Chapter 21
“Wes!” I heard Morgan shout my name from her bathroom. My brow furrowed as I pulled my shirt over my head, but before I could respond, the door flung open. “What the hell is this?”
A laugh rumbled out of me when she pointed to the red mark on the side of her neck, her eyes wide with mortification.
“Looks like a hickey to me.” She shot me a murderous glare, not finding my straightforward sarcasm as humorous as I did.
“I literally sucked for like…two point five seconds! I barely latched on!”
“Does this look like barely to you?” I looked at the red mark again, bringing my fist to my mouth to muffle my snort. “It’s not funny!”
“It’s a little funny.”
“Wes!”
“Okay, okay! Jesus, calm down, alright? I know how to fix it.”
“You can’t fix a hickey!”
“Just sit tight.” I turned toward her bedroom door. “Trust me.”
“Trust you? That’s absolutely terrifying.”
I threw a middle finger over my shoulder before disappearing down the hall.
Morgan just returned from Aruba late last night, where she’d been on an extended vacation for two weeks for her brother’s destination wedding. I sent a message to see if she wanted to meet up before we headed to the bar for Saturday night out. She’d messaged back and told me to come over.
Once again…simple, easy, straight to the point. Perfect.
Making that deal with her four months ago had turned out well in my favor.
I hadn’t had much better luck in the flings and casual dates department than before we made it.
I’d met some women here and there just as she had gone on dates of her own, but they didn’t go anywhere.
I swore everyone in this damn town was looking for commitment all of a sudden.
I walked into Morgan’s kitchen and opened a few drawers until I found the one with utensils. I grabbed what I needed, then turned to the cabinet behind me to get a glass, filling it with crushed ice before making my way back down the hall.
When I returned, she arched her brow curiously. “Why do you have a spoon in ice?”
“Just come here.”
We sat on her bed, and she pulled her hair to the side, exposing her neck and the red mark.
I chuckled as I looked at it. I wasn’t a hickey kind of a guy, so I wasn’t sure what came over me.
The only excuse I could come up with was that it’d been a month, and when I saw her, she looked all sunkissed and hot from her time in the Caribbean.
And she had on this red tank top, and something about her in red did things to me.
Needless to say, I got a little carried away.
But I swore it was only a couple of seconds.
It wasn’t my fault she had sensitive skin.
I took the spoon out of the icy glass, pressing the back of it against the red mark, earning a small hiss from her. “What the hell is an ice-cold spoon going to do?”
“A hickey makes the blood vessels break and leak, and the cold makes them vasoconstrict—or tighten up—so they don’t keep leaking.”
She slid her eyes over to me, furrowing her brow. “How do you know that? And words like vasoconstrict?”
“My mom was a doctor. My sister is a nurse, almost an NP. And I watched a lot of Greys. I’m basically a medical professional by default.”
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
“Just shut up and let me work.” I pressed the spoon more firmly against her skin. “You know, maybe that two seconds was all Karma needed.”
“Karma?”
“Yeah, Karma. I recall a certain someone biting my fucking neck not too long ago…”
“So you did this as payback?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
During one of our trysts, her teeth sinking into my flesh as I came made me come even harder. But once the high wore off, my neck started to sting like a bitch. When I looked in the mirror, I had a whole-ass bite mark, which led to Callie asking if I’d been fucking a vampire the next day.
After a few minutes, I pulled the spoon away, sucking in a breath between my teeth. “Okay, well…that didn’t go exactly how I thought it would.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
She went to stand, I assumed to look in the mirror, but I pulled her back down. “Don’t look…not yet.” I ignored the look of panic and annoyance on her face as I thought for a moment. “Oh, wait! I have an idea!”
I shot up from the bed, ran out to the kitchen, and returned a moment later. Her eyes dropped down to the utensil in my hand. “A whisk?”
“I saw this…somewhere.”
“That is neither helpful nor reassuring!”
“Relax, Princess. I got this.”
“Again, not reassuring.”
I sat next to her on the bed, looking at the whisk in my hand for a second before pressing the side of it against her neck and moving it up and down over the mark that looked a little darker than it was five minutes ago.
“Ouch!”
“It doesn’t hurt. It’s just a hickey.”
“It does hurt!”
“Stop being such a baby.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re whisking my neck!”
I snorted at how ridiculous it sounded but remained quiet while I worked. After a good few minutes, I drew the whisk away from her skin, blinking a few times. “Well…” I scratched the back of my head as I cleared my throat.
A distressed breath left her as she shot up and ran to the bathroom, and I winced in wait. “How did you manage to make it even worse?” she yelled.
“It’s not that bad…” It was bad.
“It’s purple!”
“It’s more of a maroon.” I scoffed. “And you call yourself a color expert.”
