Now Leaving Sugartown Read online

  Did I just slip into an Oestrogen Fest? I need a drink. And some alone time with my James Deen vibrating cock.

  I head for the bar. I make a point of not looking at Sammy as I walk toward him and that much closer to a stiff drink with a very happy ending, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel his eyes on me. I squeeze into the space behind Sam, my breasts brushing his back as I pass, and grab a beer from the fridge. I turn and walk across the deck, toward the house for a little breather.

  Smack.

  “Ah, fuck. What the hell was that for?”

  “You bastards need to go and find some pussy that didn’t grow up in my house,” Elijah grumbles. As I push the screen door wide and step into the air-conditioned house, my smile could only be perceived as psychotic, but what else is new?

  I walk the hall I’ve stumbled a thousand drunken nights through and stop outside what used to be my old room, but now contains Holly’s gym—another purchase she had to have but never uses, no doubt—and I turn to the opposite wall. This door leads to my new bedroom, if you can call a storage closet a bedroom. There’s barely enough space for a double bed—in fact, it’s pushed flush against three walls, with no room to even wedge a vibrator between—and a small dresser containing three drawers. I haven’t bothered to unpack, and what little possessions I brought with me are strewn all over the floor between the door and bed. My tattoo gun and several bottles of ink, the only things I have worth any value, sit atop the dresser, staring at me. My fingers are itching to ink, and I could kiss Uncle Elijah for suggesting we work on a piece this afternoon. Though where he’s going to put it sorta stumps me. You’d be hard pressed to find a single part of his body that doesn’t already have some kind of ink adorning it.

  I pick up the sketch pad and pencil from beside my pillow and work on a piece I’ve been creating since I came home. I don’t know who it’s for yet, but it’s an intricate chest piece. I’m almost done with the shading when a knock at the door across the hall has my head snapping up.

  “Pepper, can I come in?”

  I set the book down and take a swig from my beer before getting up and walking the three steps to the door. “If you’re looking for me I’ve been relocated to the supply closet.”

  Sam spins around. He studies me as I lean in the doorjamb. I point to the door behind him. “That room is reserved for Holly’s kink table now.”

  “Well, you gotta have priorities, right?” Sam says with a wry smile.

  “Guess so.” I shift back to the bed and flop down on it, resting my beer on the hard wood floor. Sam shuts the door and I try to ignore the way my heart rate skyrockets.

  “Whatcha doing here, Sam?”

  “Just came to see how you were settling in.”

  “Well, as you can see I’m living in a closet now, which really isn’t that different from the apartment I shared with Stieg, I guess. At least there I didn’t have to hear Holly and Jack make use of their kink table. I’d ask you to sit down, but we have a severe shortage of chairs. And room.”

  “I’m fine standing.”

  I smile. “What’s the matter, Sammy? Afraid I’ll seduce you?”

  He laughs, but just when I think he isn’t going to respond he says, “Yes, actually.”

  “Sit your big arse down, chief. I won’t ruin your virtue,” I say, shifting my legs a fraction to allow him room. It’s not much room, but that was sort of the intention.

  “I believe it was me who ruined your virtue.”

  “So it was.”

  “Who’s Stieg?” He narrows his eyes on me.

  My face falls, and as with everything I don’t want to answer, I shrug. “Just some guy I left behind.”

  Sam’s eyes grow dark. He clenches his teeth together, as if he’s biting back a sharp retort. But Sammy Belle never was very good at keeping his thoughts on a leash. Just one more thing we have in common. “Old habits die hard, right?”

  “Sammy,” I begin, but he casually waves it away and takes a swig from his beer. “He’s my boyfriend. Or my ex, now, I guess. If you could call a boyfriend someone who you live with but almost never see, and who you think may have only been with you because of your father’s connections.”

  “I’m sorta glad old habits are dying hard then,” he says. “You ever hear from Coop?”

  “All the time. He came to Melbourne to see me before the band flew out for LA. He’s good; he’s Coop.” I inspect my nails, avoiding his probing gaze. Sammy has a way of making you divulge information you had no intention of divulging. It’s like he gives you this look: open face, soft smile tilting the corners of his mouth, and knowing eyes that always see deeper than I’d like him to.

