by Huss, JA
But I take too long to decide and she moves on. “We’re over,” she says.
“Yup,” I agree. “We are.”
“So leave.”
“Fine.”
But I don’t move. And neither does she.
“Well?” she growls. “What are you waiting for?”
My eyes lock with hers. Could I walk away at this point? I’d like to think so. But then things would just get worse. I could become truly obsessed instead of marginally possessed. “Better to just get it over with.”
“What?” she snaps.
My hand comes up almost of its own accord. I take two steps forward and it slides right up against her bare throat, my palm fitting there against the soft skin of her neck like that’s where it belongs. I feel her swallow and take a breath.
But she doesn’t move. She says nothing.
I lean in and kiss her.
She doesn’t kiss me back. Not right away. But I don’t give up easily. I nip her lip and press my palm against her throat a little harder. She gasps and her mouth opens. I slip my tongue in, expecting her to bite it. That’s typically her next move.
But she doesn’t do that either. Her lips go soft and then they press against mine, kissing me back.
And then I’m pushing her up against the side of the garage, my body angling in to trap her there, my knee between her legs. Her hands come up to my shoulders, gripping them tight enough for me to feel the dig of her nails through my hoodie.
And we kiss. And this kiss is pure lust. It’s forceful, and heated, and filled with memories of all the times we’ve done this before.
I’m immediately hard. Ready to take this to the next step.
Not take her upstairs. Fuck that. I’m gonna do her right here. Outside. Her back pressed up against the splintering wood of this dilapidated garage.
But her fingertips grip my shoulders even tighter and then she pushes me back, dragging the back of her hand across her lips, glaring at me. “Fuck you, Tony.”
“Let’s do it.” I go back in and kiss her again.
But this time, she does not kiss me back.
This time she whispers one word. Barely audible. “Stop.”
I take a deep breath that sounds more like a growl than a sigh and step back. “You know you want it.”
She sets her jaw and shakes her head. “Nope. I’m not getting involved with you again. I’m so over it. I’m so over you and this fucking act of yours.”
“Act?” I laugh. “It’s not an act. I need you, Rosalinda. I need you to fuck me so I can forget you.”
She blinks at me, then huffs out a laugh. “I forgot about you so long ago, I barely remember what it was like back then, Tony. They say when you break up with someone you only remember the good parts. Well, that’s not my problem.” She places both hands on my chest and pushes me until I have to take two steps back. “My problem is that I only remember the bad.”
She slips past me and climbs the steps up to her deck, disappearing from view. But a moment later I hear the jingle of keys. The creak of a door. And then the finality of this encounter as she slams it closed.
CHAPTER FOUR - BELINDA
I lock the door and lean against it, my heart hammering inside my chest. What the fuck just happened?
Tony Dumas is here. Outside my apartment. Right now.
I rush into my bedroom, head straight for the window, and push the curtains aside just in time to catch him flipping up the hood of his jacket as he rounds the corner to the front of the garage.
I step back, hit the bed, and take a seat.
Did that really just happen? Did my ex just travel more than two thousand miles to… what? Stalk me home from work and kiss me good night?
Don’t be an idiot, Belinda. He came here to fuck you and then forget you. He literally just said that! To your freaking face!
And Rosalinda? What the actual hell? Like I’m some conjoined twin or my own split-personality version of Brangelina. Which so pisses me off.
But never mind that. He came here to get me out of his system because we have this… this… sick thing between us.
This sick thing where we get off on the hate and the venom. Where we crave the anger and rage. Where getting off isn’t enough—we must be filled with wrath and fury when it happens.
I grab my hair and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to scream in frustration.
But I hold it in, flopping back on the bed to stare up at the ceiling. Why? Why did he come here? Why did he start this again?
It took me months to stop thinking about him after we broke up the last time. Months of lying in my bed, straining to hear footsteps outside my mother’s apartment connected to our Key West motel.
Footsteps I recognized.
That’s how I knew he was behind us tonight. I heard him. I didn’t say anything to Vinn and Vonn because that would turn into something… well, not good. Toxic masculinity at its finest, probably. A whole bunch of posturing and implied ownership.
It’s been eight years. I was doing good. I’ve had a couple dozen nearly normal relationships. Well, encounters. More like booty calls. But still, they didn’t involve hate-fucking.
I was in a good place before that last trip to Key West. And even then, I was very proud of myself for walking away. For not giving in to the urge to walk into his cottage—just across the fucking street from the one I was staying in—and start it all up again.
And just a few days ago I was thinking, Yeah. I’m good. It’s all good. I’m over it. I’m over him. Goodbye, Tony Dumas. So long, asshole. Hope I never see your face again.
But now?
I reach for the pillow, place it over my face, and scream into it.
Then I do it again. And again.
Because I might not want to admit it, but… Oh, my God. I fucking wanted to give in. So bad.
I wanted to bite his lip, and claw his face, and make him… make me.
I reach for my phone in my jacket pocket and I’m just about to pull up Tara’s contact when I remember she’s back there. In Key West. With Tony’s stupid brother. Two hours ahead, so it’s four in the morning her time.
