AllFreeNovel
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No ifs, ands, buts, or second-guesses.
I’m dragging her off to bed, and I don’t give a single solitary shit if I know I’ll wake up hating the thought of her leaving me again.
Of not being in my life—this time for good, probably—but that’s the way the cookie crumbles when it’s frosted with the words, yes, I’m fucking my former best friend.
And fucking is all it’s ever gonna be.
Anything else stays boxed up in my skull.
She has a dream to return to soon, and I have nothing to offer that would ever make staying here worth it.
My past is a sullied wreck.
Every time I look around the room, I’m reminded of that.
All the laughing faces who can throw back a few drinks drive it home. They can get happily lit without turning into...whatever the fuck that poison makes me.
Me, I’m damaged goods.
A defective with a brain like roadkill, flattened by the war and the shit I did to bury those memories before they killed me.
Always two drinks away from becoming a walking nightmare again.
I can’t change that fuckery. Nobody can.
Nor can I change how it affects my future, how it limits me in life, in love, in soul.
I suck ginger ale bitterly until my tongue aches.
Whatever this is—whatever we’re doing every time I tumble Shel into a quiet place outside or my own bed—I can’t show her how I crucified myself with a crown of regret and nails of whiskey.
Even if that’s “over,” it never truly is.
Each day is an exercise in crisis management.
I don’t want her knowing jack about that.
Watching her laugh at Uncle Grady’s bar stories, I wish things were different so badly it feels like a rabid dog’s teeth, grazing my throat before the last killing bite.
“Oh, I love this song! The perfect way to wind down.” Shelly sets down her cider bottle with a clink and grabs my hand. “West, let’s go! We have to hit this one...”
It’s “Always On My Mind,” a slow song by the King of Rock and Roll. The King may be long gone, but everyone in Dallas loves his work religiously.
She gives me this longing look, gazing up through seductive lashes, as she steps into my arms.
My entire being sizzles as we find our rhythm, slow dancing to the rising lyrics, the heart heavy longing pouring from the speakers.
Believe me, it’s got abso-fucking-lutley nothing on what I’m feeling for her.
“You smell so good tonight,” I whisper, craning my face down to inhale the honey-sweet scent floating off her hair. “Shelly, you’re beautiful.”
I’m sputtering like I’ve had a lobotomy and I don’t care.
With a soft laugh, she pushes into me—dangerous territory when my dick is so crazed it should be leashed.
“I’d say you must be drunk but...I don’t think I’ve seen you with a single beer all night,” she says softly.
Damn.
