Chapter 15 #3
Or, hell, maybe it’s that I forgot my goddamn pills and I’m sort of all over the board, if I’m honest. Maybe I was having fun a minute ago and all of a sudden I’m not, and my brain’s being electrocuted again and I’m trying not to let it show on my face, like I’ve been doing all fucking day.
It’s getting exhausting and I need a drink right now.
Don’t let this ruin your night.
No, I won’t. Jordan doesn’t get to live in my head like this. Fuck him.
The pup and his handler disappear into the crowd.
Killian’s getting all gooey, laughing too much and too loud at nothing as he slithers around Max like he’s been turned into liquid.
We find a free booth and someone comes to take our drink orders once we’ve arranged ourselves.
I can’t tell how I feel about Luca boxing me up against the wall. Don’t know if it’s safer that way.
“A cosmo,” I tell the server.
“Oh, me too,” Killian pipes up. “Make that two.”
Luca nudges me, and I look up at him. I get the sense he’s picked up on my weird mood, as finely attenuated to me as he is. “We don’t have to stay all night, you know,” he tells me in a quiet voice. “We can dip whenever you want. Just say the word.”
“Do you think I should get off my meds?” I ask abruptly.
He draws back. “What?”
“My meds. Should I stop them?”
“Why? I thought they helped you.” When I don’t respond right away he presses me. “Why are you asking this all of a sudden? Is something the matter?”
“What are you guys whispering about?” Killian complains loudly. “Share with the class!”
“Settle down,” Max admonishes him.
“Forget it, Luca,” I mumble. “We can talk about it later.”
“Alright.” He’s frowning at me.
Our drinks are passed across the table. I glance around and catch the eye of a man near the bar who very much looks like a sexed-up biker.
He’s sort of grizzled, with blue eyes so electric they pop even in the darkness of the space, and there’s something unnervingly familiar about them.
I can’t tell his age as he approaches us.
It could be anywhere between forty to sixty; it’s hard to gauge from his bald head and gray beard.
“Hello,” he says, looking between the four of us. “I don’t think I’ve seen your faces around here before.”
Killian lights up like a Christmas tree.
The man does seem to be his type: big, burly and bearded.
“My partner and I come here a few times a year, ever since it opened. We’re all from Boston, but I have family here.
” He’s quick to set the record straight.
God forbid anyone mistake him for anything less than a native.
He paws at biker-man’s vest, beneath which he wears nothing but sculpted abs and curly chest hair, fingering the rivets.
“Just visiting, then?” Cueball’s gaze lands on me, and the weight it holds is almost startling.
I know immediately what he wants and I’m shutting it down, staring back in a way that I know is unfriendly as I press closer to Luca.
“I’m Lawrence,” he announces, still watching me. “But most guys call me Daddy.”
I’ll just fucking bet they did. He looked like he would change his legal name to Daddy if he could, wear it on a goddamn name tag and everything. “That must be so validating for you,” I mutter under my breath.
And Killian’s still falling all over this guy, as if that wasn’t the most embarrassing, most unattractive possible thing for him to say.
“I’m Killian, and this is my Max.” He transfers his affection back to his partner, stroking his shoulder.
“And those are my friends, Luca and Noel. It’s their first time. ”
“No-el?” He makes this bastardization of my name a question. “Like Christmas?”
“Noel.” My lip curls. “Like mole.”
“Watch out,” Killian advises with a laugh. “The little one bites.”
“They always do. That’s what makes it fun.” He leers at me.
I’m bristling, my hand squeezing my cocktail glass so tight that it might just splinter into pieces and I kind of hope that it does.
It would keep me from hurling it at him.
I’m so reactive right now, teeth bared like a dog who hates someone on sight, and I don’t precisely know why.
It’s not the first time I’ve been hit on by someone I want nothing to do with. Bad scent? Bad vibes?
Luca wisely chooses this moment to step in. He leans forward to break Lawrence’s line of sight with me and says, “He’s also unavailable.” His voice has gone down an octave and his meaning is clear, blatantly possessive, and I don’t mind it at all.
Lawrence side steps just enough to put him back in my field of vision. “You don’t share?”
Luca is usually slow to anger, but tonight it comes to him quick enough. He puts the full force of it in one word: “No.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Oh yeah, they’re very boring and monogamous.” Killian reaches out, tugging the edge of the leather daddy’s vest. “But we aren’t. If you’re wondering.”
