Chapter 38
TWO MONTHS LATER
This is torture and I’m so sure Roxie’s doing this on purpose.
I grit my teeth as I watch the new flavor of the week kiss her in a way that’s not decent for the daytime, up against the shop window so hard it’s like he’s trying to push her through it.
A heavy clang sounds through the quiet shop as I set my cleaning supplies down with more force than necessary. I wish I was setting this metal tray down across his stupid head. As I smack him across the temple with it.
His hand slides down to her ass and she pushes him away, that confident, sexy smile on her face. The one I don’t really recognize anymore.
I’m not trying to look into it but I can’t help it.
She never looked like this when we were together. And I can’t tell if that’s a good thing… or a bad thing.
“Goddamn it,” Asher groans when he walks by me, seeing where my eyes are glued. “Get a room!” He yells loud enough that there’s no way she can’t hear us while so pressed up against the glass.
Roxie turns and rolls her eyes at the glass as if she knows we’re watching her, but turns and faces the young buck who’s fallen for her and dismisses him quickly. He doesn’t walk away though.
“This one’s not letting her boss him around quite so much,” Asher says, noting it at the same time I do and we both stand still, waiting and watching to see what he does.
Roxie says something, but she’s too muffled from the glass. Just based on her body language, she’s pissed. Her shoulder’s rise and her back straightens as if she’s preparing for a fight.
The dude’s love-drunk expression turns sour and cruel as he spits something at her, and while I don’t hear it, I can see his lips moving around the two words that fucked up my life.
“You’re nothing,” he snarls and I move.
“Ty, Ty, wait, this isn’t a good–” Asher’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. I barely register it.
I don’t care if it’s a good idea. I don’t care if she’s pissed off later. I don’t care if my heart hurts more.
I’m not letting anyone hurt her.
I throw open the front door and that’s the only warning he gets before I’m on him. I grab him by the collar and pull him to me as I punch with my right hand, making the hit land with much more power.
“What the fuck?!” he cries, trying to get away, but I’ve got him. I hit him again, this time my knuckles connecting with his rib cage as he grunts.
“Ty,” Roxie says so softly I almost forget the guy and turn to take her in my arms.
But I think her rage would turn on me if I tried that.
“Don’t you ever say that to her again. In fact, get the fuck off my property. Don’t look at her again, don’t talk to her again, don’t even fucking breathe in her direction again, do you understand me? You got your fun, now disappear. Or I’ll make sure you do.”
Fuckhead shuts his mouth and with one look at Roxie–who says absolutely nothing, by the way–he walks off, holding his sore ribs.
Once he’s out of my sight, I feel like I can breathe a little steadier. The red tinge of rage is fading and I’m aware of my heart beating again.
“What the hell, Ty?” Roxie whispers. Not angry, not sad, just curious. Like I handed her some kind of puzzle piece that she didn’t know existed.
“What?”
“Why…” She lets the word trail off, never finishing the full thought, but then again… maybe ‘why’ is the full thought.
“You deserve better than that asshole.” I shake my hands gently, I just need to get rid of the tension in my body now. It’s been so fucking long since I’ve gotten any, so long since I’ve felt Roxie around me and jerking off has long since stopped being satisfying.
“I had it handled,” she snaps, her eyes glaring at me with more anger than I’ve seen from her fairly laidback attitude for the last two months. After the talk in the breakroom, she didn’t confront me again. In fact, she kind of…friend-zoned me. Hard.
It was like any and all romantic tension we had was buried. She greeted me warmly, she gave me high-fives and fist bumps, she complains and teases me like she does Asher. But she’s not asked to talk about what happened anymore.
She’s not asked to try to get back together or anything like that.
And what’s fucking worse is that she’s started letting her one-night douche bags walk her to work. I have to see their smug fucking grins when she walks away like they can’t believe how lucky they are.
I know exactly how lucky they are.
It’s killing me, but I watch. I watch and I protect and I sit and I wait. She doesn’t need or want me, but I need her. I want her so bad it hurts.
“Sure you had it handled, chica,” I roll my eyes. “You’ve never not had your stuff handled, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to sit here and let some pretentious ass think he can talk to you like that.” My voice is raising but I can’t control it.
