THE SHRILL RING FROM my bedside table jarred me from sleep.
I groaned, clinging to the fringes of sleep, desperate to sink back into its murky depths.
Because she was there. That fucking gorgeous girl, who with one look, swallowed me whole. The one who’d climbed on the back of my bike and held onto me as if her very life depended on it, and it seemed, just for one night, it had.
For a little while, it was just the two of us who existed.
Did it make me pathetic that night two nights ago had been the best time I’d had in as long as I could remember?
Funny, because it didn’t come close to ending the way I’d been dying for it to—wrapped up in miles of long legs, buried deep in all her sweet where she just kept pulling me deeper, a few perfect hours to make me forget.
Didn’t matter.
Because she still had, and that fact scared me a little bit because I sure as hell didn’t need to go getting messed up on a girl that I was only going to have to leave behind. She was tied here. She had made that much clear.
But that didn’t change the fact she made me feel different when I was with her, like maybe not every single thing in this world was bad. As if this girl saw me for who I really was and she actually liked him.
She’d asked me what I wanted from her. The problem was I had no clue. All I knew was it was more. That I wanted more of her dark and her light and her heavy and her soft. I wanted more of her sweet breaths and more of her pounding heart.
I wanted more of her kisses.
Fuck.
I wanted more of her kisses.
The phone rang again, vibrating against the wooden tabletop.
Facedown in my pillow, I blindly swatted around for my phone. When I caught hold of it, I flipped onto my back, rubbing at my eye as I answered with a groggy, “Hello?”
“Sebastian.”
The spiteful voice punched me in the gut. Anxiety climbed out from it, like ants marching across my skin.
Sucking in a shaky breath, I sat up on the side of the bed. I ground my teeth when the years of resentment came flooding in, washing over all those stupid childhood scars marking up my insides, my heart and spirit and mind.
“What do you want?” I gritted out, crushing the phone in my hand.
He laughed the ugliest sound. “Ah, what, you’re not excited to hear from your dear old dad? Have some respect, boy.”
I scoffed. He’d lost that a long time ago.
“I think you know the answer to that, so get it over with and let me go back to my life.”
“Your life?” he mocked, brutal sarcasm bleeding from his tone. “Glad you have a life to continue on with.”
My insides squeezed and bile rose in my throat. “What do you want?” I asked through clenched teeth, refusing to take his bait. “I’m not gonna ask again.”
“What do I want? What you owe me.”
Fucking money. Always more money.
Taking. Stripping me bare.
Everyone wants a piece of Sebastian Stone.
“Don’t owe you anything.”
“Yet you take care of that worthless brother of yours.” The words sliced through me, a bitter blade. “You might protect him, but I sure as hell won’t.”
“You mean your son?”
“He stopped being my son the day he killed Julian.”
A knot formed in the base of my throat, all sharp, crude edges. Heavy. Too heavy. “It wasn’t his fault,” I grated around it.
“Then why did you lie? Why are we all still lying?”
It was always what he held over my head. The threat to expose Austin and what he had done. To proliferate the lie of what he had not. Wouldn’t allow him to hurt my little brother any more than he already had.
“How much?”
“Ten.”
Bastard.
“Fine. I’ll wire the money to you this afternoon.”
Satisfied laughter spread maliciously through the phone.
And I hated.
Hated.
Hated.