I can figure out how to fix myself.
Chapter Twelve
Cole
After swiping a couple of bottles from Aaron’s kitchen, I get the fuck out of his house before I have to look at Hadley and see that broken, haunted look in her eyes.
I know I’m partly to blame for putting it there, but I’m beginning to learn that the darkness within her could run almost as deep as mine. She needed that between us just as much as I did. She needed to hand her pleasure, her pain, over to someone else so that she didn’t have to think about it just for a few minutes.
The image of her writhing on the bed beneath me fills my mind, the heat of her pussy as it sucked me deeper, the little noises she made as I pushed her closer and closer to falling over the edge.
“Fuck,” I mutter, reaching down to rearrange myself in my pants.
I knew I made a mistake the second I allowed Marissa to lead me up the stairs, but my need to forget about the world and the bullshit around me was too much to deny. I figured I could let her blow me, imagine it was someone else and everything would be fine. Not good, not earth shattering, but fine. And I was right, because there was nothing exciting about being alone in that room with Marissa until I felt Hadley join us.
To start with, I wondered if she really did want to join in, but I soon learned it was her jealousy that forced her to stand there and watch as her teammate wrapped her lips around my cock.
If she was any good, I might have let her continue, but seeing as she sucked like a fucking dead fish, it wasn’t all that much of a disappointment when I pushed her to the floor and stalked out of the room after someone I knew would rock my world in a way Marissa would never be able to.
I have no idea where I am, but I don’t give a shit.
I shove one bottle in my pocket and twist the top off the other before taking a huge mouthful. I don’t feel the burn. I’m too fucking numb.
Everything about the past few days has been fucked-up. It only seems right that I continue it.
I have no idea how long I walk for, but the first bottle is long empty as I stumble my way down onto the beach. Finding a secluded spot—not that there’s any other fucker around anyway—I pull out the other bottle and repeat my earlier actions.
I rest back against the sand dune and stare up at the star-filled sky above me, wondering why I didn’t at least try to find some weed, or anything, before leaving the Garricks’ house.
I blow out a breath and run the events of the past few weeks over in my head.
My uncle is my fucking dad, and the man I thought was my dad… I can’t even go there. It’s bad enough that Hadley keeps bringing it up, questioning me about it. Why the fuck did she have to be there that night?
I don’t remember finishing the bottle, but the next thing I know, the sun is burning my eyelids and warming my skin.
Dragging my eyes open, I blink against the bright morning sun and find that I’m still clutching last night’s empty bottle like a fucking addict. Pulling my arm back, I launch the fucking thing across the beach. I hate that I’m becoming more and more reliant on it to get through my shitty life. I’ve experienced firsthand what that poison does to people yet still, I can’t stay away from it.
Maybe I’m just destined to go down the same road as her, or worse… him.
For years I’ve been forced to look at the same darkness every time I stare at myself in the mirror. It’s one of the reasons I’ve found it hard to accept that he was never our father in the first place. I know it’s true, though. It’s true, and I’m just the black sheep with that cunt’s darkness wrapped around my soul. Him and all the other assholes who thought they could walk into our trailer over the years and take what they thought they were owed.
I have no idea if the majority of them knew I was there or not. She might have, but she sure didn’t care as she turned our trailer into a fucking crack den with a revolving door.
It’s hard to forget the couple who did know I was there.
My stomach turns over as I remember their dirty faces, their harsh words, their threats.
I should have been at school like all the other kids. I wanted to be, but Ace refused to let me. He said I wasn’t well enough, that I was too weak. I remember begging him to let me go with him and Conner, knowing that I had a hell of a lot more energy for school than I did for the assholes I’d have to endure that he knew nothing about—or if he did, he never let on.
My stomach turns once more and before I can control it, I throw up on the sand beside me. The remainder of last night’s vodka burns in a way it didn’t on the way down until my stomach is empty.
Pushing to my feet, I stumble down the beach until I find something I recog
nize in the distance.
Surf’s.
It’s the place the team goes to almost every day after practice to do… well, whatever it is they do. I was invited, but I think they soon got the message that off the field, I wasn’t willing to spend time with any of them. I’d much rather be alone in my room than listening to their lies and bullshit as they try to convince themselves that they’re God’s gift to women and the game. So what, their parents have money? It doesn't make them any better than anyone else. Pricks.