The Deal Dilemma

“Sharing is caring. Sharing is fucking caring?” Willie sits forward, beer bottle ready to slip from his fingertips. “Are you fucked? How you gonna say that and leave? What if she does share? What if he makes a move?”

“I think we should go there.” Julius crosses his arms.

“We should definitely go there.” X glares.

“Fuck no, we ain’t going there.” Willie shakes his head. “We’ll send Layla!”

The boys nod eagerly, but it’s Layla’s mocking laughter that calls our attention.

“Honey bunnies, you ain’t going nowhere. Crew claimed her, and then he passed her on.” She looks away from her TV drama to meet my gaze with a glare. “You get to boil in the pot of shit you stirred.”

Willie groans. “I can’t believe you walked out of that bitch with him still inside.”

Julius sits forward. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“She won’t touch him!” Layla swears.

Willie scoffs, and then he scoffs again. “You sure? From what I hear, heard and saw, little Davis discovered she’s a fucking—”

“Watch it.”

Willie grins but frowns a second later. “Why do we think she won’t touch him? She’s a girl and Crew’s an asshole.”

“An asshole she likes.” Julius jabs me in the ribs, and I shove his ass off the couch. “What? Am I lyin’?”

I don’t fucking know, is he?

She wants me, yes.

Cares about me, sure.

But does she like me?

The girl loves me, I know this, but she’s loved me since always. She loves me like she loves Memphis, only less. He was first in her eyes, and I was second. It wasn’t a bad place to be when it came to her, but her top spot could never be mine. I know this.

I’ve known this, and eventually, I won’t even be in the top five.

Shit sucks, but that’s what’s real.

“You guys, this is Crew we’re talking about.” Layla hauls herself up, narrowing her eyes. “There is no way you left them there together alone.”

Licking my lips, I sit back, picking at the label on my unopened bottle. “I might have moved my car and waited for the prick to go.”

“And how long did that take?”

I look around the group. “She followed me out, sent him on his way a beat later.”

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait…” Willie jumps to his feet. “We’re having a fucking pity party when we should be painting pastries?”

“Bro, what?” Julius frowns at his brother.

“That’s what she does when I serve her double!” He points toward his wife… who officially exits the conversation.

“Okay, back up a minute.” X scoots forward. “So, you got pissed, and instead of tossing her over your shoulder and carrying her out like you wanted to, and should have, you left… but then you parked where she couldn’t see and watched until you saw Jess, the guy, leave?”

I nod.

“And he left right after?”

I nod again.

“Pfft.” He jumps to his feet. “Man, you’re dumb. She followed you. Bet she’d take your call right now if you tried getting a hold of her.” Anger slips into his tone and he pouts his way to the fridge for another drink.

“Someone not answering your calls, brother?” Julius teases.

X flips him off, and we all know he’s right. His best friend’s baby sister won’t acknowledge him… after he fucked up and fucked her at her birthday party.

“I say you call her.” Willie sits back with his arms crossed.

“Nah.” I press the heel of my palm into my eye. “I need to get my head on straight. Break away from her for a minute so I can think.”

“Why? Ain’t we keeping her?” Julius wonders.

A scoffed laugh leaves me, and I drop my head back.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? Keeping her.

Davis came to me looking for a solution to her “problem,” that’s it. She didn’t ask for more, didn’t offer more than that fucking truck I don’t even need, but know it’d kill her to sell. It would be like breaking the last tie to her brother. But me and her, we’re on two different islands, and they don’t collide. I don’t deserve her. I know this.

I hide shit, do bad shit, hardly have shit.

Memphis drilled all this and more into me for years when I was nothing but a sucker surrounded by stony-eyed assholes okay with pissing away their parents’ life savings on classes they didn’t bother showing up for. He was my friend, and then he was like a brother, but not long later, he was nothing. Didn’t change the fact that his words were true and didn’t need to be spoken.

I was aware Davis was out of my league and that hasn’t changed.

I have no house, no stupid fucking degree.

She’s too good for me, but in the end, not even that shit matters. Those things can be worked past, I know that. What can’t, are the two simple truths that can’t be denied:

I want her.

She wants to feel wanted.

Those are two very different things.

