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Authors: Stevie J. Cole

Roxy (Pandemic Sorrow #3) (10 page)

BOOK: Roxy (Pandemic Sorrow #3)
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A few minutes later he strutted back in. “Want a drink?” he asked, making his way to a bar situated on the side of the room.

“Sure.”

“Bourbon?” He opened the oak cabinet.

Before I had a chance to answer, he shook his head. “No, you’re probably a vodka girl.”

Bottles clinked together as he dug through the cabinet. He pulled out a large ornate crystal bottle, then dragged an ice bin from the middle of the cabinet and shoveled cubes into both glasses.

The stones decorating the outside of the sleek bottle sparkled under the lights.

“That bottle is gorgeous. What kind of vodka is that?” I knew it had to be something absurd if we didn’t even carry it at The Club.

“Oval,” Jag said popping the top and pouring a stream of liquor.

I walked to him, staring at the bottle as I ran my fingers over the smooth texture of the stones.

Grinning, he said, “Swarovski crystals.”

“I figured. We have some Alize´ at the bar with pink Swarovski crystals, not near as intricate as this.” I knew how much that bottle of Alize was and could only imagine how much this one was.

When I looked at him, I noticed his pupils had doubled in size, and everything inside of me shook. He’d just gone and gotten high. I pushed the disgust down, swallowing and wishing I’d just kept my eyes focused on that damn bottle.

Jag sighed and plugged the top of the vodka. “It was one of those things I bought just because I could. When you don’t have money and then all of a sudden you’re swimming in it, you do ridiculous stuff just because you can. It’s stupid when I think about it now, but it is damn good vodka.” Handing me the glass, he arched one brow. “You don’t mix vodka like this with anything, except some lime.”

I brought the glass underneath my nose and sniffed. It was strong, but smelled smooth. I sat on his couch, crossed my leg, and waited on him to return from his kitchen. He strutted over, flipping his hair out of his face as he placed a small glass bowl of sliced limes on the corner of the table.

Jag plucked a bright green slice up. He didn’t ask, he just twisted the thin cut, spritzing a little juice on me before dropping the curled rind into the glass. “Don’t worry, my hands are clean.” He leaned in to kiss my neck. “For now at least,” he groaned, and bit down on my flesh.

Chill bumps scattered across my skin. Suddenly, everything within me tightened and tensed. My heart palpitated and my leg bounced. Looking around, I took in my surroundings, including Jag, who was now lounging back on his sofa, one arm draped along the back with his glass clutched in his hand, the other arm hung loosely around me.

He sipped his drink and used the edge of his thick tongue to savor the remnants from his lip. “I’m glad you gave me a chance.”

I looked at him, caught off guard, and completely unable to form a response aside from, “You’re welcome.”

You’re welcome? What the hell was that?

Jag’s deep laugh rolled from his lips.  “You’re welcome. Fuck, you are something else.” His grin deepened, forcing his dimples to pop out. “I like the way you make me feel.”

I took a quick sip of my drink, swished it around for a second to calm my nerves, then set it down.

“I like the way it feels to be with you,” I tried my best to sound unaffected by him, and in the process just sounded like an idiot.

At first I really hadn’t been affected by him, and I had been proud of that, but the more I was around him, the more of him I learned, my stoic façade faltered. The more time I spent around him, the more I wanted him, and the harder I fell. All that terrified me.

Leaning in, I kissed him and within seconds he’d pulled me into his lap.

I was straddling him, the contact was too much, too tempting, and his hands roughly feeling over every inch of my body nearly made me scream. It was like a form of sexual torture.

His caresses alternated between hard and soft, rough and sensual, and every few minutes the kiss would grow deeper, more passionate, and nearly silent moans would press through his mouth to mine.

“God,” he moved his lips from my mouth, gently laying them right below my ear. “I want you.”

That statement sounded as though it made him weak; it was almost a whisper, but had an edge of a growl to it—it was breathless.

His lips swept down my neck to my collarbone, his fingers scratching up into my hair. “Fuck, I
want
you. Like fucking crave you.”

Kissing down the scoop of my neckline, he pushed his hips up against me; the hard bulge beneath me was impossible to ignore, and that sensation caused my body to instantly prime itself for him. I was wet, I was hot, and I just wanted him to take me. Right then. Right there. However he wanted.

I leaned my head back to better enjoy the feel of his mouth covering me, and my fingers twirled the silky waves of his hair, ever so slightly tugging the more turned on I became.

Jag pulled the collar of my shirt down and rolled his bottom lip down my breast, the stud in his lip adding to the overwhelming sexual tension.