  He’s giving me this look now, so I roll my eyes and say, “He feels guilty for never being around. He bought this big fuck-off house in Melbourne, but I don’t think he’s ever actually going to live in it. I think he just likes knowing he has somewhere to crash away from paparazzi when he comes to town. He’s been trying to get me to move in there, but I’m not into that whole Toorak yuppie scene.”

  We fall into awkward silence. I know he wants to ask me where I’ve been, why I left. I know because if the situation were reversed, I’d want the answers to those questions as badly as I wanted my next breath. He doesn’t ask, and I don’t tell. Some things are better left unsaid.

  I study our legs, spread out side by side on the aubergine comforter. I wonder what he’d do if I pushed my thigh up against his. I wonder what he’d do if I straddled him right now and played Ride ’em Cowboy the way we used to when we were kids.

  “So, a tattoo artist, huh? You any good?” He points to the tattoo gun and I give him a wry smile of my own. He knows I am. I’ve spent my whole life with a pen in hand—a tattoo gun is really no different. Besides, I know he’s seen the piece I gave Elijah when he and Ana came to Melbourne on a naughty weekend away last year. I tattooed them both. Though it’s understandable that he may not have seen his sister’s tat, on account of it being branded on her arse.

  “Take a look for yourself,” I say, and hike the hem on my skirt up to expose the roses I inked on my thigh. Pink and red roses begin about three inches above my knee and trail all the way up and across to my panty line, where they disappear beneath the lace trim on my Cheeky Victoria’s Secret panties.

  Sam inhales sharply. His eyes are glazed, and he moves as if on autopilot. His fingertips glide over my thigh, tracing ink and the faded lines of old scars. I allow my eyes to briefly close, but they shoot open the second he retracts his hand. “The scars are still there.”

  “A pretty decoration won’t cover several years’ worth of scars, Sammy.”

  He clears his throat. “No, it won’t.” He drinks down the remainder of his beer and stares at the door.

  The silence is awkward. It feels wrong, and not at all usual for us, but then again, before yesterday the last time I saw him he was talking about the future, our future, and all the while I was planning to run.

  Sammy sighs and gets to his feet, and just when I think he’s about to leave my room without another word, he turns and stalks the three steps back to my bed. “You know I’m here for you, right?”

  “Um … well, you are in my room.”

  “I’m serious. You know where I live. If you ever need someone to talk to—if you ever feel the need to pick up a blade again just—”

  I wince at the memory. “Stop talking.”

  “I mean it, Pepper.”

  “I’m not suicidal, Sam. Not today, at least.”

  He picks up my phone and hits the power button. I haven’t turned it on since I left the city and I’m sure there are probably a million messages from my friends, and maybe even Stieg, wondering where I am. I should object to him scrolling through it, but I don’t care. It’s Sam, and the truth is that phone doesn’t contain anything that I wouldn’t tell him if he were to ask me outright anyway.

  “You have one hundred and sixty-four missed calls.” Sam’s blue eyes search mine. I shrug. He shakes
his head and then taps away at the screen, handing it back to me with a resolute “You have my number. Use it.”

  “Aye-aye, chief,” I say and salute him, but he already left, slamming the door behind him.

  I close my eyes and try not to see the images that play over in my head, the way it felt when he touched me. The way I come apart, and lose myself completely under his stare. I try with everything in me not to feel the weight of all my mistakes when it comes to that man, but it’s a lost cause. Instead, I fumble through my bag and pull out my pills. I swallow two at once with a mouthful of cold beer, and I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, willing the meds to take affect and make me numb again before the pain can pull me under.

  I close my eyes and curl myself around a pillow, clutching the soft cotton tight against me as tears stream down my cheeks. I need to get out of this town. There are too many memories here. There’s too much heartbreak, too much hurt, and too much Sam.

  Six years ago

  “CHECK IT out, biatch,” Luke says as he flops down in the chair beside me. He throws a magazine down on top of the picture I’ve spent the morning drawing, forcing the pencil in my hand to slip and slide off my page, marking the white border and the desk. I’m just about to shove my pencil into his eye socket and create a new accessory for my hair when I get a look at the corner of the bag.

