by Franca Storm
I look up through teary eyes to see him hurrying towards me. He climbs onto the bed. He takes my face in his hands and wipes away my tears with the pads of his thumbs. The look on his face; his concern and the tender way he touches me, makes me cry harder.
“Tell me, Nicki. Did I hurt you? Are you okay? Please talk to me,” he begs. He’s really freaked out.
“I’m okay…sorry. I’m just…I’m happy.”
“These are happy tears?” he presses, hesitant to believe it.
“Yeah,” I sob. “I’m sorry,” I say, shielding my face with my hands.
He wraps his arms around me and rocks me gently against him. “You were so brave tonight, Nicki,” he says, as he brushes my hair away from my tear-stained face.
I’m not sure how much time passes before I finally stop crying and manage to collect myself. I pull away and he releases me, studying me intently.
“When you remember this night, can you omit the part about me crying like a baby?”
He chuckles. “Already omitted.”
He climbs off the bed and crosses to his chest of drawers in the corner. I watch him slip on a pair of boxers and then grab a t-shirt. He walks back to me and, before I can react, he slips it on over my head. I look down to see that it is my favorite t-shirt of his; the Bruce Springsteen concert shirt.
“As much as I love the sight of you naked right now, I can’t have my girl parading around with nothing on when Mitch is up and about.”
“Are we going somewhere?” I ask, confused.
“I drew you a bath,” he tells me, holding out his hand to me. “Come.”
“A bath?” I ask, confused.
“I know you must be sore. The bath will help.”
I can’t help it; I grin like an idiot. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“It’s just…you’re being so…I love you too, John.”
He smiles and leans into me. I think he’s going to kiss me, but he surprises me and sweeps me up into his arms instead. “Bath time,” he tells me as he carries me to the door.
“Be careful, John,” I warn. “A woman could get used to this.”
He chuckles. “Only the best for my Nicki.”
My Nicki. I’m his? Yeah, I’m his. I like the sound of that. I like that very much.
Chapter 26
~John~
I wake up to the irritating sounds of clanging, clinking, metal scraping against ceramic. I groan in protest and force my eyes open. I try to move, but I quickly realize I can’t. I look down to find Nicki draped over me, her head on my chest and her legs tangled with mine. The blanket from the couch is flung over us and that’s when I realize that we aren’t in my bed. We slept on the couch.
It takes me a second to remember. Right, while Nicki was taking a bath I came out here to the living room to watch some TV while I waited for her. I knew if I didn’t distract myself then I would’ve fallen asleep before she came back to me. I was completely exhausted. But Nicki wasn’t. She became hyper and so damn talkative so we ended up watching some crappy sitcom until around 2am when she finally calmed down. Hmm, so sex makes her hyper. Gotta remember that.
I turn my head towards the kitchen, to the sound of all the noise. Mitch is in there fucking around, making coffee and breakfast. I carefully pull myself from beneath Nicki. She murmurs at the movement, but she doesn’t wake. I head into the kitchen and snap at Mitch, “Could you be any louder?”
He scoffs and turns around, coffee in hand. “You wanna talk about loud? What the hell did you do to her last night? I swear all I heard for hours was her talking and laughing.”
“Sorry, she was a little overexcited.”
He gives me a look.
“What?”
“Just waiting for you to admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“I heard you guys, John. It was hard not to. I know you fucked her.”
I cringe at his choice of words.
The bastard picks up on it and shakes his head. “Wow. This is new. Should I say made love or some bullshit then?”
“Fuck off.”
He chuckles. “In all seriousness, I’m glad. For her; not for you.”
“Not for me?”
“I’m still pissed at you.”
“For what?”
“What do you think, you dick? For the shit you said to Chloe last night.”
“About her being your woman?”
“Yeah. That.”
I roll my eyes. “Come on.”
“No. You need to control your temper better! When you get like that things just fly out of your mouth.”
