I’d even started writing again in my free time, something I hadn’t done since I was a teenager.

“Hayley!” Christopher shouted and I used my hand to shade my eyes from the sun. Hayley and Joe stood above us, smiling.

“Damn, Hayley,” I said smiling. “Your boobs are enormous. Imagine what they’re going to look like after you pop that kid out.”

With a groan and a helping hand from Joe, she lowered herself beside me and scowled. “You got jokes, huh? Well, you’re no Kate Moss anymore, so shut it, Teg.”

“Hey,” I scoffed. “I like that I actually have a butt! I don’t have to be jealous of all you lucky bitches with body fat anymore!”

Hayley snorted. “You do realize how utterly ridiculous you just sounded, right? And how many women would beat your small but now existent ass for saying that?”

“If I keep eating like this, I might be a C-cup someday,” I said hopefully, peering down the top of my T-shirt.

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Shut up.”

“Ladies,” Joe said as he took a seat beside Christopher. “Don’t subject the little dude to your absurd female issues.

“And by the way, Teg,” he continued. “I’m digging the hair.”

“Me too,” Hayley said, reaching out to run her fingers through my short locks. “It’s really growing fast too.”

Nine months ago I’d cut off my dreads, took out most of my piercings, and threw out every last one of my toe rings. Whoever that girl looking back at me in the mirror had been, she wasn’t me. She was the mask I’d been hiding behind and I was done hiding.

My hair hit my chin now. I’d recently had it cut into a pixie style, short in the back, longer in the front. I hardly wore my contacts anymore and found I actually preferred wearing my glasses. It was sort of like reuniting with an old friend, only this time an old friend who was infinitely more fashionable than before.

“Where’s your mom?” Hayley asked. “Are we eating without her today?”

Yawning, I stretched out my arms and legs before scooting up some and placing my head in Hayley’s lap. “She’ll be here,” I said. “She’s just running late. Said she wanted fresh cold cuts or something. But really, I think she has a crush on Rich.”

“Rich?” Joe asked. “The butcher on Stockton?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they flirt all the time and it makes me ill.”

“But he’s so much older than her.”

I glanced up at Hayley and shrugged. “But he’s a nice man with a good job.”

She smiled down at me. “And he doesn’t ride a motorcycle.”

I smiled back. “There is that.”

“Daddy rides a motorcycle,” Christopher said. “Someday I wanna ride one too.”

“How about a pickup truck?” I suggested. “Or a muscle car? How about your very own fire truck?”

“Nope.” He shook his head exaggeratedly. “I want to be just like Daddy.”

“Well,” I said, sighing. “I tried.”

“There’s a Phish concert next week,” Joe said. “I could always take him with me, introduce him to the other side of the tracks. Where the real men are.”

I snorted. “By real, you mean men who like to wear Crocs, get high, and sing along to Tom Petty while reminiscing about the high school crush that never was?”

“Yep,” Joe said proudly and thumped his fist on his chest. “Real men.”

Hayley started laughing and I smiled along with her. They were so perfect for each other, so in tune to the other. Joe might not be what I would consider aesthetically pleasing, he might play video games more than he helped out around the house, he would probably never stop getting high, but even so he loved his wife. And despite his shortcomings, she loved him.

But people didn’t need to change to suit each other. They just needed to accept their differences. You could love someone just the way they were and still live in harmony together.

I’d realized this too late; because when I had, ZZ had already taken the man I loved away from me.

• • •

Grabbing the head of thick brown hair between his thighs, Cage punched his hips up. “Faster,” he growled. Although gagging, the stupid bitch complied, probably because he was holding her head right where he wanted her and she had no choice but to do whatever the fuck he told her to.

They were all whores. Every last one of them. They deserved to be treated like the fucked-up bitches they truly were.

And yet, still he felt nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

Cursing, he yanked her head up and used his grip on her hair to toss her beside him. Straddling her chest, he gripped the sides of her face, forcing her mouth open. Holding himself above her, he thrust his dick into her open mouth and began fucking her face. Fast and hard. She was gagging prolifically now and her eyes were wide and watering and finally, motherfucking finally, he felt something. Some twisted sliver of satisfaction.