“You believe I like you?” he groaned against my skin. He glanced up at me, his fingers gathering my hair tightly into his fists.

I didn’t say anything, and just when I was about to, Jag said, “Right. Well,” he kissed his way back up my neck, ending with a hard, long kiss on my lips. “I’m
not
the guy you think I am, and I refuse to let you believe that I am.” He stared at me for a second and then scooted me off of him. “I’ve got to go to practice in the morning. I should probably take you home now.”

“What?” I was so confused about what the hell had just happened.

Jag stood up, flattened out his shirt, and, without even trying to hide it, adjusted the hard-on tenting his jeans. “When I know you understand that I like you, then we’ll go further. I don’t want to fuck shit up with you, and if I let you stay here I
will
end up fucking you in my sleep. Can’t let that happen.”

Grabbing my hand, he yanked me up. “Come on, princess. Don’t take it the wrong way.”

He chuckled to himself and tucked strands of hair behind both my ears, tilting his head as his eyes scanned from my lips to my eyes. “I need you to be different than all those other girls. There’s a first time for everything, and this is the first time I’ve ever respected a woman enough to
not
fuck her.” He walked toward his entranceway. “Even if it’s killing every part of man inside me not to. Because I have never wanted to fuck a girl the way I want to fuck you. And when I do, I promise I will ruin you.”

In the past week he had fought for me, he had told me he believed in me, and now he’d just suggested he respected me.

All those things made it easy for me to forget he was an addict. It made me want to forget that word even existed.

 

                          *****

A week later, not only was he still pursuing me, but he really refused to sleep with me, which shocked me. We’d done nothing but hang out at his ridiculous house, watching movies, marathoning seasons of
House
and
Breaking
Bad
on Netflix, and engaging in a lot—
a lot
—of really amazing foreplay.

I thought surely once the satisfaction of getting his way sunk in, he would have moved on to somebody of importance, some other girl that was more like him, yet here he was.

I’d been so preoccupied with him, I’d been oblivious that the anniversary of Sean’s death was creeping up. Jag really blocked out all the bad parts of my past. It was almost like his presence protected me from all those painful things I’d let consume me, change me, and torment me. When I woke up on May 3
rd
and looked at the date on my phone, my muscles stiffened.

Shit.

Sadness swam through me, and I gave into it. I missed Sean. And I felt like shit because I had been so consumed with a guy that I had forgotten my brother—well, not forgotten him, but I hadn’t observed my usual state of mourning.

Sometimes I felt guilty when I just went on with life. I felt like losing someone that meant so much to you should destroy you, and it had; but I mean, I felt like carrying on with your life, laughing, enjoying
anything
was almost sacrilegious.

A huge part of my soul died when Sean did, and I was in a constant battle with how much I should let it affect me. Until Jag, I had wanted to just lie down and die, and I pretty much had mentally and spiritually. For the past two years I had been nothing more than a shell. Jag had somehow breathed life back into me, and as I sat on my bed thinking about Sean and Jag, the fact that they had the same problems really hit me.

It knocked the breath out of me.

How and why had I let him get to me when I knew he was no good for me? I was too involved mentally with him now, I didn’t even want to acknowledge how emotionally attached I’d gotten to him already. I liked him and it wouldn’t be easy to just give up on him. Within a little over a week I’d already lost some of myself with Jag, and, for me at least, when I lost a piece of my heart to someone, I never, ever got it back.

Chapter 12

Two days later my mood was absolute shit, and not even Jag’s ridiculously sexy smile could bring me out of it.

I turned into the gravel lot and shoved my car into park. Jag and I had sat in silence for the last five minutes of the drive to this hole-in-the-wall dive bar. I had been a complete bitch to him and he’d taken it, which made me feel like shit. I had no reason to be an ass to him, but I was hurting and confused, and really, I had no business leaving my house, or being around anyone.

We shoved our way through the crowd, and, after I’d pretty much demanded that he not get high that night, we ordered our drinks. People were, of course, staring at us as we made our way through the thick crowd to find a table on the side of the bar. Jag couldn’t go anywhere without people noticing him. Sitting down at the rickety table, I noticed how anxious he seemed. That air of confidence he carried was diluted. He was out of his element, and I think maybe he felt vulnerable away from the safety of the elite clubs he frequented. For a moment I thought maybe all the staring made him as uncomfortable as it did me; for a split second, it seemed like maybe he didn’t eat up his fame like he pretended to.

Jag took a drink, sticking his tongue out and gagging at the cheap mixture.

“Stop being such a diva,” I teased.