“I don’t know about that,” he responds good-naturedly. “I’m too old to entertain two at once.”
Max chimes in with, “I like to watch.”
Despite the proverbial fucking banquet throwing themselves at his feet, though, Lawrence’s gaze refuses to stray from me and I finally realize why I hate it so much. It’s because his eyes are the same bright, blank blue as Jordan’s.
The moment it dawns on me it’s suddenly unbearable being here.
There’s something crawling up my throat and making it hard to breathe.
My heart is pounding so hard and fast that I’m certain the whole club can hear it.
I’m surging with the kind of helpless rage I haven’t felt in months and months, the kind that makes me grab things and break things and hurt myself and bleed.
Another prod to the inside of my skull, zap, and my vision jolts violently along with it. I almost gasp, the sensation is so awful and intense.
Don’t let this ruin your night don’t let this ruin your night don’t—
“Can you please fuck off?” I hear myself snap.
Everyone’s eyes are suddenly on me. Luca’s concerned, of course, those little telltale lines evident on his forehead where it crinkles up, and Killian’s utterly bewildered. Even Max, who is possibly the most stoic human being I’ve ever encountered, looks a little perturbed.
Lawrence’s eyes crinkle in the corners. He’s fucking laughing at me.
He thinks this is funny. I’m bridling and he’s smiling into his ugly, ratty beard like this is a game.
He’s never been more wrong. I’m fully activated, trembling with the urge to scream, to jump across the table.
“Ease down, princess,” he says mildly. “We’re just having a conversation. ”
“And I’m asking you nicely to fuck off.”
“Wait, what?” Killian titters nervously. “Are you joking, Noel? Is this, like…you being funny, or something?”
“Noel.” Luca.
Lawrence folds his arms over his chest, leaning his hip against the edge of the table. “Do you really bite?” he teases me, all too happy to engage me. “Or is it all attitude?”
I seize my drink and launch myself across Luca’s lap with every intention of glassing the motherfucker, but my range is cut short by him grabbing me around the waist and yanking me backwards.
The cosmo goes slopping across the table.
“I’ll show you bite, you geriatric fuck,” I snarl, even as Luca pries the glass from my hands.
“What the hell?” He skitters backwards a few steps. “What was that for?”
“Noel.” Luca replaces my wriggling, furious body back into the booth, and he’s trying to hold me steady and catch my eye. “Hey, what’s the matter? What’s going on?”
Killian and Max are still watching at me in uneasy confusion.
Max has seemingly puffed up to twice his size where he sits across from me, and his partner doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
His hands flutter to his cocktail glass and then drop back into his lap, and he exchanges an anxious glance with Luca.
“Did I miss something?” he asks no one in particular. “He was just flirting. Wasn’t he?”
A server appears to ask us if everything’s alright over here—I guess he witnessed all the commotion.
The others assure him just fine, a mild disagreement, nothing to worry about, but that’s wrong, I’m fucking worried.
I’m not okay. I need out of here. My night’s ruined, I ruined it, and I’m breathing too fast and too shallow and my stomach’s in knots and god, I wish I hadn’t forgotten my meds. Oh, no.
Luca lets me out of the booth when I ask, and he’s following me, too, down the stairs, across the noisy floor where the music’s so loud and the bass is so deep my heart can’t quite compete. I hold my breath until we emerge out onto the sidewalk. My ears are buzzing and roaring.
Luca’s right there with me, taking my face in his hands. His lips are moving. I barely make the words out: “Noel, what happened in there?”
I stare into his face and I’m suddenly so, so grateful he’s here, because I think I’d dissolve without him. I know I would. The rush of gratitude seems to knock me back into my body, cut my momentary dissociation short. I reach out and grip the front of his shirt with both hands, tight.
“What’s wrong?” he says. “Talk to me.”
I let it ruin my night. That’s what’s wrong. I can’t hide this anymore, it’s not going away, and my brain’s on fucking fire and I want to scream and claw it out through my eyeballs. Fuck.
I don’t make him ask again, I just say it. “It was Jordan,” I say hoarsely. “Jordan did it.”
“Your ex-boyfriend?” His hands slide down from my face to my shoulders. “What about him? What did he do?”
And now I’m choking up and I hate myself for it, for this weakness, for caring, for being a victim. God, I fucking hate it. “He did it, Luca. He’s the one who hurt me at Anathema.”