“I wanted to come and see you. I’m not exactly anyone’s favorite person anymore.”
“And you think you’d be that person to me?” she asked, annoyed.
“There was a time that I was.”
She froze, and turned toward the man that had been her nightmare, her dream, and everything in between. This was her greatest shame, her greatest pleasure, and her biggest secret.
“James gave you an ultimatum. Why are you still here? Don’t you just run away?” she asked.
“I want to. I want to get on that road, drive away, and be done with it.”
She shrugged. “Why don’t you? It’s not like you’re helping Ryan out. Do you remember him?”
“Teri.”
“No. You don’t get to ‘Teri’ me. You don’t get to tell me what you want, that everything is a mistake, and you’re so fucking sorry. I’m not going to do this again with you, Dane.”
“So I lose you and I lose Lucy.”
She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against them.
She felt sick to her stomach, and she swallowed down the pain of what her drunken actions had caused many years ago, even before she knew he was a married man, and what she had gone through.
“I’m not going to do this with you. I told you that. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place, and it’s not going to happen now.”
Teri started walking, remembering the first day she had met him at a party. It had been one of the first MC parties she had been to where she had met the Dirty Fuckers for the first time. She had been twenty-one years old. It was the first time she had left Skylar alone with their mother, but she had gone.
While there, she had met a man called Dane, and after one too many drinks she had ended up in his bed, and they had fucked like wild animals. Of course in the morning, she had discovered that he was a married man. Ryan had been so young, and she’d had to deal with the guilt of fucking another woman’s man.
She had vowed never to let it happen again, and for a short time it hadn’t.
The problem was, when it came to Dane, she had a weakness and she hated herself for it. Hated that she had hurt another woman, another family, so she did everything she could to make it up to Lucy.
She had done everything but tell the other woman the truth.
“Teri, I’m not going anywhere. Lucy has moved on.”
“You didn’t come back for me,” Teri said, turning toward him w
ith tears in her eyes. “You made me that woman. With you being gone, and now witnessing what you’re really like, I want nothing to do with you. You used me to get your own kicks. I’m not going to do it again.” With that, she ran up to the clubhouse. Randy was coming out of the house as she charged forward, and she collided with him.
“Hey, baby, are you oaky?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just really need a drink right now.” Entering the clubhouse, she went to the bar, wiping the tears away so no one would ask questions. She would be fine. All she needed to do was focus on something else, and not the past few years of pain. One day she would talk to someone, but right now, it was like every single wound that she had put a Band-Aid on was being torn open.
Randy ran his hand down her back, stroking her skin, and she focused on that pleasure, not on the pain inside her heart. She had been a young fool. An idiot believing sex could mean love.
Dane was just a man who wanted to get his kicks anyway that he could, but she refused to fall for anything else.
Drinking down the whiskey, she waited for Daniel to refill her cup. She swallowed that one, and then took Randy’s hand. “Let’s go and have a good time.”
****
A few days later
Skylar got the job at the library and was asked to start immediately. Of course, she was so damn happy, and Leo even offered to drive her to and from work. So did Paul. She noticed both men never liked to be outdone by the other, but then it could just be that they enjoyed doing things equally.
It had been a couple of days since the amazing sleepover, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it, or that kiss. She found herself at odd moments touching her lips, and feeling the two of them on her lips once again.