Welcome to Sugartown (8 page)

It’s not just
the music that has me on edge, though. I debated coming here
against staying in with another TV dinner for a good two hours
before I told myself to stop being such a pussy and finally threw
myself in the shower before I could chicken out again.

Truth is, I
don’t know what I’m doing here.

Ana’s the
first girl I’ve seen something more with. And that’s a dangerous
way of thinking. Not just because her dad has the ability to send
me on my way—one call to my case worker and I’m back in the clink,
maybe for good this time—but because, for once in my life, I’m
thinking about more than just getting laid.

I really like
this girl, but I also need this job, and I’m not sure getting
involved with the boss’s daughter is the best idea. I’m just about
to say to hell with it and head back for my bike when I catch a
glimpse of Ana. She’s standing with Holly and a slightly older dude
who is wearing nothing but jeans and a leather vest. His arms are
wrapped around Holly’s waist like he’s afraid that at any moment
she’ll start running. The guy’s built, but he’s no looker. Holly
might be as fucking crazy as a howler monkey locked in a cupboard
full of crack, but she can definitely do better than this shirtless
douche.

Ana’s back is
to a fire that’s raging in a metal drum in the centre of the
yard—why anyone needs a bonfire on a night with a top temp of 26 °C
is beyond me, but I guess that’s the way they do things around
here. She’s wearing a peach coloured sundress and the fire’s
lighting up her head like a halo. She looks like she’d rather be
anywhere than watching Holly be mauled by No Shirt Guy.

She catches
sight of me and ditches the happy couple. I don’t know shit about
fashion but I know that Ana in that dress is a sight that’ll be
seared into my brain forever. Her beautiful tits are bouncing as
she makes her way toward me, and the fabric covering her hips sways
like a bell when she walks. I feel my dick jerk and thank fuck that
the dark hides my bone-a-phone.

“
You came,”
she says, and she’s fucking beaming.

“
Almost,” I
whisper and her brows knit together as I chuckle to myself. “I’m
here.”

“
You’re
here,” she says with a sigh, and it takes everything within me not
to sweep her up in my hands and carry her off to my bike. Fuck,
this is confusing. It’s not like Ana’s the first girl to get
excited over me showing up to her party.

But maybe
she’s the first girl that mattered.

“
I
am.”

Wow, this is
really fucking awkward.

A few hours
ago I was making out with her in the supermarket and now we’re
edgier than a couple kids with their dad’s porn collection. “And I
brought beer.”

“
Great. I’ll
show you where the eskies
are.” She leads
me through a maze of people, bikers and their old ladies, plus a
few more who I’ve seen in the shop. At least twenty of them give me
the evil eye as I walk behind Ana and pretend I’m not checking out
her arse. She doesn’t make any introductions and I’m guessing
that’s for my benefit, because I just know some of these guys are
dying to grill me about my intentions toward her. And I might even
have an answer for them, if I knew what the fuck was going on
myself.

As soon as
I’m done putting the beer away, an excitable ball of six-year-old
boy barrels into my legs and almost knocks me to the ground. That
would have made it twice in one day that I’d been bowled over by
Belles. Something tells me that, if I overstepped the mark with Ana
tonight, then Bob would make it a trifecta, though I’m not sure I’d
be able to stand after he was done beating the shit outta me. Maybe
not ever. “Elijah, you’re here, you really came.”

“
Yep. I’m
really here.” I smile at Ana before squatting down to Sammy’s
level. “How you doin’, little man?”

“
Awethome now
that you’re here.” He jumps up and down. “You wanna come thee my
Mathbox carth?”

“
Hey, Sammy,
Elijah just got here and Ana Cabana was really hoping she could
spend some time with him first—”

“
But he thaid
he wanted to thee them.”

“
And he will,
just not now.”

I stand up
and look at Ana. “I don’t mind. Really.”

“
Yeth!” Sammy
grabs my hand and bolts for the house. “You hath to come thee my
room, Elijah, ith tho awethome.”

“
I bet it
is,” I say, as I throw Ana an apologetic look over my shoulder.
She’s tagging along behind us, looking less than happy that Sammy’s
whisking me away and a part of me is fucking thrilled she doesn’t
want the kid monopolising my time.

Sammy leads
me up the backstairs, past even more bikers that look about ready
to beat the crap outta me, and into the quiet house.

Bob is
standing in the kitchen with his wife, helping her carry several
dishes filled with salads. He stares at me, at my hand clasped in
Sammy’s, and at Ana, tagging along behind the two of us.

Yeah, this
isn’t awkward at all.

“
Hey, Mr
Belle. Mrs Belle.” I offer up the first greeting, mostly just to
fill the silence in the room.

“
So, I’m Mr
Belle when you’re in my home, putting the moves on my daughter, but
just plain old Bob when I’m at work?” he asks, and his face is all
scrunched up and serious.

“
Bob, leave
the poor kid alone,” Ana’s stepmum chimes in. Being called a kid by
a woman who’s barely out of her twenties is kinda weird. Bob just
grunts and brushes by us as he carries the trays outside after his
wife.

“
He’s gonna
castrate me for this, isn’t he?” I mumble to Ana once the screen
door closes behind him.

“
Are you
kidding? That sentence contained the most syllables I’ve ever heard
him utter to someone other than Sammy and I.”

Sammy glances
up at me. “Whath cathrate mean?”

“
Ask your
sister, she knows everything.”