“I’m not a diva,” he said, and swiped his hair from his face.

Just when I had managed to calm down a little and push away the fact that it was the anniversary of my brother’s death, the band came out.

This is what I did every year. Come watch the band my brother was once a part of play a tribute to him. I usually sat at the same table, far removed from everyone else so no one could see me. I would sit there, alone, and wallow in sorrow. I never should have brought Jag with me. It was too much. I had let him into a part of me that no one else belonged in. This was
my
hell. My way of torture.

A few people clapped and screamed when Theo, the lead singer, grabbed the mic. “This date,” Theo hung his head, his scraggly brown hair covering his face as he drew in a few calming breaths. “It holds a lot of bad memories. It was two years ago today that I lost one of my best friends, Sean Slade. He was our guitarist, and I miss him every fucking day. Roxy, I know you’re here. Love you like you’re my sister. I miss you. Sean wrote this for you, Rox.”

When Theo mentioned Sean I tried to fight back the hurt, but that didn’t last long. I could feel Jag looking at me, and when I made the mistake of glancing over at him, it was obvious he was worried. That made things worse, it solidified that I had every right to be upset.

After the first two lines I jumped out of the chair, almost knocking it over as I ran toward the bathroom. I needed to purge this pain. I needed to be alone.

Time doesn’t do shit to make the loss hurt less, all it does it give you time to separate the pain from yourself. I snaked through the narrow hallway littered with people who were laughing, drinking; everyone there was happy, and I wasn’t.

I pushed open the restroom door, finally letting the tears free. I entered a stall, slamming the door shut and locking it. I just needed to cry, I just needed to grieve for a few minutes. I should have just told Jag that I didn’t want to do anything because I’d been nothing but a major bitch to him, and now here I was, hiding in a filthy bar bathroom, sobbing.

That song they had just played, my brother had written for me. He had played it for the first time two days before he died. After he’d played it, he said he wrote it as a promise to always be there for me, to always remember why he needed to stay sober—to protect me and Layla.

Sean had meant that, but he didn’t own his life. Addiction did, and addiction stole my brother from me. It stole my father, my childhood. The grip drugs have on people ruined my life.

A loud, guttural cry forced its way up my throat and I crumpled against the cold metal frame of the stall. What I hated more than anything was that every time I thought of Sean, I could only manage to see that image of him dead in his bed, and that hurt because I couldn’t remember him any other way. I’d forgotten what his smile looked like, and only had a vague memory of how his laugh sounded. The fact that I had forgotten those things made me feel so fucking guilty and angry.

I’d been crying so hard that I had reached that point where it was hard to catch a good breath, almost like a three-year-old who had been pitching a tantrum Sometimes I wondered whether these breakdowns were really depression, or if they were just tantrums because I felt so cheated that I’d lost all the people I loved.

I heard the door swing open, and the bustling noise and garbled music from the bar flooded in for a second.

“Hey…princess?” Jag’s voice was soft, uncertain.

No, he did not come into the women’s restroom after me?

I took a quick breath, trying to suck back my tears, and said nothing.

“You okay?” I heard the slow clomp of his boots as he crossed the worn tile and stopped outside my stall. “I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be locked up in here alone and crying.”

“I’m fine!” I growled, staring at the door. “Just go back to the table.”

I drew in another breath, wiping the cold tears from my face and waiting on him to leave.

“Nah. Can’t do that.”

The door moved and I shook my head, groaning. “Why not?”

“Because I like you.” He paused and I heard his fingers tap against the aluminum door. “And I don’t want you to cry.”

That made a small smile tear at one side of my mouth. I’m not going to lie, the fact that he had come in there to check on me surprised me and made me feel like he really did care about me. He could have easily avoided the awkwardness of that entire ordeal by sitting at the table. He could have gone to the restroom and crammed as much coke as he could up his nose, but he was standing outside the stall trying his best to soothe me. As sweet as it was, I still just needed to be alone.

“Well,” I sniffed a few times, “you’re just going to get raped whenever some girl comes in here and recognizes you.”

I watched his feet from under the stall. The toe of his boot tapped the floor, and a small chuckle floated over the door. “Is that a fact?”

“Yeah.” I peered through the small crack in the door and saw him staring in at me. A stray wisp of black hair fell down in front of his face as he adjusted his eye closer to the door.

“Just go, Jag.” I was practically pleading for him to leave me alone.

The door shook. “Just let me in.”

“No. Go away!”

I heard him groan, frustrated, and he said, “Fine.”

