Page 48 of Pistol Whipped

Each line a reminder

of when you were with him

All the times that I held you

and then let you go,

Back into his arms

like mine weren’t the right mould,

Not shaped or designed to be what you needed

While I screamed on the inside

that he wasn’t either.”

The next verses are about late-night parties and screaming fights; he sings about the girl I was back then, drowning under the weight of something I wasn’t equipped to understand. He sings about his own mistakes, and how anger led him to say things he never meant and wished he could take back. That’s when it dawns on me that this isn’t a song about The Pistols. It’s a love song, and it’s about me.

The song ends, and not one person in the bar is looking at Dutch anymore. I don’t even have to look up to know it. The weight of his stare is the heaviest, but even the drunkest person in here has followed those brown eyes of his right to me. I can’t take it. I’ll risk disappointing him, even after he’d just bared his fucking soul to me on that stage, because if I look at the whiskey in front of me for one more second, I will give in, because how could I ever be worthy of such a confession? After everything that happened, after everything I’m still doing.

I shove the glass back at the bartender, and without another glance at Dutch, I bolt for the side door. Outside, in the alley, it is easier to breathe.

The night air of The Neck is damp, as usual. Worse, the mist from earlier has transformed into proper old rain. Each drop clings to my skin and hair in an instant, soothing some of the fire burning inside me. Only it doesn’t quite reach the worst of the flames. The ones that have been simmering inside me for weeks. The ones that, if I am honest with myself, ignited the day Dutch put me over his knee. The very same heat that, ever since, has had me reaching between my thighs every night for a bit of relief.

Looking down at my fingers, I debate taking the edge off right here and now. My panties are already soaked, so it’s not like it would take long. My fingertips are skimming the waistband of my skater skirt when the door bursts open beside me.

I yank my hand back and look up only to find a sparkle in Dutch’s dark eyes that told me it was too late. He caught me red-fucking-handed.

“Weren’t even going to wait for me, Rainy-o?”

In an attempt to act like he hadn’t seen a damn thing, I lean back against the brick wall of the bar and pretend to admire the manicure Tina gave me for tonight’s show. The magical witch that she was, she’d somehow managed to hand-paint little skulls on each nail.

I didn’t get to look for long because Dutch grabbed both my arms and pushed them gently back against the wall.

“Don’t play with me, Rain. I’m pretty sure I know what you were about give up in there. And I know you heard me, too. The song. And what it means.”

His voice is strained; the veins in his neck pop. It is easier to look at them than into the face of my best friend. It is easier than dealing with my own simmering feelings for the man who just confessed his love for me in a disgusting dive bar. Or maybe that he has always been in love with me. I don’t know. My scrambled brain is too fucked up right now to process if it’s one or both.

His voice ghosts over my ear as he leans in and whispers, “And I know what you were about to do out here, too.”

He pauses and scans my body. His eyes eat up every inch of me, and that fire I was complaining about, ooooh boy, is raging.

“You were going to touch yourself out here in this alley, where anyone could have seen you, weren’t you?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He just keeps up an endless trail of questions that my throat is too dry to possibly answer. The rain is getting harder. Each drop that hits Dutch leaves rivers trailing over his skin. They are almost as distracting as his questions.

“Was it the song that got you all hot and bothered?”

Did hearing his beautiful confession turn me on? Check.

“Or was it the sound of my voice?”

That deep baritone that seemed to slink right between my legs? Double-check.

“Or, have you been itching to ride this dick ever since you came all over my lap?”

Check times infinity.