The Not-Outcast

by Tijan

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know who else liked to have drunk conversations? When she wasn’t passed out from drugs, I mean.” I barely paused. “My mother.”

  He flinched, then started rubbing at his forehead. “Donna.”

  “Her drink of choice was vodka. What’s yours?”

  Another frown. Another flinch. He kept rubbing at his forehead. “I’m not an alcoholic. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’re implying it.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you implying it?”

  It was taking such effort for him to enunciate his words clearly.

  I was enjoying his struggle.

  “What?”

  “I’m confused.” That was me. I was playing again.

  He shook his head all around, wiping his hand down the side of his face. “You’re messing with me because I’ve been drinking.”

  “I couldn’t tell.” A straight face on me.

  He stared at me, his eyes narrowed. He couldn’t tell either.

  He rolled his eyes. “If you’re trying to ingratia—ingradia—ingracia—if you’re trying to make me like you, it’s not working. I can tell you’re making fun of me.”

  Still a straight face. “I would never do that.”

  He paused, studying me, and his shoulders rose and fell back down. He reached for another piece of pizza. He’d forgotten his first one. “I’m going to give you some hard truths. Cut will never love you. Never ever. He’ll always look at you, and think, ‘she’s the bitch who made me lose my best friend.’ And you know what? It’s going to happen. He thinks we’re done being friends because of me, but it’s you. It’s all you. It’s your fault, and you want to know why?”

  He was a mean drunk.

  Still deadpan. “No.” I leaned forward. “Tell me. Please.”

  “Because you’re nothing. You’re nothing. You come from nothing. Your mom was a junkie whore, and that’s who you come from. Everything comes around, and when you’re old and alone, you’ll be back on the streets. You’ll be the one with a needle in her arm, and you’ll be spreading your legs for your ex-husband’s newest stepson like your mother did for me—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” a snarl ripped through the room.

  I couldn’t move.

  Up until then, I’d been impassive, not taking anything Chad said to heart, but then he said that.

  That.

  And…

  I—

  Cut was furious. I felt his anger slapping against me from the room. It was rolling off of him in waves, but then my mind went blank.

  Someone was shouting.

  There was a scream, a primal scream.

  A tugging at my hands.

  “Let him go, Cheyenne. Let him go.”

  Cut’s voice sounded like he was submerged in water.

  Why did he sound so far away? He was standing right next to me.

  I was ripped away from someone.

  Something? I didn’t know.

  My hands were bleeding. I recognized the feel of warm blood.

  I saw it, too, lifting up my hands.

  Blood trickled down. It was coming from my fingers. My nails.

  Why were my nails—? One had been ripped off.

  That didn’t make sense.

  “You’re not going to say a thing.”

  Cut was angry. He was back to snarling, and he was sounding barely restrained.

  “Are you kidding me? That bitch tore chunks out of my throat.”

  “You’re not going to say a damned thing.”

  “Cut!”

  “I mean it, Chad. You talk, and you’re not going to enjoy what happens next for you.”

  I blinked, focusing back in again.

  They were huddled together across the room.

  I was shaking. Why was I shaking?

  Cut looked over at me, cursing under his breath.

  He started for me.

  “Is that a threat?” Chad rose up from where he’d either been leaning or sitting. I couldn’t tell.

  Cut never spared him a look, but he said, “You’re damn right it is.”

  “Babe.”

  We were in his bathroom.

  I was on the counter. He was standing between my legs.

  A dab.

  I hissed, feeling the burn.

  He was cleaning my wounds.

  It started to come back to me then.

  I looked up as he was holding my hand, and our eyes met.

  I asked, “I attacked him?”

  Cut never answered me. He didn’t need to.

  I knew.

  39

  Cut

  Chad told me an hour after I got Cheyenne to bed.

  I went back down, sat across from him, and said, “You talk or I call my lawyer tonight to start the ball rolling on how to make you sell your half of the house to me.”

  He stared at me, long and hard.

  There were red marks around his neck. Scratches from Cheyenne. Blood seeped out over the dried blood already, and his entire neck would be black and blue tomorrow.

  Fuck.

  I grimaced because he could take pictures, if he hadn’t already, and I couldn’t promise Cheyenne would be protected.

  He let out, shaking his head, “You’re going to regret choosing her. She’s got a wild side to her, and she’ll never not have that in her. It was how she grew up. She had to be wild to survive, but that gets in them people, and that’s just how they are the rest of their lives.”

  “You should stop talking about Cheyenne…seriously…and tell me about her mother instead.”

  He looked to argue.

  “Now.”

  There was nothing to argue with me. He talked or I left.

  Another beat where he studied me, as if he were gauging me, but then he gave in. He told me the story.

  It was after Cheyenne had stayed with him. Deek wanted him to run over to their house, check on Cheyenne. Deek never told him why he wanted him to do that, but he did. He went after one of our hockey practices, and instead of Cheyenne, he found Donna.

  She wanted a fix, so she needed money.

  He said, “She offered to sleep with me for cash.”

  “And you did that?”

