Dirty Princes (Hot Candy 3)

Ryan’s face is pale, his eyes wide, emotion shifting behind the mask for the first time in hours. “Riddick—”

“Oh, fuck off.” Wrenching the backseat door open, I haul my duffel bag out and start limping around the car, pain making me stagger. “I don’t need your fucking help. I don’t need anybody’s help.”

I’m so damn angry.

So damn disappointed and sad.

“You should go out with Brylee,” he says after me, and I almost stumble and fall on my face. “She loves you. I told you.”

I’m bent over, breathing through the pain in my body, in my soul.

“You know what?” I grind out. “Maybe I will. Know something else? Whether I do or not is none of your fucking business. Not anymore. So you can go fuck yourself.”

He doesn’t seem to listen. “And you should give up smoking. It’s bad for your health. You should take care of yourself, Rid.”

Yeah, yeah.

He’s saying something else, but I’m already moving away, out of earshot, across the sidewalk and into the building. I keep going, dragging my leg, my teeth grinding, my thoughts fuzzy.

Fuck you, Ryan Dawson.

No lover has ever made me cry. You won’t be the first. I won’t let you.

Not when there’s so much more that’s worth my goddamn tears.

***

Popping some painkillers, I head straight to bed. I don’t care if it’s still midday. I hurt, and I don’t wanna face the world—the gray skies, my empty apartment, the reality that keeps crashing back into my life.

Ryan’s cold expression.

When I next wake up in the late evening, I’m drenched in sweat and panting with pain. In my dreams I was running from a skeletal hand that was raking its burning claws down my spine and into my leg.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Fuck this shit. I need stronger painkillers, but I don’t keep anything like that at home. Nothing that could get me addicted. That’s how Mom got hooked.

Xavier, too, maybe.

Fuck, no. I can take it. My pain threshold is sky-high. At least that’s what I thought until today.

It’s like the crack in my chest is echoed in my body, tearing me apart.

I swallow the last of my over-the-counter painkillers and roll back into bed. Sleep cures many things, I’m told.

So do your thing, Sleep.

If nothing else, it’s an escape.

I wake up again in the early morning hours of Monday, groaning, my back on fire, my leg numb. What the hell.

Another loader, Dan, had to have surgery in his back after he ruptured a disk from lifting heavy weights. Always a risk in this job.

No. This can’t happen to me. I’m much younger than Dan. I’ve never had back problems. And I’ve got work to do.

Limping around the house like a hundred-year-old, cursing with every step, I struggle to put some breakfast together—and then I sit and stare at it, feeling sick.

Not good.