Unattainable (Undeniable, #3)(76)



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 f*ck,” 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 f*ckin’ stupid?” he said, sniffing. “That shit is for sale, locked, stocked, and accounted for. Not for personal f*ckin’ 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 f*ckin’ 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. Motherf*cking 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 f*cks about what happened to his lungs. In fact, he didn’t give two f*cks 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 f*cked 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 f*cking Bucket since I was fifteen,” she said. “Since my parents first moved me to this dump of a town.”

Nice. Really f*cking nice. She looked proud of it too.

Fucking whore. They were all motherf*cking whores. But the biggest of whore of them all, the one who’d f*cked 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 f*cked-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 f*cking city, for shit’s sake, and yet…nothing.

He wasn’t going to lie; that shit f*cking 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 f*cked-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 motherf*cking died. Twice.

And she’d run out on him.

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

He was stupid. A first-class moron. He’d gone his entire life jumping beds, not giving a f*ck, 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.

Grabbing the bottle off his nightstand, he took a long, deep swallow and washed away the burn of humiliation with a different kind.

He was on his fourth chug when his bedroom door swung wide open and hit the wall with a loud crack. He didn’t bother turning.

“You know what f*ckin’ time it is?” a loud, angry, familiar voice demanded.

Cage didn’t turn his head. “Do I f*ckin’ care?”

“Bitch,” Deuce said. “Get your clothes on and get the f*ck out.”

Behind him, Cage heard the girl scrambling to get off the bed. A few moments later his door slammed closed and heavy footsteps crossed the room. His father’s face came into view, far too close and a little blurry. Cage wrinkled up his nose. “Back the f*ck up, old man.”

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