“
But thee’sth
a girl?”

“
Buddy, if
there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that women are always
right. Never question it. It’s as sure as gravity. Women are
always,
always
right.”

I spent the
next half hour playing with monster trucks in a six-year-old’s
bedroom, weaving them in and out of the empty beer bottles I’d
accumulated. It wasn’t at all how I’d seen this night going in my
head.

Sammy was a
lucky kid. I didn’t know much about the woman that Ana called
“Dragon”, but I knew he was loved. Ana doted on him and big bad
motherfucker Bob was reduced to a teddy bear when it came to his
son. Sammy didn’t know it yet, but he’d grow up one lucky son of a
bitch.

I was maybe
even a little jealous. Not every kid has people willing to do
anything to protect them. I just hope he grows up to respect and
love his family the way a family like this should be
loved.

Now, as I
watch Ana and Holly spin Sammy around to some Beasts of Bourbon
song that really should have been left back in the nineties, I
can’t help but feel a little like I don’t belong. Ana may be a
teeny, tiny little thing, but her heart’s as big as an
Ox’s.

Yeah, there’s
a nice visual,
I think, and pull another
long draught of my beer.

She’s been
silently coaxing me over, trying to get me to dance, but I don’t
dance on account of looking like a freaking chimpanzee with two
left feet. Some dudes have rhythm with that sort of thing, but me?
I save all my rhythm for the bedroom. Give me a blonde with soft
curves and a nice rack and I can make her body dance with my hands
alone. But on a dance floor? Not so much.

Ana grins
like an idiot and makes several weird hand gestures to get me to
come closer but I just smile and shake my head and store the memory
away for a later date when I might need something pleasant to think
about.

“
Beautiful,
isn’t she?” Bob asks from beside me. I wonder how long I’ve been
gawking at his daughter like a total dick.

“
Yeah, she
is.”

“
She looks
just like her mum did at her age. Got the fire of the devil in her,
too. Just like her mother.”

“
Yeah, I’m
starting to see that.”

“
But she’s
soft underneath, breakable.”

Surprised by
the reverence in his tone, I turn toward him. “I can see that about
her, too.”

“
Ana’s a good
kid. She’s suffered through a lot of shit from the kids in this
town after that Turner fuck finished with her. I would have broken
both his legs already, but I’m on pretty thin ice with the
Constable as it is, and I’ve got my businesses, my wife and Sammy
to think about.”

“
I’m kinda
surprised you let that stop you.”

“
You gotta
know when to pick your battles, Son. Sometimes you gotta let your
kids sort out their own shit.”

“
Like
choosing who they date?”

He guffaws,
“You’re a good kid, Cade. I like having you around the shop. But
not around my daughter.” Bob takes a long swig of beer. “’Course,
it’s not up to me who Ana dates, and she rarely takes notice of
anything her old man tells her these days. But know this: you take
her down that road you’ve been on, drag her down, you hurt her in
any way and I’m gonna finish you. I don’t care if I have to follow
you to the back of beyond. You hurt my little girl and I’ll put you
to ground quicker than you can fucking blink. Are we clear,
Cade?”

“
I’m not
gonna hurt her, Sir. Ana’s about the best thing to happen to me in
the last ten years.”

He swigs the
remainder of his beer and leans in to set it down on the table
behind me. “Just make sure you’re the best thing to happen to her,
too. Ana doesn’t need you to be another decision she’ll regret.” He
gives me a long hard look and strides away, over to his
wife.

Fuck. He’s
right. I’m not the best thing for Ana. I’m not even close. I’m just
a kid who made some pretty fucked up decisions, who turned into a
man who made even more fucked up decisions. The worst of which I
did time for. It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent every waking minute
since I got out working my arse off and trying to keep my tarnished
record clean. It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent every second of my
life since trying to be nothing like my father. I’m his flesh and
blood and that alone makes me not good enough for her.

She deserves
a man that went to uni to get a degree, someone who makes a killing
and wears a monkey suit and comes home every night to their big
fuck off house full of riches, not some dick who didn’t finish high
school, works a job “the man” tells him to because his
stupid-as-fuck decisions took away all his other options, and who
can fit all his worldly possessions on the back of a motorbike,
like me. Which then begs the question—what the fuck am I doing
here?

I chug the
remainder of my stubby and set it down alongside Bob’s.
I’m outta here,
I think,
and head around to the alley where I left my bike. I don’t get much
further than the side of the house before I hear Ana behind me.
“Elijah, wait. Where are you going?”

“
Home,” I
reply without turning around, and then I laugh to myself, because
the motel room where I sleep and store my overnight bag while I
work is hardly a place to call home.

“
Without
saying goodbye?” It’s impossible to ignore the hurt in her voice.
Fuck. “What did he say to you?”

“
Nothing I
didn’t already know.”

“
Which
means?”

I stop
walking, but stand with my back to her. I’m not sure I’m strong
enough to walk away. I’m drunk and acting like a complete tool and
I can’t seem to make myself stop. “Forget it, Ana. Just go back to
the party.”

“
No! I want
to know what he said to you.”

I whirl
around and pin her to the brick wall. She startles, but doesn’t try
to escape when my arms pen her in on either side. Her chest is
heaving, those gorgeous tits are just inches from my hands, from my
mouth, and suddenly all I can think about is rolling my tongue
around her nipple and teasing it with my teeth. My cock jerks
inside my jeans and I’m instantly hard.