“Fuck you, I’m not afraid of anything,” I argued, my hackles rising even though I knew there was truth in his words. I realized he was getting to me, he was doing what I’d sworn just hours ago that I wouldn’t let happen again.
My mask, cracking and peeling but still intact, fell back into place. “You need to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Farrah,” he replied, letting go of my arms to take a step back. “I’m gonna grab something to eat and head to bed, and you’re going to come with me.”
The mask slipped. “You’re insane!”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one in this situation acting even remotely normal.” He chuckled dryly, pulling his T-shirt over his head as he walked toward the fridge.
I was stunned.
He was laughing at me. It was too much. The mask dropped completely.
“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, my face turning beet red and the veins in my neck bulging. “Get out!”
He didn’t move from the kitchen, but spun back toward me with a calculating look. “It looks like zombie Farrah has left the building.”
“Get out!” I screeched again, the tears I’d been holding back finally falling from my eyes as I clenched my fists against my thighs. My heart thundered in my ears, pounding wild and heavy as I tried without success to calm myself down.
“You want to try and make me?” he asked in a bored tone, one eyebrow raised in question.
“Fine!” I shouted. “If you won’t leave—I will.”
I’d barely gone two steps before he was standing in front of me, blocking my way. “You’re not going to Gram’s.”
My entire body stilled and I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths through my nose as I struggled to control my rioting emotions. I was stiff, my muscles so tense they felt locked in place.
“Come on out, Ladybug,” he taunted with a bitter laugh. “Aren’t you frustrated, baby? I’m ruining your plans. You set up this whole scenario so I’d walk away, you were so sure I’d leave. Come on, you want to hit me?”
I opened my eyes to find him watching me with a fierce look. I took a step back, not realizing how close we’d become when he swung his hand out and hit himself hard in the chest.
“Come on, Farrah, fight!” He hit his chest again. “If you want me to leave, then you’re gonna have to make me believe it, baby.” He hit it again.
He raised his arm yet again and I’d had enough. “Stop it!” I screamed, flying at him when the latest blow came way too close to the bullet scar on his chest. He braced his feet as I moved, and when I reached him he used his hands to grip my hips, hoisting me up until my arms and legs were wrapped around him.
My fingernails dug deep into his back as I held him to me, pulling and grabbing as if I couldn’t get close enough. God, what was I doing? I was so confused I was shaking, the adrenaline from our fight making my body tremble as he started walking toward my room.
“I hate you,” I whimpered into his neck.
When we reached the bed, he peeled me from his body, dropping me. “No, you don’t. You love me, and it doesn’t matter how much you push, Ladybug. I’m not going anywhere,” he growled, unbuttoning his jeans and shoving them and his boxers to the floor. “You try that shit with me again, you’ll get the same result.”
My breath caught as he stripped my pants and underwear down my legs. His hands were gentle but his words were not, and I was having a hard time keeping up with what was happening. I’d been so sure that I’d be able to shut it down, so sure that I could chase him away with a few precisely chosen words, that I no longer knew what to do with myself. He was lovingly stripping me bare as if I hadn’t just tried to break up with him. My head was spinning.
He crawled onto the bed, our bottom halves fitting like the pieces of a puzzle as he braced himself above me, meeting my eyes with a tenderness I hadn’t seen before.
“You took her side,” I whispered, hating myself for sounding like a whiny little girl, but unable to let it go.
“Won’t happen again,” he promised. “My loyalty is to you, even when you’re being a bitch. It’s always you, Ladybug. Forgive me?”
“I wasn’t being a bitch,” I replied sullenly.
“She was trying to protect me, baby. Her heart was in the right place,” he told me gently, but my body still stiffened beneath his. “Let me finish. Her heart was in the right place, but it won’t happen again. She knows not to do that shit again.”
“Yeah, because I’d fucking lay her ginger ass out,” I huffed, refusing to meet his eyes as he barked out a laugh.
“I have no doubt you would,” he said. “But you won’t need to—I made that shit clear after you’d left. You gotta understand, Farrah. She feels responsible for me after everything that happened. Not saying that’s right or wrong, it just is. And I haven’t talked about you, so me moving you up here was a surprise.”
“You didn’t move me up here. I moved up to be with Callie. Plus, it’s not like you had anything to say about me anyway,” I grumbled.
“I had plenty to say, just didn’t say it. Shit was too weird with us then, the back and forth, barely seeing you. I didn’t want them asking about us when I wasn’t sure if you’d even let me in here.”
“I was so mad at you today,” I confessed.
“I knew that when you turned into a zombie,” he replied, brushing my hair gently from my face. “I didn’t know what was going on and you were spouting off nasty shit, so I just reacted. It won’t happen again, Ladybug. You come first, always.”
“Please don’t leave me alone with them again,” I asked in a shaky voice.
His nostrils flared, his eyes filled with remorse. “I won’t, baby, I promise.”
He climbed off me and reached for my hand as he sat up against the headboard. He leaned over and grabbed a condom from the nightstand, somehow opening it with his teeth and rolling it down his length with one hand. We held hands as I scooted over to rest my ass on his thighs, and eventually his other hand rose to cup the side of my face.
