Rough & Rugged (Notorious Devils Book 3) (19 page)

I wake up hours, maybe even
days
later. Serina is naked next to me, and I shove her off the bed as I stand.

“What the hell?” she mumbles.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I roar in her face.

“Calm down, limp dick, nothing happened,” she snorts as she stands and puts her skimpy shorts on.

“What?” I ask, rubbing my hand over my face.

“You drank too much, couldn’t get it up. I told you I’d stay until morning, then we could play.” She grins as she cups her tits and looks at me expectantly.

I watch her for a minute, feeling absolutely nothing. I don’t want her, and my cock doesn’t want her, either. I tell her to leave and I lie back down in bed, closing my eyes and thinking about Hattie. Her long, light brown hair, her sweet angelic baby face, and her small tits.

I
miss
her.

I
want
her.

I
need
her.

I don’t know why I do, I just do. She was made for me, meant to be only mine. Now she’s gone. I can’t even get pissed at her about leaving, either. It’s my fault. I let her walk out the door.
Fuck
. I drove her home and dropped her off.

She wants more of me then I can give her. I’d break her in a way that I don’t think she could ever be repaired if I pushed it. So I let her go; against everything inside of me,
I let her go
.

I
t’s been a week.

The longest week of my life, I think.

I haven’t seen or heard from Johnny, and I have no bites on the resumes I’ve littered the town and internet with, with the exception of the local bar downtown. I have one more week before my stressful situation turns dire.

If I don’t find work by then, I’ll have to crawl back home and beg my parents to let me move back in. Of course this will come with a gigantic
I told you so
speech, and I’ll most likely have to enroll in some kind of schooling, maybe even apply to a university somewhere. If I have to do that, I’m picking somewhere on the east coast, away from them and away from Johnny.

I miss him, though—more than I thought possible, considering we weren’t together for very long. He worked his way inside of me, in my heart, my mind, and definitely my body. I ache for him.

It’s been a week, and I can’t get him out of my head.

I can’t stop from crying at night, wishing he was at my side, knowing that if we were together he may not be there anyway. I did what I knew was right for me, what was best for me, even though it hurts like hell.

I walk down the street to the diner in town, where Andy asked me to meet him. I wouldn’t have even thought about meeting him, except I’m hungry. My cupboards are becoming pretty damn bare at the moment, with no hope of them being refilled anytime soon.

When I walk into the diner, I’m relieved to see that Andy is in his civilian clothes and not his uniform. I’m extremely proud of my brother. His job is a tough one; but sometimes, when he gets that uniform on, he thinks he’s in charge of everything, including me and my life.

“Hey,” he murmurs as soon as I sit down across from him.

“Hi,” I greet nervously.

“I’m a dick. I still think of you as twelve years old, scrawny and small, needing your big brother to protect you,” he begins. It makes me giggle.

I
was
so small and extremely scrawny. Andy protected me on more than one occasion, and I was always extremely grateful for it. Still am, too.

“I knew you meant well, Andy, but you have to let me make my own decisions, even if they are mistakes,” I say with a sigh.

“Was he a mistake?” he asks cautiously.

“No, Johnny couldn’t be a mistake; but I think maybe the timing just wasn’t right for us,” I say, trying to be as vague as possible.

“You’re too nice.”

“I need a job or I’ll have to go back to mom and dad’s. That will mean living under their thumb,” I confess, chewing my bottom lip.

“I shouldn’t have fucked with you like that, and I shouldn’t have allowed Willa to, either,” he exhales. “I’m sorry, it was another dick move on my part.”

“It’s over and done. Don’t worry about it anymore,” I shrug.

“Still, I’m really sorry. I could help you find something. Where have you applied?”

“Everywhere but the strip club. I got a call back from the bar in town,” I admit.

“You strip and I’ll beat your ass black and blue, baby sister,” he grunts as his face starts to turn red.

“I don’t have anything anyone wants to see, Andy,” I say lifting my shoulder, believing the words. “But I have a meeting with the owner of the bar in about an hour.”

It’s not something I want to do, work in a bar all night long, but it beats going back home, and it’s the only line I’ve gotten. It’s something I wouldn’t have considered a while ago, but something I’ll be happy to take now. I really, really, don’t want to move back home.

“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” he asks, arching a brow.

“Why?” I ask tipping my lips in a half-smile.

“A
bar,
Hattie? They’ll eat you alive,” he grumbles. “Plus, you aren’t old enough, so you better just cross that off your to-do list for the day.”

“I can serve drinks there, can’t I?” I ask.

“Only in a restaurant, not in a bar,” he explains. I feel myself deflate.

