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I blinked. What? Mum thought I sucked? Even Mum, who’d always said she’d be there for me, thought I was no better than Rocco thought I was?
That made every person in my life. Every person but one.
And that one person was causing me enough turmoil.
I felt the haze descend.
Piper kissing Mason’s cheek while he held her hand.
On brand. Fucked it up again.
Rocco’s voice in my head reminding me I ruined everything I touched.
Mum had lied to me all these years?
Maddy would be better off with Paris than with me, and that was saying a fucking lot.
I felt that Mum lying to me all these years was less likely true, but I didn’t want reassurances, I wanted to wallow in the familiar comfort of pain and anger.
I grunted in frustration, kicked the wall and stormed out of the house into pouring rain. Even the chill couldn’t cool me down. I needed to hit something. I’d take that broken bottle coming at my gut again. I wondered if that guy was still in lock-up or if he’d be willing to go round two.
Then I looked up and saw the light on in Piper’s room. It was late for her light to be on, but it was a beacon in the dark of my soul and she was calling me home.
Without even thinking, I’d taken that path from the porch to the roof outside her window and knocked on it.
She rolled her chair away from her desk and turned to me. Her pen was hanging out of her mouth, but her smile fell as she looked me over. She was at the window and opening it in second.
“What’s–” she started as I climbed in her window, but now was not the time for talking.
I pulled her to me and kissed her like my world was ending. Because it felt like it was. She was in my arms, she was kissing me back, but that heavy sense of foreboding weighed heavily on me, and I couldn’t get her close enough. My hand slid up her top as the other brought her closer to me.
She put a hand on my chest and looked up at me. Both of us seemed fighting for breath. I was sure mine had more to with me fighting the urge to throw her against the closest surface and do everything so wrong it would only ever feel right. I leant towards her to kiss her again, but she stopped me with her hand on my chest again.
“Roman, what’s…? Are you okay?”
“No,” I growled as I gripped her tightly.
“And, drinking and fucking is going to help that?”
Really? Coming from her? Maybe I had no one after all. “Old habits die hard.”
“I’m not judging you, Roman,” she said gently as she lay her hand on my cheek.
My eyes closed and I rested on her hand. It felt so nice, but with the quietening of the storm inside me, the voices came back.
I looked at her and kissed her again. I wasn’t soft. I wasn’t sweet. It was that darkness in me. The one she’d liked at school just that day. Well, if she liked it, she could have it. She kissed me back with everything I gave her. It was hot. It was heavy. It had her hands scrabbling at my shirt in her hurry to get it off me. She’d almost succeeded when she suddenly leant her head on my now bare chest.
“Roman,” she panted heavily, “this isn’t– Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay. What do you need?”
Her. I just needed her.
“I need you to stop talking and kiss me.”
“Roman…how–”