“Things aren’t always going to be easy, Ladybug,” he told me quietly, our eyes meeting in the dark room. “I’m going to screw up and you’re going to piss me off. Stop trying to walk away. Stop trying to push me out. I’m not going anywhere, okay? I don’t want to be anywhere but right here.” He let go of me to maneuver my body, and soon he slid inside me until we were fully connected. Then he stopped.
His fingers slid into my hair to hold me in place as I wrapped my hands around the sides of his neck. “I need you to fight for yourself, baby,” he whispered against my lips. “I need you to fight for us.”
“I’ll try,” I replied. Then I began to move.
I pulled myself up and dropped back down, over and over until my thighs burned. His hands were everywhere—sliding down my back to grip my ass, wrapping around my waist, cupping my breasts, gripping my hair. They didn’t stay in one place for long; just when I’d start leaning into what he was doing, he’d stop and start somewhere else.
When we were both sweaty, our breathing fast and heavy, he reached up and grabbed my hand, pulling it between us.
“Get yourself off.” He was panting, his eyes wild. “I want to watch.”
I was too far gone to feel any sort of self-consciousness, and immediately started rubbing my clit in small circles, my orgasm rushing in within minutes. I couldn’t stop the moans that poured from my throat, and barely heard his words as he talked dirty in my ear.
When the orgasm finally ebbed away, I could no longer continue riding him. My body was boneless as I slumped against his chest, my arms barely able to hold on as he flipped me onto my back.
“I love you, Farrah,” he said into my shoulder. His face was buried in my neck as he raised my hips and thrust hard a few more times, finally coming with a low grunt.
It wasn’t the first or the last time that Cody would completely derail my plans, but whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remaine
d to be seen.
Chapter 12
Farrah
“What about this one?” Cody asked, running his fingers across the script tattoo on the side of my right thigh. “All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen.”
“Did you ever read Roald Dahl books in school?” I asked.
“Sure, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Right. This tattoo’s from Matilda. I loved that book growing up. Her parents sucked too.”
He ran his tongue over the letters. “You like to read?”
“I love it, always have. We didn’t have a TV when I was a kid, but I could always check out books from the library at school. That’s probably why I have such an addiction to them now.”
“Me too. I haven’t had time to read in a while, though,” he replied.
“I always read, I feel weird if I haven’t read in a while, like jittery and shit. The only time I wasn’t reading a bunch was when I was drinking all the time. It’s hard to read when you can’t focus on the words.”
“Not too drunk to get tattoos, though, huh?”
God, the smirk on his face killed me.
“Never too drunk for that,” I joked, “as long as you can find a tattoo guy that doesn’t give a shit.”
“How many are there? Maybe I should count them,” he mumbled against my skin, running his lips across the tattoo again.
“Twenty.” I laughed as his face lifted in surprise. “I have ten ladybugs, though, and my flower.”
The mood in my bedroom turned somber as my last sentence sank in. We’d been lying in bed for hours, dozing and talking. We were both trying to keep things simple, coming down from our earlier fight, but the reminder of my scars was like a bucket of cold water thrown over our bodies as we relaxed in our afterglow.
“I wish I could have killed him for you,” he told me seriously, resting his chin on my belly.
“Well, thankfully that ship has sailed.”
“How long was he with your mom?” he asked nonchalantly. His hands had started trailing over my tattoos again, but he couldn’t hide the tension in his shoulders.
“They got together when I was twelve.” I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted to forget everything that had happened before I’d been taken in by Callie, but I found myself speaking anyway. “At first it was okay. My mom was always a junkie, ya know? So when I was little, there were all of these tweakers in and out of the house. It freaked me out. When she got with Gator, that shit stopped, and I was fucking relieved.”
Cody kissed my hip and moved himself up the bed to lie next to me, gently pulling me on top of him, our bodies aligning from toes to chest.
“Keep going,” he said.
I laid my arms across his chest, resting my chin on them as he played with my hair. “So, yeah, at first I was stoked. I didn’t have to deal with all the creepers anymore. Mom and Gator were barely ever home, so that was a plus. It took a couple of years before he started creeping me out, though. Like, this one time, he came up behind me in the kitchen and sort of pulled my hips back against his, and his tiny dick was hard. I was, what, fourteen? Yeah, I think I was like fourteen by then, because it was the summer before high school. Anyway, it was fucking gross, and he tried to play it off like he’d thought I was my mom or some shit. But then he started talking about my boobs and how I’d filled out, blah blah blah.”
I shuddered in revulsion, feeling Cody’s body jerk. What I didn’t tell him was that was when I’d started deliberately losing my curves.
“Did he touch you?” he asked, his voice deep and rough.
“No, no. He never got far. By then I’d started hanging out with some people outside of school, so I wasn’t around much,” I assured him, trying to hide the lie.
There had been one other time, after I’d met Callie and had started hanging out at her place more than I was home. Gator had stopped making excuses for touching me, and one night he’d thrown what little control he had out the window and attacked me.