I exhaled and leaned back against the wall. Instead of hearing the door open and the drone of bar noises creep inside, I heard footsteps coming back toward me. I heard something clink against the tile and looked down to find Jag’s fingers curling around the bottom of the stall. His face popped under as he pulled himself beneath the frame.

I was shocked that he had just laid down on the floor in all his expensive designer clothes and dragged himself across a gritty concrete floor.

“No.” I stared down at his face that now had an enormous grin plastered over it and shook my head. “No, you just didn’t!”

“Yeah.” Jag braced himself with his hands and pushed up from the floor. “Yeah, I just did. I told you I didn’t like you crying.”

Grabbing a string of toilet paper, I shot a disapproving glare at him as I wiped the tears away. I was embarrassed, and I don’t know why because I’m sure this little episode was nothing compared to the fits his diva ex-girlfriends threw. But I wasn’t a diva, and this wasn’t a fit over some superficial bullshit. I was broken. I was hurt. My soul had been ripped to shreds, shattered, tattered, and destroyed, and then I had attempted to bandage it all back up with tape. At that moment I didn’t care what he thought of this, I was honestly just glad I wasn’t alone.

I could feel the tears welling up again as I furiously dabbed at my face.

Jag grabbed the tissue from my hands. His lips lay straight across his face and his eyes softened. A small sigh crept from his lips, and he gently blotted the tears away from underneath my eyes. Sweeping a damp piece of hair from my cheek, he leaned in closer and said, “Look, I know it hurts. It fucking sucks. Hell, it’s not fair. And I’m sorry. I’m
sorry
you lost him.”

He’d figured out why I was in here? He’d caught that? He’d actually been paying attention to me when I talked to him? And he seemed genuinely concerned and like he knew how bad I hurt. That was almost too much because I had never felt like someone really cared or understood aside from Sean and Layla. My nostrils flared. I was trying to hold back the flood of tears wanting to let loose. Every muscle in my face gave out as I gave in to another loud, uncontrolled sob.

“Oh, no.” Jag embraced me. “Please don’t do that. I’m not good with tears and all that shit, princess.”

“Stop being nice to me. Damn it,” I whispered into his thick hair, fighting back the tears. His scent had grown familiar, and taking in a deep breath of him swathed me in a feeling of security, made me believe everything would be okay as long as he held me just like that.

He pulled away, gripping my shoulders as he looked at me. “Stop making me like you,” he arched a brow and one side of his mouth curled up, “and I’ll stop being nice.”

He trailed a fingertip down my cheekbone, and that sensation somehow comforted me. A single touch had never granted me so much relief, and in that instance I was terrified of what was happening between us. This moment had done nothing but make me fall for him even more; I felt like I had no control whatsoever over how I felt toward him, and I couldn’t afford to lose control because I couldn’t handle any more hurt.

My defenses came up.

I jerked one shoulder away from him, trying to sound sincere when I said, “I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me. I’m perfectly fine.”

Jag shook his head and took my hand in his, stroking the inside of my palm with his calloused index finger. “I don’t feel sorry for you. I
know
how you feel. There’s a difference. And you can keep lying to yourself and pretending to be some badass, but I see through that.”

“Jag—”

He released my hand, moving his arm above my head and leaning in toward me, his palm groaning against the slick wall. “Want me to treat you the way I’d treat any other girl I had locked up in a restroom stall?” He inconspicuously bit down on his lower lip. And before I could tell him that I didn’t want to know how he treated other girls he slowly and seductively inched his face toward mine, his stare unfaltering and causing heat to spread through me in a matter of seconds.

His full lip brushed over mine, and he was all that mattered; the pain had vanished.

Placing a soft, innocent kiss to my lips he pulled away for a moment, then slammed his mouth over mine, hard, unforgiving. His hands rubbed roughly over my arms, then up my shoulder and neck. Just when my entire body grew weightless from his kiss, he pulled away.

Every time he kissed me, it left me a little breathless, panting to fill my lungs with air. We stood there staring at each other. And there it was—pain.

His eyes held more pain than I would have thought possible. When I didn’t know him, he seemed so untouchable. He came across like his life couldn’t have been better, but I could tell by looking in his eyes that was all a façade. .

Pain is something no one could hide from me. No amount of money, of luxury—or in his case, fame—could hide what life has done to you when someone
really
looks into your eyes. And that right there made me beyond weak for this man I knew I had no business with.

I
thought
I had no business with him, but honestly, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Looking back on it all, he was like my beautifully flawed counterpart. He was so broken, but so was I. Flawed perfection, something that doesn’t make any sense, and that’s
exactly
what this relationship was.

BOOK: Roxy (Pandemic Sorrow #3)
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