Page 56 of Bad Blood

“I just wanted to know.”

“You don’t get to know. If I don’t want you, I don’t want you. Now go.”

Her eyes widen and shock siphons the blood from her pretty face.

I talk like that all the time, just not to her.

She moves away and I head over to the little garden area where I can be by myself.

I light up a cigarette and take a long drag.

Maksim comes up to me minutes later with a tentative expression on his face.

“Sorry, man. I thought you might change your mind.” He looks me over like he’s inspecting me.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“So I couldn’t help but notice you turned Jenna down again. It’s not like you to turn away easy pussy.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “You’re fucking the new girl, aren’t you?”

I take another drag and hold the smoke in my lungs, causing more damage to what I’m sure is already there given the amount of shit I smoke.

“Why the question?”

He laughs. “Jesus, Chad. Since when do we keep things from each other? Especially shit about chicks. I know you’re fucking her. I’ve seen you with her a lot.”

I haven’t exactly been careful. People might be talking, but they’d never let me know they are. They’d be too scared to.

“You like her and I think it’s okay to,” he adds.

“You do?” He might not be saying the same thing if he knew about my arrangement with Billie.

“She’s just a girl, Chad. I might be high right now, but have you ever just considered that it might be okay to like her since she had nothing to do with her father’s shit?”

I have. There have been several times over the last few days when I’ve pushed the whole thing to the back of my mind and wondered if maybe this could work.

Billie didn’t have anything to do with what her father did and yes, I do like her.

I think I might more than like her, but she wants to leave.

I won’t be enough to keep her here. And why should I be?

It was me who wanted her gone. Me who provided the way for her to leave.

Me who was the fool all along.

Saturday morning comes again all too quickly,as if time has decided to be my enemy and work against me.

Billie and I have ten days left of our agreement.

I hardly slept after she left last night and I was up early, staring at the wall, wondering what the hell I’m going to do when we stop seeing each other and she leaves New York.

I mulled over it for hours, never coming to a solution that didn’t see me slipping back into my old ways.

The crazy thing about that is when a guy like me meets someone like Billie Fairchild, he’s never the same again.

The thought lands me in even more trouble when it pushes me to

check out where she is by tracking her phone.

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