Page 17 of Gluttony

You should have known!

And, somewhere, deep down, he had; that nagging guilt that slithered inside him every time he was inside another woman, should have been a massive red flag that something wasn’t right. He’d found fleeting pleasure with those women, but once he’d nutted, that niggling feeling of wrongness returned, stealing every drop of satisfaction.

So why did he keep doing it?

He had no fucking idea.

Shaking his head, he shot to his feet, rage, anguish, fear, and that sickening guilt pummeling him. He paced, his legs pulsing with unspent maniacal energy, something that couldn’t be burned off, but kept pumping through him, cascading through sinew and bone and blood until his chest pounded with it. He sucked in rapid breaths, his chest expanding and deflating too quick to ever get enough air.

He was suffocating, drowning, the guilt and despair, a living river crashing over him.

No more talking. No more chats or texts or calls—this is done….

She wanted to end them, to sever any chance at everything he’d ever wanted.

Fuck that!

He’d made a mistake, yes, a huge fucking mistake, but it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t make it right.

…once you actually see me, once the camera is on, once you actually know me, the real me….

I’m not worth it….

Striding to the wall, that hideous energy zipping through him, he struck out, beating his fist against the wall, leaving craters where his hits landed. Over and over and over, until his knuckles here split, bloody, and throbbing.

The pain, welcome and purifying, shot from his hand and into his frenetic mind.

Valentina was hurting, he’d caused that, and he could make it right. But she’d cut him off, and he knew she was way fucking better at hiding her tracks online than he was, and that meant finding her when she didn’t want to be found would be impossible.

“Shit,” he spat, “this cannot fucking be over!”

A blast of realization hit him so hard he literally reeled, his back hitting the wall behind him.

The hair ties.

She knew about the hair ties, that every single one symbolized a woman he’d brought home to fuck.

She’d called themfuck tokens.

How? He’d only ever told Cluster and Tiburon—a patch over from Bone Dogz—about that, just two nights ago at Cool Hands….

Shit! She was there? She had to have been there, and close enough to hear him talk about the hair ties. Now that he thought about it, that was also the night she’d started to ghost him, not replying to his goodnight text as she usually would have.

Motherfucking goddamn shit!

His heart striking his ribs, hard and fast, he stumbled over to the bed and sat on it, his weight pressing down, the mattress giving beneath him. A mattress he was going to fucking burn. He planted his elbows into his knees and cradled his head in his hands. Shit. She’d been there that night at Cool Hands…and he’d missed her, probably looked right past her, walked right by her.

But why was she there? Had she’d known he would be there—it would have been a good guess, since she knew about the Unchained and their businesses. It wouldn’t have been too big a stretch to assume that he’d be there on a Friday night. And she’d been right.

Which meant….

She’d come to him. Finally.

Maybe she’d finally decided to reveal herself.

And, damn, if he hadn’t fucked that up. She’d probably come, expecting to approach him, admit who she was, and then melt into his embrace as he pulled her into his arms where she belonged. She’d expected a warm, happy welcome from him, as he’d told her to expect.

However, she hadn’t expected him to reveal his gluttony to her, and for him to walk out with the blonde, effectively spitting in her face, and stomping on all his promises to her. Val had been there, and had seen it, he was sure of that now.

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