Carmen Jenner - Welcome to Sugartown

Holly stops midsentence and swivels toward me. “The fuck?”

I ignore the tiny, scary redhead and speak only to Ana, “You got a minute?”

“Are you fucking serious?” Holly demands, then stalks toward me and starts ranting and raving about how I should leave Ana alone and how I’m turning into the worst kind of stalker and that, if I’m not careful, I’ll find myself up shit creek without a paddle because there may suddenly be a witness emerge to give their story on the events of that night with my biker brothers. I let her go on, even as my heart hammers in my chest with fear because someone other than Ana and Kick has the ability to put me away for a very long time with a simple phone call. Even as I think about throwing the ranga midget over my shoulder and depositing her on her arse outside, I don’t, because I deserve everything she’s saying and more.

“Holly,” Ana says, “it’s okay.”

“Yeah? For how long, Ana? Til he runs his mouth again and you decide to lash out with your injured arm, forcing me to drive you to the hospital to have your cast refitted again?” I glance at Ana in confusion and see that she’s sporting a brand new fluoro pink cast. I’d known she’d hit me pretty hard last night, I was still wearing the evidence of that, but I hadn’t realised she’d done more damage to her arm. “Or maybe this time you’ll run your mouth and he’ll hit you—”

“Now hold on just a goddamn minute,” I begin.

At the same time Ana says, “Holly!”

“You know what? Fine. Duke it out, scream and yell and blue until you tear one another apart and get this shit out of your system for good. You don’t belong together. And this may be hard to hear, Elijah, but Ana is way too good for you and you’re all kinds of wrong for her. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from one another, because this little thing between you is toxic and it’s going to tear both your lives apart.” Holly unties her apron and throws it down on the counter. She looks only at Ana when she says, “Call me when he’s gone and I’ll come back and help you finish up.”

She doesn’t say a thing as she passes me. She doesn’t have to, because all the hatred she feels for me is as clear as day in her eyes.

The squeaky screen door bangs back on its hinges and then closes with an audible slap. Outside, I hear the roar of an engine and breathe a sigh of relief once I hear it drive away.

“You really hurt your arm?”

“Yep. Another four to six weeks in this crappy cast. At least the last one was white and I didn’t have to worry about what the hell was going to clash with it, but this fluoro pink thing? Yuck!”

“You’re rambling.”

“Yep, I guess I do that when I’m nervous—”

“I know,” I say, both because it’s a trait of hers that I’d always found adorable and because I want her to know that I know all of her idiosyncrasies, even the ones she wasn’t aware of. “I’m sorry I hurt your hand.”

“Well, to be fair, I didn’t have to punch you in the face.”

“Yeah, you did. I was a complete dickhead.”

“Yeah, you were,” she whispers and then swallows hard before glancing out the shopfront window. “You broke my heart, Elijah.”

Tears spill down her cheeks. I move to wipe one away with my thumb and she flinches and moves out of reach. I’ve never had a woman push me away before and I’m certainly-as-fuck not about to let it start now with the only woman who’s ever mattered. So I follow her to the other side of the kitchen and corner her until I’m close enough to be her shadow.

I place my hands on her waist and she lets herself be lifted onto the bench, and then I ease myself between her legs and cradle her face in my hands. She closes her eyes. I don’t know whether she’s savouring the moment or wishing she wasn’t in it, but I hope to fuck it’s not that last one.

“I fucked up, baby girl,” I whisper. She nods and more tears roll down her face. I smooth them from her skin with my thumbs. “Tell me how to fix it.”

Ana gently shakes her head. “I don’t think you can.”

“Yes I can. I can fix this,” I say resolutely. “I’ll put us back together with my bare hands, just don’t walk away. No more secrets, no more mistakes.”

“Elijah.” She grasps my hand and gently pulls it from her cheek. “Holly was right. We can’t go five minutes without fighting or trying to tear one another’s clothes off.”

“That’s normal—”

“That’s not healthy. For either of us.”

“Don’t do this, Ana,” I warn, but my words fall on deaf ears. It’s written all over her face; she has no intention of backing down this time. I shake my head and send her a pleading glance. I’m not above getting on my knees and begging her to give me another chance, but I can see in her eyes that the time for grovelling came and went, and I was buried balls-deep in another woman instead of falling to my knees in worship.

