Oblivion definitely didn’t have HER.

And come tomorrow, I wouldn’t either.

I wanted it to be her hand on my cock and I imagined it was, living in my imagination and in the lie for just a few more ignorant moments.

Jodi stroked me. Or was it Dee? Danni? Denise?

Regardless of the expertise being used to get me off I felt myself going softer and softer. I thought of pale pink lips and strawberry blonde hair, but every time she appeared behind my closed eyelids, she disappeared just as quickly.

I groaned in frustration. The girl getting me off took the noise as a sign of encouragement, picking up her pace. Jerking me harder. Long fake nails clicked together as she worked me.

There was no fucking way I was going to come, and I was glad for it. I wanted to punish myself for what I was about to do.

For what she was about to see.

Sadly, the only coming I was doing was coming down from my high, which was the last fucking thing I wanted. It was a shitty-ass time to sober up.

I changed my mind.

I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t hurt her. I would find another way. I grabbed what’s her name’s forearm to make her stop her pointless hand job, but it wasn’t her my eyes darted to.

It was Ti.

MY Ti.

Standing at the foot of the bed.

She appeared straight faced. Impassive. Almost expressionless. I knew better than to take her at face value. Thia ran deep, but covered up even deeper. What I saw behind her flat expression scared the shit out of me, because it was more than her usual spitfire self.

She was mad.

Pure unadulterated RAGE mad.

The naked bleach blonde kneeling next to me barely paid Thia any attention, and continued to stroke me as she looked back at her despite my hand on her arm trying to stop her. “You want in?” she asked Thia.

Maybe she wasn’t there. Maybe I was just dreaming. Because Thia Andrews had been occupying my dreams since that first night in the shower.

It wasn’t until she spoke that I knew for sure it wasn’t a dream after all.

I thought she’d run.

I’d done this so she would run.

Not from the house. From me.

But she didn’t. The girl was always surprising me.

She walked right up to the bed with a look of determination in her eyes that I’d never seen before. She reached over me and plucked one of my guns from one of my holders, which was the only thing I was wearing. She aimed at the naked blonde and cocked it. “Get. Out. Now.” The fake seductive look on the blonde’s face instantly disappeared and was replaced with fear. She jumped from the bed and ran out the door without a backwards glance.

I know it was the asshole thing to do but I couldn’t help it.

Maybe it was because I was drunk.

Maybe because I was tired of not knowing what to do or who to trust or how to protect the girl who had wiggled and smiled her way into my broken heart.

I laughed.

Not just a little laugh either. I laughed at the absurdity that my life had become as well as the situation I was currently in.

Thia turned the gun on me and that’s when I noticed the tears threatening to leak from the corners of her beautiful green eyes.

I froze.

“Shit.”

Ti sniffled, although she was obviously trying to hide the fact that she was on the verge of crying. An unfamiliar feeling took over. My heart lurched into my stomach and I felt sick.

Guilt.

I’d committed every crime there was to commit. I’d done shit that sane men would never dare to even think of, yet I’d never felt a shred of guilt for any of it.

Ever.

Until now.

Until Thia.

Love. It was the only kind of torture I wasn’t familiar with.

I was quickly learning it was the most painful kind of them all.

“You know,” she started. Her voice was as shaky as the gun in her hand. “You really need to stop trying to make me hate you.”

I muddled through my cloudy thoughts in search of a response, “And why is that?” was the best I could come up with.

Ti laid the gun down on my bare stomach and I resisted the urge to reach out and tug her down onto me. She was about to turn the handle on the door when she turned back. Tears stained her cheeks and my gut twisted in a way I was beginning to hate as much as I hated myself.

She looked me right in the eye and held my gaze.

“Because it’s working.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Bear

No amount of coffee or cold water could have dragged me back into sobriety after I’d seen the look on Ti’s face in that room.

Alcohol and anger go hand in hand like junior high sweethearts.