Still drunk from my orgasm, I didn’t move from Preppy’s chest as Bear rolled off of me and onto his back at the end of the bed. “Holy shit,” he said. I glanced over my shoulder to see him disposing of a condom I didn’t know he had on, but was suddenly really grateful for.
Preppy finally spoke, “I’m glad it was good for you, Care Bear, now get the fuck out.”
Bear looked to us with a questioning look in his his eyes. “You kids gonna be okay unsupervised?” he asked sarcastically, dressing quickly and grabbing his whiskey on the way out.
“Fuck you. We’ll manage,” Preppy responded, his cock again twitching inside of me. I wiggled my hips, needing more, but he grabbed my ass and held me still.
“Okay, just know that I plan on getting good and drunk tonight and don’t feel like cleaning up blood, so don’t take shit too fucking far.” He took a long pull from his bottle and just like that he was gone, the sound of the party outside blasting through the partially opened door, then disappearing again with Bear.
All that was left in that room was me, Preppy, and the consequences of our little game.
A game neither of us had won.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
DRE
When the door clicked shut Preppy sat up and flipped me over onto my back, pinning my wrists above my head against the headboard. “Don’t think that this is over just because he left,” he said.
“Isn’t that what it is, though? Over?” I asked, remembering my anger and trying to get up. Preppy held me firmly and all I could do was wriggle around, the muscles of his forearms barely straining under my struggling. “This game. Us. It’s all over.”
Preppy reached under my chin and turned my face toward him. He kissed the corner of my eye, absorbing the tear that had threatened to spill down my face. He pulled back and slammed into me. “No, baby, that’s where you’re wrong. This game isn’t over. It’s only just begun,” he said, delivering another punishing thrust of his thick cock. “Except now, the game is whoever comes first, loses.” He grinned down at me, his smile real, his hair falling into his eyes. “You wanna play with me?”
I arched my back suddenly and his cock slipped out of me. I jumped off the bed. He reached for me and I jerked my arm away. “I can take a lot of things,” I said. “I’ve had my weak moments, but I know who I am and I’m strong as fucking steel when it counts. But what I can’t take is this. Whatever you’re playing at. Whatever reason you told Bear that I could be a club slut. Because we obviously see things differently, so let me explain this to you,” I said, grabbing my clothes and pulling them on. “This isn’t a fucking game.” I pointed between us. “We’re not a fucking game!” I choked out.
“I’m glad that you see it that way. Maybe having two cocks inside you at once fucked some sense into you after all,” Preppy said calmly, standing up and pulling on his jeans.
“What?” I asked, frozen with my hand on the door. I turned around slowly. “What the fuck did you say?”
Preppy ran his hand over his beard and looked to the floor, like he was trying to make a decision. When he looked up at me and his eyes met mine, I knew it had been made. “I’ve been telling you that I can’t keep you, Dre. Why the fuck do you think I was saying that?”
“I don’t know. Because of your past and because of what happened to you and what you do…”
“Maybe that’s part of it. But the other part is the lies I’ve been telling you to get what I want.”
“What lies?” I said, taking a step back, afraid of what he might say.
“Where should I start,” he asked, slowly walking toward me. “Do you want to know what I did to you? That night I brought you to Mirna’s? Do you want to hear how I took off your clothes and I ran my mouth down your body while you were unconscious? Do you want to know that I spread your legs and licked your bruised pussy because I wanted to taste you, your weakness. I wanted to swallow you and devour you, so I shoved my tongue inside of you because I fucking could.”
“No, no you didn’t. You wouldn’t,” I stammered.
He huffed. “Now, I know you don’t believe that,” Preppy said, buttoning his shirt as if it was just another day. His cool emotionless expression plastered back on his face, while I was in a state of shock I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to come back out of.
He shrugged. “I thought about fucking you too, but I settled for jerking off on you instead. I came all over your stomach.”
“Fuck you,” I said, only able to muster up enough of my voice to whisper the insult at him.
“I may have pulled you from that tower, Doc. I may have rescued you from that motel room, but I never saved you. You were never safe.” His phone vibrated and the screen lit up, he looked down and tossed it on the bed that acted as a barrier between us, a bumper for the truth. “Go ahead. Answer it. It’s your dad,” he said, not giving me time to process the new information.