He came hard in her throat and immediately pulled out. She started gasping, coughing, and tried to turn her head. Slapping his hand over the girl’s mouth, he leaned down. “Swallow it,” he demanded, grinning down at her.

She tried but she couldn’t. She was choking, coughing too hard, and spit and semen erupted from her lips and between his fingers.

Disgusted, he climbed off her and wiped his hand clean on her hair.

“S-s-sorry,” she choked out, rolling away from him, still coughing.

“Yeah,” he muttered as he swung his legs out of bed. “You are sorry.”

Bending down beside his nightstand table, he grabbed his credit card, dumped out the last of his eight-ball, and started cutting.

“This shit is choppy as fuck,” he hissed.

“Do you know where we live?” she asked. “It’s hard to come by grade-A shit in the middle of nowhere. Don’t see why you didn’t just dip into your old man’s stash.”

Cage positioned his rolled-up twenty over the first line and inhaled every last granule before glancing back at her.

“Am I fuckin’ stupid?” he said, sniffing. “That shit is for sale, locked, stocked, and accounted for. Not for personal fuckin’ use. I tap into it and they’ll know.”

“I was just sayin’,” she muttered.

Cage shot her a dirty look before bending over to blow another line.

“Don’t fuckin’ speak then,” he shot back, pinching his nose with his thumb and forefinger and inhaling hard. The tingling burn hit the back of his throat and he swallowed that shit.

Wetting his middle finger, he swiped it across the wooden platform, picking up the last of it. Then, sucking his finger into his mouth, he rubbed it across his gums.

Ah, chemically induced energy. The only way he could find the will to get out of bed anymore. Grabbing his smokes, he lit one up and coughed through the first few drags, cursing as his lungs began to burn something fierce. Sitting down on the floor, he leaned against his bed and left his head fall back.

His left lung hurt all the damn time. Motherfucking constantly. And he’d been told, by several specialists in no uncertain terms, that it was going to hurt for the rest of his life. Apparently when one of your lungs was nothing but scar tissue or some such shit, living out the rest of your days in pain 24/7 was just one of the many perks.

He wasn’t supposed to be smoking. He wasn’t supposed to be doing anything that caused damage to his lungs, not that he gave two fucks about what happened to his lungs. In fact, he didn’t give two fucks about what happened to him or anyone else.

“You want me to see if Bucket’s got any of that China White left?”

Cage glanced over at her. “Bucket’s dippin’?”

She shrugged. “Fucked him a few months back, and he paid me in smack.”

“You fucked Bucket?” he asked, disgusted. She couldn’t have been any more than nineteen or twenty and Bucket was nearly as old as his old man.

She started laughing. “I’ve been fucking Bucket since I was fifteen,” she said. “Since my parents first moved me to this dump of a town.”

Nice. Really fucking nice. She looked proud of it too.

Fucking whore. They were all motherfucking whores. But the biggest of whore of them all, the one who’d fucked him so hard he wasn’t sure he’d ever get back up…

Tegen.

He’d been heavily drugged after he’d come out of surgery. He didn’t remember much, but as the pain had become more bearable and they’d begun weaning him off the heavy dosage, he clearly remembered Tegen not being there. At first he’d panicked, thinking something had happened to her, that ZZ had shot her, that she was just as fucked-up as he was or worse, dead.

Then he’d made the mistake of asking about her and his old man had filled in the blanks. She was fine. Unharmed. And not here.

Not once did she come to check on him. He was laid up in her fucking city, for shit’s sake, and yet…nothing.

He wasn’t going to lie; that shit fucking hurt. Nearly as bad as the holes in his body. He’d faked more pain than he was actually in and went back to being too dosed up to care.

And he’d been dipping ever since. Because when he wasn’t fucked-up, that shit hurt. The burning inside his lungs…

Yeah, he take that over the ache inside his heart, any day.

He’d told that bitch he loved her. And she’d run out on him.

Stupidly he gone after her, gotten himself shot, and he’d motherfucking died. Twice.

And she’d run out on him.

If she’d been seeking payback for what he’d done to her, she’d fucking succeeded. And then some. And yet he was still thinking about her. He still fucking wanted her.

He was stupid. A first-class moron. He’d gone his entire life jumping beds, not giving a fuck, only to end up in love with the one bitch who’d, once upon a time, actually cared about him and he’d burned her. Fitting.