And that right there is my mistake, stupidly thinking that anything where my group of friends is concerned will just be simple and easy breezy.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the time I’ve been in Westbrook Blues and met the Blue Boys and their girl, Astraea, and even Ivy and Spider, is that everything is not always what it seems.
There’s always a thicker plot going on just underneath the surface.
“I’m sorry, your what?” a new voice purrs darkly from behind me, a darkness I know so well, it makes my insides collapse as liquid heat starts pooling at my core. “Did you just say your girls’ trip?”
Fuck. Me.
It can’t be…
The hairs at the back of my neck stand up as if I’ve been electrocuted. I swear I feel my insides knotting up, pressing heavily on my ribs which will probably puncture my furiously pounding heart.
That voice, that deep cadence with the dark undertones of hate and playfulness mischief, I know it.
At another time, I was used to waking up to it with each phone call, but now… now it’s different, wrecking havoc to my system like never before.
“I think your pretty little head is under the deluded impression that all this is just for you,” Noah purrs softly, cruelly, deceptively. I don’t miss the sarcastic tone of his voice. “I guess liars think the world owes them everything they want, huh?”
Oh God. Save me.
Noah’s here.
My eyes close on their own volition.
My heart starts pounding with renewed vigor, as if wanting to kill me off.
I should’ve known when I saw Emmett sitting there. I should’ve pieced it together that one Blue Boy wouldn’t be here without the other but most of all, I should’ve seen this for what it really is.
I just didn’t think Raea would connive and plan to do something as painful as this.
Too far. She’s gone too far…
Putting me in the same space as him. Not just the same space, but an airtight vessel that will be in the air in a matter of a few minutes by the looks of things.
The saddest thing about it all is, I’d rather jump out without a parachute to escape the agony of seeing him now, especially after the last time I was with him.
That would be fitting, seeing as how I fell for him without a safety net on the hard ground of his life where all those who have lied and abandoned him lie there rotting, dead, and ignored but still manage to make him suffer by taunting him.
Aware that he’s waiting for my response—so is everyone else apparently—I try to breathe in deep, nice and slow, then exhale a shaky breath, trying to soothe the mayhem caused by his presence. And hopefully get my heart working again.
Why him?
“Cat’s got your tongue, huh?” he taunts.
I feel myself start to sweat, my palms growing clammy.
I need a battle plan. ASAP!
Rubbing my palms down my pants would be a show of weakness in front of him so that’s a big no, and just standing here like an idiot is much worse, almost like rolling over and letting him step all over me, kicking me like a dog for my sins. Because honestly, no one can hurt me as deeply as Noah can.
But no matter what I do, I can’t afford to give him the satisfaction of seeing me down on my knees for him. He’ll eat me alive if I do that.
Plastering a sweet smile on my face, I turn around to face him, whipping my hair around like the fucking bitch he’s called me a few times.
But as soon as I see him, my breath stutters.
Dressed from head to toe in black threads and the still unreleased Yeezy’s, he stands there looking raggedly sexy, angry, and vulnerable. I can’t look away.
It’s as if we color coordinated but I stop myself from thinking we’re riding the same wavelength of blending with the darkness in our souls.
“Hey,” I whisper hoarsely and watch as his eyes dilate—in anger or arousal, I don’t know. I don’t think the two are different at this point.
His body is much more leaner than before. His muscles are cut and defined, as if his bench press has increased since the last time I saw him—which was a night I’ll never forget.
“Did you think all this is for you, Kim Possible?”
Kim Possible.
It used to be a term of endearment but now it’s just a cruel taunt, reminding me of my mistakes, my lies, and the sins I committed, hurting my own friend.
“No, but I did think it would be free of assholes,” I fire back, glad when my voice is strong and level.
Noah clenches his grip around the neck of the bottle in the brown paper bag, the rings on his fingers glinting with the sunlight filtering in from the window. He’s fighting to keep his face neutral, keeping a lid on his emotions, but I see him clearer than I’ve ever seen anyone else. Including myself.
Yeah, we’re at war all right.
“Well take it or fucking leave it, Kim, the assholes are here to fuck it all up,” he says smoothly, too smoothly. He means it.
His gaze is hooded, his hair longer than before, falling over his right eye while the other one pierces into me and I almost gasp at the state of him.
My God, what’s happening to him.
He’s both incredibly sexy and so damn broken, a mirror image of me if I’m being honest—minus the sexy part. That’s all him. There’s no one who can top Noah if you ask me.
“Good to know where you stand,” I whisper but it sounds like a groan to my ears making me wince.
“Can’t fault me for being honest.”
“Or drunk for that matter,” I whisper, keeping the judgement out of my voice. I won’t hurt him like that.
“Yeah well,” he trails off, but doesn’t look away from me. “Thanks for that observation, at least you don’t lie about the obvious.”
“Last time I checked, I’m not the only liar on this plane,” I say, my voice low.
He cocks his head slightly to the left as if studying me. If this was a forever ago, a time when he and I were…whatever the hell we were, I would’ve let him pierce my soul, but each time he’s given me one of his thorough perusals, it’s ended in a nightmare and devastation that I’m pretty sure I can’t handle right now.
