Or…
Come closer. Kneel down in front of me like she used to, tip her head back, part those beautiful lips and let me inside. Suck me down until my cock nudges the back of that tight throat before she breathes slowly, relaxes and lets me breach that tunnel…
Inhaling a deep breath, I take a step back. And then another. Because I can still feel the phantom caress of those rough silk, dark brown curls between my fingers and over my palm. And the vibration of her pleased hum down my dick.
Standing here in this place with her, the memories like a third, asphyxiating presence, it’s a danger zone. Part of me is drawn to her like a lonely, shivering traveler craving the warmth of a fire in the dark. And the other part shakes in terror because that insatiable need, that hunger could send me spiraling. She could so easily become my next addition…or send me plunging headlong back into my old one.
“Nothing? No witty comeback? No smart-ass remark?” she demands, the corner of her mouth curling higher into a harder sneer.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask, smothering the urge to retreat until the shadows swallow me up. Until I disappear into the shame and guilt. “Defend myself? I’m not going to do that. There’s no point. Should I beg for your forgiveness? As if I have a chance in hell of receiving that.”
“Forgiveness?” She laughs, and there isn’t shit humorous about it. The sound is caustic, corrosive. She tilts her head to the side. “That’s for Bible stories and Christmas movies. You won’t find that here. I. Hate. You.”
Those last three words are bullets striking me dead center mass, and I almost press my palms to the injuries they’ve left behind.
But maybe it’s a byproduct of living with a drunk. Some people learn to duck and hide, avoid confrontation and ugliness at all costs. I run at it, fists and chin raised. Even when I’m guaranteed to crawl back bruised and bloody.
And in this fight, that’s the only way I’m coming out of it.
“Don’t stop there, Lennon,” I murmur. “It’s been ten years. You can’t tell me that’s all that you have. Give me more, I can handle it.”
“Give you more?” An almost imperceptible tremor quivers in her voice, and her rage heats the night air. And as sick as it might make me, I want to reclaim the space I inserted between us and bask in it. Because I’m desperate. So fucking desperate. And I’d rather have her hate than her apathy. She shakes her head, those thick curls grazing her shoulders, her jaw. “I don’t give a damn about what you can or can’t handle just like I don’t need your permission to speak my mind. It’s a little quirk I have.”
Despite the pain using me for target practice, humor bubbles behind my sternum. Another thing that hadn’t changed. Her tongue that could be sugary sweet and deadly sharp, even at eighteen. I’d enjoyed both edges of it.
“Lennon…”
“No.” She throws up her hand, shoving it out towards me as if she can shove my words back at me just as easily. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything from you, King. You don’t get to be the victim here.”
My stomach caves under the impact of that vocal blow.
She can’t understand how I’ve struggled with that word—victim.
I decided to do my first line of coke. I let the music take a backseat to the indulgent, wild, selfish lifestyle that was all about me, my pleasure, my needs. Those were my choices, my decisions, and I own them. And those choices had direct and indirect effects on everyone around me—from my band, to the people we employed, to the label, to the fans. And definitely the music.
There also came a moment in the depths of my addiction when I couldn’t stop. Something primal inside of me—the man who’d escaped his small, judgmental town with hope, stars and hunger formorein his heart—had cried out in pain. Begged that I put the drugs down. Walk away. Just say fucking no. As if it could be that simple. The truth is I willed myself into this addiction but I couldn’t just will myself out of it. It had a hold on me—mentally, physically, emotionally. Addiction crept into and hid out in the dirty, unswept corners of my soul, the places where all of my fears, insecurities, anger and grief grew and spread like mold never revealed to the light. Yeah, I couldn’t free myself of the monster’s grasp. I had invited something in that overtook my life, and I became the slave to its master. And not until I opened the door and walked into rehab could I break the chains.
And even now…even free… There are times I hear the clanking of those chains, calling me. But now I lean on my family instead of the drugs to get me through the darker moments. Because I’m still a work in progress.
So am I a victim? No. I’m in a murky, complicated place in between.
There’d been a time when I could tell her all of this—or none of it. And she would still understand. Still get me when no one else truly had. But we’re no longer those people to each other.
And I’m to blame.
“I should be used to your silence. You’re good at that.” She scoffs and starts to turn around. To leave.
The panic that wells up inside me, scratching and clawing at my gut, should be a red, blaring warning to slow down. To give us both space. Instead, I’m again rushing forward, plunging into the blast of her rage, gulping it down without thought or care that it might drown me.
“L.A. was a trigger.” She halts mid-turn, the shadows and her hair concealing nearly everything but the outline of her nose and the curve of her mouth from me. She doesn’t face me again, but she isn’t walking away either, and taking that as a win, I continue. “I got…heavy into drugs.” Fuck, it hurts revealing that to her of all people. Even if she already knows. And there’s a good chance she does. Hell, she would’ve had to be living in a blackout zone not to hear about my epic, humiliating meltdown. Still, in this moment, I’m thankful for the darkness.
“When I came home from rehab, all the old places, people and temptations were still there. I stayed sober, but if I wanted to remain that way, I needed a change of environment. It’s not the same for all ex-addicts. But for me, I couldn’t” I shake my head.
Seeing the people who I’d snorted and smoked with, fucked … Driving by the places I’d partied in, lost a part of my soul in… It’d all gotten to be too much. And some nights that tug had become damn near unbearable. Only the presence of Gunner in his room and either Kade, Mac or Gideon camped out in one of the guest rooms had kept me from crawling into that pit again.
“So I decided to move back here. I wasn’t much wanted when I lived here before, but it was the safest place I could think of at the time. And Leif is here.” I pause, consider my next words and whether to utter them or not. But my sobriety is about truth. And since there are already so many secrets between us—secrets I can never reveal—I won’t allow this one, even if it would be by omission. Besides, in this town gossip is the second most popular religious denomination next to Baptist. It’s not like it would remain private for long. “And then there’s my son.”
She doesn’t say anything but her petite frame stiffens, her shoulders curling in the slightest bit.