Now Leaving Sugartown Read online

  This isn’t the only reason I hate weddings. No. I also hate the flounce, the music, the stupid pastel dresses, and sitting at a table alone while I stab my half-eaten slice of cake for making me feel as if I should simultaneously join a gym, and go back for seconds.

  “I hate you,” I whisper to the chocolate ganache frosting, which I don’t really hate at all, but kind of love.

  Behind me I feel a presence. A man presence. No, not a man presence, a Sam presence. I know, because it’s as if my Kitty Cooter can sense his whereabouts whenever he’s in the same room. It’s as if she’s stealthily sniffing catnip and then when she finds it she drops to the ground and has to roll around in it, getting all high and shit from just the scent of him. Sam is my vagina’s kryptonite. And I suspect that somehow, in some way, he knows this.

  He leans down over my shoulder and whispers, “What did that poor cake ever do to you?”

  I feel that same tingling all over my body that comes any time Sam’s lips are close to my ear, and for a half second I close my eyes and just exhale, and then my lids snap open when he chuckles and moves away.

  “It’s making me fat. And whoever said chocolate was a good substitute for sex is a fucking lying cunt.” I punctuate this with more cake stabs, because it really hasn’t paid enough.

  Sam’s brows shoot skyward, and he smiles and waves at some old couple who have stopped dead in their tracks as they bypass our table on the way to the dancefloor. He turns his self-satisfied gaze back on me, his lips tipping up at the corners. He’s not outright laughing at my predicament, but the smug bastard is enjoying this way too much. “Feeling a little frustrated, are we?”

  “Well judging by the amount of dry shampoo I had to use in my hair to cover up your come, clearly you’re not frustrated at all.”

  “You have no idea,” he mutters, and removes the fork from me, which I’m still using to stab wildly at my piece of cake. “Dance with me.”

  I glance at Sam’s outstretched hand, and then up at his beautiful face. He looks incredible in a suit, but then, he always has. Not like me. I’m too … indelicate for nice things. I feel like an arsehole in this dress. It’s so flouncy and … lavender.

  “I don’t dance,” I say, pushing aside his hand and ignoring the frisson of excitement that bolts straight to my hoo–hah when his flesh touches mine. “You know this.”

  “It’s a wedding. Everyone dances at a wedding.”

  “Everyone but me,” I say, sipping my JD through a straw.

  “Please?” he whispers. I’m teleported back to my high school formal, right back to that gym with its blue and green streamers, and its crepe paper seaweed and tacky underwater-themed decorations, right back to Sam asking me this very same question, as tentatively as he is now. I hadn’t said no back then, and it looks like old habits really do die hard.

  “One dance.” I place my hand in his and let him lead me onto the floor as the familiar strains of an old Counting Crows song that Holly used to listen to on repeat filter out from the string quartet.

  Sam finds a space for us amongst the other dancers and pulls me close. I inhale sharply, my nose pressed to his chest, letting his masculine, clean scent engulf me as we slowly turn in circles. I feel weighed down, as if there is a lead weight resting on top of my chest. As he spins me in his arms, I’m overwhelmed with emotion, with feelings. I’m broken, yet whole. Caged, yet free. I can’t breathe without breathing him in. I can’t think without Sam consuming all of my thoughts.

  I can’t do this.

  I try to pull away, but Sam only holds me all the more tightly.

  “Sam, let me go.”

  He ignores me, pressing his body as close to mine as he could possibly get without being inside it. “You know I can’t hear this song without seeing the two of us dancing around Holly’s lounge room. You were what? Seven?”

  My lungs constrict, squeezing painfully. “I can’t breathe.”

  “I can’t either,” he murmurs. “I haven’t taken a single damn breath since you came careening back into town.”

  I shove at his chest, forcing him to stumble back. “Stop.”

  “Why?” he demands, and several couples on the dance floor turn their heads in our direction to stare. Sam’s eyes are bright with anger and something more, something infinitely deeper than annoyance or ire. It’s years’ worth of pent-up hurt and frustration and desire all clawing its way to the surface. All coming to a head to make us what we are today; two lost and lonely people who are all wrong for one another.

