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A vision that returned as Xoan’s black and pink streaked hair, his filthy words making me come on demand.
I want to stay in those arms.
No doubt Xoan Kennedy was crazy as all fuck. But oh boy, did I cling to his sort of madness, swept away in it.
Craved an encore performance he couldn't give. Even I knew about Xoan Kennedy. He was infamous for leaving a crowd high and dry, begging for more.
Even an audience of one.
“So much better,” I murmured before I realised I was speaking. “Thank you,” I tacked on the end, just to be an asshole to my ex-husband.
The husband my family approved of when I was seventeen and he was twenty-one. The one I couldn’t tell them hurt me if I didn’t agree with him, or do as he asked back then because that fear of pain and the way he looked at me like I was nothing seemed the worst thing in the world, craving his approval.
I knew nothing back then, just like Jon Snow.
Lance was a soon to be ex-husband, because I filed those papers over six months ago, and I kept waiting on that date with a nice judge who would cut my ties officially–and permanently–to the asshole who still managed to control my actions like a master puppeteer.
Not any more, Lancy-boy.
I gritted my teeth, pushing up from the floor with shaking legs and managed to avoid his grabby, clammy hands that made my skin want to leave my bones and crawl away.
“So delightful.” Lance watched me struggle with gleaming eyes. “Why don’t you turn up at his next show and try again, hmm? Maybe you can make yourself a pathetic groupie for him.”
I swallowed my anger, my pride, and pushed everything I felt for Lance away until there was nothing left....nothing at all.
“Move, please,” I said, my voice distant.
My head was already searching for an exit strategy that removed myself from Lance as fast and as far as possible.
“As you wish.” Lance’s pleasant facade dropped, and he scowled at me as he unleashed the evil, the never ending anger that always resided within him.
He grabbed the door as I went for it, throwing it wide. The heavy wood hit me in the shoulder. I stumbled back, breathless as pain shot through the joint, cramping my neck. The muscles gripped each other tight as I struggled to make my arm work, grabbing for the door just out of my straining reach. Lance shot me a triumphant smirk before he slipped through the gap, and slammed the door behind him.
Locking it from the outside.
“Asshole!” I screeched at the door and slammed my boot into it. Those babies weren’t as thick or hardy as I liked, and I earned a throbbing toe to match my aching shoulder.
I inspected the lock. No easy open from this side in a room designed more as a storage cupboard than a livable space. But there was more than one way to skin an ex-husband, and it started with a super fine hairpin I added to my space bun hairdo after the first time Lance locked me in a small space, knowing I was claustrophobic, capitalising on my fears.
Savvy enough to save myself, but not savvy enough to run, at least not back then.
Things are changing, Lance.
Though I’d lose my chance at studying at Rippton and the almost guaranteed job that came after, because the ex-hubs also paid my tithe to the university, though they had me on a short list for a scholarship previously.
On my own, I’d be broke. Free. But also, broke.
No million spare to toss at the feet of my college education. If they didn’t let me stay, I could kiss the dream of being a graphic designer goodbye, because I knew Lance would also ruin any chance I had of transitioning colleges and taking my grades with me. A courtesy that would extend to my besmirched record and name, making it impossible to study and likely hire beyond waitressing. Maybe some art on the side.
I should have been more suspicious when he suggested—too sweetly—of approaching Xoan, Rippton U’s resident bad boy international rock star, for work.
Lance set me up. And I didn’t regret a moment of it. I should be more pissed at him, but accidental rock star sex–okay, fucking–was the top of my favourites list, at least until the high Xoan left me on wore off. Maybe I could have rubbed in the difference between their sexual prowess a little more but no matter what Lance did or anything about our past, I couldn’t risk enraging him further and jeopardising any future I might garner in some small town, far away.
“Rusty,” I muttered at the lock, not meaning it, but me.
I used to be able to do this a whole lot faster.The penance of a misspent youth.Kudos to the life I chose in managing to get Lance to back off, thanks to an elderly neighbour’s kindness, and a little interference. It didn’t hurt that her bank balance topped my husband’s by near on a dozen million dollars.
Because money bought things like love, kindness, and power in our tarnished world.
