Unattainable (Undeniable, #3)(19)

CHAPTER FIVE


ZZ: Where the f*ck are you?

Rolling my eyes, I typed ZZ back a short text.

Me: Fuck you.

My phone buzzed again.

ZZ: Can’t. You ain’t here.

Me: I’ll be home later.

ZZ: Where the f*ck are you?

Me: Since when do you care?

ZZ: Answer me.

“Fucker,” I hissed under my breath.

Narrowing my eyes, I glared down at my phone. What the f*ck was wrong with him?

Angry, I punched in exactly two letters.

Me: No.

“Teg?”

My head shot up and I found Hayley, her husband Joe, and our mutual friends, Tara and her boyfriend Tim, and two of Joe’s douche canoe friends, Doug and—Scott? Skip? something with an S—all staring at me.

And Hayley looked seriously annoyed.

“What?” I asked, feeling pretty annoyed myself.

She gestured toward Scott or Skip. “I was just telling Steve how much you appreciate motorcycles and it just so happens that he has one.”

Whoopee. Like I f*cking cared.

“Oh yeah?” I said, glancing at Steve. “What kind of ride?”

The douche canoe grinned at me, revealing two perfectly straight and glaringly white rows of teeth.

“A BMW,” he said. “R12—”

“A sports bike?” I interrupted, wrinkling up my nose. “How super gay for you.”

The table went quiet as everyone glanced uncomfortably at one another. Rolling my eyes, I stabbed a piece of tofu on my plate and shoved it in my mouth.

When I’d finished chewing and still no one had yet to speak, I glanced around the table. “What?” I asked. “Sport bikes are for pussies. True f*cking story.”

Hayley let out a long-suffering sigh and Joe shook his head. Whatever. I shrugged again and went back to eating.

Exactly one extraordinarily painful half an hour later, I was finally on my way out the door, racing through the night with Hayley hot on my heels.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Are you trying to stay single forever?”

I picked up my speed, suddenly pissed off that both my work and my apartment were within walking distance of Hayley’s home.

“Tegen!” she shouted, breathing hard behind me. “I just want to see you happy!”

“I’m perfectly f*cking happy!” I shouted over my shoulder. “In fact, the only thing I’m not happy about is you constantly trying to marry me off to Joe’s douchey friends!”

“You are not happy!” she shouted back. “You are so far from happy!”

Oh, hell no. How dare she?

I came skidding to a stop and spun around. Upon seeing my murderous expression, Hayley froze.

“Stop it,” I hissed. “You don’t get to judge me, you don’t even know the half of it, so you do not get to f*cking judge me!”

“I don’t need to know any of it to know that ZZ is the problem! You’re like frozen or something, Teg! What’s the plan here? Are you going to marry him? Or are you just going to have meaningless sex forever? When are you going to really start living?”

I stared at her, fighting back the tears burning behind my eyes. I wasn’t frozen. I f*cking wasn’t. I had a life here. I did. I f*cking did.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

Hayley’s expression shifted from hard to kind. “Oh, Tegen, honey. Please, I just want you to be happy.”

Happy.

Who was I kidding? Even after all these years, I wasn’t ready to let go. Because if I were, if I really and truly were ready, I wouldn’t still be daydreaming about being on the back of a certain *’s bike. I wouldn’t be staring forlornly at passing motorcycles. And I wouldn’t be f*cking a man who did nothing but remind me of a life I supposedly wanted to forget. Everything I’d left behind.

But most of all, because he reminded me of…

Shit.

Which meant it was probably time to start being honest with myself, meaning I would finally have to admit what my therapist had been trying to get me to concede for years now.

That ZZ wasn’t just a fill-in, he was a fill-in for something, for someone very specific.

Goddammit, I was still sitting on Cage’s bed the morning after he’d taken my virginity, my heart aching, looking up at him as he looked down at me and said, “It ain’t like that for me, baby.”

Even after all these years.

I left Hayley in the middle of the street staring sadly after me. When I got home, I found ZZ lounging on the couch in his boxers, his cell phone held to his ear with his shoulder, a bottle of Jack in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

I dropped my backpack by the door, kicked off my sandals, and began undressing. By the time I reached him, I was naked.

As I straddled his lap, he stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray and let the bottle fall to the floor. Cupping both my breasts, he squeezed them hard and twisted the soft flesh in his hands until I winced in pain.

“How many?” he asked the person on the other end of his phone call.

“Fuck that, Prez,” he continued. “I can handle it.”

“Fuck me,” I pleaded in a whisper, lowering my face to his, grinding my hips over his, feeling him grow hard as I did.

His grip on my breasts tightened and his dark eyes bored into mine, but he did nothing.