Sobbing.
Hating that I couldn’t stop the terror from taking hold.
Hating the words that fumbled from my mouth.
That I pled.
That I begged.
“Please. No. Oh, God, please, I’ll do anything.”
Anything.
Because it was the brutal truth of the horrible matter.
Iwouldn’trather die than let Timothy Roth touch me.
20
Rex
Iwas going to lose my fuckin’ head. I stormed through my kitchen, raking my fingers through my hair like it might stand the chance of calming me down.
Frankie was having her usual Friday night sleepover at my mom’s, and I was supposed to be heading out to meet up with Kale to grab a bite to eat, after which no doubt we’d end up at the bar so we could hang out with Ollie for a few hours.
But there I was.
Fuming.
I had no claim. No right to think of that girl as mine. That didn’t mean my heart and body and mind weren’t screaming it when the piece of shit who’d been giving her a hard time at Olive’s a few weeks back pulled into her driveway. When he stumbled out of his shiny silver Mercedes and staggered up the inclined bank toward the deck steps.
What the hell was she thinking? Messing around with that scumbag?
My brain spun with a shit-ton of possibilities I didn’t want to entertain.
Had she gone back to the bar on a night I hadn’t been there and run into this douche and decided to give it a go? Had she given him her number that night? Had something been going on all along?
No. I knew better than that. There was no chance she’d been fucking around with him before I’d been a complete bastard and pushed her away.
My thoughts headed south.
Right to that mouth.
That fucking mouth that had been wrapped around me two weeks ago.
Warm and wet and sucking me deep, the girl on her knees like some kind of offering.
A sacrifice.
Somehow, I’d gotten that was what it’d been. That she’d been cutting herself wide open. Letting me take and use and exploit.
And I’d wanted it. Wanted it so badly. Wantedherso badly. But how the fuck could I do that to her? Not when I still couldn’t make sense of the disaster zone that was my heart. Not when I was locked up in bullshit chains that she didn’t need to be tied to. The last two weeks had been torture, pretending she wasn’t right there, across the street. That I didn’t care when there was a fucking uproar demolishing my insides.
I made another pass through my kitchen, peering out the window like some deranged ex-boyfriend.
Did I actually think that asshat was any worse than I was?
Shit.