“Can someone tell me what’s going on here?” I say, turning away from Noah to look at Ivy. “Why are they here?”
“We’ve been hoodwinked, babe,” Ivy mutters, but she doesn’t sound all that unhappy about the fact. “Apparently this was all Raea’s plan.”
“This was her plan?” I croak, my throat now dry. “Kidnap us with them?”
I can’t help the disdain in my voice. Not when I can’t help the pounding of my heart feeling Noah’s unmistakable icy gaze on my back. Every. Inch. Of. Me.
“Yup.”
“Oh come now, Kimmy,” Spider says with a low chuckle, looking at something—no, someone—over my shoulder. “It’s not that bad being kidnapped by us.”
No, it’s not. Especially when they all look like sinfully delicious sexy gods with dubious intent flashing in their eyes…
“It is if your eyes are laughing, Spider,” I counter.
Is it too late to leave? I mean we’re still on the ground and the door is still open. I’ve survived this long by listening to my flight-fight instincts and right now it’s telling me to hightail my ass out of here.
As if the gods know how close I am to bailing, a flight attendant appears from out of nowhere, dressed in a short black pencil skirt, a white shirt, and a black blazer with the emblem of a phoenix on fire on her breast pocket.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please settle in your seats. We’re about to take off.”
“Excuse me,” I start, turning to the attendant. “I think I left something back at home. I need to leave and…”
“Close the door, love,” Noah says, cutting me off as he moves to stand right behind me, his body heat seeps into my back. My body trembles and I almost sigh, the pulsating attraction between Noah and me increasing tenfold. “We’re already late, thanks
to someone selfish.”
“Of course, Master Montreal,” the lady says with a sly smile for him.
Master Montreal? The fuck?
“Thanks, love,” he says in that sexy purr that sets my blood on fire.
Did Noah fuck her? The rumors about him are legend after all.
Looking at the girl, then back at Noah over my shoulder, I almost jump when I find his gaze waiting for me. I fucking hate that he affects me this strongly. Hate that he has a face and a specific touch that makes me immediately think of sheet-clawing, primal, no holds barred, screaming sex.
Abort, bitch. Now!
“Uh no, I need to go,” I press, now frantic.
“No, you don’t,” he counters. “You’re a coward and you want to run, we know that about you, but you’re not doing any of your cowardice here. Not when Baby Blue has gone out of her way for you like this.”
Raea. Right. Of course. All of this is for her.
All this suffering. All this pain of being this close to the guy whose heart I broke by lying when I promised him I’d never lie to him ever, like everyone else has in his life. But all I wanted was just to survive, but I know he doesn’t want to hear my excuse.
But this, this anguish and torment, I’m going to brave it for my sweet best friend who’s suffered more than most people should and still managed to forgive me when I hurt her.
“I’m not running and I’m not a coward, I say, my voice so low but he hears me. Of course he does.
“Yeah, but you’re a coward,” he mutters. “The biggest one I’ve encountered in my life. And as you are well aware, I know a lot of your kind.”
That hurts.
It hurts way more than it should because I promised myself that his opinion of me wouldn’t hurt me anymore, but here I am, sucking in a breath at his harsh words.
“Hope you suffer for it,” he says, brushing past me, stalking down the aisle with my shattered soul in his wake.
Looking around the plane, I notice Spider who’s now typing something on his phone to Ivy who’s sitting across from Emmett, her body inclined closer to him, as if she’s listening to something he’s saying but he’s silently watching her with an unreadable expression.
It’s then that I realize how everyone is ready to get this show on the road and my drama is just delaying them. They’re just too polite to say anything about it.
Noah’s right again. I am a coward. One big ass, tired as fuck, messy coward.
“Miss, whatever it is you’ve forgotten you can let me know and I can organize with the ground team to get it ready for you when we land,” the attendant says. “As it is, we’re fifteen minutes behind schedule and that won’t do for Master King.”
Of course. That won’t do for that asshole. I should’ve seen that smirk of his for what it was.
“Thanks,” I mumble and then move down the aisle, looking for a place to sit. It doesn’t take me long to figure that the only place I can sit is at the back of the plane, with the raging mess that is Noah.
I’m so fucked.
And not in that delicious way from that one and only time…
She’s here.
All of King’s warnings and all my preparations for this day did nothing to save me from the assault of seeing this girl.
The one girl beside Astraea who I cared for deeply. Before her true colors were exposed for the world to see the type of person she is.
Manipulative.
Wicked.
Stunning.
Kim’s as beautiful as she is dangerous.
I know better than to step closer to the blazing inferno that is her traitorous, tempting, sinful body.
But fuck, I couldn’t help myself, desperate to be in her powerful presence one more time, even if it was for a brief second. And now, I’m all but panting for a whiff of her, a simple touch, an innocent, almost accidental graze on any part of my body, or even a quick look.
The fuck?!
“Fine,” Kim huffs, her voice sounding hoarse, throaty, and airy at the same time, it fucks with me like nothing else. Sometimes all I fucking need to get me through some dark as fuck days is to hear her voice.
