by Raven Dark
I’d turned off my phone. There’d likely be a lot of messages from her. There’d be no way I’d be able to get into the house without getting the third degree. Vicious insisted on taking me right to my door; If she saw him, she’d probably call the damn cops. So I handled it the only way I could think of.
I lied.
My best friend Sandra lives a few doors down from us on the same street. She loves me, and I adore her like the sister I’ve never had. Our moms have been friends from the first day we’d arrived in Whiskey, so it’s normal for us to drop in unannounced, sometimes late. You can see where this is going.
The idea of Vicious dropping me off, his bike’s roar waking my mother out of a dead sleep and coming out with her finger already on the speed dial for 911 filled me with a dread that nearly made me sick. So I had him drop me off at Sandra’s house and told him it was mine.
See, this is the thing. I never lie. Never. I can’t even lie about small things, like why I’m five minutes late for work, or when I don’t want to go out with friends. Sandra always tells me I have no poker face. How I got rid of Mom that night without her catching on, I’ll never know. The principle of the thing makes me feel bad enough, but it feels worse that I’ve lied to Vicious. Ironically, it makes me feel only slightly better to know I won’t see him again, which means I won’t have to worry about how to handle what would happen after.
It makes me feel better, but that same thought also crushes me.
When he kisses me, long and hard on the mouth outside of Sandra’s house, the house he thinks is mine, I want it to last forever. He tells me he’ll see me soon. It’s a nice fantasy, but I know it isn’t true. For one thing, where can this possibly go? We have nothing in common, and, if he was for real, sooner or later he’d realize I was too young for him and walk away.
No, tonight the fantasy would end. Still, I can’t help feeling like a sleaze-bag for acting like I’m ashamed of him. It’s immature and not at all like the strong confident woman he needs, one who doesn’t care about what others think. But I’m just not ready for the alternative. Not when I won’t even have him to console me when my life falls apart.
As soon as he rides out of my life for what I’m sure is the last time, I sneak around to Sandra’s bedroom window in the back. All the lights in the house are off, including hers. I find a couple of pebbles and toss them at her window. They hit with soft clacks against the glass. I hope the hell she’s home and hadn’t decided to spend the night at Skeeter’s.
Sandra’s mother is a heck of a lot more relaxed than mine, but she doesn’t like guys like Vicious either, so I’m not about to wake her and invoke questions I don’t know how to answer.
Sandra’s head appears in the window. She lifts it up with a bleary-eyed, but worried look. “Anne? What’s wrong?”
“Tell you later. Let me in, will you?” I shout-whisper up at her.
She shuts the window. A few seconds later, she opens the back door, furthest from her mother’s bedroom, and waves me in.
“Everything okay?” she asks as I slip into the house and toe-off my shoes so they don’t squeak on the marble kitchen floor. “Did you lock yourself out?”
I shake my head and point to the ceiling, toward her bedroom upstairs.
She raises one pale, manicured brow. “Okay, this is getting interesting.” She picks up my shoes and we go upstairs.
Sandra shuts her bedroom door and bounces onto her pink, frilly bed. Now that we’re alone, all the tension leaks out of me in the way that happens only when a girl is with her bestie. I lean against the door, letting my head drop back on it. My heart is racing. I really hate sneaking around and lying like this. It isn’t me.
“Okay, now you’re scaring me a little.” She sits up slowly. “Anne, what’s wrong?” When I don’t answer, she sits up a little more. “Wait. Why the hell is your shirt on backwards? And why the hell are you covered in grass?”
“It is?” I look down. It is. The shirt should have the school’s name on it, but it’s blank. Did Vicious not notice or not care? “Shit.”
“Anne,” she drawls out, sounding a little like him.
I drag myself over to the bed and sit down. “Um.” How to explain? There’s so much to tell her, I hardly know where to begin.
I end up starting this all backwards. “I just had sex,” I croak out.
