Unbeautifully(11)

He grunted. “You weren’t, so who cares? Where’s Eva?”

Exasperated, I threw my hands up in the air. “How should I know? I’m not her babysitter! She doesn’t tell me where she’s going!”

His eyes narrowed. “Did she come home last night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“I was at prom,” I bit out.

His eyebrows shot up. “Oh.”

Then his brows went back down and his eyes narrowed. “Wait, are you saying you didn’t come home at all?”

Oh, so now he cared. After months and months of not giving a crap about where I was or what I was doing, he suddenly did.

I folded my arms across my chest and gave him an identical, narrow-eyed stare. “I came home pretty late,” I said. “I didn’t check to see if Eva was home.”

“What’s pretty late?” he growled.

Oh, that was it. I’d had it. He couldn’t just waltz in here after nine months of being both emotionally and physically absent and suddenly start demanding details of my life.

Marching up to him, I grabbed the edge of my door. “None of your business,” I spat out angrily and slammed it closed in his face.

I expected him to burst into a tirade. I waited for it, holding my breath, but he didn’t. After several moments of silence, I pressed my ear to the door and listened as his booted feet pounded the wooden floor, stomping further and further away.

With a heavy sigh, I sat down on my bed. My father, the one I knew and loved, would have gone all Incredible Hulk on me and busted down any door I slammed in his face. He would have cursed and yelled and acted like a big, blundering idiot. Then he would have apologized, hugged me, and told me he loved me. This man was not my father. He was broken and sad and I hated him.

Crap, now I was crying. I was so sick of crying.



Someone was pounding the fuck out of Ripper’s door. Someone who was about to die. Lying on his belly on his bed with his head facedown in his pillow, he reached out to his right, patting around on his nightstand . . . where was it . . . keys, no . . . pack of smokes, no . . . condoms, no . . .

His fingers curled around the grip of his nine.

“Hey, asshole!” Hawk bellowed. “You gonna leave your fuckin’ room sometime this century?”

“Go away!” he yelled back, his volume muffled by his face-plant in the pillow.

As the pounding continued, his thumb found the hammer.

Pulled it back.

Click.

Index finger over the trigger.

One more time, asshole . . .

“Ripper! Get your sorry ass—”

The bullet cracked across the room, in what direction he didn’t know since he hadn’t even bothered to lift his head.

“DID YOU JUST SHOOT AT ME?”

Ripper grinned into his pillow. Even shit-faced drunk, blinded, his hands behind his back, he could still aim.

He let another round fly. Just for the fuck of it.

“Fuck!” Hawk roared. “I swear to God, asshole, you and—”

Another bullet cracked through the air.

“Fine! I’m gone! Happy, you miserable shit?”

Happy?

Ha-ha-fucking ha.

Despite the awesome mental image of Hawk—six foot two, two hundred and thirty pounds of ripped muscle, arms heavily tattooed, and usually sporting a three-inch Mohawk—doing a bullet dance in the hallway, he was far from happy.

He hadn’t been happy in . . . how long had it been since Frankie Deluva carved him up like a fucking jack-o’-lantern?

Four years? Five? Who knew? And really, who cared?

It didn’t matter how many years passed, he’d still be missing his right eye, still look like he’d gone ten or twenty rounds with a mountain lion and lost, and he’d still be damn miserable because of it.

And now . . . he’d fucked Danielle West and was waiting to die. He’d been waiting to die all day long and when a man knows he’s going to die but doesn’t know when or how, it makes for a very unpleasant wait.

He would know. This was the second time in his life he’d waited to die.

Groaning, cursing the sun and his life and his stupid cock, Ripper pulled his pillow out from underneath himself and used it to cover his head. Holy shit, he was an idiot.

And he hadn’t just fucked her, he’d been all up in that shit, mouth and hands everywhere, doing pretty much everything a man could do to a woman with the exception of a few choice activities.

He’d fucked Danielle West.

And he was going to die because of it.

He knew Danny, she was a fucking chatterbox. She was always rambling on and on about music and clothes and some asshat named Chan-a-something Tater Tots. She was going to spill to someone and then that someone would spill to someone else and then he’d be worm food.