We spend the next half an hour talking about our parents, and I promise to come to Sunday dinner this week, even though I really,
really
don’t want to. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen mom and dad, and though I’m not their favorite child at the moment, I should still make the effort to see them. Andy promises me that he’ll keep an eye out for work and send some my way if he can before we go our separate ways. I walk toward home, calling the bar and cancelling my interview as I go.

I’m deflated and defeated.

With a year’s worth of banking experience, you would think that I could find a job in town, plus the fact that our town is about the size of a postage stamp and I know just about everybody. But therein lies the problem.

I
know
everybody, which means they all know the reason I was laid off from the bank, and they’re all erring on the side of caution. This also means they’re all scared that my big, badass,
Notorious Devils
non-boyfriend is going to somehow convince me to commit a crime of some sort. Put all that together and
that
means that my parents also know, which means that Sunday dinner is going to be my own fresh slice of hell.

I slam my apartment door and throw my purse across the room. I’m pissed.
Fucking
pissed. I have no other choice but to leave town. Either going to college on my parent’s dime, or taking my stuff and just going, you know, without a car.

I slide down to the floor and I cry.

College it is.

I’ll be miserable, but I’ll be fed. I’ll have a roof over my head, and I’ll be far away from Johnny and my temptation to take a bus to see him. The temptation I have to agree to all of his terms, terms that would eventually rip me apart. But at least I’d have him for a little while.

I crawl across the room where I threw my bag and reach for my purse, pulling my phone out. Scrolling through the numbers, I find the one for him. He gave it to me our last night together. Lying in bed, wrapped in his arms, he said I needed to have it—just in case.

I stare at his name and number for at least twenty minutes, debating whether or not I should call him; needing to hear his voice, even in a voicemail greeting. It’s pathetic, how just a short period of him in my life has made me crave more and more.

In the end, I don’t call. I turn my phone off and walk over to the window, needing to just look beyond my apartment walls. There’s a motorcycle parked in front of the little clothing store that’s across from my building. My heart races at the sight of it.

Could it be him?

I watch as a man approaches the bike and my heart sinks. Long, black hair and a big, bushy, black beard. It’s not Johnny. I sigh and turn away from the window. Then I walk to my bed and crawl inside after stripping down to my bra and panties.

I sleep; and when I do, I dream of Johnny.

I don’t wait for Sunday before I visit my parents—well, my father. I decide to call him and ask him to lunch on Friday afternoon, instead. He agrees, though he sounds less than thrilled. I can understand why. Rumors have been circulating around town, and my father despises rumors and gossip as a whole.

My family isn’t anything special in town. My mother is a secretary for the high school, and my father is a respected CPA. He’s in partnership with several other accountants. I know part of his irritation stems from me asking him to break away during end of the year prep time. Though it’s only October, he’s still relatively busy with his small business owner and corporate clients.

“Henrietta,” my father’s deep baritone voice greets as I walk up to his table.

I cringe at the sound of my legal name. My parents are the only people that call me that. I was named after my grandmother; a woman I never even knew.

“Dad,” I smile, sitting down across from him.

“I’ve already ordered tuna sandwiches, so what’s this about then?” he asks, getting straight to the point.

“Obviously, I’ve lost my job and, unfortunately, I can’t find another. Is my going to college still on the table?” I ask, laying it all out there.

“So you didn’t know as much about the world as you thought you did. Tough out there without any formal education, isn’t it?” he asks smugly.

I want to roll my eyes, maybe call him an ass—but I don’t. I stay silent. I let him have his gloating. I’m the one begging here, and he holds all the power over me, something he not-so-secretly loves.

“Okay, what do you want here, Henrietta? I’m not paying for an education for you if you don’t have a plan. This isn’t just some way to get me to pay your bills.”

I try not to growl. I try to stay calm. It’s difficult, but I
try
.

“You said you wanted me to get an education, go to college. I’m good at banking, I was thinking something in finance,” I say before I pick up my delivered sandwich.

“
Finance
?” he snorts. “You barely passed math. I’m not wasting my money on that. You’re going to have to do better,” he murmurs before taking a bite of his own food.

“My dream is pastry chef school,” I say just above a whisper.

“That’s even more useless than finance, Hattie,” he spouts.

I knew it was a mistake, but I had hoped my dad would be receptive to my wanting to go to school.

“I’ve got nothing, dad. I don’t know what to do. Nobody will hire me,” I whisper as tears well in my eyes.

“You should have thought about that before you decided to be a big badass and move out on your own, disregarding your mother’s and my advice. You also should have thought about that before you started hanging around with biker trash the way you were. All of this you’ve done to yourself; all of this is a great life lesson for you, and I refuse to bail you out. Your mother won’t either. Andy still has concern for you, of which you’re lucky. Perhaps he can help; though, I doubt it.”

“I dated Johnny for a few weeks, dad. You’re going to condemn me for a man I dated for a couple of weeks?” I ask, not understanding him.