Now Leaving Sugartown Read online

  Pepper slaps my thigh in much the same way she did with Jake, only she leaves her hand there long enough for me to feel her heat penetrating through my jeans. “Relax, Sammy. It’s just fucking, right?”

  I shoot her a look because I don’t know if she’s referring to the movie, or us, and I really need Jake to piss off because I need her to not be referring to us, which means the two of us need to have a little fucking conversation.

  “You know what’s weird?” Jake says, mostly to himself, because Pepper and I are both too busy staring at one another and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. At least, I am. “That this chick looks almost exactly like you, Pepper. When did you get into adult film?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Jake says, standing up and winking before heading to the bathroom.

  “Dude, if you get jizz on my mirror again, I’m gonna fucking kill you,” I shout.

  “I’m gonna paint it Jake, baby!”

  The second Jake closes the bathroom door, I glare at Pepper. “What the hell are you doing? No panties, giving me come-fuck-me eyes, porn? Are you trying to kill me?”

  “YES,” I say matter-of-factly and climb into his lap. “I’m trying to kill you slowly with my hot, tight, very-unattainable-right-now pussy.”

  I wrap my arms around his neck and crush my lips against his, driving my tongue into his mouth until he moans and has no choice but to kiss me back—not that I think he was trying not to. I rock my hips against his. My pussy is soaked, and I’m sure I’m leaving a very wet patch on his jeans, but I couldn’t care less. The whore on the flat screen shrieks with pleasure—yes, shrieks, seriously, someone needs to gag that bitch—and I break away from Sam, wanting him to hear my cries and not hers. Wanting it to be my pussy he imagines when he watches this, wanting him to free his cock from his jeans and slam himself inside me, but knowing we can’t do any of that with Jake here.

  I run my fingers through Sam’s hair, pulling its soft golden length, wanting to get closer, needing to feel, because Sam is the only man who can make me feel, and it’s been so long since I’ve felt anything but numb.

  The toilet flushes and I still, my heart pounding against my ribs. Panic washes over me. Whatever this is between us, whatever we’re doing right now, it’s far too soon to expose it to Jake’s scrutiny, so I wrench myself away from Sam’s lips, from his grunts of pleasure and his very long, very hard cock and slide off his lap. I flop back down on the sofa as Jake yanks open the bathroom door. I avoid looking at him. Instead, I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the couple on screen who have invited another fake-titted floozy to play hide the salami. My skin is on fire and the ache between my legs has me wanting to visit the bathroom myself, though the thought of my vag sharing a space with Jake’s jizz nauseates me.

  “Why do I feel like I just walked in on the two of you going at it like rabbits? You could cut the tension in here with a fucking rusty chainsaw,” Jake says, sitting down on the couch beside me.

  “Does it look like we’re fucking like rabbits?” Sam asks, slamming his empty beer bottle down on the coffee table a little too forcefully.

  “Sam and I never fucked like rabbits. More like gorillas, really.” I crinkle my nose and shove at Jake’s shoulder with two hands. “Dude, you smell like come. You’re disgusting.”

  I inch closer to Sammy, but the couch is only so big and I’m not sure I can move closer without straddling him, completely.

  “Hey, I eat a tonne of pineapple. There is nothing wrong with the smell of my come.”

  “I think I just threw up a little in my mouth,” I reply and stand up. Bending over, I snatch my empty beer from the table and remember too late that I’m wearing a very short skirt and no underwear, and yeah, okay, while I may not be unhappy that I’m giving Sammy a show, I’m less than thrilled that Jake’s getting another glimpse at my cock socket. The first was a freebie, I was trying to get Sam worked up, but god damn if I don’t feel like Jake should pay in blood for that shit.

  Jake and Sam groan, and I’m suddenly so embarrassed that I want to curl into a ball and just roll away from the two of them.

  “Fuck me, if you don’t stop flashing those pink bits around, you’re gonna wind up the pig in a spit roast sandwich between me and my boy, Sammy here,” Jake says. Yeah, because Sam would ever let that happen. He may be all sweet and sunshiny on the surface, but Sammy Belle is a fucking caveman in the sack. He takes what he wants, when he wants, and he doesn’t play well with others.

