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While I got my name from my father, I’d gotten all my looks from my mother. But there was one thing that differentiated us. She was shattered into pieces from years and years of abuse, and I… I was just beginning to crack from the weight of the world on my shoulders.
“Do me a favor?” Zeke says now, motioning to the kitchen exit. “Take out the trash before you go?”
“You got it, boss.” Hands occupied holding multiple trash bags, I shove the door open with my back. The cool night air fills my lungs the second I step outside, and I make it two steps toward the dumpsters before I freeze in my tracks. I guess of everyone from my past that could show up in a dark alley to accost me, Dean’s the lesser of two evils. I’m not even surprised he’s here, at the exact place we met all those months ago. He’d pulled in behind the truck stop to empty his bladder, and I’d literally busted him with his dick out. I could tell he was embarrassed, and it was, by far, the least embarrassing thing I could’ve caught anyone lurking back here doing, so I cracked a joke. “Bathroom’s for paying customers only.”
He laughed and replied, “Looks like I’ll be getting a coffee to go.”
He got a coffee, but he didn’t go. And even though I was working in the back, he waited for my shift to be over, and then he asked for my number.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
But now? Now… I’m annoyed. And that annoyance comes out of me in a disbelieving laugh.
“What’s wrong?” Dean asks, hands shoved in his pockets as he makes his way over to me. Behind him, I can see his truck parked, headlights on low, engine still running.
“Nothing. It’s just the last thing Zeke said to me was to take out the trash,” I tell him, moving to the dumpsters. “Who knew the trash was already waiting for me out here.”
He takes the bags from me and effortlessly throws them into the dumpster. “I always did like your smart mouth, Jamie.”
“Really?” I cross my arms, shielding myself from him. “Pretty sure you liked all theotherthings I did with my mouth, but okay.”
“Does Holden like it, too?”
“I don’t know.” I turn around, walk away. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Jamie!” he calls out, grabbing my elbow and spinning me to him. “Are you and he…?”
I raise a single eyebrow.
“Holden isn’t right for you,” he says, followed by a groan because he knows how hypocritical he sounds right now. “Just be careful, okay?”
I scoff so loud it echoes through the surrounding darkness. “You got some big ass balls to be saying that to me.” I mock contemplation. “But then again, I’ve seen your balls, and they’re nothing to write home about.”
Even with the little light around us, I can see his jaw working. “When did you become so...” he trails off, his eyes narrowing.
“Jaded?” I ask. “Cynical? Pessimistic? Contemptuous? Pick a word, Dean. Any word!”
“Cruel,” he answers after a beat, shaking his head. “You weren’t like this when we were together.”
“You just answered your own damn question,” I mumble, spinning on my heels again. My phone alerts me to a text, the sound slicing through the silence. I’m momentarily surprised because my phone never goes off anymore. I’ve kept it solely for the alarm. When I slip it out of my back pocket and check the notification, I see that it’s a text from Holden.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Dean asks, voice low. He almost soundshurt. As if he has the right.
I don’t respond. I just keep walking.
“At least let me give you a ride home, okay?” he urges.
I can hear his footsteps nearing. “No.”
“Why not?”
I’m so done with these games. So over this bullshit. I turn around so quickly, I almost knock into him. “Do you know that you’ve never once said sorry to me?” I hate the way the evidence of my heartbreak comes out in the wavering of my words.
“Itried, Jamie! When you showed up at school, I tried to talk to you, and you wouldn’t even hear me out.”
“School?” I ask, dipping my head forward so my ear’s closer to him, because what the fuck am I even hearing right now? “High school, right? Not the college you told me you went to.”
His eyes drift shut and snap open a moment later. “I didn’t want…” he trails off.