She jerks up, and her beautiful face splits into a huge, girlish grin. Sandra is a lot like my mom, with pale hair and blue eyes, a model’s face and Barbie doll legs. She looks like one of those preppy college girls everyone expects to be a bitch, except she’s really nice.
“Oh my God.” She squirms into position like she’s getting ready for a long, involved chat. “Tell me. Everything. Now.”
A laugh spills out of me, and just like that, I know everything will be all right. I can tell her all of it and not have to worry about being judged or getting the third degree or having to pay for my horrible decisions for the rest of my life. Well, not with her, at least.
I smile and fall back on the bed. I tell her the whole story from beginning to end, starting with meeting Vicious at The Eatery that day. Her eyes go wide with wonder.
“Anne, you’re shitting me right now. His name is Vicious?”
I nod with a smile.
“That’s hot.”
I giggle.
“And he’s a Heathen. For real?”
“Yup.”
“You’re making this up.” Her lips twitch as she looks at me shrewdly.
“Nope.”
“Jesus.”
I go on, telling her about riding his bike and the hours we spent under the stars—and about what we’d done while out at Lover’s Ridge.
“Wow.” She stares at one of her pink walls. “So that’s why you’re glowing now.”
I feel so much better telling her all of this. Everything that’s happened feels like the sort of thing girls who are close with their mothers would rush in to tell them, a night of girl talk over popcorn and movies. That’s the thing; Mom and I are close, but with dating, she feels like a stranger. It’s freeing talking to Sandra about this stuff, and it cements our relationship anew, reminding me why we’re best friends.
Sandra looks at me, starry-eyed. She’s a good girl like me, and her boyfriend Skeeter is great, but he’s the quintessential rich prep. He goes to the same school as me, and Sandra met him months ago when she’d come to get me for a rare night out. I think she loves him, but every girl has her fantasies.
“You said he was older, right?” She breaks into my thoughts.
“Yeah. At least twenty years.”
She flops back beside me. “That’s so sexy.”
“Right?”
“Your mom’s gonna kill you.”
“She won’t know. That’s why I’m here.”
“So you had him drop you here.” Her eyes sparkle like stars. “Bad move. He’s going to realize this isn’t your house eventually.”
I want to tell her I doubt I’ll be seeing him again, but I know even Sandra wouldn’t be able to help lecturing me if I told her that. What kind of friend would she be if she shrugged at an older man having his fun with me and walking away?
“I know.” I sigh. “What was I supposed to do? You know what my mom’s like.”
“Yep.” She gets up, grabs a shirt out of a drawer. “Okay. You’re staying here. Put that on.”
“Oh, thank god.” I blow out a breath. “I love you right now.”
“Love you too. I’ll put your clothes in the wash in the morning.”
I smell my shirt. It smells like him, spicy and wonderful, with that sexy hint of exhaust. A childish impulse not to let her wash it wells up and I inhale it again. I can still feel some of his come dried onto my stomach and the thought makes my sex clench.
It also makes my chest feel tight.
I’m no stranger to breakups or abandonment. I’ve only had one serious boyfriend, and it ended as badly as it could end, yet this somehow feels worse
. Vicious didn’t say anything that suggested he wouldn’t see me again, but I’m not stupid. This can only go one way. With a heartbreak I already know far too much about.
Sandra doesn’t even know why my ex-boyfriend and I broke up. It’s the one thing I never told her, or anyone. Thank god, because if I had, knowing about Vicious’ age, she’d launch into over-protective friend mode.
I change and crawl into Sandra’s clean, warm bed, thanking my lucky stars for her having saved my ass tonight. And because, when tomorrow comes and the mess of my life sinks in—when I realize I really will have to live without Vicious—she’ll make life bearable.
We fall asleep, and I dream. I dream of my biker in leather and wish I was still back at Lover’s Ridge in his arms.
It was a fantasy, nothing more. Now that it’s over, I have to be the good girl and go on with life.
God, help me, what have I done?
