And what kind of person needed seven tries to save her own life?
Yet there she stood, rubbing the tears away and rushing out of the bathroom to appease a man who didn’t act like he gave a shit about her. A man who’d humiliated her, fucked with her mind, and hit her more than once.
“They’re in the refrigerator. I’ll grab one for you, Jase,” she called, forcing brightness into her voice as she hustled into the kitchen and found him standing in front of the open refrigerator, scowling.
“Right here.” She slipped under his thick arm and grabbed a bottle of his favorite beer from the top shelf of the refrigerator. How he couldn’t find anything would always remain a mystery, but one she’d never asked him to solve. Asking why, even about something small, could be the wrong move on the wrong day.
Back at home, she could and would have teased the hell out of her dad’s MC brothers if they’d been unable to find something practically staring them in the face, which, to be fair, would probably happen. The difference was that they’d shrug off her teasing and join her in laughing. Those guys had always been able to laugh at themselves. It was a quality she’d never fully appreciated until Jason.
Around the club members, she didn’t have to measure her words or tiptoe around a volatile temper. She didn’t have to catalog tone, expression, and the number of beers someone consumed and run it through some twisted internal safety calculator before she opened her mouth. And if they ever saw her acting like a timid mouse around a boyfriend, well, the boyfriend wouldn’t be breathing for long, and that wasn’t a hyperbole.
“Don’t fucking hide my shit next time,” he grumbled as he snatched the bottle from her hand.
Or, you know… you could open your damn eyes.
She clamped down on her tongue as she nodded. Her throat ached from all the words she swallowed each day.
Jase twisted off the top, then took a long drink that had more than half the bottle disappearing. Looked like tonight would be a multi-drink night, and her nerves fluttered. Drunk Jason could go either way, sleepy and lazy or mean and destructive.
“Grant and Benny are on their way over. We’re gonna play some GTA. I’m hungry. Make us some of those spicy cheese fuckers we like.”
“Jalapeño poppers?” she asked, even though she knew exactly what he meant.
He snapped and pointed at her with a grin she used to find sexy. “That’s it.”
Oh, of course. Let me drop everything and deep-fry appetizers for you and your mouth-breathing buddies while you shoot hookers in a video game. Would you like me to fan you with a palm leaf while I’m at it? Rub your feet? Maybe I should crawl on all fours and bark on command.
“Sure.” The word tasted like ash. Hopefully, she had all the ingredients, so she wouldn’t have to run to the store and make him wait for his snack.
He didn’t like to wait.
He didn’t likeso many things.
He really was a good-looking guy, with deep blue eyes, light brown hair, and a muscular physique that women drooled over. On his most recent barber trip, he’d cut his hair shorter than she preferred. Jase liked his hair buzzed, whereas it had been longer when they’d met. Back then, in the beginning of their relationship, she’d loved running her fingers through the soft strands. Back when, for a short time, he’d made her feel special and safe. When he’d told her she was pretty, intelligent, and precisely what he wanted in a girlfriend.
How stupid she’d been to fall for his lip service.
As she turned to preheat the oven, Jase caught her arm and spun her back to face him with a rough tug. Her pulse spiked. The movement was so fast her brain didn’t have time to catch up.
“Everything okay?” she asked, staring up at him. He had eight inches on the five-foot-three stature she’d inherited from her mom. For one second, she thought she might get a kind word. A thank you for retrieving the beer and cooking for his dickhead friends. Maybe it was nice to know she wasn’t so completely jaded that she automatically expected something hateful to fall from his lips, but thinking positively only made the reality of his cutting comments sting more.
“Cover that shit up.”
She blinked. “What?”
He huffed and rolled his eyes, giving her a none-too-gentle shake. “Your face. Go put some goddamn makeup on. Fuck’s sake, Beth, you tryna make me look bad in front of my friends?”
Her stomach soured as her hand went to her cheek, fingers brushing the tender spot his palm had already found once today. “What? N-no, of course not. I didn’t have anywhere to go today, so I didn’t bother with makeup. And I had no idea the guys were coming over. I’m s-sorry.”
She’d forever hate the way her voice wavered. She used to be the girl who flipped off Gator when he teased her about a bad haircut and told him his beard looked like a ferret had died on his face. The girl who’d once called Screw an ‘overprotective Neanderthal’ to his face and made everyone at the table laugh, including him.
Where had that girl gone?
Jason shoved her away with a grunt of disgust. “Well, get moving. They’ll be here soon, and I’m fucking hungry.”
As she skittered past him, he cracked her on the ass with an open palm. It hurt, and she bit her lip to keep from yelping,though she couldn’t hide the way her body reacted. Her muscles automatically tensed for another hit.
This wasn’t a playful light ass smack or a lead-in to a consensual sexy spanking, but a warning.
