Page 103 of 23 Hours

Pack. Give Chibs to Jez for temporary safekeeping. Leave after dinner. Hotel.

What do they do?

They have my back.

Bink books the hotel under a fictitious name to keep my identity a secret. Jez is excited to have Chibs for a while. Pixie will open the gate when I’m ready to leave because nobody would expect her involvement.

In less than the hour it takes for our therapy session, everything is mapped out, and I’m ready to take the next step.

Freedom is finally within my reach. No more limbo.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

GUNZ

Closing my eyes for a beat, I massage the bridge of my nose, tryin’ to stay on task and focus for a solid minute without a fuckin’ problem. My head’s pounding, stomach churning. I’m runnin’ on a couple of hours of shit sleep, and once again, I’ve had to run interference on another apartment Kit has tried to move into.

That’s not happening.

Not now.

Not fuckin’ ever.

For the second time in less than five minutes, the vision that continues to plague me paints the back of my eyelids. I try my damndest to force it away. I don’t wanna see her. Not now. Not again. But the bitch won’t stop haunting me. When I’m awake. When I’m asleep. She’s there. I can feel her breath on my neck. Her tongue on my balls.

Blood coats her naked form as she masturbates, begging me to help her come.

Fuck.

This all began the night of her wake.

When I said goodbye and I threw a handful of her ashes into the fire.

Conjured out of thin air, she was there, dark hair spilling over her shoulders. Those nipples I’ve sucked hundreds of times before on display, cunt ready and willing. Except she was wearing the hottest schoolgirl skirt, offering herself up to me. How could I say no? I couldn’t. I took her. Right there. In front of the brothers. In front of my own son. Drunk off my ass, I bent her over a picnic table, threw up her skirt, and violently fucked her sloppy wet pussy… The same picnic table I’ve fucked her on before. The same one I’ve shared her on at many club parties. She fucking loved my cock. Begged for it. Took it like a champ. It was like old times. Her smiling over her shoulder at me, gripping my shaft with her tight walls. She fed him. The gluttonous beast thrives on depravity. He finger fucked her tight little asshole. Bruised her pert little ass in a punishing grip. Bit her back. Licked up her spine, tasting salt and all that was her. She moaned my name. Told me she loved me.

I came calling out to her, filling the condom I somehow remembered to put on.

That’s when it happened.

Reality flooded in.

The woman beneath me was wrung out, her legs quaking. But those weren’therlegs. Her skin was too pale. Hair, the wrong shade of brown. She had a lip ring. I fucked this woman, this whore, in front of my entire club, like I’d done hundreds of times before, but… this female wasn’t mine.

She wasn’t the woman I’d screwed for years and she sure as hell wasn’t the woman I had at home, sleeping in our bed, waiting for me to come join her like I should have done hours before. The woman I love. Cherish. Made a goddamn baby with.

“Leave me alone,” I whisper to the ghost, hoping it’ll work this time.

As always, she smiles—bright, full teeth, tits still coated in blood. She steps forward, licks those same teeth, slow and sexy as fuck, then beckons for me to join her with the crook of her finger.

Refusing to let her win this time, I chug my third bottle of Bud. Then another. And another.

The drunker I am, the quicker she vanishes. Day after day, from the moment I wake, she’s there… forever lurking. At night, I drink her away for just a little while, only to stumble home, so I can watch my woman sleep. For hours, in the quiet of our bedroom, I watch. Niki isn’t there, but the guilt remains, gnawing at my guts like termites in a house, destroying the foundation little by little. I understand I’m fucking everything up.

Each day I push Kit another inch away. I see it. I feel the yawning distance grow. She no longer looks at me as she did before. She’s grown quiet. Niki fucking revels in that. Knowing I can’t have the thing I want most. To love and worship the only thing I’ve ever loved. When I was a kid, my mother told me I wasn’t worth anything more than a quick fuck. That nobody would ever love someone like me. That my cock was the only thing of value. She was right. I should’ve known the bitch would always be right. She created this monster.

On the stool next to mine, Mickey bumps his shoulder into my arm. “It’s about time to stumble home. Yeah?” He shudders in laughter, watching me swallow the last bit of my sixth beer before grabbing my seventh from the growing row of empties. Ten should do it. I’m almost there.

This bastard’s on babysitting duty. Each night, Big has sent another brother to keep an eye on me, as if I’m some child who needs looking after. Mickey drew the short straw this time. Bet he’s hating life right about now, not able to partake in libations, per Big’s orders. No, I didn’t ask if those were the rules, but I notice shit. Seein’ as though my babysitters remain sober, I know it’s under Prez’s orders. They’d be as trashed as me otherwise.

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