I can give her what she’s after, no problem, teach her all she could possibly wish to learn, and show her shit she’s never thought of, but then what?

Let her go?

Allow someone else to have her?

Touch her?

Love her?

Fuck that and fuck no.

She’s mine until this damn deal is done.

After that, I’ll be her shadow, scaring away every man who dares to get too close.

I might not be good enough for her, but no one else is either.

And that’s fucking that.

“Uh, dumb fuck who left his wannabe woman with another man?” Julius lets the blinds loose, takes a giant bite of his corn dog, talking with a mouthful. “There’s an angry little virgin walking up the drive.”

My brows snap together, and he yanks the door open.

“For the record, I’d have dragged you to the room and handcuffed you there,” he tells her.

Davis completely ignores the man, slipping beneath his extended arm, eyes connecting with mine in an instant, but mine flash to the rag wrapped around her hand, a giant red stain seeping through it.

I jump to my feet, panicked. “What the fuck happened?”

“Sharing is caring?” She ignores me completely, getting right to it, putting me on blast for my stupid fucking comment, without knowing I shared it already.

“Sharing is caring,” she repeats, her tone now free of the sass she walked in here with. “At first, ‘I thought gee, Davis, that’s a strange thing for the man to say when every other second of every other day he gets growly when someone so much as smiles near his little problematic project—’”

“Problematic project?” I jerk forward, my eyes slicing from her hand to her face, trying to stay connected to what she’s saying, but going fucking crazy knowing she’s hurt. “Tell me what happened.”

“But then I played some things back.” Yet again, she continues as if I hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved closer. “And I thought of how you kept reminding me how my virginal status was at your disposal. Your choice, your timing, and all that, as if I wasn’t fully freaking aware, but I need—”

“Oh, this is ’bout to get good,” Julius whispers.

“Don’t say it, girl,” Willie warns, leaning forward on his elbows.

“To know why you picked him. Not so I can argue, I won’t, I promise. I said you can pick, and I won’t fight it, but you know I’m a thinker, so you can’t drop a nuclear missile in my lap and just leave like I’m supposed to know what to do with it. I don’t. I one thousand percent do not know what to do.”

My head cocks, and I blink at the brunette before me. It takes a second, but my motherfuckin’ mind catches up.

“Excuse fucking me?”

My voice is low and gruff, rough.

Davis blanches, her gaze roaming my face, tension whirling around her more and more by the second as my body brings itself closer to hers.

“You won’t fight it.” The tips of my shoes touch hers, and she cranks her neck up to keep eye contact. “You won’t fucking fight it?”

“She thinks you want her to fuck the Ken doll,” Julius adds, as if I didn’t figure that shit out on my own, and Layla comes around the corner, propping herself there with a bag of potato chips.

Davis reluctantly pulls her attention from me, flicking it their way, but only for a split second.

“Did you touch him?” Anger pricks at my skin. “Let him touch you?”

She says nothing, her frown deepening by the second.

“I asked you a question, Davis.”

“I asked you one first.”

A humorless laugh leaves me, and I don’t realize I’m walking until her arms bend back, pressing onto the countertop behind her.

“If he touched you—”

My chest vibrates with every word, but she shakes her head, so I cut off.

“You touch him?”

Another shake.

“Why did you pick Jess?” she presses on in a whisper, but her eyes…

Goddamn, her big brown eyes are sloped at the edges, a hint of hope flickering just beyond the surface, but it ain’t there for him. It’s for me.

I grip her hips, lift, and set her on the counter, so we’re nearly eye level. “You think I’m done with you?”

Her eyes fall, but I call them right back with a sweep of my knuckle along her jaw.

Gently cupping her left wrist, I bring her bandage to my lips, whispering against it. “You think I’ve had enough?”

That I’ll ever have “enough”?

The uncertainty coloring her cheeks pink about kills me.

“There’s still so much for you to learn, Sweets.” I draw my thumb along her lower lip, pressing hard against it. “So fucking much.”

Tell her you didn’t choose him. Say you want her to stay the fuck away from him.

Tell her you were jealous as fuck, how you saw black and wanted to murder the man, so you had to get out before you did exactly that. Explain how you acted like a dick, so she wouldn’t know the truth, that you want her even though you’re not enough, even though you can’t give her the life she wants and deserves. That you know she won’t choose you, but how you want her to want to keep you, not fuck you and forget you.