  “Jake, not even if—”

  “Yeah, yeah, last man on earth and all that,” Jake mumbles. “Cover that fucking pussy up then, you little cock tease.”

  Jake shoots up from the couch and heads for the kitchen. I’m left gaping at him. Did he just get shirty with me? I glance down at Sam for an explanation and he shrugs and gives me one of those “I told you so” expressions.

  Jesus Christ. Boys are such pussies.

  I shake my head and stalk off towards the bedroom. I pull on a pair of brightly coloured hipster briefs from my drawer, and stomp back around the partition to find Jake and Sam arguing in a series of sharp-whispered words over the breakfast bar. Jake’s glance shifts to me over Sammy’s shoulder and then he holds up the bottle of absinthe. “I’ve been trying to convince Sam here to ditch the beer in favour of a few ABCs.”

  “Brilliant. Let’s all get even more shitfaced, shall we?” I snipe. I’m not an idiot, and I’m no stranger to walking into a room full of people talking about me. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss me off. “Oh, and both of you pussies will be pleased to know that my Lady V is now appropriately covered. Though I’m not sure that’s going to help with how soaking wet I am.”

  When I feel they’ve had enough time to let that little taunt settle in, I snatch up a peach from the fruit bowl and take a bite. The juice runs down my chin and I collect it with my fingers and lick them clean. When I look up again, both men are staring at me with their mouths slightly agape. “Now, do you boys need a little time alone to share your feelings and compare penis size, or are we going to get drunk?”

  Jake is the first of them to recover, “Nope. I already know I got Sammy beat.”

  “Jake, if you’re bigger than Sammy, then feel free to whip it out at any time. I’d be happy to compare the two.”

  Sam growls. He actually fucking growls. His shoulders are tight, his jaw set, and the glare he pins me with might have been kinda scary if I didn’t find his jealous streak so damn adorable.

  “Well I would, but I doubt Sammy’s ego could take another beating.” Jake mixes the shots and carefully slides mine across the breakfast bar towards me. I pick it up and salute them with it before downing the vile–tasting liquor. The boys do the same and all three of us stand there in Sammy’s kitchen, our faces scrunched up as if we’d been sucking back lemons.

  “What in the hell was that?” I ask, when I can finally choke out the words.

  “That, was the fucking greatest leg-opener in the universe, baby,” Jake says, as he pours us another round. “It tastes like fucking shit, but you’ll be thanking me in a few hours.”

  He gives me this look, as if he’s mentally adding more words to the sentence in his head, and I shudder. I can’t help it. It’s not that Jake is hideous. I mean, he’s no Sam, but he’s not the worst thing to look at. He’s a pretty average height, with brown hair and blue eyes. He clearly works out, though how he and Sam maintain muscle mass in a town with no gym is kind of beyond me. He’s not unattractive, not by a long shot, but he’s just so … Jake.

  “We need something to chase that shit with,” he says, and then turns and rummages around in the fridge.

  Sam moves around the breakfast bar. I reach for the shot and he places his hand over mine. I look up at him. He leans in, and at first I think he’s going to kiss me. I want him to kiss me, but he presses his cheek to mine and whispers, “Should you be drinking this much with your medication?”

  I frown, and t
ry to disregard the way his words force my stomach to lurch with shame and embarrassment.

  “I drink all the time.” I counter, his face is so close to mine I can feel his breath wash over me. “Relax, Sam. What could possibly go wrong?”

  The first round hits me like an anvil.

  The second, like an atomic bomb.

  The third, and I cease to exist.

  I’M SURROUNDED by cicadas. Cicadas and the annoying chirp of birds. My head throbs. It’s windy, which is weird, because I can’t remember whether the loft windows even open far enough to accommodate this much airflow. I crack an eyelid and gaze around me. Imbibing in the green fairy hadn’t been my smartest idea because apparently, I’m still seeing green. My brain hurts. My body hurts. And I need to pee.