“How?” I asked as the phone stopped vibrating before starting back up again.
“He’s been calling for weeks. He wrote you a letter, too. It’s on top of Mirna’s fridge. Blue photo album. He wants you to come home,” he said.
“When?” I asked.
“Since the very beginning.”
“But why?” I asked, but I didn’t know what I was asking. Why he lied? Why he bothered with me?
Why I let him into my heart?
Every word he spoke was another bullet being fired at me, but he couldn’t hit every target. His eyelids were red and heavy. His voice was raspy, “Why? Because I needed you to make those documents for me.” He paused. “Or maybe just because I like unconscious pussy.”
I leapt onto the bed. “You son of a fucking bitch!”
Preppy moved to the door. “Go the fuck home, Doc. You don’t belong here. You never did.” He didn’t look up when he left, closing the door with such force the cheap plastic blinds fell from the window to the floor.
He’d slammed the door shut on the room.
On us.
On everything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
PREPPY
“Where you stomping off to?” Bear asked, catching up to me as I was doing just that, angrily stomping down the shell driveway. He slapped me on the back of my shoulder. “Everything okay back there?” he asked, lighting a cigarette and jerking his chin back toward the garage.
I was about to snap something back at him, my emotions all bubbling at the surface, a place I hated them to be. My mouth hung open, ready to fire off some sarcastic retort that would have Bear seeing right through me, but I stopped myself and shut my mouth when I saw the concern written all over Bear’s burly face. Or maybe it was pity. Fuck, I’d already caused so much hurt for one lifetime, I could’t stand to see him look that way. So I made a decision right then and there. My shit would be exactly that. My shit. I knew Bear and Grace well enough to know that if they knew how deep things ran with Dre, then they would take it on as their own problem. And for fucks sake, our little family had enough fucking problems to add my shit to the fucking pile.
I slapped a smile on my face and reached into Bear’s cut, plucking his cigarettes from his pocket and tossing him back the pack after I’d slid one from the pack and lit it. “All is good, man. Just got a call from Patty who runs the GG operation off Sunset Vista,” I lied. “The mister in the grow-room is leaking. Gotta go dry out her hallway runner and fix the leak before her fucking pacemaker stops. Gotta keep the GG’s happy. Keep growing that money.”
“You sure that’s it?” Bear asked, scratching his head. “I thought that maybe that girl…”
I cut him off. “That was fucking epic, right? Although, I’m not gonna lie, at one point I think I felt your balls on my fucking leg, dude.”
“Preppy…” Bear said, still attempting to carry on some sort of serious conversation about my behavior. Wasn’t gonna happen.
Not then.
Not fucking ever.
“At least now I know what to get you for Christmas. A
good ball trimmer. Or maybe a wax if you’re into the pain. On second thought, maybe I’ll get waxed, might be something I’d dig.” Bear’s face began to lighten as he shifted his focus from Dre to my ridiculousness. The corners of his mouth turned upward into his signature cocky smile.
“That’s where you’re really fucked up. You had your fucking cock deep inside a hot chick and you were thinking about my balls? Sounds like that’s your problem, not mine, motherfucker,” Bear teased, punching me playfully in the shoulder. “But hey, any girl who likes to be double stuffed will make a great BBB. She’ll fit in just fine with the brothers.”
The rumble of an engine started and we both turned to where Wolf was mounting his bike. He rolled up slowly, and it wasn’t until he stopped right next to where we were standing that I realized Dre was on the back. I almost dropped my cigarette, sending bits of red ash flitting around in the darkness when I caught it before it could hit the ground.
“You move quickly,” Bear said to Dre with a knowing smile.
“Just getting a lift,” Dre clipped. “I wanted to thank you for my AUDITION,” she said, stressing the word, “to be one of your club girls, but something came up and I decided to go another route.”
“Okay to give her a ride?” Wolf asked Bear.
“Shame, beautiful. Could have had a lot more fun,” Bear said. He nodded to Wolf, who revved his engine in response. The look on Dre’s face said everything and made me feel small.
I’d broken everything into so many pieces there was no way in fuck it would ever be able to be put back together again. So I guess you could say my plan worked.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t tearing my fucking gut in two.
