Page 52 of Cherry Beats

“No.” I sighed. “But it’s going to be. Go, live your life.”

“You’re the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”

“You’ll thank me for it one day.”

“Screw you,” he whispered.

“You wish.” I winked.

Then I left without looking back, holding my stomach the whole way home to try and ease the ache of losing him forever.

* * *

“Tessa!”

Opening my eyes, I stared at my bedroom door and let reality catch up to me. I’d left Presley’s place only a few hours ago. I was home again.

“Tessa, for fuck’s sake!” Freddie called. “You have a visitor.”

“What?” I groaned, lifting my head from the pillow on my bed.

“Take your earphones out, you cockwit. I said you have a visitor,” Freddie barked in his oh-so-brotherly manner.

I sat up slowly, taking a quick inventory of what I was wearing. Baggy grey jogging pants, a loose cream vest top, and no bra. Shit.

“Who… who is it?” I asked, quickly running around my bedroom to throw on a bra as my heart began to pitter-patter in my chest. “Freddie?” I called out, tiptoeing to the top of the stairs and brushing down my wild hair.

My brother was laughing with someone by the front door, too lost in conversation to give me another moment of his attention.I began to walk down the steps as carefully as I could, cautious to see who was waiting for me at my shitty little house with my strange, awkward family in front of them.

The pair of dark boots were the first thing I saw standing in the front doorway.

Then dark jeans.

Hope bloomed in my chest at once, but with one more step closer towards my visitor, it deflated like a popped balloon the second I realised it was only a delivery driver.

Freddie glanced over his shoulder and pointed to the guy. “Delivery for you.”

“Couldn’t you have just signed for it for me?” I snapped snarkily, moving quicker to push my little brother out of the way.

Freddie stumbled back, glowering at me with a cock-sure smirk on his face. “I can’t. Apparently, it’s your signature he needs.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled and looked straight up into the delivery driver’s eyes. He was a biker driver, peering at me through the open visor of his helmet as he clung onto the backpack on his shoulder. “Sorry your day is so shitty that you had to stumble upon my arsehole of a brother. It’s true, people like him do exist in this world. But please don’t tell the locals we’re housing him here. They’ll be marking our door with an X and coming to burn us all at the stakes within hours.”

The biker’s brows rose in surprise before he laughed against the inside of his helmet. “Are you Tessa Lisbon?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.” The driver swung the backpack off his shoulder, dropped it on the floor, and bent down to unzip it. I took the opportunity to glance at Freddie and frown, but my brother just shrugged like he was bored of everything already—life, me, talking, breathing—and he slipped away, sticking his earphones back in his ears without a care in his miserable little world.

I looked back down at the guy who was now pulling something out of his bag:abig ball of leather I recognised instantly.

“I have this for you to sign.”

The biker stood tall again, holding out Presley West’s leather jacket in one hand and a black Sharpie pen in the other. All I could do was stare at him in shock as my entire skin prickled to life.

“I-is that…?”

“It’s from a Mr West. He’s asked that you sign this, and then I return it to him.”

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