  I stalk away, only just reaching the outside of the building before he grabs my arm. Leading me around the corner, he turns me to face him. I glower. “Jesus, Sam, take a fucking hint.”

  He shoves me up against the wall, and his bright blue gaze is fervent with need. “Take a hint? I have been taking hints, Little. All you’ve been doing since you came back is fucking hinting, and teasing and leading me the fuck on.”

  “Oh please. You give as good as you get, so don’t go pretending that I’m the only guilty party here.”

  “You are the only fucking guilty party here because you walked away,” he seethes, and then his lips are on mine and the last thing I’m thinking of is walking away. I don’t even know what those words mean anymore. I couldn’t walk if I tried because I can’t hold myself up. He slides his hand down my side, skimming my breast, and then my hip, and then finally the back of my thigh. He lifts my leg and wraps it around his hip, and the pressure of his hard cock against my clit piercing is almost my undoing. How many times have I longed for this? How often have I wanted Sam to take me this way since I came back?

  He breaks away from my lips and kisses my neck as he whispers, “I thought of you, this afternoon while I was stroking my cock. I thought of burying myself inside you.”

  I place my hands on his chest and shove. “Stop it.”

  “No, Little. Not this time,” he says and grabs the back of my neck, pulling me towards him and forcing his mouth down to mine. His tongue pushes inside, seeking searching, coaxing for me to open for him, and I want to. Holy mother of wet snatch do I want to. But I can’t. I clamp my mouth closed, and my teeth pinch his tongue. Sam pulls back, pressing a hand to his mouth and staring at me accusingly.

  “I said stop. I meant it.”

  I can’t stand here and watch his face grow dark with hurt. If I do I’ll break down. I’ll snap, and our lives will wind up even more entangled than they already are, and I can’t do that to him, so I push off the wall and stalk away. He follows.

  “Pepper.”

  “Leave it, Sam.”

  “Leave what? The fact that you were giving me eyes this afternoon? The fact that you stare and you pine and you walk around my loft like you’re ready for me to take you and fuck you up against any flat surface?”

  “I do not look at you like that.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Yeah, okay, maybe I do, but it’s because I’m a woman who likes to fuck, and be fucked, Sam. Don’t go fooling yourself into thinking that you’re special.”

  “Oh, I won’t. Don’t worry your pretty little head. I know exactly how forgettable I am. And how easy I am to leave.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Don’t what, Pepper?” he seethes. “Don’t remind you that you’re a cold–hearted bitch that left me in the middle of the night?”

  “I had my reasons for leaving.”

  “Oh right, your reasons. What are they again? ’Cause you know I’m not sure I really understood those, what with you not picking up your goddamn phone to talk to me.”

  “Holly told you everything I had to say.”

  “Yeah, Holly told me. Thanks for that, by the way. Nothing says pathetic like your girlfriend’s mother breaking it off for you.” Sam turns his back on me and runs his fingers through his golden wheat-coloured hair. I close my eyes and when I open them he’s standing before me, his face twisted into a grimace of pain. He grabs the top of my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “W
hy did you come back?”

  “I came back for my family, Sam.”

  “For your family? Or for me?

  “Aren’t you the one who always said that it’s the same thing? That we’re family, no matter how much we might wish we weren’t—”

  “Why the loft?” he interrupts.

  “I told you I can’t live with Holly.”

  “You’re full of shit,” he challenges, shaking me again. “You still want me.”

  “Yeah, I do. You’re hot, and fucking well hung. I remember every single thing you did with that tongue and that gorgeous cock, and those long, skilled fingers, but that’s all it is. This”—I move my hand between us—“whatever the fuck this is, it isn’t anything more than an old flame that should have burned out long ago.”

  “Good to see you kids finally working out your issues,” Bob’s booming voice settles over us in the darkness. Sam releases his hold on me, and I glance around Sam’s torso at his father. Bob glares between us, and then shakes his head. “Do you think you could keep it the fuck down? This is a wedding, not a fuckin’ wrestlin’ match.”

