Chapter Fifty
It had been hours since I left Devil’s Tunnel and made for the clubhouse, and yet, I could still hear the vibrato of agony that wobbled in the fractures of her voice—feel the sick sensation that had followed, dropping like a cold, hard stone into the basement of my stomach.
Truth is, I hadn’t read her lyrics when she penned them.
I didn’t even know she could write.
The same way I hadn’t known she could sing when she sat in the back seat of my truck three years ago expertly harmonizing with me like we’d been at it for years.
Laiken held onto her secrets tightly, and I didn’t know of them until they left my skin tingling, my palms sweaty and my throat rigid.
I suck down a breath, and feel guilt tearing through my chest.
Laiken gave me an earth-shattering truth only she and my sister knew, and that should have been enough.
Her words in my notebook should have been enough.
Only, I had to go and selfishly pick at the last of her sutures when I asked her to give them a voice, even after she’d told me she couldn’t do that.
I’d taken something from her today. And I had no right to ask her to cut a vein after she’d already pressed the blade.
My stomach muscles tense, sweat sliding across the nape of my neck.
Laiken had tried her best to swallow her guttural whimpers when she’d left me and the tunnel behind. And as I’d listened to them fade, I sat there, unmoving, frozen in time.
It was at that moment I was reminded that I would always be Laiken Campbell’s demise; why I had removed myself from her life.
I had no right pushing my way back into it yesterday, even if my heart was in the right place, and all I wanted was to make sure she’d be safe.
I should have taken Harlen with me.
He should have been the one to enter the diner.
He should have been the one that held her, the one to drive her back to her grandmother’s, the one that watched over her as he had for years.
I fucked up thinking she’d be safer with me than without me.
Music pounds.
My hand flexes, then coils around Ally’s throat, her cunt wrapped around my cock.
“Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace vibrates through the red brick wall of the clubhouse as I slam my hips into her again, and again, and again.
“Oh god, Chase, you fuck me so—”
I pinch my fingers into her throat, silencing her, feeling the cartilage shift beneath my grip. I don’t want to hear how good I’m making her feel when I’m making the only girl I actually give a fuck about feel the complete opposite.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl.
And at the deliverance of my demand, her pussy tightens around me, her searing walls squeezing my cock into a fucking vise, and I screw my eyes closed wishing it could just be her.
Laiken Campbell.
The girl I never got to call mine.
The one I need to let go of.
The one I can’t.
My forehead slams down on the brick wall at the thought, and I’m breathing over the slim shoulder of the girl I’ve used countless times for a meaningless fuck as I finish. I let my hand slip from around her throat, dropping her to her ass.
Ally stumbles carelessly to her feet, reaching toward her throat, brushing her long blonde hair back from her shoulders and touching the tips of her fingers to the same place my hand had just departed.
I suck in a sharp, shaky breath, throw the condom into the bin at my side, tucking myself back into my jeans and screwing my eyes when Ally tries to grab for my face.
Ally has been dancing at the club for a while now, and when she’s not on one of the makeshift chrome poles shaking her ass in one of the boys' faces, she’s on my dick.
I slam my open palm down on the rough brick, biting my bottom lip behind my top teeth, giving her my cheek.
Ally takes the hint, though she flirts with it, her hand slowly traces the length of my throat.
“Don’t,” I rasp my warning.
“Asshole,” she whispers, but the playfulness in her tone tells me she doesn’t quite mean it. She knows what the fuck this is, that she means nothing to me.
She slips past me and heads for the closed door, but doesn’t move through it without telling me the same thing she does every time I give her my dick.
“No one fucks me like you do, Chase Keller.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, not replying, and when I hear the door snick closed behind me, I crush my fist against the wall, biting back the pain that shoots through every nerve, tendon and bone in my forearm.
“Fuck,” I groan. Rolling my forehead on the rough brick, I turn, slide down the wall, and unclench my bleeding fist to retrieve the bag of coke Ally likes to keep stuffed in her bra before she realizes it’s missing.
It’s the only reason I fucked her today, because I knew what I’d find.
I hold it in front of my eyes, stare at the pile of white powder, and feel the way my blood trembles for it, the way my heart stutters off rhythm for the euphoric release. My spine turns hot and sweaty and it’s fucking disgusting, and I hate myself so much right now.
“You remember how her mother died, yeah?”
“Give her something to believe in, or let her go.”
Harlen’s phantom words are like a knife in my ear.
Still, I open the bag, chew on my bottom lip and peel away the loose skin. But I don’t shake it out, I reseal it, throw it across the room and get to my feet.
This time, I cultivate the strength to leave it behind.