Throttle Me (Men of Inked, #1)(73)

I f*cked up, okay? I f*cked up and I know… I know I did. I let my little firecracker down so many goddamn times.

Fuck!

I know I don’t f*cking deserve her, but I’ll be goddamned if I leave her again, and I’ll be even more f*cking damned if I let what I deserve or don’t deserve in life keep me away from her. Period.

I told her that everything I touch, I f*ck it up. Why the hell do you think I ran from her little ass all those years ago? I was trying to shut her out before she got under my skin. But I couldn't. She wouldn't let me keep treating her like an irritating gnat.

Shit, I even told April I thought she was a narc. Damn, that was lifetimes ago... I'd give anything to go back and keep shit from falling apart. I would tell her dad to f*ck off, just grab her up, and f*cking run.

I never should have let her out of my car that night when we were kids. I could have protected her from f*cking everything. From all of it... Fuck!

I’d ask where I went wrong, begging for an answer that would soothe this f*cking terrible ache, this guilt that I’ve carried for decades. Even though I don’t deserve a break from my pain.

As for you, I know you think you know Lil, now that you’ve read her story and walked in her shoes through this f*cked-up life of hers. But until you hold a woman like Lil, until you stare into her drunken eyes, heavy from ecstasy while your balls deep inside of heaven, inside this woman that is so f*cking unlike anyone else on this goddamn earth… Until you hold her shuddering body as her tears soak your shirt while she cries out for something even she doesn’t understand, just so long as it takes away her pain… Until you’ve been where I’ve been with Lil, you don’t truly know her.

Not like I f*cking do.

That fateful May night, I felt the dread in my bones. It really started that morning, another one of my countless mistakes, I ignored the hair-raising sense of dread that hit me that morning.

I was supposed to be on my way to Atlanta for some stupid f*cking merger meeting between my company’s marketing department and another new upcoming marketing company.

I was hauling f*cking ass from one terminal to another, trying like hell to catch my connecting flight from Houston to Atlanta, when it hit me like a motherf*cking brick across the face. I stopped right where the f*ck I was, *s crashing into me from behind, cussing at me.

I took my ass to the nearest f*cking ticket counter and asked for the next flight to get me back home. Shit, I’d been gone for almost three months straight. I hadn’t seen Lil in over six months—that she knew of. I’d still kept an eye on her. I just couldn’t f*cking explain what the hell my eyes were seeing. She was so far gone, I couldn’t see a single thing in my wife that resembled the woman I had fallen in love with over twenty years ago. The woman I’d waited all my life for was truly and irrevocably f*cking gone.

Do you know what it’s like as a f*cking man to have to look at your wife and watch her all over these cheesy f*ckers, drunk and high out of her goddamn mind, so f*cking lost she’s beyond ever being found?

Oh, I knew what the f*ck she was doing. I knew about the drugs and ALL the men. But I was such a f*cking coward! I just walked away, like I had all the other times. I told myself that at least she was happy; at least they made her smile. For more than a year after my boy died, I could only get her to look at me or speak to me when we were in the throes of passion.


I was a *, that’s what I was. I just wanted her to be happy, and she was only ever happy when I wasn’t home. Every time she looked me, all she really saw was what could have been had our son lived. With me or my presence came memories of what should have been. And if there is one thing Lil and I have, it is a f*cking world full of what-should-have-beens.

And there isn’t a f*cking thing in this world worse than what should have been.

When the plane finally touched down, I drove like a motherf*cking bat outta hell to get home. Only, she wasn’t at home… Shit! She was never home. I couldn’t find her at any of her normal hangouts. I hit every bar and lounge up and down Common and Market Streets.

I called every goddamn five-star hotel within a hundred-mile radius and still couldn’t find her.

That’s when I got scared. I was sure that I was too late. I hadn’t been there when she’d needed me. I knew she’d finally done it. She’d taken her life and killed the love of mine… She’d killed my firecracker.

As far as I was concerned, I’d f*cked up and all but handed her whatever drug or weapon she’d needed to get the job done. When she finally, really needed me, I’d been off being a * because I didn’t know how to take care of my own wife. I didn’t know how to bring her from the darkness and depth of misery she fed off.

Instead of manning the f*ck up and grabbing Lil’s demons by their throats, killing them one by one, snuffing out every single one of those bitches f*cking with her head, I’d stood aside, waiting for her to come back to me, waiting for her to need me enough to come back.

Fucking thank FUCK my cell rang! I knew it was her. Even though she didn’t say a word, I knew it was my firecracker. I knew I wasn’t too late. I knew it was her calling me for help, calling because she finally needed me.

I will thank God every night of my life for that call… ‘Cause I had a motherf*cking number.

In only twenty minutes, that abundant victory immediately gutted me, leaving in its wake nothing but bleak desolation.