Take this whole afternoon back.
Leave the classroom of the tiny private school where I’d taken a job as a teacher during their summer program, and instead of coming here gone straight to the small house I shared with Ben –where I was safe and memories of Christopher were buried and hidden in the hope that one day they would finally be forgotten.
I slumped into the driver’s seat, my gaze drawn to the little family that came bustling out of the store.
My heart rattled in my chest.
“Shit,” I cursed, gripping the wheel. “What am I doing?”
The sick part was I knew the answer to that.
Chapter Two
Christopher
Outside the bedroom door, the party raged on. Timothy’s house was splitting at the seams, the way it always was on a Friday night. Music blared, and voices lifted above it, echoing through the thin walls. Distorted sounds pounded heavily against my skin, my eyesight hazy in the deep shadows of the darkened room.
I felt completely weightless and somehow still pinned down by the pungent fog clouding my brain.
Every elemental part of me slowly became detached. Floated away. All of my emotions. All of my thoughts. It was like they hovered somewhere overhead, just out of reach. My entire consciousness faded away, right along with my conscience, leaving me with nothing but the physical.
It’s what I craved. Needed. The relief of feeling nothin’ but skin on skin.
Even though some part of me hated it at the same time.
Slouched back on the worn out couch in the spare bedroom, I lifted the half-drained bottle of Patron to my lips, idly watching the dull mop of brown hair obstructing the face of the girl who was on her knees, sucking me off.
The only thing I could discern was the pleasure of her hot, needy mouth and the burn of tequila as it roared through my system to settle in a scorching pool in my gut.
She looked up from under her thick veil of hair, brown eyes wide as they searched for a connection, but instead met with the apathy in mine.
That was the fucking problem. I was on disconnect.
That plug had been pulled a long time ago.
Never would I allow someone to have that kind of control over me.
Not like she had.
Not ever again.
Monday morning, I rolled up in front of Jared and Aly’s house at the ass-crack of dawn. I squinted against the bright rays of light burning my eyes as the sun climbed over the horizon, chasing the last of the night from the sky.
I cut the ignition and jumped from the cooled cab of my truck. Heat swallowed me whole. You’d think at 5:30 in the morning we’d get a little reprieve. No such luck. Summers in Phoenix were fucking misery.
That didn’t stop the eager smile that tugged at my mouth as I ambled up their walkway.
So what if I had to leave my man card at the door every time I walked through Jared and Aly’s door. Call me a *, I didn’t care.My niece had me wrapped around every single one of her tiny fingers.
I rang the doorbell and rushed my hand through my hair, listening for movement inside. A shadow passed behind the draped window, before metal slid as the lock was unlatched. My sister grinned at me when she opened the door.
“Christopher, aren’t you looking chipper this beautiful morning,” Aly teased as she lifted a knowing brow, stepping back to let me inside.
So yeah, I’m sure I looked like hell. Both Friday and Saturday nights, I’d been over at Timothy’s house, living it up. Funny how all that living made me feel like death warmed over. Every weekend left me just a little more hollowed out. I was pretty sure I was slowly killing myself, week by week losing just a little more of who I was, carving away more and more of what had been important to me.
Pretty soon there would be nothing left.
But there was no way to get any of it back.