Fire Inside (Chaos, #2)(96)

If that wasn’t enough, I spent a goodly amount of time licking the wounds I’d opened myself by having and then losing Hop.

So there wasn’t time to sit down with Tyra and tell her about Hop.

Therefore, when Ty-Ty called to tell me there was a hog roast, asked me to come and I demurred, since I hadn’t yet told her, I knew just how deeply I’d worried her and I knew she wanted me to live my life, when she pressed me to go, I had no excuse not to.

So here I was.

Though I did tell her I couldn’t stay long.

My out. I went but I intended to leave as soon as it was seemly.

It wasn’t time yet for Hop and me to have moved past what Hop and I were and lapse into distant acquaintances that had to share each other’s space on occasion.

With the number of times I’d turned to wine and Bob Seger the last couple of weeks, torturing myself and barely containing the pain, I knew that would take about seventy-five years.

The good thing about the hog roast was that I got to see Tabby and Shy together for the first time and meet Shy’s good-looking, very nice brother Landon. Tab and Shy were cute together and someone would have to be blind not to see they were over-the-moon in love and happy.

I was thrilled for her. She was so young and still, her road to love had been bumpier than most that had decades on her. But she was Tabby. She had been a good kid who grew into a lovely woman, funny and sweet. She deserved that.

And seeing her happy with Shy, it made it worth coming to the hog roast and possibly seeing Hop, having those festering wounds I was trying and failing to anesthetize with work, wine and the stylings of the Silver Bullet Band open further, spreading the pain, lacerating my heart.

So the time had come. I’d had a couple of beers, a pulled pork sandwich, gabbed with Tyra, Tack, Sheila, Brick, Big Petey, saw and was seen.

And Hop hadn’t showed.

So now it was time to go.

I was moving through the forecourt of Ride, avoiding people and skirting big drums filled with fire when I felt a vice-like grip clamp around my arm.

I gave a small cry of surprise and my head whipped around just as my body started moving without me moving it.

Hop had hold of me and, if his profile was any indication, he was ticked.

This wasn’t good.

“Hopper, let go,” I hissed, struggling and losing as he yanked me around the outskirts of the party toward the garage.

“Shut it,” he growled.

“Let me go!” I snapped.

He let me go after forcing me into the corner in the area behind the concrete steps that led up to Tyra’s office, and then pinning me there with his body.

With no escape route available, I glared at him. “Are you crazy?”

“You’re talkin’ to that guy,” he snarled.

Oh dear.

I should have known this would happen. It was nearly impossible to keep anything under wraps in families.

And Chaos was family.

Damn.

“Hop—”

“Scrape me off, in just weeks you replace me?” he bit out and I felt my eyes get wide.

“No!” I clipped. “I didn’t scrape you off for one, and for two, it’s a few phone calls, nothing more. I haven’t even met him! And it won’t be anything more. I’m just doing it to make Ty-Ty happy.”

He moved forward, which was a miracle since I was already pressed into the cinderblocks that made up the garage and he didn’t have much room to move.

“Stand back,” I demanded.

“No f*ckin’ way,” he replied.

With him that close, that spicy scent of him in my nostrils, his badass gorgeousness all I could see, I lost it.

“God, Hop! Move away! It’s not a big deal and anyway, even if it was, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

He lost it, too. I knew it when he pressed even closer, changed the subject and growled, “Can’t sleep. Not hungry. Can’t concentrate. If I don’t pay attention, my mind wanders to you.” His face dipped close as I started hyperventilating at his words. “I tried to give you what you needed, to stay away, let you live your f*cked-up life, but I can’t. Taste you in my mouth, lady. See you in my dreams.”

Oh God.

He was killing me.

I couldn’t bear this, therefore I whispered, “Stop it.”

“No,” he replied.

“We cause each other pain,” I reminded him.

“I get it,” he returned. “I get that you bury the good we got that’s way f*ckin’ bigger than the bad to protect yourself from losin’ it, seein’ as you’ve lost everything you had that matters, startin’ with your mom and dad.”

Why did he have to be so smart?

“You aren’t gonna lose me,” he promised.

“You can’t promise that,” I snapped.

“Yeah, I f*ckin’ can,” he shot back.

“Life happens, Hop,” I told him.

“It doesn’t if you don’t live it,” he retorted.

See? Smart!

Gah!

“Well, this isn’t going to happen,” I declared.

“Fuck yeah, it is. I’m done with this shit. Weeks, nothin’ on my mind but you. Weeks, goin’ to bed alone when you’re a f*ckin’ twenty-minute drive away. Heard you were talkin’ to that f*ckin’ guy and lost it. I ate shit, did shit I hated, scored marks on my goddamned soul to fight for the life I wanted. Bein’ that man, do you think I’m gonna let the first woman in my life who makes me happy slip through my fingers?”