“Where are you?”
Nothing.
“Niko?”
I put a hand over one ear to block hearing over Cece yelling, ‘Tits out for the girls—not the boys!’.
“Hey, where are you?” That same whirlwind in my gut returned, but it’s more like a tornado now and it’s tearing everything out of the ground.
Pop! Pop! And the line went dead.
Present
The shit thing about leaving the people you cared about and coming home is knowing damn well that there are things that those people are keeping from you. For instance, my mother. Ma has always been straight to the point. She doesn’t fuck around, and I think that comes from when she and my old man were older. They have this whole Bonnie and Clyde story going, but she has always put us boys first. Well, at least she used to.
“Ma, I know she’s the daughter you never had, but there comes a point where you’re going to have to tell me what the fuck that was about.”
Meraki’s dramatic departure is nothing out of character for her. She has always been good at causing a scene, but very rarely do I not know about it. I’m starting to feel the repercussions of leaving now.
Ma stands from her chair, her mug in one tatted hand. I’m beginning to think she and Mer got tatted together. Meraki with tattoos is fucking lethal. She’s pure sex now carved with sin. “Boy, I love you more than anything, but Meraki’s shit? That is no one’s right to tell but hers and when, or if, she feels like ever trusting you again, she might tell you. Until then, it is not my place.” Ma kisses my old man and leaves like a fucking tornado of mass destruction.
“Bro.” Danny shakes his head, his eyes wide. “I’m going to old lady that bitch so quick she won’t know what hit her.”
The muscles in my jaw twitch. “Motherfucker, I’ll hit you.”
“—Hey!” Lydia’s hand slips into mine, reminding me of her presence. My fingers flex away from hers, my eyes pointed right on Danny, our enforcer.
He smirks at me, flashing his gold tooth. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“Hey, Lyd.” I turn to face her. “Wanna go upstairs? We need to talk.”
Lydia’s brows cross in, but she smiles anyway, and I wait until she’s out of the kitchen when I finally let out a deep breath, pointing my index finger right at Danny.
“You ever…”
He holds his hands up, chuckling. “Got it, got it. Meraki is off-limits. Hate to say it to you, bruh, but you do know that half this town wants her, and the other half are the wives who hate her because their husbands want her.” He’s waiting for me to answer when Fanta interferes from the doorway.
I didn’t. I mean, it’s not hard to take a guess. Meraki is by far the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but I’ll never fucking admit that to her, or anyone, for that matter.
After dodging through all of the boys and a whole lot of fucking bottles later, I stumble my way up the stairs and stand outside the door I know Lydia is waiting behind.
Lydia is hot.
More than hot.
And she’s educated, classy, and somewhat of a freak in the sheets—or at the very least, I’ve fucked her up enough to be. But she was never going to work. Truthfully, she’s just always been a distraction for me. You need a distraction when you have the ghosts of your past haunting you every time you close your eyes at night. It doesn’t matter what that is. Some take drugs. Others alcohol. I had Lydia. She was always too flaky to realize I had been using her, and too self-absorbed to think I’d ever cheat on her.
I’ve had two girlfriends in my life: Cece and Lydia. I cheated on them both, with no thoughts about it at all.
I push the door open with my index finger until it hits the other side of the wall. Lydia is sitting up on the bed that’s in the middle of the room. The same bed I fucked the blonde on last night.
Whatever. None of them matter.
“Hey, baby.” Her voice is raspier than usual from the sleep I just woke her from. She tucks her blonde hair behind her ear. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and small heart-shaped face. The opposite of my nemesis.
“Look, Lyd, we need to talk.” I take the steps farther into the room, until I’m falling onto the bed beside her.
This was going to happen for a while, and the only reason why it hadn’t was because she had a job to fulfill. It’s currently fulfilled, she doesn’t need to be here anymore.
She curls her legs up and wraps her arm around them. Running my finger over my upper lip, I think about a way that I can do this without her causing a fucking scene. I don’t wanna hurt her—in more ways than one—and that’s not because I feel something for her, because I don’t. That’s just because I don’t wanna have to explain to the brothers why one night into my presidency there’s a body already dropped upstairs. That’s not gonna restore their faith in me after what I had to tell them last night. I can read the way her eyes are flicking between mine, wide and frantic.