Not regret you.

Resent you.

Release you.

I say none of that.

How could I? This is Davis fucking Franco we’re talking about. She’s perfection in the shape of an hourglass and I’m the unsteady surface she’ll fall from, shattering all she is. All she wants. All she could be.

I’m a weight in the water, bound to hold her down.

The taste of warm metal coats my mouth, and I swallow the droplets of blood seeping from my tongue, forcing my clenched teeth to release it.

“So, we’re not done yet?” she dares to ask.

The break in her voice is like a knife to the chest, twisting and tormenting. It’s as if the thought of ending whatever it is we’re becoming pains her as it does me.

Do you ache for me, baby?

Whether she realizes it or not, I don’t know, but her little hand lifts, pressing gently at the center of my ribs.

My forehead finds hers, and she closes her eyes.

“No, Sweets,” I murmur. “We’re not done.”

We’re so fucking far from done.

It was a quarter to three in the morning by the time we got home from the emergency room.

Turned out, in her rush to get to me, Davis tossed the dishes in the sink, breaking a bowl and slicing along the line of her thumb, deep enough to need three stitches.

A hurricane of guilt swallowed me whole as she sat there, trembling in my lap, eyes squeezed closed with fear, as the ER doctor stuck the needle into her skin to numb the area.

I drew her lips to mine, but the guilt eating at my stomach wouldn’t allow me to take them with my own, so I pressed soft kisses to her forehead and held her tight. Thank fucking god, she held me back.

They sent us home with all we’d need to keep it clean, and the minute we walked into the door of the apartment, Davis dropped onto the couch with a blanket, passing out before the hot cocoa she asked for was done. As much as I wanted to drag her to my bed again, I didn’t, not after our little fight, if that’s what it was, and not after she got hurt because of me, so I covered her up and knocked out on the chair beside her.

I thought for sure today she’d be pissy, playing a little game of ignore, but I’m not sure why. I should have known better than that. The girl doesn’t play games, that’s why she showed up at Willie’s. She needed an answer, so she came for it.

She came for me and thank fuck for that.

Problem now is, I don’t want her out of my sight, and to be honest, out of arm’s reach sounds pretty fucking shitty to me too.

I want to reach out and touch her, toy with her in all the wicked ways, but mostly, I’m feeling like a needy little bitch—I just want to hold the girl. In my arms, in my lap, however, so long as she’s close.

For a split second yesterday, I felt her loss, and it’s not something I’m ready for.

I’ve spent years wanting to be worthy, but knowing I wasn’t. It wasn’t so bad when she wasn’t around, but I’ve touched her now, tasted her.

I’ve been the first person she smiles at in the morning and the last she sees before bed. I sleep beside her, wake with her in my arms. You’d think all the time we have together maybe would be enough.

Wrong.

All it did was make me want more.

Crave more.

Need more.

Of her, of us. Of all of it.

Like right now, she’s walking around the house dusting the photos on the wall, and all I want to do is grab a little fucking wand thing like she’s got and follow.

What the fuck is that about?

“Do you have to work tonight?” she asks, wiping her brow.

Closing the drawer to the silverware, I stack a few bowls and lift them into the cupboard. “No events tonight, so the bar’s closed, but I’ve still got a good hour of paperwork, and I need to sign off on payroll sometime today.”

She nods, dropping the dusty wand in the garbage can before tying the bag closed and pulling it from the can.

I meet her by it, taking it from her hold, and she smiles up at me.

“Come with me. We can get honey walnut shrimp from that place on the corner on the way home.”

“Make it the taco truck and I’m in.”

My eyes slide across the creamy skin of her cheeks, and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “Whatever you want, Sweets.”

A flush deepens the skin of her chest, and she tucks her hair behind her ear. “Do I have time to shower?”

I nod.

“Do you want to join me?”

My frown comes so fast, and a quick and sharp “fuck yeah,” is on the tip of my tongue, but then she busts up, her laughter loud and teasing, washing away the thickness in the air.

When she turns and walks away, I have to dig my nails into my sides to keep from following, but the second the door clicks closed, a grin splits my lips.

We’re good, and that’s damn good.