Chapter 31
four finger love punch
Preston Darling
“What are you doing in my kitchen?” Dolly asks, padding in on bare feet, a towel around her hair. A pink velour tracksuit hugs her curves that drive me out of my fucking mind every time I see them. I’m glad to see her back in pink after the colorless outfit she wore last night.
“I’m making you breakfast,” I say, smiling as I deliver two plates to the island in the kitchen. “It’s easier if you have a crepe pan and fresh peaches, but I made do. Sit. I’ve got coffee going now.”
She slumps onto a barstool and rubs her temples. “I should have known when I woke up all sticky and covered in bite marks that it was you.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t remember last night. You weren’t that drunk.”
“I was trying to convince myself it wasn’t real,” she says. “You could have had the decency to be gone by morning so I could keep telling myself it was just a nightmare.”
“You mean your wildest dream?” I ask, cocking a brow as I pour the creamer into her coffee. I slide it across the counter to her. “Here you go. Sweet and creamy, just like you.”
“Preston,” she groans. “I’m too hungover to fight with you this morning.”
“So don’t,” I say. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”
I sprinkle another dusting of powdered sugar over her crepes before taking a seat beside her.
“Since when do you cook?” she asks, cutting into her food.
“The Dolces have such a stranglehold on Faulkner, it’s dangerous for businesses to allow Darlings in their establishments.
I got bored of ordering takeout and having to eat in my car or eat it cold when I got home.
So, I learned to make everything I wanted to eat.
” I lean over and kiss her shoulder. “It tastes better when I have someone to share it with.”
“I’m sorry you’re alone,” she says quietly. “But you can’t stay here, Preston.”
“Then come home.”
She turns and gives me a funny look. “I am home.”
“Dolly, we both know this isn’t your home.”
“You don’t know anything about my life now,” she says. “And that was your decision. I would have stayed in contact, stayed friends, if you’d wanted that. But the moment you knew sex was off the table, you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Pain twists in my chest at the knowledge that I hurt her.
I never meant for that to happen. I just couldn’t keep holding on, couldn’t keep hurting all over again every time she told me she wasn’t coming home.
I protected myself from pain, and it caused her pain.
I should have just endured it. What kind of man hurts a woman for his own sake?
Men like my father and grandfather, that’s who. Of course I’d do the same. I was formed in their image, groomed since birth to be just like them. I never stood a chance.
“You’re right, I’m an asshole,” I say, reaching for her hand. I wrap my tattooed fingers around hers, looking at her name spelled out over my knuckles. “In my defense, I was just seventeen and an idiot. I’m sorry. I should have stayed in contact. I wanted you in my life, though. I still do.”
She pulls her hand away. “I have a boyfriend, Preston.”
A knife couldn’t have cut me deeper, but I won’t give up. Not again. Not ever.
“What, that married asshole groping you at the bar?”
“What about it?” she asks, a challenge in her voice as she tips her chin up and stares me down.
“You’re better than that, Doll.”
“Then you don’t know me anymore,” she says, dropping her gaze to her plate.
“I know you deserve better than that asshole.”
“Well, that’s what there is out here,” she says. “You think it’s my first choice? I came out here to be a star, Preston, and that’s what I’m doing. Whatever way I have to get there.”
“I don’t give a fuck about you being a star.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” she says. “You don’t care that I care. Just like you didn’t care that I needed a friend because it wasn’t what you needed.”
“Or maybe I got tired of being your friend, giving you what you needed, and having you walk all over me in return,” I say, my anger rising. “A man can only pretend to be a doormat for so long.”
“A doormat?” she asks, scoffing. “More like a bully who bulldozed everyone to get his way.”
“If I’d gotten my way, you’d be my wife by now,” I growl.
“I let you go because you told me that if I loved you, I’d do it.
And you insinuated that you loved me, and you’d come back.
But now I see it was all just a ploy to get me to let you go.
You never intended to come home. You only had one use for me, and when you didn’t need me, you walked away and never looked back. ”
She gulps, her eyes going shiny. “I look back all the time, Preston. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have let you come home with me last night.
But it was supposed to be a one-time thing.
You should have been gone by morning, like last time.