I’d fought him—hard—and he hadn’t gotten what he wanted, but it had started a chain of events that I could have never imagined. I’d wondered back then if I would have just let him, if I’d just lain back and pretended I was anywhere else, if my life would have been easier. I remember scratching up his face, pulling at his hair, and finally kneeing him in the balls to get him off me. When he’d let me run out the front door, I thought I’d won.
What a joke.
Gator had left my mom after that, telling her that he didn’t want to be around me because I was disrespectful and rude. He’d talked around her, stroking her bruised ego by telling her that he’d been drawn to her because she was such a good mom, but he just couldn’t handle me anymore. It had left my mom in a situation she didn’t want to be in. The man she’d depended on for years left because of me, but she couldn’t kick me out because the reason he’d liked her in the first place was her mothering skills. It was a complete crock of shit, but it had worked, just like he’d planned.
After he left, my mom became the partier she’d been before, with people in and out of the house at all hours, and random men stopping by as they got off their shifts at work. The indifference she’d treated me with before turned into hatred so vile it made my stomach turn to be in the same room with her. That had also gone exactly how Gator planned it would.
It had been a simple yet brilliant plan, and I’d been surprised that an idiot like Gator had manipulated the situation so well. He’d left blaming me, cutting off all contact with my mother including the drugs he’d been supplying her with, but he’d made sure that she couldn’t kick me out. So when he decided that maybe I wasn’t so bad and decided to come back, my mother was willing to back him on any situation concerning me. I’d been a lamb in a house of wolves, and they’d nearly devoured me.
I swallowed the bile in my throat from the memory and smiled at Cody, who was watching me closely. “What about you? What’s your story?”
He laughed a little and shook his head. “No story. Grew up with two parents and Callie. I was fifteen when my parents died, and Gram became my legal guardian. Now, here we are.”
“I know all that, dumbass,” I told him, rolling my eyes. “What about the rest of it? Weren’t you away at school most of the time? How the hell did you wind up with the Aces?”
“Yeah, I got sent to a private boarding school on the East Coast when I was seven.”
“Holy hell!” I gasped. I hadn’t realized that he’d left home so young. It made my stomach cramp to think of Will moving that far away in only five more years.
“It was all right. I was way ahead of all the kids in public school, and my parents couldn’t afford to send me to a private school in San Diego.” He shrugged, and pulled me higher on his chest. “My mom came from Mexico, hoping to go to college up here, so when they knew I was really smart, she started applying for all these scholarships and shit. School was really important to her, and she wanted to make sure that Callie and I got every advantage. It turned out that the one scholarship I was accepted for was set up by this old dude who didn’t have any kids, and wanted to send one to all of his old prep schools on the East Coast.”
“That’s crazy. I can’t imagine sending my kid across the country.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t do it, but I can’t really complain. I had it a lot better than a bunch of other kids in the world, you included.”
Cody looked uncomfortable at the thought of comparing our childhoods, and it made me feel like shit.
“It’s not a competition, handsome,” I told him, leaning up to give him a slow kiss. “I hit the shitty parents jackpot, but that doesn’t mean yours were saints.”
“Yeah, well, they weren’t bad.”
Silence fell as we looked at each other, and for once, I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t understand how we’d ended up where we were, lying together in bed and sharing secrets. I’d never talked to anyone about my mother, ever. I hadn’t even told Call
ie about the stuff I’d dealt with growing up, and she’d never pressed for information. I had a feeling that would not be the case with Cody.
Eventually, he’d learn all my secrets and I’d be screwed.
“So, how’d you end up with the Aces, then?” I asked, changing the subject.
His gaze moved from me to the ceiling and he let out a heavy sigh. “That’s a story for a different day, Ladybug.”
Chapter 13
Casper
Farrah was driving me insane.
After her big blowup, things had been better for a while. Once she knew I wasn’t going to take off, it seemed like she’d gotten a little more comfortable with the situation. Comfortable with Farrah wasn’t the same as comfortable with anyone else on the planet, though. I wasn’t sure if she’d ever lean on me the way I wanted her to.
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking loved it that Farrah could take care of herself. I’d been with chicks who played like they couldn’t change a lightbulb, and it had been irritating as shit. I was glad she could handle herself in most situations, but it was the situations that she should have called me and didn’t that pissed me off.
She’d found a job working at a little salon not far from her apartment, and she seemed to dig it. Instead of getting a job with Farrah like they’d planned, Callie had decided to stay home with Will for a while, and I knew Farrah had been really nervous about going it alone. She’d never said anything, though, and after a week, her natural bravado had relaxed into actual confidence.
One night I’d gone to Farrah’s place after working on shit with the club for a couple of days, and her car was in the lot, but she didn’t answer her door. I was leaning on her hood, wondering where the hell she was, when I saw her coming down the sidewalk. On a fucking skateboard. Turned out, her car hadn’t started for the past two days and instead of telling anyone about it—like maybe the guy she was sleeping with who had access to a state-of-the-art garage—she’d started using a ratty-ass old skateboard to get there.
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