The next day, and the day after, I launch myself into work. The restaurant is slow, so I take out my phone and lose myself in my music. On Saturday, two days after my night with Vicious, Mom lets me work the restaurant alone for the day until Sandra comes in to do the later shift with me while it’s busier.
I still can’t get Vicious out of my mind. A few times I’d thought I’d heard the rumble of a motorcycle, but when I’d go to look out at the street, I never saw one. Either my mind was playing tricks on me, or it was one of the few people in town who happen to own a motorcycle.
Several hundred times since that night with Vicious, Mom has asked me what’s wrong. I’m too quiet, I’m moping, and twice, I’ve given a customer the wrong order. It’s not like me. I manage to avoid answering, always finding something to distract her or making sure something comes up before I have to reply.
Before I’d fallen asleep at Sandra’s, I’d texted her that I was spending the night there. It passed the truth test, if only just. I was sleeping there at the time I called.
I’m a terrible daughter.
And I know this evasiveness won’t work for long.
I don’t see any sign of Vicious, and his absence cuts a hole in my heart. It’s only been two days, but somehow, that’s long enough to confirm my expectations about him. He’s had his fun, and that’s that.
I should be relieved. I won’t have to worry about mom, or the town rumor mill being set abuzz. He’s too alpha, too demanding. I’d lose myself in him, lose who I am. He’d chew me up and spit me out. I should be grateful, but instead, I want to weep into a tub of Bubble Gum ice cream.
An absurd wish that I could call him pulls at me, useless since we didn’t exchange phone numbers. With so much having happened so fast that night, I never even thought of it, but now the realization only solidifies my misgivings. If he wanted to see me again, he would have given me his number or asked for mine. But it hardly matters. I’m not the kind of girl who calls a guy out of the blue; the very idea would make me panic.
The restaurant is deader than it’s ever been for Saturday. It’s lonely to the point where when Sandra arrives for her shift, I’m thrilled.
I love that she works here. Sandra was putting herself through business school, and over the summer, my mother had offered her a job to help with tuition. Sandra was thrilled, more than happy to sling burgers all summer to pay her own way. And it means we get to spend lots of time together, even though we both have full summers.
“Aw, Anne, cheer up,” she says, shaking my shoulder. “He’ll call. Guys have this stupid three-day rule thing. They aren’t supposed to call right away or they’re not real men.”
I force a smile and bite my tongue to keep from telling her he won’t be calling. Ever.
A couple of hours before the shift ends, Sandra’s boyfriend drops by to visit with her. Skeeter really is the perfect preppy college boy. Rich, but not entitled, just arrogant enough to be hot without being annoying. His real name is actually Brad, but people have been calling him Skeeter since we were kids. I still don’t know why, but the name apparently stuck.
“Hi, Skeet,” I say, feeling a little happier as I take the last customer’s money and put it in the till with a thanks. I hug Skeeter over the counter, and he flashes a big, perfect smile before he hugs Sandra close. “Sandra’ll be done in a couple of hours. You want a burger or a Coke or something?”
“Sure. I think my grease intake levels have dropped to a dangerous low.”
Sandra and I laugh, and she kisses him. He takes her hand and leads her to a table. Since the restaurant is dead now, we can talk and eat until someone shows up.
Sandra and I quickly make Skeet his burger and pour him a drink while we talk about his dad’s car business, which is apparently doing better than The Eatery. It’s made his family one of the richest in Sandusky.
Watching the two of them hold hands over the table while I clean up, their heads together and grinning like love birds, I can’t help feeling a stab of jealousy. Loneliness eats at me, and I shut it down. I’d known what would happen with Vicious. It was my choice, and I had to deal with it without bringing my friends down.
An hour or so before our shift ends, Sandra and Skeet have disappeared into the back room to get some supplies from the storage room. I’m not surprised when I hear the door close and Sandra squeal in delight before there’s a thump against the back wall.
Irritation mixes with amusement and I shake my head. Figures. Those two can barely keep their hands off each other for longer than a minute.
