Page 62 of Ruin
I have enough anxiety over what happened, but I’m also concerned about leaving Anastacia while I’m here. She’s worried about being left alone for so long, and I don’t blame her. I toldher about the security system, and that’s all well and good, but it isn’t going to stop someone from hurting her. It’ll only alert me when someone arrives. They’d have her dead before I even got out of the clubhouse door.
The raucous gets louder when I pull open the door, and I bite back my groan.
“Yo, Snapper!” Grizz shouts with a grin.
I can tell by his rosy cheeks that he’s drunk. It’s barely nine in the morning. Perhaps he hasn’t slept yet.
“Morning,” I say calmly, walking past him to get my laptop.
“Morn—fuck!”
Something large slams into me and I bang into the wall. A sharp pain shoots up my finger, through my hand and wrist.
“Fuck!” I shout, shoving at Grizz, who stumbles into me.
“God fucking damnit, Grizz, you bull,” Shark barks, shoving Grizz further away and coming over to me.
“Sorry,” Grizz grumbles. “You okay?”
I look at my hand and the way my finger is bent. I grit my teeth. It’s fucked.
“Oh, shit,” Shark says, then huffs out a laugh. He looks at Grizz. “You better fucking run, bro.”
“Fuck you,” he says, coming over on unsteady legs. “Lemme fix it.” He reaches for me, but I glare at him and he backs off, holding his hands up in surrender. One of them is holding a bottle of Jameson.
“Hey, maybe you can call Lucian,” Shark says with a knowing smile that I want to smack right off his face.
“Maybe you can fuck right off,” I spit, shouldering past him and gripping my finger to yank it straight. Maybe it’s just dislocated. Despite what’s wrong with it, it hurts like hell when I fix it.
“Fucking Christ!” I shout at the top of my lungs, then let out a low growl, bending over to breathe through the nausea.
Shark mutters something and then people shuffle around. My vision went black over the momentary pain, but I’m good now. It’s slowly going away, though there is still an ache there.
“I’m calling him whether you like it or not,” Shark says, shoving a bottle of Jameson at me. Probably the one Grizz had. Good. The prick doesn’t need more alcohol. He needs to go home and sleep it off.
“Don’t,” I say. “It’s fine. Just dislocated. I popped it back in.”
By the look on Shark’s face, it’s too late.
What I really want to know is how Shark has his number. Jealousy swirls in my chest, and I wonder if Kaison knew about me and Lucian because he was with him too. Is this a thing Lucian does? Fuck’s his friend’s sons? How many others were there?
For a long time, I trusted Lucian more than anyone in the world. He was the only person I trusted with everything. Then one day, all the lies hit me at once and I realized how much of an idiot I was for believing anything he said. Now? I don’t believe a single word out of his mouth. He could have been fucking half the town and I’d never know. Not unless someone came out about it. But he has this way of getting you to do what hewants, so I doubt anyone would say a word. He’s charming like that.
Then I remind myself that I’m the one that came on to him. Still, that could have been his plan too. There was a reason I wanted him, so maybe it was part of his plan all along.
It’s just… not him. Or maybe he’s just convinced me of that.
Fuck off, he has me so fucked.
“He’ll be here in twenty.”
“Fuck you,” I growl before gripping the bottle cap with my teeth and twisting the bottle to loosen it. I spit it out of my mouth and swallow three gulps before dropping onto the couch.
I’ve had worse happen and plenty of scars to prove it. But I should have let it be. What if it is broken and not just dislocated? It still hurts like a bitch. Broken bones, no matter how small, can lead to worse problems if not treated. I’d be dumb to ignore this. Ignoring any kind of illness doesn’t make you tough or cool—it makes you a fucking idiot.
It’s still pulsing with pain, my body trembling because of it. My tolerance level is high, but breathing through pain only lasts so long before your body wants to give up and pass out. Though this is nothing compared to some of the shit that’s happened to me, like being shot or stabbed, it isn’t a walk in the fucking park either.
The last thing I want is to see Lucian today. Not after what we did early this morning. Not after my body is still aching with the memory of him. Not after I can hardly look at myself becauseI’m so ashamed for being so weak. He won’t look at me that way though. He never did. But it doesn’t make me feel any better because I know what he’s thinking. He’ll be thinking about it when he’s here. He’ll imagine everything he did to me and want to do it again. I know that because it’s always what he did. All the texts and late night phone calls were always rehashing what we’d done earlier in the day. Lucian loves talking about it, loves reminiscing about it.
