Badd Motherf*cker(76)

Michel indicated my drink. “Can I get one of those?”

I shook my head. “No, you can’t.” I rolled my hand. “Explain, Michael.”

He took a deep breath, let it out. “It’s hard to explain. I did care for you. I do, I mean.”

“Bullshit, but continue.”

“I did, I swear. Like you said, we spent four years together. It just…I don’t know. I wasn’t happy.” He wiped his face with both hands. “I thought if I asked you to marry me, it’d make us happier. I kind of felt like you were never happy with me either, and I hoped getting married would solve whatever the problem was, and that—that wasn’t something I’ve ever been able to figure out, why you weren’t happy.”

“But you went through with the wedding anyway. Up until I caught you with your dick in Tawny, at least. And that begs the question…if I hadn’t caught you, would you have married me? Would you have taken me to Hawaii and fucked me with Tawny still all over you?”

“I don’t know—god, I don’t know!”

“Stop saying you don’t know, you fucking bastard!” I shouted. “You do know, you’re just too much of a pussy to say what you really mean.”

“Fine! I never loved you!” he shouted back. “I wanted to love you, I tried to love you, but I never did. And you were…you were always…I don’t know how to say it. It felt like you were playing a role. Like you were trying to be someone else, or…like you were trying to fit into the persona of someone you weren’t. Like an ill-fitting mask, perhaps. Sex with you was…never bad, per se, but…not enough. When I met you, you were this wild person with all these crazy stories, and the first few times we slept together you were…fierce, I guess. But then you changed. You got…boring. And I didn’t know how to get you back to who you were, who you used to be. I thought, if we got engaged, you’d open up. You’d…that we’d—that something would change, I guess.”

“I got boring?!” I shrieked, outraged. “It was always the same old thing with you. You never showed the slightest interest in anything but the same thing every time! And I was trying to be what you wanted, to fit into your life, to fit into the box you put me in!”

“How the fuck did I ever put you into a box? I never once told you what to wear or how to act or that I wanted you to change. You did that on your own. I thought you’d…outgrown your wild ways, maybe. Like you’d settled down.” He was standing up, now, visibly upset, more animated than I’d ever seen him about anything; he rarely swore, too, maintaining that cursing was the sign of a weak mind. “I always felt like I was missing out, like by getting the watered-down Dru Connolly I was missing out on the fun version you used to be. But I never put you in that box.”

I staggered backward, hands shaking.

Holy fuck—he was right.

My eyes watered with tears I didn’t dare shed. I turned away, set the rocks glass down on the back counter of the bar, struggling to get myself under control. I gripped the edge of the counter and leaned against it as if it alone was keeping me upright. And maybe, in that moment, it was.

I’d changed myself for him…but he hadn’t wanted me to change. He’d wanted the person he’d met, and I’d put myself into a pigeonhole in some kind of effort to make myself into what I’d thought he wanted in his life.

Oh, the irony.

“Dru?” Michael’s voice was soft, concerned.

I wavered, for a moment. I remembered when I’d first met him, how much fun we’d had together, how easy things had seemed. He’d been a little average, sure, and he’d never made my pulse thunder or my legs shake, but he’d been stable, easy to be around, decent in bed, and most of all…normal. I’d been so sick of feeling out of place and alone that I’d settled for someone I’d never loved, and in the process I’d changed myself, forced myself into being some kind of pathetic attempt at “normal”, when I’d never be that; I couldn’t be. I could never be in love with someone like Michael Morrison. And I should never have tried.

My eyes lifted, and I saw the mirror behind the bottles of Patrón and Sauza and Johnny and Jack and Beefeater, saw the name of the bar emblazoned in frosted letters across the top of the mirror: Badd’s Bar and Grill. I saw the table where Sebastian had done such delightful, dirty things to me, and the door where he’d done other things…and then my eyes lifted to the ceiling, just beyond which were seven incredible men, one of whom could rock my world to the core without even trying. And when he tried? Holy hell.