Nix
“Hey baby.”Cherri ran her chipped pink nails up my chest and fisted my t-shirt. “I missed you last night.” She pouted, flashing me puppy dog eyes. But they barely touched the ice around my heart.
Cherri was a means to an end. An itch I liked to scratch sometimes. Nothing more. But from the longing in her eyes, it was becoming increasingly fucking obvious she hadn’t got the memo.
“Yo, Cherri,” my best friend Zane called. Cherri glanced over her shoulder at him, arching a thin brow. “How about letting my boy breathe, yeah?”
“How about you go fuck yourself, Zane?”
“Ouch, she has claws.”
“She bites too.” Cherri snapped her teeth together, and I smothered a laugh. She was something else.
But Zane had a point.
She was growing clingy. Trying to put her claim on me. But I wasn’t looking to go steady. With her or anyone else.
Girls were a distraction. A fucking headache I didn’t want or need.
“Back up, Cher,” I said, nudging her off me. “I’ve got shit to do.”
“Come on, Nix, don’t be like that. I came tonight for you.” There was that pout again.
Jesus, she sure knew how to lay it on thick.
“Go find another dick to bounce on tonight, yeah?”
Anger flared in her overdone smoky eyes. I never understood why girls felt the need to smear that shit all over their faces so much.
“You bastard,” she fumed. “I thought we were—”
“Run along, Cher.” Zane could barely contain his laughter. Motherfucker was colder than me.
She stormed off, shouldering the other girls circling us out of her way.
“No pussy is worth all that aggro,” Zane said, draining his beer. He threw it in the trash can and grabbed another from the cooler.
“I thought she knew the deal.”
He gave me a pointed look. “They all say that, Nix. Until they catch feelings and think they can tame you into more, or even worse, trap you.”
“Where’s Kye?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Some drama with Chloe.”
“Again?”
Kye Carter was the other third to our trio, and Chloe was his sister. He sure had his hands full with her. The two of them fought like cat and dog. But she was his family. His blood. And sometimes, when you grew up in a place like The Row, it was all you had.
Not that I knew a damn thing about that. My family was Zane and Kye. My brothers not by blood but choice. We’d had each other’s back since we were in diapers. They were my guys, my ride or die. They were the only two people in the world I could depend on.
“You’ve got that look again,” he said, kicking my boot.
I flipped him off, running my eyes over the party. Saturday night down at the reservoir was always the same: full of kids from The Row looking to cut loose and forget their shitty existences. Drugs, alcohol, sex… it was a fucking free-for-all down here, in a place long forgotten by the rest of Darling Hill.
“Yo, assholes.”
The sound of Kye’s voice loosened something inside of me.