Rage like no other clamps around my bones.
How could we have been so fucking stupid to think she wouldn’t hear our conversation?
“Fuck!” I growl, dragging my sweaty palms through my hair and tearing at the strands.
I stride toward Laiken and wrap my arms around her. But they’re only there for a moment before she shoves them away.
The action drills the hollowness in my chest down that much deeper.
My next instinct is to reach out and not let her go, but the one after that tells me to do the exact opposite…to let her go.
I choose neither, freezing right where I am, weighing my options like I even have a choice, begging her to look at me.
Only, Laiken keeps her eyes to her feet and whispers coolly, “Just…just…leave me alone, okay?”
I watch her take herself out the door, and my gut clenches at her request. The words bang between my ears when I feel the proverbial slap from our past swirl back around to hit me.
I grit my teeth.
Three years ago, I told Laiken that I couldn’t stand looking at her, didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to be around her. She clocked it. She pivoted and took the broken pieces of herself away.
I couldneverbe that fucking graceful.
I take a step toward the door she just left through when a hand wraps around my bicep, halting me in place.
I look over my shoulder and see Rusty standing behind me.
“Cool off, son. Come have a beer with me.” He jerks his head toward the old beat-up bar, and yells, “Harlen, go see Lai?—”
I tug my arm from his grip and we stare at each other, my eyes flicking between his. “Not today.”
And there’s a small pause. Harlen stops moving too.
Knowing presses, and closes in.
I swallow, spin and head for the door.
I flick my eyes around the lot, pausing when I find Laiken bent over the passenger seat of my truck.
My T-shirt has ridden up the back of her thighs, and a sliver of her bare ass is peeking from beneath the faded fabric.
The beat of my blood hammers against the organ in my chest.
I don’t move forward, but I do let my knuckles slip from the tinny door, dropping my eyes to my feet.
When it slams shut behind me, I look up, and Laiken does the same.
And with a cigarette dangling from her rosy, bitten lips, her chin hooked over her shoulder, she looks at me and stays bent over only for a moment longer before jarring upright, slamming her head against the door jamb.
“Bastard,” she mumbles, palming her temples.
And I can’t help but notice how her cheeks heat, the flush of pink that blooms to the surface of her pale skin, and how she tries to hide it by screwing her chin to her chest, jumping to her feet and slamming the door shut with more force than needed.
She leans against my truck, cupping her palm around the cigarette she took from my center console, lighting the trunk.
And I move toward her—toward the hood of my truck—a static silence hanging in the air.
I’m grasping for my own cigarette, shoved deep in the pocket of my jeans, sparking it up, drawing on it, then holding the smoke in my lungs. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