“Wes, I swear—”
“Yeah, so I’m gonna take off. I’ll see you at the bar.”
“Wes!”
But I was already gone, rushing out of her apartment with a laugh. I got to my car and slid in, backing out of the space a few moments later and heading toward town to meet Lucas, Callie, and Gabe.
In the two months since learning what our parents hid for nearly two decades, things had slowly gone back to normal.
As normal as they could, at least.
Lucas and Callie were working through their side of it—which was far worse than anything I had to deal with—but they were doing it together. I was just glad they didn’t let something as devastating as that break them.
As for me, life went on as usual.
I’d never been one to dwell on things, especially those I had no control over and couldn’t change. I didn’t believe in obsessing over what-ifs and could-have-beens, and I was big on closure, whether it was from the source or given yourself.
If my dad were still alive, maybe I’d feel differently because I could confront him and demand answers. But the fact of the matter was he was gone, and any answers I wanted were buried with him.
That was it.
I couldn’t let myself dwell on the betrayal over what he did or why he chose to be a part of it.
It wouldn’t change or fix anything. And the only closure I would ever get was going to come from myself in the form of accepting it—accepting he was wrong, accepting he wasn’t the man I thought he was, and moving on.
I was no longer trying to uphold a legacy I now knew was built on a lie. Moving forward, the only legacy I worried about was my own.
As for me and Morgan, things had been relatively the same, even after that awkward night at her apartment.
When I showed up that night, I wanted a distraction.
I wanted to get out of my head, to not think about my dad or what he did.
I could have gone somewhere—anywhere else to find that diversion I was craving, but I went right to her place without a second thought.
Perhaps it was because of our deal and thinking we’d have sex and just be done with it.
That wasn’t what happened at all. She saw right through the reason I was there.
And that night…I saw a glimpse of a different side of Morgan.
I’d been expecting her to throw it back in my face ever since, waiting for her to make a jab about how I’d shown up at her place desperate and distraught to piss me off or rub it in my face…
but she didn’t. We still bickered, fought, pissed each other off, and got under one another’s skin, but she never once brought it up.
We treated that night like it never happened at all.
Susan dropped off my platter of wings, and my mouth salivated—I was always starving after sex.
I’d just slid a flat into my mouth when the bell above the door rang, and my eyes shifted to see Morgan walking inside.
I smirked around my wing, seeing her in a turtleneck tank top as she approached the table.
“There you are,” Callie said with a grin.
“Yeah, sorry. I had to take care of something.”
I could see her fighting for her life not to shoot me a glare, both of us knowing exactly what she had to take care of. Her long brown hair was down, draped over her shoulder on the side where the hickey was, using it as extra coverage over the turtleneck.
She ordered her drink and something to eat, and when Susan brought it over for her, she brushed her hair back—clearly without thinking—to keep it out of the way of her food, and my eyes slightly widened.
The hickey wasn’t entirely hidden; I could see the top of the mark visibly peeking out beneath the fabric of her turtleneck.
It looked like she’d put some kind of makeup over it to help conceal it, but it seemed to have rubbed off.
Do I say something? Tell her to put her hair back where it was? But how would I do that when she was across the table? Unless…
I lifted my leg, kicking her beneath the table. “Ow!”
“Whoops…”
She shot me a look, and I tried to give her one back, but she didn’t catch on before turning her focus back to her basket of onion rings.
The others weren’t paying any attention, so I did it again.
Her leg shot up, and she kicked me right back, much harder than I’d done to her, earning a grunt from me.
Fine. Leave your hickey on display.
A few minutes later, Callie glanced over. “Can I steal an onion ring?”
“Of course,” Morgan answered.
Callie smiled and leaned over to grab one, but when she did, her eyes landed on Morgan’s neck, and a snort escaped her. “Is that a hickey?” She tried to keep her voice down—God bless her—but it wasn’t low enough, and Gabe and Lucas looked at her.
I shoved a wing into my mouth to muffle my laugh when Morgan’s eyes slightly widened. “No. I-It’s—”
“A hickey,” Gabe interrupted with a laugh. “You can’t even use the curling iron excuse for that one.”
Lucas chuckled. “What guy gives hickeys anymore?”
“It was obviously not supposed to happen!” Morgan shot back. Callie tugged at the fabric of her turtleneck, but Morgan playfully swatted her hand away.
“Right?” I snorted, adding to the conversation despite being the cause. “Sucking on someone’s neck, that’s so middle school.”
I laughed as I bit into another wing when Morgan shot me a murderous glare. “Shut up, Wesley. No one asked you.”
I smirked, ignoring her calling me by my full name. I knew she could easily throw me under the bus, but I also knew she never would if only to save herself from having to explain to our friends what the hell we’d been doing the last several months.