Let us have this memory. Now you’re reminding me why we never did it before, why we never tried.
This doesn’t work, Preston. We don’t work. ”
“It worked for you when I was stroking your ego and following you around like a lovesick puppy for our entire fucking lives,” I snap.
She sighs and picks up her coffee, holding it between her hands. “See, this is why we don’t work. Not even as friends. You think I didn’t appreciate your friendship.”
“And you think I didn’t appreciate yours,” I say.
“Well, the fact is, we’re not friends anymore,” she says.
“We live in different states and haven’t spoken in two and a half years, Preston.
We’re adults now. Last night… It was fun, but that’s all it was supposed to be.
A trip down memory lane, a chance to give in to that chemistry we always had.
But my life is here now. My dream. I know it means nothing to you, but it means everything to me.
And the fact that that means nothing to you says everything to me. ”
“That’s not what I meant,” I growl in frustration. “You know that, Dolly. I let you get on that bus two and a half years ago, didn’t I? I wished you luck. I came to say goodbye.”
“You let me?”
“Yes,” I say flatly. “And it was the biggest mistake of my life.”
She snorts and pushes her plate away. “That’s your biggest mistake?”
“Yes,” I say, forcing myself not to flinch under her gaze.
Since I started wearing a mask, I’ve come to rely on it.
Without it, people only see a monster. I go on so she’ll stop looking at me that way, like I’m a monster even with the mask.
“Going to that party and underestimating the Dolces was a mistake. But I can live with my face. I can’t live without you. ”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” she says, her gaze steely.
I take a swig of my coffee just to keep myself from saying something I’ll regret. “What about last night?”
“I was drunk,” she says, fishing her plate back towards her and starting in on her crepes again. “That was definitely a mistake. Don’t make me regret it more than I already do.”
“You weren’t that drunk,” I say. “Maybe enough to let go of your inhibitions and do what you want to do but won’t let yourself when you’re sober. You wanted me to fuck you.”
“Exactly,” she says. “Which means I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself, do it,” I say. “But we both know the truth.”
She sighs. “So I’m attracted to you. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up my dreams and go crawling home like a dog with its tail between its legs.”
“You got a deal with Nyso Records,” I point out. “No one thinks you’re a failure, Dolly.”
“I work at a café,” she says, finishing off her food. “I’m still leasing the car I got when I came out here two and a half years ago. I live in an apartment complex with one security officer. I’m not famous.”
“You have a shitty manager,” I say flatly.
“Nash is one of the best managers in LA.”
“That guy’s not looking out for anyone but himself,” I tell her.
“I could do a better job. Look at you, Dolly. You’re breathtaking.
You should be a movie star, model, and platinum artist by now if that’s what you want.
Anyone worth shit would have seen your potential and made it happen if he wanted you to be famous. ”
“I’m sleeping with the guy,” she says, throwing her hands up. “What more can I do?”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
She glares at me, that hardness in her blue eyes again, the one I never saw before she left Faulkner. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means maybe he doesn’t want you to get famous and speak out,” I say.
“He doesn’t want to be the next Weinstein.
If he preys on fresh talent who doesn’t know any better, what are they going to do?
He’s counting on you being na?ve to the way things work and desperate to get your face out there so he can pretend he’s helping you, while in reality he’s not doing anything except fucking the hottest girls he can get his dick in. ”
Dolly draws herself up and blinks at me a few times. “Now I’m na?ve and desperate?” she asks, her voice deadly quiet.
“You know I don’t think that.”
Fuck. Why did I say that? That didn’t come out at all the way I meant it.
“No, no,” she says, sliding off the stool and going to the sink with her plate. “Thanks for telling me what you really think of me, Preston. But I’ll have you know, Nash isn’t the one tricking girls into sleeping with him.”
Her words hit me like acid, burning through my skin and into my flesh, sinking into my bones to be stored like radioactive toxins that never leave. Whatever shards of pride remain for a man like me, a man whose face is that of a twisted, deformed beast, are ground into dust by her meaning.
“I didn’t get you drunk,” I say stiffly. “And don’t pretend that’s why you fucked me last night.”
“I made a drunken mistake. That’s all it was.”
“And what about last time?” I ask. “After you and Devlin broke up.”