I stayed the course, shifting on my Preppy mask for Bear. I took a deep drag of my cigarette, casually blowing smoke rings into the air. “Real shame,” I drawled. I grabbed my dick through my jeans. “Guess all this man meat scared her off.” Bear laughed and turned back toward the house.
I felt Dre’s eyes on me until the bike was well out of sight, the engine nothing but an echo through the trees.
And then she was gone.
For good.
Of course, fate is a nasty evil bitch, because it was in that moment, one of the shittiest of my life, after a confusing, yet fucking hot, unexpected threesome with one of my best friends, that I realized that the girl driving away wasn’t just some girl I was saving from my twisted ass.
She was the girl I was in love with.
The girl I would always be in love with.
Until my very last breath.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DRE
Hatred is easy.
It’s love that’s hard.
It wasn’t the betrayal that hurt the most. It wasn’t the lies or the deceit. It wasn’t even the way he’d made me feel more used than Conner or Eric ever had.
The way I felt had nothing to do with the bitterness that settled in my throat, so thick I was practically gagging on it.
No.
The thing that hurt the most wasn’t the way things ended at all.
It was the way it all began.
It was the love.
I didn’t want it anymore. It shouldn’t of even been there anymore so I wished it away with everything I had, but no matter how much wishing and praying or meditating I did, nothing worked. Even though betrayal had moved in, love refused to pack its bags and get out.
Fucking squatter.
I wanted so badly for anger and rage to be my primary emotions and so I focused on his bitter words that ended us. The way he looked at me with no remorse in his eyes. The way the door echoed as he slammed it shut. But I couldn’t stay in the darkness too long, the light always finding its way inside my thoughts, and soon I was remembering the warmth of his skin against mine the first time he touched me, the way he looked at me before he finally kissed me, the way he made me laugh in a time in my life when not a god damn thing in the world was funny to me anymore. No, love didn’t magically turn into hate just because we want it to, because it’s easier.
I learned very quickly that it turns into something else. Something much much worse.
A broken heart.
Little did I know that the real breaking was yet to come and the greatest lesson of all about love, I would be learning all too soon.
Love never dies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PREPPY
Mirna’s house had been sitting vacant since that night it all went to shit. I’d still come by from time to time, although I hadn’t used it as a GG since Dre left. All of the furniture was gone. All of the pictures. It had been over a year since Dre set foot in the place, yet I swore I could still smell her there.
She was happy. She had to be. That’s what I told myself anyway, in order to go through the motions and pretend like nothing was wrong. Her happiness was what kept one foot in front of the other, and the sometimes-fake smile plastered on my face.
Real smiles came in the form of King getting out of prison and him actually getting a girl. Or stole a girl. However you wanted to look at it. Doe was her name. She didn’t have a memory but she had a great set of tits and an attitude to boot, and I think that she was my friendship-soulmate in a way, although I never told her about Dre. I never told anyone. I told myself I was fine and the plan was to try to believe my own lie until it became true.
After Dre left town I’d come for my plants. There on the counter was my folder. She’d done it. She’d forged every single document I needed, but it was all for nothing. The judge assigned to the case denied my petition before a hearing was even called. Before I could utter a single fucking word. When the lawyer I was using told me the judge’s name who wouldn’t even grant me a hearing, it all became clear. I actually knew him. Well, I knew his sister. All I did was fuck her in a pool. A public one. With people around, but apparently word had gotten back to him and the cock sucker must not like voyeurism because the gavel crashed down on my case, crushing any hope I had left of saving Max from the system.
I was high as a kite when I got in my car, and filed the fake docs with the clerk’s office. It wasn’t necessary. It wouldn’t change a damn thing. But I did it, anyway. Maybe because it made her work not for nothing. Maybe because filing the documents made her more than just a memory, it made her real because her time with me seemed more and more like a fading dream.
But it was all too late.
In the movies the end of a person’s life is slow moving, each fraction of a second drawn out, seeming more like hours as they take their last breaths and watch the highlight reel of their lives play out before their eyes while some kind of Titanic-esque violin music plays in the background.
It’s all bullshit.
Death is quick.
Too fucking quick.
I remember walking with my friends to go into the meet with Isaac. On the way I saw this dark haired girl with innocent cheeks, and for a second I thought she was Dre. She was staring at me too, but when Dre’s face faded it was replaced by the wide eyed look of