  “We don’t have issues,” I snap back, and Sam just glares at me.

  “Yeah, we’re issue-fucking-free, Dad.”

  “I can see that.” Bob folds his arms over his chest, causing the white dinner shirt to crease with his huge biceps. “You two are just fuckin’ peachy.”

  “Do you really have to be here?” Sam turns to his dad, and there’s something in his expression that has my heart sinking in my chest. He looks tired, and worn out, and sad. Bob throws up his hands and walks away, but before he clears the corner he turns back to us. “Do the right thing, kiddo.”

  I don’t know if he’s talking to me or Sam, or even both of us, but I feel small under his heavy gaze. I let out a deep breath and stare up at the sky with its millions of tiny pin pricks. This was all a big mistake. Coming here, staying with Sam, and running out on Stieg—I should never have allowed any of this to happen. I turn, and I’m about to make my way back to the venue when I have this insane urge to run. I spin on the heels that my mother had made me change into when she saw my boots under the dress, and I stumble into Sam. He catches me, grasping my shoulders and he glares down, “Running again, Little? It’s what you know, right? You gonna run all the way back to Melbourne? Back to the last guy you left behind because the one right in front of you pushes you too much?”

  “You don’t know shit about me anymore, Sam.”

  “Right, ’cause you’re so very different from the scared little lost girl you were before.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, fuck me, Little.” He releases me and walks away, back to the party, and we’re back to the way we were when I first came home. Not friends, and certainly not lovers; nothing. Just the way we’re meant to be.

  Six years ago

  “YOU SURE you’re gonna be alright in there?” Sam asks tilting his head toward the darkened windscreen. We’ve been parked outside Luke’s house for all of thirty seconds and already I’ve seen one of the stupid girls hurling in the bushes, and two guys appear to be passed out drunk on the front porch. I swear to God, if teenagers weren’t so fucking stupid I might actually enjoy being one.

  “It’s a party, Sam. Not a concentration camp.”

  “Yeah, and up until recently you’d rather sit at home listening to your emo-shit music than hang out with idiots like this.”

  I shrug. “That was before Luke.”

  “Right. Luke.” He scowls and studies the revellers closely. I know Sam well enough to know he’s just stalling; what I don’t know is why. “Are his parents home?”

  “Jesus, Sam, you sound like Jackson.” I sigh. “No. His parents aren’t home, or he wouldn’t be throwing a kegger.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to; you’re not my dad, or my brother. You’re just the chauffeur,” I say, and then hate myself for it when I see his stricken face. Nothing has been right between us since that kiss. We’ve carried on as if everything is just peachy in front of the family, but we both know it isn’t. Sam can’t even look me in the eye. And I can’t look at him without feeling his mouth on my neck, my lips, or seeing his face when he pulled back and declared the greatest moment of my life the worst one of his.

  It took me an entire lunch period worth of making out with Luke and letting him cop a feel beneath the shirt in order to apologise for what happened at my house. Truth be told, he probably would have given in without the breast exam, but I was desperate to prove a point to myself. Sam wasn’t the only guy who could make my blood race. He wasn’t the only guy who could make me yearn and ache and feel as though my body would turn itself inside out with need if I didn’t have his touch. He couldn’t be, because then I would always feel this nothingness within, and I needed to know there was something other than nothing.

  I pull at the hem of my short skirt. I don’t know why I chose this one; the scars on my leg are too easily exposed if it rides up. Luke has greedy hands; he’d felt my scars before and I dismissed them by saying my cat scratched me. We didn’t even own a fucking cat. Jack and Holly had vetoed all animals after their first dog had died. I know, great fucking parenting, they managed to kill their dog by not keeping it on a leash and my childhood suffered for it.

  I glance over at Sam’s stoic face. “Sorry. I guess someone switched my happy pills with bitchy ones.”