  “I was in high school. I was young and horny, and Donna was hot. Yeah. I did, and I’ve hated myself for it ever since.”

  Jesus.

  “Did you give her money?”

  “It wasn’t like I paid for sex, but I felt bad and she was asking. Said she didn’t have anything for food for her and Cheyenne. I gave her what I had in my wallet. Fifty bucks.”

  “She’d been sober before that?”

  “Yeah. It was after her rehab stint. She was really going nuts for a hit.”

  Christ.

  “How soon was it before she overdosed?”

  I waited, hoping…

  Then, a soft, “Fuck.”

  I stood, moving my chair back.

  Chad looked up at me. “What are you going to do?”

  I didn’t know, but I took his phone. He had no camera, and he was clueless how to use a computer.

  “Why are you taking that?”

  “So you don’t do anything stupid with it, stupid that you and I both will regret later on.”

  “Oh.”

  I shoved his phone in my pocket and turned.

  “Cut?”

  I’d been heading for the stairs. “What?”

  “What’s going to happen with you and me?”

  This was what he wanted to ask now? I gave him the only answer I could.

  “I don’t know.”

  40

  Cheyenne

  I woke up tasting peanut butter and regret.

  I’d like to say the peanut butter was the strongest taste, but it wasn’t.

  “Hey.”

  I looked over.

  Cut was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in his sweats a
nd shirt. He’d showered and he was eyeing my hands as he asked, “How are your hands?”

  I flexed them, and hissed. “They hurt.”

  I wanted to pretend that I didn’t know the reason they hurt, but I couldn’t. My brain thought of everything and remembered everything, and I just wanted it to shut up. Today would be the best day for that miracle to happen.

  “I asked Chad to leave.”

  “What?”

  “Correction.” He reached for a coffee mug on his nightstand and handed it to me. As I sat and took it, he added, “I packed a bag for him, woke him up, and shipped him out of here. He should be on the plane and heading for Vancouver as we speak.”

  I swallowed over a knot. Damn. “You sent him to Vancouver?”

  “The team has a timeshare there and I wanted him gone for a while.”

  He sent him out of the country, and then I spied the phone on the nightstand beside his phone. “Whose is that?”

  He gave me a dark look. “I packed a cheap throw-away phone in his bag. He’ll find out when he gets there that it’s not his phone I said I packed.”

  “You lied?”

  Another dark look, and if possible, this last one was even darker. “I know Chad. He won’t be motivated to buy a camera. He won’t even think about buying one, and if he tries to take pictures of his neck with his phone, then he’s an idiot. The quality will be shit.”

  Oh. Whoa. He did that all for me.

  Yes. He was so not an idea.

  I was fully and completely in love with this man.

  I murmured, “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “What do you need to help you today? I don’t want you thinking about what happened last night.”

  That was an easy answer. “My girls. And work.”

  “Work?”

  I nodded. “I’ll work the line. I do that sometimes. Boomer knows if I need to quiet my mind, I’ll do whatever he needs, and I’ll listen to music. I’ll put headphones on. And after work, I’ll go to Sasha’s. They’ll take care of me.”

  He nodded, some of the tension leaving him then. “Good. You have good friends.”

  “I have the best friends.”

  “Yeah…”

  Crap. “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

  “Can you handle being around him?”

  I frowned at how startled and abrupt his voice came out with that question. “What?”

  “He’s like a brother to me. I hate what he did. I loathe it, and I loathe him, but I’ve never been good at throwing people to the side. So, if I didn’t? Could you handle being around him? Knowing what he did?”

  Oooh. He was talking about my mom, not about what I did to his best friend.

  I was already nodding as I scooted over to him, holding the coffee steady. “Of course. I don’t like the words that are usually used, but my mom—she did sleep around. A lot. She did it for drugs. She did it because she liked sex. And yeah, I know she did it for money. I’m assuming that’s what happened. He showed up, looking for me or something? It’s the only thing that makes sense, unless she went looking for an easy score, but I don’t see her doing that. She liked to stay to our neighborhood and had her regulars. I’m guessing he knocked or walked in, she wanted drugs, and it’s obvious that Chad had money. And I know my mom was good-looking. She had a lot of boyfriends, some bad, but some not so bad. She was beautiful. I’m not upset at Chad for sleeping with my mom. I reacted last night because of how he talked about her, and how he was saying I was the same. It’s a trigger for me. Always was, but I haven’t gotten in a fight over her for a long time.” I laughed, uneasily. “I should be more ashamed that I’m in my older twenties and I got in a physical fight, but I’m not. Not really.”

  His head dropped a whole inch as he was staring at me. “Are you serious? You’re not even bothered by what happened last night?”

  I laughed, sipping the coffee. It was good, really good. “You don’t know what life is like with a junkie. That would’ve been a tame night for us.”

  “What would be a bad night?”

  I shrugged. Another sip of coffee. “Me being taken away. Someone in jail. Someone in the hospital where it’s a multi-day stay. Or waking up and being told you gotta run from a local drug dealer because they’re going to kill you. Those would be considered bad nights.”