Since Sandra won’t be coming out for a while, I finish cleaning up. I gather up the garbage to take it outside. The garbage goes into a huge dumpster at the side of The Eatery, and it’s just getting dark, closing in on nine, which makes me glad Sandra is here.
What’s become of this town, that I have to worry about taking out the garbage when it isn’t even full dark out?
I step out and cross to the dumpster, lifting the lid on one and tossing the bags inside. The lid slams shut, and I turn around.
How I bite back the scream that jumps into my throat, I have no idea. Vicious is standing there, larger than life, a slice of pure heaven.
“Vicious. God.” I clutch my racing heart. “You have to stop sneaking up on a girl like that.”
Damn, he’s as tall as ever, hotness personified. The silver in his hair gleams in the fading light, those bare, tanned pecs of his half hidden by his vest…er… his cut.
Then I notice the expression on his face. Normally, he’d probably laugh at my annoyance, but he isn’t laughing at all. His beautiful mouth is a scowl, those heavenly blue eyes blazing, his jaw hard enough to give a stone lessons. The happy bubble that had grown in my chest at seeing him bursts, and my stomach sinks. It’s amazing how much badder and scarier Vicious looks when he’s pissed off.
He’s angry, but why?
“Vicious, what’s wrong?” My voice shakes.
After a day and a half with my stomach tying itself in knots at the idea that he has cast me aside, the knowledge that he’s here with me now should fill me with joy, but instead, my stomach knots tighter.
“You have some explaining to do, Anne,” he growls.
My heart gives a sickening drop.
Crap. I’m so busted.
5
The Price of Deception
Vicious doesn’t have to tell me what he’s talking about for me to understand what I’ve done to piss him off. How he knows, I can’t begin to guess, but he does.
For all that I’d lied to avoid my mother’s wrath, now, looking at Vicious, I’m seriously wondering if hers would have been the easier one to deal with. Which is saying a lot, because when my mother is pissed, she’s… intense.
When he’d spoken, his voice was calm, but with the smooth, low tone of a man controlling a potentially explosive temper. The muscles in his frame are corded so tight every line stands out. His eyes burn with accusation like blue fire that makes me feel as though, if I touch him, I’ll be burned to ash.
Yeah, I’m thinking my mother’s anger would ha
ve been a lot easier to handle than a pissed off biker.
I sigh and drop my head back. It doesn’t even occur to me to play it cool, to do what another girl in my position might have done and tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Vicious, you have to understand—”
He puts his huge palm up and somehow, without a word, it’s enough to snap my mouth shut. I’ve backed away from him toward the restaurant’s brick wall without even realizing it, because now he’s stalking toward me. He moves slowly, closing in like a big cat.
“I went to your house today,” he growls in the same low, carefully controlled tone as before.
My heart does another nosedive.
“I went there to drop off flowers for you. Imagine my surprise when a good looking fella opens the door.”
Oh, God, Sandra’s brother had been home.
“Vicious.” My voice breaks.
“No.” He’s close enough that I can feel the heat of him hammering into me. He puts his fingers to my lips, slowly, as if it takes all his restraint not to put me over his shoulder and drag me off somewhere. “Shut your mouth, Anne. Don’t make this worse.”
I wisely close my mouth.
“Imagine my confusion,” he goes on, “when the man at the door tells me that Anne doesn’t live there. And then when he tells me you live three houses down.”
The color leaves my face. Jesus, my mother is home. “Vicious, did you go to my house?”
“That’s what you’re worried about now?” His eyes are livid.
My eyes slide closed and tears splash my cheeks. I can’t bear that I’ve hurt him, and I know my question comes off horribly selfish. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
When I open my eyes, he cocks his head and holds his arms out at his sides. “Just tell me why, Anne.”
He deserves the explanation. I had panicked, and going to Sandra’s had felt like the only way to avoid a meltdown. Now, having to tell him, the whole thing seems petty and immature.
And a little bitchy.