“That was me controlling my temper.”
If Nicki wasn’t sleeping on the couch right now, I know the walls would be quaking from the force of our shouts. Mitch is really pissed at me, which doesn’t happen that often. We get along really well most of the time, but when we don’t, all hell can break loose.
He fixes me with one of his looks; the one that tells me he’s not backing down and I might as well save us both the time and energy and just suck it up. Son of a bitch.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get caught in the cross-fire,” I grit out.
He grins, knowing he’s won this round. I could’ve dragged it out and gone the other way, but I’m not in the mood to fight. After last night with Nicki, I’m in a great mood and I’m not gonna let anything or anyone screw with that.
“Thanks,” Mitch says.
“So, you and Chlo?”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “Nah. You know how she is. She doesn’t date guys like me. I’m not one of those trust fund, Ivy League pussies. I don’t have my entire life planned out—I fly by the seat of my pants. I’m the guy you don’t bring home to meet the parents; the guy a girl like her will slum it with for a night to get a taste of the wild side that those preppy rich kids can’t give her. But that’s as far as it goes.”
I can hear the bitterness in his voice. The look in his eyes startles me: hurt. I’ve never seen Mitch this way before. Things never seem to affect him. He’s as easy going as they come; always high on life. Shit, Chloe has really gotten under his skin.
“Listen—”
He waves his hand, cutting me off. “Save it. You know it’s true.”
“Not sure about that. Look at me and Nicki.”
“Right, yeah, she’s the girl from the wrong side of the tracks and you’re the trust fund kid. The difference is you don’t give a crap about any of that shit—appearances, family duty. And Nicki’s so damn cute that your parents love her.” He chuckles and adds, “I’m not cute, John.”
I laugh. “Ain’t that the truth?”
He slumps back in his chair. I see the defeat in his eyes. He shakes his head and scrubs his hand over his face. When he looks back at me, his happy-go-lucky self is back, as if it had never left. “Whatever. She was a good fuck. Wild as hell, John.”
“Write about it in your diary.”
He cocks an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re seriously shutting me down here?”
“She’s in the band.”
He rolls his eyes. And then he leans forward and lowers his voice as he tells me, “That stuck up, prim and proper princess thing is just an act. She likes it dirty—real dirty. She—”
I hold up my hand. “Stop.”
A sudden buzzing on the table interrupts us. I glance at the phone vibrating on the edge of the table. Nicki’s phone. She left it here last night when she’d called Chloe to let her know that everything was okay between her and me after the incident at the pub.
I scramble to silence the annoying noise before it wakes her up.
The buzzing stops before I get the chance to figure out how to shut it down. Just as I breathe a sigh of relief it starts up again. Come on!
I flip open the phone and it stops immediately. The damn thing opens right into a text. Shit, she must have it on open-to-answer mode. Now she’s gonna think I read her messages.
I’m about to just
close it when something catches my eye. The phone number. I know it well. It’s burned into my memory. It was Nicki’s home number. Now it’s just her mom’s. Her mom is messaging her? I can’t help myself; I read the message: Please stop ignoring me, Nicola. This is important. You need to listen to me. Call me back ASAP.
“John?” Mitch says.
“You’re good at this shit. Can you mark this thing as unread?” I ask, worriedly. She’s gonna kill me if she knows I read it. She’ll think I’m interfering again when it comes to her mom. I can’t believe that bitch is contacting her. That’s never a good thing. The question is: why? Nicki doesn’t need her bullshit. She hasn’t moved past what happened with her mom. A few weeks back was proof of that. The way she’d reacted when her mom had called her by going to that frat party and getting wasted and putting herself in danger.
“John, I doubt I can do that. It’s a text message, not an email,” Mitch cautions me, although he snatches the phone from me anyway.
“Try. And hurry.”
“Christ. Calm down,” he says, scrolling through her phone and doing God knows what.
“Any reason why you’re going through my phone, Mitch?”
