Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2)(59)

But everything hurt. Every heartbeat a knife to my chest, every breath more painful than the last. It hurt straight to my bones, freezing my blood and straining my muscles, making me ache…so…bad.

And I couldn’t make it stop.

“You want to f*ck,” ZZ hissed, grabbing my biceps and pushing me. I stumbled, trying to keep up with him as he began forcing me backward. “I’ll f*ck you, Danny. That body of yours is worth an ass kickin’ or two.”

I wanted to scream, NO, that I didn’t want this to happen but I couldn’t, my pain keeping my mouth shut, demanding that I continue to hurt myself, my pain telling me that I deserved this, I deserved worse than this.

“But first,” he muttered. “Your ass is takin’ a shower.”

I shrieked as cold water spiked against my skin, not realizing until that very moment he’d backed me into my bathroom and straight into the shower.

“Let me out of here!” I screamed, violently thrashing as he held me under the spray of water, now lukewarm. But he didn’t. ZZ held fast, my punches, slaps, and kicks not fazing him in the least. And still I continued, hitting him harder and harder until I was crying, sobbing uncontrollably, relentlessly beating on him and the worst thing was…

He let me.

He just stood there and took it.

And when it was over, when I’d wrung the last tear from my exhausted body, when I could no longer stand on my own two feet, he wrapped me in a towel, picked me up, and tucked me into bed.

“You were never going to have sex with me,” I whispered, blinking sleepily up at him. “Were you?”

“No,” he whispered back, brushing a lock of wet hair out of my eyes. “I wasn’t.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Seven months later…

Blasting Cannibal Corpse, Ripper pulled his truck off the Harbor Freeway and onto Wilshire Boulevard. Shit was going good. He’d quit drinking hard liquor, stopped smoking green, and work was solid. He’d done a couple of hits for Deuce on the side, earning him a nice bankroll, and he was f*cking some airheaded bitch named Colleen or Colette or whatever, that he liked well enough. Liked as in she had a *, he had a dick, and if he kept the lights off he didn’t have to see a face that wasn’t the one he wanted to see. You put two and two together and it added up to him not feeling the need to scope out other * for the time being.

Yeah, he was an *. But a dude’s gotta do what a dude’s gotta do, yeah?

Yeah. Whatever. He was so full of shit, it wasn’t even shit anymore; he was straight up pissing out of his *.

Shit wasn’t going good. Shit was just…going.

Barely.

The more time that passed, the more Ripper found himself thinking about a lot of things. About his life before the club, his life with the club, Frankie. Even Eva.

All this free time away from everything he’d known had put a lot of shit into perspective for him. Like how he’d been able to get away from Frankie.

“Eva’s blowin’ up my f*ckin’ phone, brother.”

Ripper heard Frankie jump to his feet, heard his heavy booted steps crossing the floor, heard a door creak open, then slam shut.

It took a moment to realize that he was alone.

Eva had saved his life and he’d done nothing but blame her. Maybe subconsciously he’d always known it was Eva who’d saved him, maybe saving his life was what he’d been blaming her for.

Either way, he was a first class *.

But mostly he thought about Danny and why she’d stopped calling him.

It bothered him at first. He’d thought something might have happened to her, and he didn’t know how to ask anyone without making them suspicious of why he was asking. But then Deuce had casually mentioned her a few times, so he knew she was still breathing. And like everything else when it came to Danny, he let it drop.

And moved the f*ck on.

It was for the best that she’d forgotten about him and what had happened.

Yeah, it was for the best. He just had to keep telling himself that.

Hitting his turn signal, he made a right onto his parents’ street and—

Cox, that stupid motherf*cker, was standing in the middle of his driveway, grinning at him.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he said, laughing.

He’d barely cleared the truck when Cox surprised the hell out of him and pulled him into a hard hug.

“Fuck you,” Cox growled, squeezing him hard. “Fuck you for makin’ me look for you.”

They pulled apart.

“Dude. Nice hair.”

Laughing, Ripper rubbed his hand over his shaved head and shrugged. “Don’t gotta shower as much.”

Cox snorted. “Nice.”

“Yeah, and what about you? Nice f*ckin’ tat,” he said, nodding at the new tattoo of Kami that Cox had on his neck. “What’s that now, your third one of her?”

Cox shrugged. “What can I say? She likes to look at herself.”

He started laughing. “Brother, I need a drink. You want a drink?”

“Depends,” Cox said. “I can’t do strip clubs. Kami f*ckin’ knew last time. The bitch can smell a lie a mile away and I ain’t gettin’ locked out of * that I f*ckin’ own for two whole weeks again. I swear, Ripper, the bitch is psychic. Psychic and crazy and—”