AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So I wait, and when she pulls out of the parking area, so baked she’ll never notice me, I shift Colt’s truck into gear. I give them a minute just in case, and then, I follow.
twenty-five
Rumor Has It… A Founding Son from a certain, newly restored Faulkner dynasty may be feeling the pressure as his family’s last eligible bachelor. Will we see him down on his knees begging for the hand of his queen next, or is he still too scared to take the plunge?
Colt Darling
Preston kicks everyone out at midnight so he can fuck his pregnant fiancé in the room once reserved for strippers and hookers and orgies, which seems a bit sacrilegious, but I guess he’s trying to prove he’s changed. Maybe it works on her, but all it proves to me is that he’s officially tied down like Devlin, another Darling whose partying days are over. I’m happy for him, but at the same time, it’s one more reminder that I’m nowhere near the place they are, that I’m the fuck-up of the family as usual.
They’re all growing up, moving on, but I’m not. I’m stuck in some limbo created when they busted my head open, or maybe before that, on the night I lost a brother and the world as I knew it ceased to make any logical sense. I never figured it out, now it’s over, so I just move through life looking backwards, longing for what I had, what I lost, and what I can never have again. I tried to move on. To think about the future. I wanted to be a better man for Dixie.
But I’m not.
I’m not good to her. I’m not good for her. And the truth is, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to settle down the way shewants. I need to have that conversation with her, but the time wasn’t right tonight, when I’m six pills deep and at least that many beers. We’ll have that conversation tomorrow. Tonight, I’m still partying.
I stagger out back with a handful of people who wanted to stay a little longer, drink a little more. Preston doesn’t care as long as we’re not in the house, so we make our way out to the gazebo, since the lawn is wet and mucky after a winter of rain on the dead grass.
“Where’s Tits Magee?” Duke asks, slouching back on the gazebo bench with his flavor of the week attached to his neck like a leech and a bottle in either hand.
“I sent her home,” I say.
“Dude, I don’t know why you’re not fucking around like Rylan now that you’re free.”
“I’m not free,” I point out, thinking about my conversation with Dixie in the truck. Thinking about what would happen if she put him on the blog like she did Lo. That rumor about Lo fucking around with girls helped ruin her. It would be ten times worse for a guy—and god knows how much worse for a guy like Duke, with the family he has.
“Bitches be crazy,” Duke says, shaking his head.
“Hey,” protests his girl.
I stopped bothering with their names a few weeks into second semester. Most of them only sit at our table for a day or two, until Duke gets what he wants and moves on to the next one.
“Don’t worry, baby, I like the crazy ones,” he says to her. “They’re the freakiest. Why don’t you suck me off me while Colt makes a mess of that sweet little pussy. It’s been years since he touched a girl as hot as you.”
My mind flashes to Gloria Walton in my truck outside the mall, the firelight flickering over her damp skin as her backarched and her whimpers filled my ears like a siren’s song while her snug cunt gripped my fingers like it couldn’t bear to let go.
And then I remember Dixie’s threat today, and a cold chill grips me. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t really do it, but then, she’s done everything else for me. Maybe she really would go that far. She’s shown me she has no limits, that there’s nothing she won’t do to keep me.
“I’m okay,” I say to her when she smiles my way. “Really. I have Dixie. She’s more than enough trouble.”
“Your loss,” Duke says. “You’re wasting your spot in the group if you’re not even going to bang the hot chicks. Even Rylan’s getting play. Wait—where is Rylan?”
“He wasn’t invited.”
He looks around while the girl on his lap pouts and starts toying with her neckline to expose more cleavage. He doesn’t seem to notice the pouting or her tits.
“Really?” he asks. “I thought our whole group was here.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like that guy.”
Duke just laughs and holds up his beer. “He’s a weird little shit.”
I bump my beer against his and drink. A group of five leaves. Some others are grinding in the middle of the wooden floor, having connected a phone to the Bluetooth and put on an old Rihanna song. I zone out, letting the pills and the booze and the beat thumping from the gazebo speakers carry me somewhere else, back to the year I’d climb up in the treehouse with Destiny and listen to her music while we made out or talked about getting out of this town and doing something with our lives. She didn’t get to do anything with her life. I haven’t either. All I’ve managed to do with my life is keep it.
It seems unreal now, a sweet, filmy memory that holds none of the depth or richness that the ones coming back to me from last year hold. My love for Destiny was real, but it held nocomplexity, nothing to make it last. It was as simple as a child’s drawing, and if I haven’t grown up, at least I’ve come to terms with the reality of that. It would never have lasted, even without the Dolces to ruin it. Like with Dixie, there would always have been something missing. Not because I pushed her too far, but because I could never have asked her to indulge that side of me to begin with.
“Nap time’s over, dude.”
Someone shoves me, and I almost topple out of my chair. I open my eyes, blinking up at a figure looming over me in the dark. I’m not in a chair. I’m still on the bench in the gazebo. The night air is heavy with a thick, damp chill and charged with something that makes me shiver as thunder rumbles long and low in the sky overhead like an omen. The bare trees rattle, and the pines sigh in a restless wind.