He looks up from the phone, his face white as a sheet. He looks guilty as sin. Oh, great job, buddy. I twist my body around on my chair to see Nicki standing right behind me. She grips my chair and leans in to kiss me.
“Hey,” she says, in that cute little shy way of hers. And then she focuses her attention back on Mitch. She raises her eyebrows.
Shit. “He was—” I begin. But he cuts me off.
“Your phone was going off. I was trying to turn it off when I accidentally opened a new text. I’m trying to…make it look like that didn’t happen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Wow, okay. Relax. I believe you,” she says, holding out her hand for the phone.
Mitch hands it to her. “Really?”
“Yeah. Of course. It’s just a phone. It’s not like you were reading my diary,” she says with a chuckle.
Yeah, right. If she’d caught me with it, we’d be in a hell of a fight right now. But she just lets Mitch off? Lucky bastard. “You have a diary?” I ask, reaching for her free hand and squeezing it gently. She looks at me curiously. “What?”
“Just not used to you looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Oh God. Cut it out,” Mitch complains. “Puppy dog eyes, man,” he tells me.
I laugh and rub my thumb in small circles over the back of her hand. She gasps, her eyelashes start fluttering rapidly, and she blushes beet red. Lately, since things started getting sexual between us, I’ve noticed that’s her turned on look. So damn cute.
She tries to move away, but I grab her hips and pull her onto my lap, needing her closer. I tighten my arm around her waist possessively.
“John,” she complains, eyeing Mitch uncomfortably.
I ignore her, cuz I’m not ready to lose the contact with her yet. I pick up where we left off a second ago. “So, about this diary. You don’t have one.”
She ruffles my hair and tells me. “You think you know me so well.”
“Oh, I do.” I lean into her ear and whisper, “Especially after last night.”
Mitch clears his throat noisily. “Seriously?” he grunts.
“Sorry,” Nicki says. She snatches up his coffee cup and takes a sip, before putting it down and opening her phone to read her message.
Mitch and I exchange a worried glance.
I hear her grunt with annoyance and then flip her phone closed. Her body tenses in my arms.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. Of course, I already damn well know. That bitch mother of hers.
“Nothing,” she says, turning her head to look at me and flashing me a smile that I know is fake. Her gaze wavers as she lies straight to my face, “Nothing to worry about.”
She struggles in my hold. “I have to go.”
“What?”
“John!” she complains, “Let go.”
I pull my arm away and she slides off my lap.
“You’re leaving? Right now?” I ask.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll catch up with you later.”
I push back my chair and grab hold of her arm to stop her escape. “Stay. We’ll go out for breakfast.”
She leans in and whispers so that Mitch can’t hear. “Last night meant a lot to me. There’s just something I need to do. We’ll go out later okay?”
Does she really think I don’t know what the something-I-need-to-do is? She’s gonna go deal with her mom and I don’t want her to. Fuck, but short of tying her down right now, I can’t exactly stop her and there’s no way she’ll let me come along. She knows how much hatred there is between me and her mom. “Fine,” I grunt. “Later then.”
She kisses me quickly on the cheek before hurrying out of the apartment.
“Fuck,” I mutter. Be careful, baby.
Chapter 27
~John~
“Are you listening?” Mitch demands, slapping my arm as we walk over to my truck in the parking lot.
“Shit. Yeah, I’m listening.”
He steps into my path, folding his arms across his chest. “Then what did I say?”
“Something about…the movie. Yeah, something about the movie.”
He smiles with amusement. “Yeah, but that’s a lucky fucking guess. I said; it’s been too long. We’ve been ignoring our pact lately.”
Our pact is that we see every single superhero movie that comes out together on the opening weekend. No one else. No women. Just us. We’ve had the pact since the first year of college. “We have,” I agree.
“Yeah, we have. So no talking about girls and no thinking about them either. Yeah?”
