okay or I hoped I’d be.
I needed to exorcise the feeling from my body before dealing with my father. I knew it wasn’t going to be a fucking pleasant conversation; they never were, but after the scene he and Sticks pulled the other day, I couldn’t deal with his shit anymore.
“I’m out,” I shouted to Smitty across the warehouse.
“Rut!” he called, earning my full attention.
“Yeah.”
By the look in his eyes, I knew where this was going. It was his MO to try and give me the calming pep talk right before I went to drop my dad’s cut to him. Money he had no right to even getting. He hadn’t entered Raines Auto Parts Distribution in fucking years. All the old man did was drink his share of the profits, occasionally spending a few bucks on a cheap hooker if he couldn’t entice some drunken chick back to his place.
“Remember you’re you ʼcause of you, not him and—”
I stopped him before he went any further because even though Smitty knew me better than anyone, he didn’t really know me. Not the real me. The demons that housed themselves deep within my bones, the reason for the sleepless nights, and why I preferred my own company. Even sex for me was just meeting a physical need I had. I didn’t need a fucking connection. Didn’t want it.
That was until a certain woman strolled into my life.
“I know,” I cut him off, threw a hand in the air as I walked out of the warehouse bay door.
On the drive over, I tuned out all my emotions by blaring Boston’s ‘More Than A Feeling’. It wasn’t far into the song when I realized who was singing and what that one little word meant to me. A word, a state, that I’d never given thought to until now.
Who really was Peyton Morgan? There’d been so many sides of her that I witnessed. Was she the sassy woman I remember from our first conversations? Was she really the sweet woman I spent the day with when we walked around Heron Creek? Was she the shy almost timid woman I spent time with at the house? Or was she the flirty woman I spent time with at the bar?
Yeah, there was the obvious: a cute, gorgeous woman. A body that caused my fingers to burn when I touched her. During our dance, my hands itched to move down the curve of her hips, straight to her thighs and further.
Those images flew from my head like a plane at take off at the sight of the beat-up motorcycle that sat next to my dad’s equally beat up old van. Sticks was with him—a man I tried to avoid every chance I got.
The Raines and Ogg’s were the founding fathers of Ogg’s Point. Franklin Sticks Ogg—the nickname because the dude had fucking sticks for legs—had been a staple in my life for as long as I could remember. But like many, he was just that, a staple and not a guiding force.
I pulled the truck into the dirt driveway and eyed the dilapidated trailers surrounding my dad’s. Walking up the decrepit wood stairs, I didn’t bother to knock. I walked right in. The smell of alcohol and stale cigarettes burned my nostrils. My gut twisted.
“It’s about time. Where the fuck you been?” my dad slurred.
I ignored him and the sly chuckle that came from Sticks. Asshole. I threw the check onto the beat-up dirty wood table, and looked around. I didn’t think the place could get any worse than the last time I had been there, I was wrong. Alcohol bottles laid around like fixtures, empty beer bottles scattered about like fucking knick-knacks, overflowing ashtrays littering the carpet like dust.
“You gonna answer me, boy?”
“As you already fucking know, I was out of town,” I muttered, trying not to let his words affect me.
I watched as he tried to get up from the worn plaid-fabric couch, stumbling, catching the arm of it to steady himself. “Oh yeah,” he laughed. “Now I remember.” Swaying to the fridge, he grabbed two bottles of beer and slid one across the table my way.
Just what I thought, he hadn’t really remembered what had happened. That was my father. He wreaked havoc around him and being in a drunken stupor most of the time, he never remembered.
“Drink,” he ordered as he sat down and jerked his head toward an empty chair, expecting me to do the same.
I didn’t sit. I didn’t need to be infected by some rare fucking disease. Or even worse, an unidentified STD. As tempting as it was to chug the beer to numb some of the pain being in the presence of my dad, I glided the bottle back to him.
“No,” I told him firmly and asked, “What in the fuck were you doing at grandma’s house?”
Sticks stumbled his way to the table, his grimy fingers curling around the neck of the bottle. “Ain’t letting a good beer go to waste.” He sat in one of the three empty chairs and asked, “You tag that sweet pussy that was there?”
I ignored Sticks when my dad spoke. “Heard through the grapevine you were out there selling the place. So, when do I get my cut?”
I let out a sarcastic chuckle. “You’re fucking kidding, right?”
“No,” he replied, leaning in his chair, almost falling over to grab a pen that sat on the counter. “Why’d you think I went there? For my money.”
“It’s my house.” He didn’t need the reminder, but I gave it to him anyway.
He looked up from the scribbling he was doing on the check and bit out, “And she was my mother.”
I slammed my hand on the table causing them both to jump. “And what would your mother think of you now, Dad?” I didn’t let him answer, I went on as my voice rose in anger. “Trying to scare off potential buyers, you think she’d fucking approve of that shit?”
“Boy, you need to remember who the hell you’re talking to,” he snarled, spit flying from his mouth. “I wasn’t trying to fucking scare anyone. I just want my money.”
“I know exactly who the fuck I’m talking to and—”
“Shirley,” he yelled, cutting me off like I wasn’t even there.
My blood began to boil, rage fueling the fire igniting deep inside. My eyes moved to the hallway as a slim, ill-looking woman came into view.
“Yeah,” Shirley answered. Her eyes turned to me, her gaze settling on the bulge in my pants when she asked, “Who’s this sexy piece of meat?”
“That’s nobody,” my dad replied, handing her the check. “Go deposit that and stop by Al’s on the way back, grab a few cases.”