I throw the phone across the room. I regret it immediately. That regret is coursing through my veins before it even hits the wall. And then I’m down on my knees, scrambling on the floor trying to find it.
Great. I hold it up to the light filtering in from the window. The screen is cracked. I’ve only owned this phone for six months. The screen on my last phone was so messed up I couldn’t even use it anymore. And I had to wait months for that fucking upgrade.
I hate Tony Dumas. I hate him with a passion.
Hate. That’s the only emotion I’ve ever felt for him.
So why is he allowed to have this goddamned hold over me? I don’t get it.
And why does my best friend have to live so far away two time zones over? She would get it. If we were together, she’d tell me something profound. Some reasonable explanation as to why I’m still dealing with these lingering feelings. And you know what? She’d probably be right. Because she’d probably share my problem with her boyfriend—Tony’s freaking older brother—and he’d have some older-brother superpower insight, and then… bam. Everything would make sense. I’d fall out of hate-fuck lust with Tony, and I’d move on to someone else.
Someone who didn’t think a good time was stalking a girl home in the middle of the night and hate-fucking her against the side of a garage.
Someone who didn’t pull me into their dark side and make me like it afterwards.
God. That infuriates me.
Because I don’t like it! I’m just… addicted to it!
Not it. That’s not right.
I’m addicted to him. Just him.
I need someone who is not him. Pretty much anyone, actually. I’ll take anyone.
Someone who is the total opposite of Tony.
Hmm. I pause to think about what the opposite of Tony might look like. Just so I can have a visual
. Just in case said opposite of Tony appeared in my life. I should maybe be on the lookout for him.
Tony has naturally dark hair but he’s been in the tropical sun for so much of his life, it’s been bleached to a dark coppery bronze. His eyes almost perfectly match his hair, a magical kind of brown. A brown that reminds me of those polished tiger’s eye stones you find living in large bins inside remote gas stations in random towns in Utah, or the perfect blend of tea I once found in the new-age shop that used to be next door to Sick Boyz, but is now a used bookstore. Delicious brown.
Which means the next guy needs light eyes and lighter hair.
Tony is well-muscled and he’s got ink, but listen. I’m not letting him strike those two attributes off my checklist. Fuck that. I work in a tattoo shop. Knocking off all inked men means every male who comes through the door is off limits. And let’s be honest here—I’m not exactly a social butterfly. I don’t even have a best friend at the moment. So even though I don’t want to find my next obsession at the tattoo shop, it might be my only option.
But definitely no sailors. Or fishermen. I’m done with men of the sea. Forever.
And there it is. That feeling in my gut. That sick, sick feeling of loss I get every time I even think the words ‘sea’ or ‘ocean.’ Or ‘fishermen’ and ‘sailors.’
Loss. Like… a true kind of grief. The kind of grief I feel for my mother when I let thoughts of her creep in too.
I don’t understand feelings. They’re so stupid.
Not only does Tony not deserve me, missing him and what we had in the past should not be up there on the sadness scale with missing my mother. That’s so wrong. I’m so wrong!
No. He’s so wrong!
Tony is a freak who gets off on putting his hands on my throat. He loves fucking me like I’m his toy. His whole world revolves around control, and darkness, and rage.
So why do I want him?
Why?
I bang my fists against my head and close my eyes.
I need therapy. I start tapping on my cracked phone screen, looking for therapists. I need one. Bad. Like, right now. There’s something wrong with me. Something truly dark and depraved about my sexual preferences and choices in men.
No. Not men.
Man. One man.
Just him. Just Tony. Why is he here?
He has had this hold on me since high school, for fuck’s sake. I was only seventeen when we first got together. He, on the other hand, was twenty-two.
I should’ve known. I mean, I see it now. Why would a twenty-two-year-old man want a seventeen-year-old girl?
There is only one reason.
Control.
I wish I could say that first time was magical. Oh, I came. I came hard and fast. And then he made me come again. Several more times. But magical? No. It wasn’t magical. It was hot, and sweaty, and dark.
We weren’t even in a bed. We were in the dugouts of the baseball field at the high school. This happened outside, in the middle of the night, on a bench, while I was high and a little bit drunk too.
And then my whole fucking life got tipped upside down by this man. He was all I could think about. I almost didn’t graduate! I was so obsessed with him. With the sex. With… all of it.
He took over my life.
For two years, he took over my life.
It was twenty-five months and seventeen days of yelling, and jealousy, and hate-fucks.
And even though I was unhappy, and filled with rage almost every second of the day, and sick with the thought of him walking away from me, I stayed in that relationship.
I lost so much weight. I went days without eating when he disappeared on the ocean in his boat. I stalked him. I used to sneak through Kraken Karen’s backyard and stalk up to his house and peek in his fucking windows.
And it wasn’t his house! The Dumas family didn’t own the whole street back then. Tony lived at home. So I was peeking into his parents’ house.
I was fucking sick over this man.
And then, slowly, we both moved on. The first year after we broke up for real was rough. I did a lot of graffiti painting back then. I got busted a few times, too. And when Tony found out I was in jail for the last bust, do you know what that asshole did?