“Oh, but you can?” She throws the question in my face and it knocks me off guard. Everything inside me cringes.
“That was different.”
“Oh, sure. It was so different. Got your dick wet, then I lost my use, no? I’m nothing.
But at the very least I know I have power over every man.
” She huffs a laugh and steps back, the plaid shirt opening slightly so I can see the sexy little black dress she’s wearing.
“You all want me, and I can choose or decline, depending on what I want. Not you. I have the power here.”
I know she’s talking about all men, not me specifically, but my pupils have to widen because she’s a literal goddess in front of me, and now…
for some reason, now, she finally sees what I’ve seen all along.
She’s powerful, smart, breathtakingly beautiful.
And she has every man she meets falling to their knees.
“You know that wasn’t what it was, right?” I ask, more hurt and gentle than I’ve talked with her since that first day.
“Wasn’t it?”
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Roxie. Since that day you walked into homeroom… Since the day you tied that leather cord around my wrist, I’ve been yours.”
Her eyes drop down to my wrist where the ratty string is still hanging on.
“I’ve been yours, and I always will be. But…”
She rolls her eyes and laughs. It’s the kind of laugh that is meant to cover real visceral pain, and I see right through it.
“‘But’. Right. There’s always a but. I’m so fucking sick of this,” she mutters, looking down and taking a breath before looking at me. “Are you going to tell me why you did what you did now?”
I recoil. I physically recoil at her words.
“This isn’t about us,” I say stiffly, trying to shut down her attempt to reroute this discussion.
“It’s always about us, Ty.” She steps forward and grabs my shirt, dragging me towards Harriet's diner. “We’re sorting this shit out right now.”
Grabbing her wrist gently, stopping her.
“No.”
Roxie stops and her eyes lock onto where my hand’s touching her. The softness of her skin under my palm takes me by surprise, but I don’t let it show.
I can’t.
If I do, she might move away from me quicker and I… It’s been so long since I’ve felt her like this.
“Ty, it’s hurting me,” she whispers.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I just don’t understand. And going on, pretending like it’s fine? It’s torture.”
“I know.” I do know. It hurts me every day. Every hour. Every second. I’m in agony because… All I want is her. But to save her, I… I can’t expose her to the possibility that I might hurt her.
Again.
She looks at me as if I don’t feel every shred of pain that she’s feeling.
Like it doesn’t feel like a punch to the fucking sternum every time she brings a guy around, or a jab to the jaw when she smiles at anyone but me.
Like it doesn’t make me want to cut my own eyebrow open from a hook to the face every time she looks at me, and I see the pain I’ve caused before she can mask it.
“You don’t know–” I start to tell her just how much I’m dying inside too, but she cuts me off.
“If you tell me one more goddamn time that I don’t know what you had to do, that I don’t know whatever, I’m going to smack you.” Her fists clench at her sides and my heart rate kicks up.
Maybe a fight is what we need.
Maybe I need to let her say everything she’s feeling rather than her trying to ignore it.
Maybe… Maybe being hurt on the outside will help it hurt on the inside a little less.
I pick each word carefully and speak with intention. Like she deserves.
“You don’t know what choice I had to make. For you, for me, for us.” Standing my ground, and preparing for a blow. “I did what I had to do.”
“No, see that’s where you’re wrong,” she snaps.
“You did what you thought you should, but we were a team, Ty. A fucking partnership. Damn it, Ty! We’d agreed not to do this kinda thing!
Didn’t we? And now,” she keeps going, letting it all out, and I stay silent.
“And now, you won’t even tell me what happened.
You won’t even tell me…why. You just,” she shakes her head and tears line her eyes.
“You shut me out. You say some shit at The Underground, you hurt me badly, and… And then you protect me? You don’t kick me out of the shop.
You don’t apologize for it, don’t think that has escaped my attention.
And most of all, you don’t want me anymore. ”
With everything she’s noticed laid out in front of me, I clench my jaw a little more.
“Just tell me. I can take it.” Her hands relax and instead of curling her arms around herself, like she’s trying to hold herself together.
I have a choice to make here.
Do I tell her everything and hope she doesn’t look at me differently, hope I don’t snap one day and am so used to killing that I hurt her too?
Or do I twist the knife a little more and know for a fact she stays safe?
Fuck my life.