  The bed jolts and with a lurch, I bolt upright. Only, I’m already upright, and I’m not in bed, but instead I’m wedged inside a shopping trolley. A shopping trolley that’s tied to a tree branch. A shopping trolley tied to a tree branch, about eight feet high in the air. My head spins as I try to ignore the wind howling all around me. Even if I wasn’t frozen with fear and wanted to move, I couldn’t because I’m wedged tightly inside, and my hands and ankles are fastened to the metal bars with zip ties.

  “Good morning,” Sam calls out from below. I close my eyes, trying to stave off a panic attack, as I glance down at the ground I see there’s not one, but two fire engines, including a whole brigade of men in brightly-coloured fire suits standing around and drinking coffee. This sort of reminds me of a fantasy I once had, waking up surrounded by a bunch of hot firemen, only then I wasn’t wedged in a fucking trolley and tied to a tree.

  “Sammy Jay Belle, get me down right this fucking second!” I scream, and the teenage boys filming me with their camera phones, along with the entire fucking neighbourhood laugh.

  “Not until you apologise.”

  “Apologise? You want me to fucking apologise? What the hell for?”

  Some arsehole with a beer gut and a thick black moustache guffaws. “She’s a real live wire, Sam. And she doesn’t seem nearly apologetic enough. If I were you I’d keep her up there a little longer, just to make her sweat it out.”

  “Hey fuck you, Moustache Man,” I shout back. The dude laughs, and I scream and thrash out my frustration on the trolley I’m zip-tied to. The trolley shifts, and I freeze. The butterflies in my stomach riot and smash into one another.

  Sam strolls over to the two teenage boys and plucks the phone from the douche knuckle with the backwards facing cap. He takes a second to fiddle with it and then hands it back to the kid. “If I see that shit on Google I’m huntin’ your arse down, Tommy.”

  “Sorry, Sam,” Tommy—I’m guessing—says. The two boys stalk off with smiles from ear to ear, wildly gesturing with their hands as they go.

  “Day’s a wastin’, Pepper. I got a lot of good men that could be doing a bit more than helping a little kitten up a tree.”

  “Well, if you’ll just let me down, you and your good men can go fuck yourselves and I’ll be on my way.”

  Sam turns to his co-workers. “I think we’ll just leave her up there a little while longer.”

  “What the hell did I do?”

  Jake leans against the fire engine alongside Sammy and sips his coffee. God, I’d give my left tit for a coffee right now, even one that had Jake cooties all over it. “Dude, she’s fuckin’ clueless. I don’t know which is better: that she doesn’t remember, or the look on her face when she finds out what she’s done?”

  “Can you arseholes just tell me what the fuck I did so I can go pee already?”

  “You know, I’m kind of distraught you don’t remember. A night with Jake is hard to forget, baby.”

  My blood turns cold. I have this vague recollection of lying on the futon with my head in Sam’s lap, right next to his massive erection with my feet propped up on Jake’s lap, then I remember getting real close and comfy with the floor. I remember streaking through the loft and … dancing on the pool table at Dave’s? I’m almost ninety-nine-point-nine per cent certain that I was fully clothed during that last one.

  “Sam, please tell me that isn’t true.”

  “You didn’t sleep with Jake—”

  “Oh, thank god.”

  “Hey,” Jake protests. “Plenty of women have ridden the Jake express all the way to O Town, and I ain’t ever had any complaints.”

  “Please stop talking,” I say. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “You didn’t sleep with Jake. You did however, spill your drink all over Dave’s pool table. Then you got up on the bar and decided to Coyote Ugly the place up a bit, and then you gave out my number, and Jake’s number to Sixteen Sixty, told her we were both well hung, could go all night, and that we were looking for a little cougar action.”

  I burst out laughing, and if my head weren’t pounding so hard, I might have gone into full-blown hysterics. Sixteen Sixty was a regular at Dave’s; she had been since before we were old enough to drink. She was bat-shit crazy, and she’d earned her unfortunate nickname because from the back, she looked like a sixteen-year-old: straight, long blonde hair, firm arse, and clothes to match, but from the front? Years’ worth of excessive drinking and time had not been kind. Her boobs could be tucked into her belt—I knew this because one time she’d cornered me in the women’s bathrooms to show me—and she looked every bit of sixty and more. No one knew her real age. I guessed she was in her late sixties, but when Sixteen Sixty partied, apparently she partied hard.