He bailed me out. Got me a lawyer and everything. And that lawyer got me off with community service. That’s when I got that first commission for the mural. A legit, public mural.
My first job as an artist.
But did Tony stick around? No. He didn’t answer my calls. And all I wanted to do was say thank you. But did he pick up? No.
He disappeared again.
I couldn’t eat. The whole sad mess started over from day one. And it took me an entire year after the bailout before I could think straight.
Tony Dumas wrecked me.
And now he’s back to shatter all my pieces for good.
I grab the pillow and scream into it again.
The next day he’s all I think about.
Tony. Tony. Tony.
I want to stab myself in the eyeball. At least then I’d be screaming in pain and not be muttering Tony, Tony, Tony inside my head on repeat.
But of course, when I walk in to the Fort Collins Theatre to get my noontime coffee, there he is.
I almost turn around and walk out.
Hell, who am I kidding? There’s no chance in hell I could turn away from the heated glare he’s sending me from across the coffee shop.
His eyes lock with mine. And this is when I realize—he really is stalking me. I come here for my noontime coffee every day before work. He has my schedule down. And he’s gonna… what? Follow me around until I give in and let him hate-fuck me?
I don’t think so.
And listen, I’m not saying no because I don’t want to fuck him. Or let him fuck me. It has nothing to do with the fucking.
It’s the principle of the thing, OK? He’s not gonna sail into this town—my town—for one last forget-me-forever fuck and then go back home to his stupid little Key West life, OK? That’s not going to happen.
Not on my watch.
This is my town. He and his family were the ones who chased me out of Key West eight years ago. I’ve settled in. I have friends.
Well, one friend. Well, sort of. Tara. Why did you have to move away? We were a team! We were good together! We could’ve run this place!
And now… now who am I stuck with?
Right on cue Vann Vaughn’s truck pulls up in front of the theater coffee shop. He’s talking on the phone, grinning. That boy is always grinning.
And even now, when he’s on the other side of the window, still in his truck, almost twenty-five feet away—his eyes find mine. And then that grin is only for me.
Vann has a thing for me. It’s a little bit sad the way he has a thing for me. Because it’s all very one-sided.
I involuntarily glance over my shoulder at Tony and find him glaring at Vann.
Hmm. Now that’s an option. I could use Vann to get rid of Tony. He’d do it. He’d do anything for me.
And it would work. Vann is kind of a catch. Sure, he’s a player. And yes, he’s one of those happy people. But he’s a talented artist. He’s very good and he’s offered to tat me up on several occasions, but I’ve resisted. Getting a tattoo from a cute guy like Vann feels… personal. Especially when he’s made it very clear he would like to date me.
It’s my turn at the counter so I tell the pretty brunette with the bright blue eyes what I want. I don’t know her personally, but she’s very friendly with the Vaughn brothers, so when the little bell jingles and her eyes flick to the door and she beams a huge smile, I know Vann just came in.
The next thing I know his hand slips around my waist and he plants a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll take what she’s having,” Vann tells the blue-eyed woman.
The girl laughs. “Is this your girlfriend, Vann?” She winks at me and then turns to get our coffee.
“Maybe,” he says coyly.
“No,” I s
ay.
“She will be,” Vann offers.
“Will not,” I say. And then I look over my shoulder and find Tony standing up at his table, staring at us.
Glaring at us.
Vann looks too. “Hey, is that—”
“Yes,” I hiss. “Don’t show fear.”
“Fear?” Vann laughs. “Hey! Tony!” Vann is yelling across the freaking room. He lets go of me and saunters off to greet my ex.
The brunette sets my coffee on the counter. “Don’t worry. I’ll put it on his tab.”
“Thanks.” I smile. But I take my coffee and turn away quickly, eyeing the door, wanting to escape, but unable to resist the magical polished-tiger’s-eye pull of Tony Dumas without at least looking back at him one more time.
Do not look back, Belinda. Don’t do it.
I look over my shoulder and find Vann trying to dap Tony’s knuckles.
Tony is having none of it.
“Hey!” Vann calls across the room. Only this time he’s talking to me. “Bring me my coffee, Belinda.”
I make a face at him.
He begs with his hands. “Please.”
All around me women are smirking and giggling at adorable Vann Vaughn. The state university is just a couple blocks down. So there are dozens of girls who would love to have the full attention of a Sick Boy.
Then all their eyes are on me.
I slink back to the counter, grab Vann’s coffee, then make my way over to the other side of the room.
I want to come up with a logical reason for why I’m doing this, but there isn’t one.
I just can’t help myself.
Tony Dumas is like a magnet. He is gravity. And I am unable to resist his pull.
Of course, everything about this is a bad idea. Vann openly flirts with me every chance he gets. Tony is a jealous asshole.
Nothing good can come from my decision to make this a party of three.
But I do it anyway.
“Thanks, babe,” Vann says, taking his coffee from my hand. Then he pulls out a chair. “Sit, Belinda. Take a load off and enjoy your coffee.”
“Umm… I gotta get to work.”