  “It’s nothing I don’t deserve,” he says, and for the first time in more than a week, he looks at me. Really looks at me. The way his gaze rolls from thighs to eyes makes me flush right to the roots of my hair. He’s eye-raping me, and suddenly I’m cursing my decision to wear clothes at all tonight. I inhale sharply, because the bolt of pleasure that arcs from my nipples to my vagina is a little extreme, even though it’s Sam who’s causing the tsunami tide of teenage hormones to surge through me.

  “Is it always going to be this weird between us, now?”

  “Probably.” He shrugs and stares out the window.

  “Awesome. Don’t wait up,” I say and grab the bottle of tequila I stole from the parental unit’s liquor cabinet. I throw open the door and just as I’m setting my feet on the ground and peeling myself from the seat, Sam’s hand wraps around my forearm. His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist in the softest of touches. I lean into the car, failing to understand why he does this to me. How can he piss me off one second and make me fall in love with him all over again in the next?

  “You have your phone?”

  I pull it from the inside of my bra.

  “You have my number. Use it.”

  I nod and pull away, only he tightens his hold around my wrist. “You can let go of my hand now, Sam.”

  “Be careful.”

  I roll my eyes and yank free of his grip, slamming the door behind me as he starts the car and blinds me with the high beams. Arsehole.

  I make my way past the stupid girls vomiting in the bushes and the guys passed out on the veranda, one of whom wasn’t really passed out, just a jackarse who thought he’d get a hot thrill by looking up the skirts of girls passing him. He even tried to cop a feel, but I kicked him in the face and now I’m pretty sure he’s out cold.

  I enter the house, pushing past bodies attached to familiar faces and some randoms I’ve never seen before. Luke is leaning against the mantle and my heart gives a little leap when I see him but it has nothing to do with the fact that that skank Lisa Gray is draped over him, or the fact that I’m excited to see him. It’s about the release of adrenalin that courses through my body. It’s about finding that blissful nothingness in his kisses. It’s forgetting Sammy when I’m making out with Luke, or maybe it’s the fact that I feel closer to Sammy when I’m with Luke because sometimes when the darkness edges its way into my head, I imagine Sammy’s touch is the soothing balm and it’s his hands that are setting me on fire. I know that’s wrong, and if I really believed Luke had a genuine bone in his body when it came to telling
me I meant everything to him, I’d never consider using him the way I do. Though neither of us have discussed it, I know he’s benefiting as much as I am from our little ruse. Or at least he will be after tonight, because despite the fact that my whole stupid naive heart is balls-to-the-wall in love with someone else, I know it’s a pipedream to keep wanting that, so I plan on giving Luke the only thing I have worth any value.

  Lisa leans in to whisper in his ear. Her itty titties brush against his chest, she’s wielding them for all she’s worth but Luke glances down and then looks away as though he’s completely uninterested. Two points for the awesome boob club. Luke’s eyes meet mine across the room and his face lights up in another megawatt smile that reminds me I need to buy some form of tooth whitener.

  “Babe,” he shouts.

  I smirk and push my way past several more bodies blocking the path between me and the pure, unadulterated nothingness his touch causes. Luke moves towards me and I spring at him jumping and pinning my legs around his hips, my fingers clutching the bottle of Tequila behind his shoulders. We stumble backward a few feet, right into Lisa. Beer sloshes from her cup all over her dress.

  “Oh my god!” she squeals, looking down at her ruined outfit. “You just ruined my dress.”

  “Ooopsie,” I say dismissively, and then lay one on my non-boyfriend. Or maybe he is my boyfriend, now? Who the hell cares, as long as he’s giving me the oblivion I crave. “Did you miss me?”

  Luke groans against my mouth and palms my arse. “So fucking much.”

  I laugh. “You’re a terrible liar, Luke. It’s a good thing I came along, or else you’d be all over one of the Stupids right now. Just imagine the hit your reputation would take.”

  “I only have eyes for you, baby.”

  “Right answer,” I say leaning into the kisses he places on my jaw. “Now, how would you like to ruin another dress for the evening?”