A nobody? It took years of practice to not let comments like that bother me. But I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t stung just a little. For fuck’s sake, I was human like all the rest.
“You want me to stop by Carl’s place too?” she added.
I was watching them interact like it was a nightmare come to life. And it was. It was my nightmare. One I lived. Daily.
“How low are we?”
Shirley pulled a bag from her pocket and threw it on the table.
He eyed it. “Okay, stop.”
My eyes locked on the small Ziploc bag filled with white powder.
Jesus.
She walked past me reeking of cigarette smoke and blew me a kiss. “If you’re here when I get back, big boy, we can have a lot of fun.” Her eyes trailed down, and again, settled on my cock.
Sticks leaned over in his chair and grabbed her ass. “We can, baby.”
She looked to Sticks, giving him a hoarse chuckle. “You got it.”
It took everything in me to keep down the sandwich I had for lunch.
“Shirl, do your damn job,” my dad shouted to her.
She kept moving, and when the door slammed behind her, I looked to my dad who was now back in the fridge grabbing another beer. I snatched the closest dirty glass and threw it across the room. Sticks flew from his chair, my dad jumped back from the open fridge door, his hand flying out, clutching onto the chair to steady himself.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, boy?” he bellowed.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I didn’t give him time to answer, I threw a hand out, shouting, “I work my fucking ass off to keep this shit going?”
“You run my business, boy. Watch what you say,” he snarled.
“Really?” I yelled. “Pretty fucking funny, Dad, since I hold the majority percentage in the company.”
His brows drew together before surprise took over his aging, drawn features.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“I…” He stumbled, but I didn’t let him continue.
“Yeah, you sold twenty-five percent to Smitty a few years back. I know you’re blitzed out of your mind so let me clarify this for you. That means I own fifty percent, you twenty-five and Smitty twenty-five. So...” I drew out. “Let’s do the math old man. I own the fucking company.” I shouted.
“Yeah, but…” His words faltered. “But that’s my company.”
“It hasn’t been for six years. It’s mine now.” I jabbed a finger at my chest. I gestured to the disgust surrounding me and added, “So like I said, I’m funding all this shit. And wanna hear the real fucking kicker, Dad?”
The horror that flashed across his features was a look I wanted to see there because it was the horror that I held inside and had for a long fucking time. I wanted him to feel it. Feel the fear that everything you had you could lose in a flash because I lived every-fucking-day with that dread. The one woman who would have loved and protected me from the terrors of the world, had left it at the same time I had entered it. I never even got the chance to look into her eyes and feel that comfort a son feels from his mother. Eyes I knew were the color of mine, eyes I only saw in photos.
The only other safe harbor, anchor in my life, had been taken from me suddenly too. No one knew me losing my grandmother at the age of thirteen would affect me the way it did, but they didn’t know that I had found solace in her eyes. The safety and security that I would have seen in my mother’s, I had found in my grandmother’s. And she had no idea she provided that, especially after what happened to me.
I raked my glare over the piece of shit I had left. I couldn’t keep the contempt from my voice. “I’ve been approached by Mickelson’s and their buyout offer is really fucking tempting.”
“You wouldn’t?” He tried for indignant but all I heard was fear.
“I would,” I chuckled, making my way across the stained shag carpet. With my hand on the knob, I turned. “Same time next week?”
“You can’t sell—” he began to shout.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” And I walked out.
***
Two hours later, my back to the headboard, a Jack in one hand, I stared at the cell in my other. I was hoping that when I blew my load in the shower earlier to visions of her laying beneath me—legs spread, a pussy so fucking sweet on display inviting me into her body—that those images would have swirled down the drain with my come.
They hadn’t.
Now I sat, four Jack’s deep, my cock wanting another release, phone in hand, with fingers itching to tap on the screen.
Fuck it.
I stabbed at the screen, maybe in hopes that I’d break it, giving me an excuse not to text her. But it didn’t work.
Me: You get those papers signed?
I stared at the text. Five fucking words. Don’t be a fucking pussy, Rut. I deleted it, tossed my phone onto the bed next to me, and threw an arm over my eyes. I knew damn well she signed the papers, and Herb gave her copies, because then he faxed me mine before calling.
The thought of her ass moving beneath the tight material of her skirt as she strolled down the stone steps of the Inn entered my mind. Slowly pulling the denim up to uncover her perfect body, no panties and lowering myself to my knees, I get a sweet smell of her pussy.
I reached inside my boxer briefs and gripped my hard cock. Visions of her soft smiles filled my head. Her smell. Her voice. Watching her mouth open wide as she brought the burger to it, so many fucking images had popped into my head. Wondering what it’d feel like to have that mouth wrapped around my cock. Her body, so fucking soft and perfect, fitting with mine like a damn glove. The way she walked next to me.
For fuck’s sake, Rut, pull it together.
I didn’t pull it together as I let my mind wander to where I wanted to be. I buried my face between her legs, inhaling the sweet smell. Lightly, I let my tongue explore every fold of her pussy.
Buzz. The cell vibrated, ripping me from the fantasy. I grabbed it like a fucking bitch, my heart slightly racing in hopes her name would be the one lighting the screen. But it was fucking Jessica. And that had my dick deflating in record time. I didn’t even open it. I tossed it back on the other side of the bed and let the whiskey calmly seep deep into my veins, taking over my liver.
It wasn’t long before the amber liquid slowly flowing through me took me under.