It sucks that I can’t even have that now. Not when I don’t trust a word that rolls off her skilled tongue.
“Fine,” I growl, going down the aisle so I can go to the back of the plane, away from her. As I brush past her, I hear her small hitch of her breath and I tense up.
It’s been like that from the very beginning with this girl.
Every contact, no matter how small, awakens something deep and sinister in me. And in this case, it’s not just arousal, it’s angry, white hot livid lust.
But I know better… especially after last time.
Experience is the best teacher and all that shit.
Fuck this all to hell.
She had the right idea when she was about to bail just now.
“The shit I do for Astraea, good God,” I mutter to myself, then chug a healthy ‘sip’ of my beloved Jack D.
He’s one of the only motherfuckers who’s never let me down.
He gets me.
There’s a good chance that if I stick to him for the duration of this flight and even this godforsaken getaway, I might make it through the punishing flames of hell.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard Phoenix-Eight for your flight from Westbrook Blues to Colorado. This will be two hours of smooth flying, with just a bit of turbulence. It’s nice and cold in Colorado, with the holidays on blast. I expect you’ll be having a good time. Happy holidays from the Phoenix Corps.”
From the Phoenix Corps, huh? Are we just going to embrace this shady shit then?
Just thinking about that shit makes me think of another motherfucker who betrayed me and let me down recently. George.
His absence on this plane is loud and clear. We’ve all noticed, even though no one has said a word, and that makes me fucking sad.
It’s no big secret that George is currently on the outs with us after what he did but fuck if that isn’t messed up.
At this point in this useless life, it’s as if no one is who they say they are.
Everyone lies.
Everyone has secrets.
No one is honest and I’ve cared deeply for people that have repeatedly taken me for granted. Now try to fucking imagine how that shit makes me feel.
Not to mention my one personal hell that’s happening in my life right now. With my deadbeat asshole father who just popped up back in my life out of nowhere.
I take another chug, falling into my seat away from everyone else. Maybe here in the silence I can numb my pain without anyone bothering me.
Closing my eyes, I lie back but soon, the sizzling of the blood in my veins and the awareness my fucking whisky-dick has for her alerts me that she’s close by.
I don’t have to open my eyes to see her. All I have to do is just feel. She’s never far from my fucked up soul.
Without meaning to, I sniff out her cheap-ass perfume, no, deodorant, and my body sinks in the plush leather seat even more, as if comforted by her when I’m nothing but.
“Put your seatbelt on,” she whispers, her voice coming from across me.
“Of all the seats on this plane,” I mutter, but of course, she hears me. How can she not? She lived in a fucking trailer almost all her life. I expect her hearing is fucking spectacular.
“Trust me, this is the last place I want to be right now.” Something tells me she’s not just talking about her seat on this plane.
“Then why the fuck did you bother?” I fire at her, my eyes flying open.
“I bothered because I care, Noah! I’m not here for you!”
No one can accuse us of beating around the fucking bush.
We’ve always been direct with each other, which is one of the things that made being around her so fucking easy and complicated at the same time.
But now, now it’s just excruciating.
“Obviously. Yo
u do everything for yourself, you made that shit abundantly clear,” I grit out. “You fooled me into thinking otherwise though.”
At some point of us, I thought I knew her well. More than I knew anyone in the world and that’s saying something. But it didn’t take long until I figured I knew nothing at all.
Or maybe I did. I knew her fake alter ego. The side of her that fucked with me so good, I’m probably messed up for life now.
Sex is ruined for me, with just one fucking taste I’ve been looking for her between legs that have nothing but randomness and desperation. And she, she has sorrow between her legs and her lips and something that tugs at my insides, yanking everything I am, including my fucking balls until all I want is her.
“That’s not fair,” she whispers, her stormy grey eyes muted, the fatigue and stress so clear but I can’t care.
Don’t fucking care, asshole. Feelings are what got us in this mess in the first place. “Everything I do is for everyone I love,” she whispers.
Daring myself, I stare into her eyes. In that second, I swear it’s too late to think of the value of my life as I sink into them, seeing everything we were. Everything we’re not.
“Yup. That’s exactly what you do,” I say hoarsely. “Consequences be damned.”
“Noah,” she says, her sexy voice reduced to a whisper filled with regret and something else that shatters my already broken heart. Those gorgeous eyes welling up with tears. I shoot up from my seat as soon as I see them.
FUCK!
“Noah, please…”
“Save your fucking begging, Kim.”
She reaches up to touch me. I see her hand getting closer. For a moment I want her to touch me. I want to feel her sweet touch again, but fuck!
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
I think I hear her whimper. It does something to my insides, but I’m on the move.
I’m barely aware that we’re taxing on the runway, the plane gaining speed for takeoff. All I know is I need to get away from her.
“Master Montreal, you can’t be up. Please take a seat. We’re taking off.”
I’m not listening.
I stumble my way away from her.
Seeing an open seat in front beside Spider, I head over and plop down beside him.
Frosty Blues: A Westbrook Blues Novella Page 10