  “Holy shit, Cheyenne.”

  I shrugged. A third sip. This was so good. “It is what it is.”

  “So, me sending Chad away—”

  “Probably for the best, because you’re right. He would’ve taken pictures of his neck or called someone, and they would’ve wanted to know what happened, and I’d be arrested. Not good.”

  “You agree I was right to send him away?”

  “You were right, and being smart, and …” Damn. He did that for me. I was so in love with him that I was becoming mushy. My voice cut out as I said, “Only people who’ve ever done something like that for me have been Sasha and Melanie.”

  His eyes held mine, darkening and softening. “Come here.”

  I clambered over to him.

  He swept up the coffee, placing it on the nightstand, and in the next second, I was airborne. I landed with him on top of me and his mouth was on mine, and this was the best way to turn my brain off.

  41

  Cheyenne

  There’d been talk of a group picnic. That obviously didn’t happen.

  Instead, I headed home for some Zen time. I did a hemp facial mask, saged the crap out of my apartment (because that made sense to me), and did yoga with some meditation. Melanie came over ready for some yoga, too, so why not? I did another session, but yeah; the second round of yoga was hella hard. I was more into the meditation that round, and because it seemed to fit the theme, we hit Sasha’s afterwards.

  Juna was happy to see Melanie happy. There was no upside down shimmy this time.

  Cassie came later in the evening, but only to pick Melanie up. They headed off after a drink.

  My phone buzzed later on.

  Cut: How are you?

  Me: Good. Surprisingly. At Sasha’s.

  Cut: Girl time tonight?

  I was down for how he didn’t seem to mind how much time I spent with my girls.

  Me: Yeah. You?

  Cut: I’ve got some business I can do, then head back to the arena tomorrow.

  Sasha asked, “That your man?”

  I gave her a look. It was more of a twisted-crooked grin.

  She grunted. “Still weird to think of him like that?”

  “We spent the day apart. Do I offer to go there? Do I ask him to come to my place? I don’t know how to do this.”

  “You guys are new. Do you want to see him tonight?”

  But my phone buzzed again.

  Cut: Did you drive to Sasha’s?

  Me: Yes.

  Cut: Let me know when you’re leaving. I can follow you back to your place? Or do you want to stay at my place?

  Even with ‘the Chad thing’ last night, I liked his place. It was peaceful.

  Me: Yours, but I’ll be fine. If you’re worried about safety, I can get one of the guys to walk me to my car and I’ll head home, get a bag and head to your place.

  Cut: You sure?

  I liked that he was caring about me. I liked it a lot.

  Me: Yes.

  Cut: Text me when you’re leaving the club, tho.

  Me: Will do. I’ll go in an hour, I think. I want to talk to Sasha a bit.

  Cut: Have you told her what happened last night?

  Me: Not yet.

  Cut: Text if you need anything, okay? Chad didn’t open up about him and Sasha, so I don’t know what’s going on with them. I do know it bothered him to see her liking Hendrix.

  Me: Good!

  Sasha picked up her glass. It was brandy tonight and swirled it around before gesturing to me. “You seem happy, though.”

  I nodded. “I am, which scares me.”

  A soft chuckle from her. “I hear you.”

 
; “Okay. We need to talk about The Chad.”

  An instant sneer from her, but she was trying not to laugh. “Fucking Chad.”

  “Fucking Chad.”

  We both laughed, but then it was serious time.

  She was eyeing me, as she sipped more of her brandy. “Why don’t I have a good hunch about this conversation?”

  “Because… because you’re probably not going to enjoy it.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but other than that, there was no reaction from her. Just a simple eyebrow raise, and another sip of her drink, and she was so cool. Like ice.

  “What’s going on with you guys?” We had talked before about him. There’d been a three-hour phone call, but I needed the most updated update.

  Her face shuddered now. It was brief and slight, but I saw it. She was putting up the guards, and I ached that she even had to do that.

  “Sash.”

  She clipped her head to the side. “No. Not for that asshole.” She drained her drink and shoved the empty glass to the end of the table. A beat later, it was swept up by one of her bouncers. Another one would be coming to replace it. It was the system she had down pat. A hard look came over her eyes, but she blinked, focused on me, and she softened. “Great sex. I thought I might’ve loved him, but he’s not the guy, Shy.”

  I was aching again.

  She was my girl. She deserved the best fucking guy there was for her.

  “There’s not much more to it. He’d reach out. We’d have sex. He’d say that it was a mistake—” Oh, that dickwipe! “—then he’d reach out again, said he made a mistake, and it was just a repeat. The longest we lasted was two days, but same thing.” She closed her eyes, and when they opened, there was a haunted look that she masked quickly. Same Sash. “It is what it is. I’m done with him.”

  I waited a beat.

  Her gaze lifted to mine. “You can say whatever you’d like. If you two made up and he realized he’s the biggest douche in the world and now wants to be your brother, then you’ve got my blessings. But him and me, we’re six feet under, Babe. I’m sorry. There’s no going back for either of us.”