I nod, but what he’s asking is easier said than done right now. I’m worried about Nicki and this thing with her mom. I can’t get it out of my head until she finally texts me to let me know she’s okay. But Mitch is right. The two of us haven’t hung out for a while so I need to keep my mind here and not elsewhere.
“So the movie and then we hit the pub?” I ask.
He smiles. “Sounds good.”
As we make our way across the parking lot, he tells me, “I checked the band website and we’re getting some good traffic now. Ever since we uploaded those demos.”
That gets my full attention. “Good. I’m working on getting us some non-campus gigs too. We need more exposure outside of college. We’ve done all we’re gonna do around here.”
“Sweet. Like the city circuits?”
“Exactly.”
We reach my truck. I pull out my keys and disable the alarm. As I reach the driver’s side, something stops me. A note on the windshield, held there by the wipers. What the hell? I snatch it up. It’s folded with just my name on the front. I open it and read: Johnny boy. The truck was just foreplay. This isn’t over. I warned you not to cross me.
“Come on.” How persistent is this psycho?
Mitch snatches the note out of my hand. “Shit. There’ve been rumors going around about Axel being a complete head case since we walked onto campus, but here’s the proof.” He hands the note back to me. “What do you wanna do?”
I haul open the driver’s door and gesture to the passenger side. “Get in. We’re gonna make a pit stop before the movie.”
***
I wait patiently for someone to answer the door to the frat house.
“You seem…calm,” Mitch says from beside me.
“I am.”
Before he can say another word, the door is opened by Blake. “John. This is…a surprise.”
“Where’s Axel?” I demand. I might be calm enough right now to actually take the time to knock on the door rather than kicking the damned thing in, but there’s a limit. And making small talk is beyond that.
“Why?” Blake asks. I can see the concern all over his face. I’m not surprised, seeing as though every time Axel and I are anywhere near each other, we fight.
&n
bsp; “This is why,” I say, shoving Axel’s note at him.
He grabs hold of it and scans it quickly. He blows out a breath and shakes his head. “Unbelievable. Look, I’ll talk to him, John. Okay?” He hands it back to me.
“That won’t do it.”
“I can’t let you in here to use one of my guys as a punching bag. You know that.”
“I’m here to talk.”
He seems stunned. He looks at Mitch. “Do you believe it?”
Mitch nods. “He’s actually calm right now. This isn’t fight mode with him.”
I cock an eyebrow at Blake. “See? Let me in, man.”
“He’s out on the patio,” he says, finally stepping aside.
I nod and stride into the house with Mitch following close behind.
“Mitch stays with you the entire time!” Blake calls out.
I raise my hand in the air. “You got it.”
With Mitch right behind me, I push through the patio doors at the rear of the kitchen and into the backyard where, sure enough, Axel is sitting reading a newspaper and drinking from a bottle of scotch beside his half-empty glass on a patio table.
I pull out the chair opposite him, spin it around and straddle it backwards, glaring at the fucker while Mitch hangs back to give me some room.
Axel smirks at me as he looks up. “Johnny boy.”
I drop the note onto his newspaper. “It is over. This thing between us is done. We’re even.”
“Even?” he asks, amused. “You attacked me twice, beat the shit out of my friends, stole my girl and humiliated me.”
“And you’ve come at me more than enough to make us even, Craven.”
He leans back in his chair and studies me. “Shit, you’re afraid, aren’t you?”
“What?” I snap. “No one’s afraid of you.”
“Not of me. Of what you might do.”
“You talk a lot of shit.”
He smiles. “Since this little feud escalated, I’ve looked into you, Johnny boy.” He leans across the table, his eyes boring into mine. “Didn’t you almost kill a man once?”
Hearing those words, having that awful day thrown in my face so out of the blue like this, really catches me off guard. I can’t keep the shock and pain from my face. His eyes flash with victory as he notices. I attempt a recovery, clearing my suddenly dry throat as I tell him, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”