  I glance up at Mr Skilleter and find he’s still getting himself together before starting the class, and then I turn my attention to Luke and the shit-eating grin on his face. I pull the magazine from the paper bag and just stare at it. Only it’s not a magazine. It’s so much more than a magazine. It’s a banned manga comic book. Shouyoku Komoriuta—the very rough English translation being Lullaby Lust, unless Google had steered us all wrong for a decade. The point is, this comic is like the holy grail of Manga. One of only twenty left in existence, and for the last two years I’ve watched every auction like a hawk. I’ve bid on no less than eight of these fuckers, and every time I wind up being outbid the second I’ve placed it. I can’t believe I’m holding this in my hand. I kinda wanna be like all those other idiots and kiss Luke Roberts right now.

  “Who da man?”

  “You,” I squeal. I actually fucking squeal for Luke Roberts. Mr Skilleter glances up from his work book to glare at me. I don’t care that I’m about to be in lunchtime detention for the remainder of my high school career. “You’re the fucking man, Luke.”

  He bursts out laughing. “Dayum girl, you got balls.”

  “PEPPER RYAN!” Skilleter’s face turns an ugly shade of heart-attack purple as he bellows my name. “Principal’s—”

  “Office,” I finish for him, collecting my shit and stuffing it in my bag. I don’t stuff the comic in, though—that would be sacrilegious. I cradle it close to my chest. I’ll put it away when I reach the office so Ryker doesn’t take it from me—pervert—but for now I’m not letting this sucker out of my sight. “I know. Going.”

  Luke chuckles under his breath. “Meet you at the gate, jailbird.”

  “Whatever,” I say, and throw him the finger over my shoulder. Inside, though? Inside, my heart is bursting. Not at the march I’m taking toward death row—been there done that, got the fucking T-shirt—but for the beautiful, insanely poetic contraband comic in my possession that’s tucked tightly against my chest. And maybe, just a teeny, tiny little bit, for the boy who supplied said contraband.

  I’m not really surprised to find that boy waiting for me once the bell rings, and I’m sent from the principal’s office with a slap on the hand.

  “Hey, jailbird.” Luke straightens as I approach. He’s casually leaning against the brick wall that houses the Sugartown High sign.

  “Thanks, arsehat. Your surprise gift gave me detention for a week.”

  “You got off easy.”

  I shrug. “Principal Ryker and I are tight.”

  Luke shoots me a puzzled glance.

  “He’s a complete perve. I’m pretty sure he loves it when I come in because I’m the only member of the student body in this dumbarse town that actually has a pair of boobs.”

  “He noticed too, huh?”

  I begin walking up the path, away from the school and its decrepit death-trap buses waiting curb-side. I’d rather gouge out my ovaries with a spork than set foot on one of those and confine myself to the sweat-stained hell that is riding the school bus.

  Luke rides the bus. I’m sure he sits at the back with his mates and acts as if he owns the freaking place while the stupid girls giggle and drape themselves all over him, as if the shit he says is actually funny, or even smart. Today though, he doesn’t get on the bus. Today he follows me along the foot path. Luke’s best friend, Nick, and the stupid girls stare with their mouths gaping as I stalk past, though it probably has less to do with me and more to do with the fact that their very own Luke Roberts is trailing along behind me.

  “Luke, aren’t you riding the bus today?” Lisa Gray asks in this saccharine voice that sounds as if she’s swallowed a toddler.

  He turns and begins walking backwards alongside me. It’s disorientating, and normally I’d stick out my foot in the hopes that he would trip, but today he bought me banned manga porn that’s completely inappropriate for someone my age, so I kinda feel like making him crack his skull open on the concrete would be in poor taste. “Nah, today I’m braving the wilds.”

  “Why?” Lisa says, and she couldn’t have sounded more offended and confused by his statement if she’d tried.

  “Because today, Lisa, I’m a fucking lion tamer.”

  I turn and glare at him. “A lion tamer? Douche canoe is more like it, but you know, semantics.”