“Ah, fuck!” I rub at my chest to ease the burn in my heart. “This is bullshit, baby girl. The way I feel about you, the way you feel about me, that shit doesn’t just up and go away. I know I’m not worthy of someone as fucking spectacular as you. I know it. This whole fucking town knows it. But I’ll be a better man. I’ll change. I’ll do fucking anything you ask of me, just don’t do this.”

Ana presses her hand to the centre of my chest and I capture it with my own the way I did last night, only now I bring it to my lips and kiss it all over. I feel her defences melt a little so I decide to knock them over completely, until there’s nothing but the dust of her resolve left. I cup her face and force my lips down upon hers. I watch surprise flit across her face and then I close my eyes and throw myself into proving that she’s wrong, that though we’re not fine right now, one day soon, we will be.

She kisses me back, tentatively at first, and then, as I fist my hands in her hair and push myself further into the space between us, her legs wrap around my hips and I pull her off the bench in order to feel her small body wrapped around me. She tastes of salt and need and damn, if I don’t want to fulfil every single one of hers. She lifts her t-shirt over her head and throws it to the floor, and then she claws at mine until I’m no longer wearing one either. I slam her up against the refrigerator and she arches into me, her big beautiful tits at the perfect height for sucking. I claim a nipple with my mouth and gently bite down until it peaks against my teeth and tongue. Ana cries out so I do it again, harder this time. The end result is a thing of beauty; she pushes herself against me and reclaims my mouth with her own. There’s nothing tender or tentative in this kiss; she’s a squirming, clawing wildcat, and I’m revelling in every second of her newfound confidence.

“You’re so fucking perfect,” I say as I rock my hips into hers. My cock strains against my jeans as I push into the soft fabric of her yoga pants and I feel her lips part around me.

Fuck me! I almost blow my load right there. She’s soft and soaking wet and so completely fucking all-woman that I feel like I could just melt into her warmth.

I rock into her again, harder this time, until I’m certain she can feel just how fucking hard I am and how much I want her. The fabric barrier between us is driving me insane; I want to tear off her pants and push myself so deep inside that her pussy won’t ever forget how good we are together, even if her heart’s determined to.

Ana moans. Her breath comes out in hot little pants against my cheek and I know that, just like me, she’s close to coming.

“God, you feel so fucking good,” I mutter as I drive myself faster, pushing as deep as our clothes will allow, but she doesn’t react the way I expect her to. Instead, she’s completely frozen. And then tears spill down her cheeks, and I have no choice but to gently set her down on her feet.

I don’t have the foggiest idea of what’s going on but something tells me, without even knowing what went wrong, I’ve fucked this up royally.

“Hey, come here.” I cradle her head to my chest and wince as her tears spill onto my stomach because I don’t know what the hell they mean.

We stand like that, with her head cradled to my chest and her arms flung around my waist for too long, and then, when not a sound can be heard but our breathing and the gentle hum of the fridge, Ana wrenches herself out of my arms, dries her eyes with the back of her hands and says, “Go home, Elijah.”

“You’re my home, baby. Don’t take that away from me. Please?”

“No. I’m not. If I were, you would have told me the truth. And you certainly wouldn’t have fucked another woman right before you told me you loved me.”

“Ana—”

She swipes at her eyes, turns to face the bench and goes back to awkwardly rolling out a lump of pastry with her left hand. “We can’t do this anymore. We need a clean break or we’ll just end up hurting one another.”

Is she fucking kidding me?

When it becomes apparent that she’s not and that she’s done beating a dead horse I press a kiss into her hair, taking one last chance to breathe in her sweet, vanilla scent.

“We’re already hurting, baby girl,” I say and leave the kitchen a fucked up, heartbroken mess.

An entire month after my break up with Elijah, I’m still just as miserable as I was the minute he walked out of my kitchen for good. After he’d left that day I’d cried until Dad came home from a club meet and found me passed out on the floor. He’d picked me up, carried me to my room and that’s where I’d stayed for two days before Holly came a calling to kick my lazy, heartbroken arse out of bed.

A month on and she’s still dragging me around to places I don’t want to go. Tonight, it’s a harvest hang-out. I don’t know how many of these things Holly and I have attended, but they always begin with a bunch of idiots gathering in a newly harvested cane field on the outskirts of town and end with a bunch of drunk idiots running from the cops before they get arrested for drinking in a dry zone and lighting bonfires during bush fire season.