  Jake punches Sam on the arm. “You couldn’t let her believe we’d slept together? I was this close to slipping a ring on her finger and telling her we’d tied the knot.”

  “Jake, no amount of absinthe in the world would ever get me drunk enough for that.”

  “I’m still waiting for an apology,” Sam says, folding his arms over his chest.

  I glare down at him. “Fine. I’m sorry I gave some crazy old bat your number. Can you please get me down now? You know I don’t do heights.”

  “Alright boys, I’m going in,” Sammy says, and two of the firefighters, including Monsieur Moustache Man pull the ladder from the fire engine and lay it up against the tree. Seconds later booted feet climb the metal rungs, and Sam’s face appears before me.

  “Morning, sunshine.” He grins, and I have never wanted to hurt him so bad for looking so damn fine. He drank more than me, and already he’s up. He obviously took a shower because his hair is still damp and curling around his neck, and he looks better than the prospect of coffee and greasy food.

  “I hate you,” I mutter, and if looks could kill, well …

  “No you don’t.” He produces a pair of pliers from his back pocket and dangles them before me, and if my hands were free right now, I’d take them and shove them in both of his eye sockets. “A man could get used to seeing you with your hands bound, Little.”

  “Just let me the hell out of here.”

  “First, I want you to apologise for being such a cock tease. My balls are about ready to explode after your antics last night.” His tone is soft, playful, when he says this, but his eyes are fixed on me: dark, threatening, and all kinds of intense.

  “Fine. I’m sorry for being a cock tease,” I say, trying not to get sucked in by his words, or that low, fucking incredible tone that makes me want to take all my clothes off. And my panties are definitely not wet right now. Much. “Untie me.”

  “I will, but I think we need to have a conversation about what happened with us last night, and where we go from here.”

  Eeek. I didn’t like the sound of that. Last night I’d kissed him on a whim. Oh, I’d wanted to. I’d wanted to do all kinds of dirty, unspeakable things to him since I came back to town—I still do. But it was different from having him go down on me, or from the kisses we’d shared at my parent’s wedding. It was somehow more intense. More meaningful. It also meant we were right back to five years ago, and no matter how much I may have wanted it to, nothing has changed
. And I need it to not be five years ago. I need that very much

  I also need a coffee, with an Endone chaser.

  And I needed to call Coop and have him wire me some money because the shifts I’d picked up at Belle’s Pies weren’t cutting it. And I needed to get back home.

  “Crap,” I say, feeling the branch I’m tied to sway a little when I yank at my restraints again.

  “Why do you look like you’re about to run, Little?”

  “I had the morning shift at the diner,” I say, narrowing my eyes on him. “Now can you get me the fuck out of here? Please?”

  “We’re not done. We are having this conversation whether you like it or not, and Little, tonight?” He begins cutting the nylon with the pliers, and he’s not gentle about it. He looks about as happy to be releasing me as I feel being tied to a trolley in a tree in the middle of Main Street. “You had better be waiting for me when I get home, because if you run, I will find you, and I’ll drag your hot little arse back here so we can finish this shit once and for all.”

  “Let me go, Sam,” I say, and I mean it in more ways than one. I suspect he knows it too because he gets all tight-lipped and glowers at me for a moment, and then he holds out his hand and helps me climb down the rungs.

  When I’m on the ground, Jake hurries over, showing me some candid snaps from his phone where I’d apparently done body shots off of him and Sam. Looking at just one of them makes me want to bathe my tongue in bleach.

  “Pepper,” Sam calls from behind me. “I meant what I said.”

  “Fuck you,” I snap, and stalk away. The whole host of fireies chuckle and start catcalling after me.

  Sam knows I’m afraid of heights. I’m shaking from it, that and probably the fact that I officially ran out of pills last night. I’ve been slowly weening myself off of them since I came back, and that, combined with the obscene amount of alcohol I consumed, is kind of making my head fuzzy. I stomp down the street towards the diner and reach out to yank open the front door when it’s pulled back for me by a very put-together, very fresh–faced, coffee-wielding Olivia. We come face to face. Her gaze flits over me from head to toe, and her eyes are full of … pity? And that’s when I know I want to die.