  “I hope you’ve had your rabies shot,” she calls to him.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s compulsory for any idiot who’s been near your vagina, Lisa,” I throw over my shoulder with a double-fingered salute. That’s followed by a series of gasps from the remaining Stupids and a protest of, “She’s such a bitch. What did I ever do to her?”

  Luke chuckles and turns that megawatt smile on me. It doesn’t work, of course—okay, it works in as much as I think, ‘Wow, he has really white teeth’ and ‘Damn it, I think I just fell for the old retina-searing switcheroo’. “I wanna make love to your mind, Ryan.”

  “Can it, Roberts. I’m only letting you share my footpath because you bought me sexually-oppressive banned manga.”

  “You wanna share more than a footpath sometime?”

  I stop dead in my tracks and glare at him. What I want to do is run for the hills. Did he just … did he just ask me … I can’t help it, I burst out laughing. “Are you asking me out?”

  “Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted to swap spit with me. Then I was going to ask you out on a date—assuming you’re a good enough kisser. Now I’m seriously reconsidering the whole thing.”

  I frown, glaring at him. “Oh, I’m a good enough kisser, but I don’t date.”

  “Because of your brother that you want to be fucking, but aren’t?”

  “He’s not my brother.”

  “Neither am I, remember?”

  “Did someone put you up to this?”

  “Yes, our entire year had a bet I couldn’t get in your panties before the month’s end,” he says, straight-faced.

  My blood boils. “I knew it.” I should have known. Why would Luke Roberts be interested in me? Why would anyone be interested, for that matter? I shake my head and begin walking again, much faster this time.

  “Pepper,” Luke protests, as he hurries along behind me. “Hey, will you wait up?” He grabs my arm and yanks me to a standstill. “I’m kidding. No one put me up to it. I like you. Not that I’d object to getting in your pants, so if you wanna show them to me, or just hand over the pair you’re wearing now so I can sniff them as I jack off tonight and think about your tight puss—”

  His creeper speech is cut short by my schoolbag flying out of my hands and smacking him in the face. “Ow,” he says rubbing at his ja
w.

  “You’re an arsehat.”

  “I guess I deserved that.”

  “Ya think?”

  “So you want to then?”

  “I’m not giving you my panties, man. That’s gross.”

  “I meant, do you want to go out with me? But I love that your head is still in your underwear; that’s where mine is ninety-nine-point-nine per cent of the day, so it seems only fair.”

  “If I agree to go out with you, will you stop talking about my underwear?”

  “Just tell me what colour they are.”

  “You are such a fucking creeper.”

  “Can I just … can I try something?”

  He moves towards me, and I take a step back into the fence. I glance up into very pretty hazel eyes. “I’m not opening my legs for you.”

  “Not yet,” he says and then he leans in, clutches the nape of my neck and pulls me to him, covering my mouth with his.

  I’m completely stunned. Out of all the ways I saw this … whatever this is … I hadn’t seen it ending with Luke mauling me.

  I place my hands on his chest to push him away but then his tongue slides into my mouth, and he tastes like mint, and need, and I’m not going to lie, it’s completely hot. His tongue swirls against mine, coaxing, inviting. I follow. I don’t falter. I just fall right over the edge.

  My hands fly to his hair and tangle in the short curls. Luke snakes a hand around my waist and pulls me closer, so that his hard chest is pushed against my soft one. My nipples bead, and the ache between my legs is so tangible, it hurts not to have him touch me. I remember feeling this way often when I look at Sam, especially that day down by the lake where I thought I would literally combust if he didn’t touch me.

  The thought of Sam is like an electric shock to my heart. I know it’s wrong, and I like Luke, I really do, but for half a second I close my eyes and allow myself to imagine Sammy kissing me this way. I imagine it’s his hand on my waist, his erection pressing against my belly, his tongue in my mouth, and I literally attack Luke. I mean, all-out climbing, scratching, searching, and silently begging his body to merge with mine. This is definitely not a PG13 book anymore here, people. And all of this occurs while Luke and I are just a few hundred metres from the school gates.