“Girl, you know me so well,” I said as I took a seat. “I just fucking hate that it’s the only thing in my life that seems to be working right now.”
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
“Well, let’s see. Connor’s a tool. Or maybe I’m the tool, literally, being manipulated and used for what he wants. You need to see this fucking text. Here. Look!”
I handed my phone to Justine with the text message pulled up. I hadn’t written anything back yet, but mostly that was because I was too pissed off to say anything. I also wanted a little bit of alcohol in me before I spoke; I figured the meaner I could be to this asshole, the better I would feel.
“Wow, I’m sorry,” Justine said. “Did you have any inkling that would happen?”
“No!” I said. “And that’s the bizarre thing. It would have been one thing if he had just faked being nice and sweet to get in my pants. But he told me some seriously fucked up shit from before. Apparently, guy used to be a real fat kid and got used by some of the hot bitches at his school.”
Justine recoiled in surprise.
“Said he was an awkward goody-two-shoes in middle and early high school before he moved down here. When he got here, said he got a whole bunch of tattoos, learned to fight, did whatever he could to be tough. But he was honest about that part of him before.”
“Wait, we’re both talking about Connor from the Black Reapers, right?” Justine said, almost sounding like she was refusing to believe it. “As in, Connor, the tatted-up guy who never smiles and has floppy hair?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “The one who fucked my brains out and then crushed my soul.”
“Jesus. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m right there with you when I say screw them.”
“Preach, sister,” I said, holding up my glass and clinking with hers. “You never have talked much about that night with Brock.”
Justine shook her head. She was, not surprisingly, far more guarded about her dating and sex life than the rest of us. The only reason I had even found out in the first place was because Tara had noted her car was there when she went to get Brock out of jail that one day. In the times when I’d brought it up before, she had refused to confirm or deny it.
But she was quite willing to empathize with me now.
“He was nice,” she said. “Was. Sweet talked me. Said he’d never seen anyone like me. I never did anything like that, much less with a biker, but…I don’t know. He seemed different.”
“Funny enough, he is,” I said. “But only relative to other bikers.”
“So still an asshole,” Justine said, followed by a bittersweet laugh. “Yeah, it was like what you experienced. Maybe a little friendlier and more polite than Connor was, and…honestly, Brock didn’t act as vulnerable. He just complimented me a lot and found the right buttons to press.”
Shitheads. All of them.
“I don’t know what the Rogers girls see in them,” I said. “At least Hannah grew up in that world.”
“I mean, if you take away their shitty behavior, I could see the appeal.”
“What?”
I hadn’t expected that from Justine. Yes, she was the most empathetic and the kindest of all of the girls in our friend circle, but this was not at all what I figured she’d say about the group that had hurt her like this.
“Who isn’t attracted to men that take no shit and aren’t afraid to call it like it is?” she said. “Problem is…the Rogers girls got lucky. Brock and Steele knew the Rogers girls very well. Hannah grew up in that world. Us? We’re just outsiders. We don’t know them that well. So we don’t get the benefit of backstories. We just see them as is. And if they don’t give us their backstories, they’re pricks.”
Except I did get Connor’s backstory. And…he still acted like a dick to me.
Something’s not adding up. What the fuck is going on with that?
Doesn’t matter. He sent the text.
“Well, that’s great psychology work, but I need to get drunk,” I said. “So.”
I tipped back my drink and finished all of it in two gulps. It took a little longer than expected—I was not in college anymore—but it went down. I smiled when I finished.
“Let’s go.”
I ordered a second round once Justine promised she’d get one too. I got halfway through my drink when I pulled out my phone.
