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Chapter Thirty
Just a couple of nancy wankers.
After the highs of my court win, I’d been on cloud fucking nine…for all of a week and a half. Then Piper had asked me to the lake and everything – every-fucking-thing – good felt like it had been wrung out of me after shattering both mine and Piper’s hearts. It was a little more than I could take.
So I did what Roman Lombardi does best and didn’t take it. I didn’t deal with it. I ran away.
When I wasn’t out with the boys drowning my sorrows with a new level of tolerance I’d never before enjoyed, I was at home in my window waiting to watch the sun come up as I stared at her window. After my run in with the law, I was at least a bit more tactful about my behaviour in places I could find myself in trouble again.
I looked like shit, but I didn’t fucking care. I went days without shaving, which went really well with the days of barely sleeping. I showered, if only so Mum didn’t go to the extremes of holding an intervention. Oh, but she wanted to.
The only people who knew what was going on with me were Rio, my mandated shrink, and, of all the fucking people, Dunbridge. But I’d been forced to tell him when I went to one too many lessons, having not had the energy to wag class. I was almost proud that my attendance was the thing that made him concerned about me.
But I was surviving, and she was thriving.
It was the best outcome I could have asked for.
It was two weeks after the lake incident, and the boys and I were out and living large. But blokes can only get by for so long without some munchies and more smokes, so we were doing a servo run. We’d run into Lily and I’d been caught up with her, pretending I was actually going get over Piper.
“There you are,” Steve chuckled as he and Jake found us.
“Here I am,” I said with a salacious wink and put my arm around Lily’s shoulder. “Where’s Salazar?”
Steve and Jake looked at each other but didn’t say anything.
That wasn’t a good thing.
I looked around for Rio, wondering where the fucker was now. There was chatter up ahead and my drunk brain told me I recognised a lot of the voices. Not surprising in a town that size.
As we rounded a corner, I finally found Rio. I wanted to say the betrayal stung like a bitch, but I was numb to all that. I was pissed off he was wasting his – and my – fucking time, doing our handshake withHerof all people.
“What are you doing, you fucker?” I snapped as we walked over to them.
My eyes swung to Piper, and I realised that had been a bad idea.
I could feelfeelingsthreatening and I stamped them out with what I knew best; anger and pain. I didn’t care that all her friends weren’t even pretending not to watch the scene unfold. Well, if they expected me to throw a punch at Rio, then they were shit out of luck.
Besides, Sober Salazar over there would have wiped the floor with me in the current state I was in. My arm wasn’t around Lily’s shoulder for shits and giggles. It was strategic. An effort to keep my face from meeting the pavement.
“Keep your fucking panties on, mate,” Rio said. “I’m coming.”
I gave him a curt nod, had to steal one more look at Piper, and led Lily away.
Rio took his sweet arse time. I heard him muttering something to Piper.
When he finally caught me up, I snapped. “You don’t need to be going and apologising on my degenerate behalf.”
“No,” he chuckled roughly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I let go of Lily and shoved him. “I mean it. No apologies.”
Confused concern flashed across Rio’s face and his hands raised in defence. “No apologies. Got it.”
It was a testament to the kid gloves he wore around me these days that he let me get in his face and didn’t take a swing.
“I mean, not that I was apologising for your shitty behaviour.”
I snarled at him. “Well, what the fuck were you doing with her, then?”
