I always needed the fucking road.
Chapter Five
AYDA
The moment I woke up, I reached out, and my hand touched the spot where Drew had been lying. His place was cold and abandoned, and even the dent in his pillow was long gone.
Rolling forward, I pushed my face into the pillow and breathed in deeply, reveling in that soapy masculine smell he’d left behind for me. The very smell that brought back every aching memory of the night before.
I hated myself for crying in front of him.
I hated myself for not holding myself together long enough to assure him that I was all right.
I hated myself for asking him to stay, even if I did enjoy those moments we’d just laid together.
Pushing up onto my hands and knees I let out an unwilling groan as my body, in its entirety, ached. Everything hurt. My joints were on fire, my vagina felt like it was suffering from blunt force trauma, and my limbs were useless noodles.
I smiled down at the pillow and started to laugh, spurring another set of groans as I forced myself to the edge of the bed. There was an odd sense of satisfaction in the stiffness of my body. There was a smirk on my lips every time I felt the pangof fresh bruises on my skin, and as I stood upright, I laughed in absolute wonder, because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to walk without looking like I was pushing something out of my uterus.
No matter how much my flesh hurt, how much I ached, or how ridiculously sore I was, I felt more satisfied than I had in weeks. Drew and I had connected. It was some crazy, fucked up, violent level of communication, but it was there, and I had a physical representation of that connection. The only downside being that Drew was going to hate it.
When I finally managed to get to the bathroom and stand in front of a mirror, I stared at myself with wide eyes.
Shit.
Scratch that last thought, Drew was going to hate himself if he saw this. I didn’t have to have some great insight into his psyche to know that. Just one look at the bruises on my naked body and his voice echoed in my head. Jesus, my hips were the worst. They had little purple dots marring my flesh, then my ass had a streak of purpled-red down the cheek he’d slapped, and my thighs already had several different shades and sizes of bruises covering them. That pattern of random shapes and sizes continued to my chest and shoulders, my breasts, to places I hadn’t even known our bodies had touched.
Drew was going to hate it.Hateit, but I undeniably claimed it like a badge of honor.
The more I looked at the bruises, the more they brought back the memories, the touches, the breaths and groans of pleasure. I felt Drew between my legs, his hands gripping, his fingers digging into the flesh wherever he could reach… and I’d liked it. In some twisted way, he’d marked his territory, claimed ownership again. I felt that possessiveness in every bruise reflecting back at me.
Whatever confusion I’d had the night before was suddenly gone, and I embraced the new sudden clarity that made me smile at my mottled reflection. It was just rough sex. That’s all it was; rough, emotionally-charged sex that left me with these memories and a heart full of hope that he wasn’t completely gone. That a part of him still needed me.
The only question now was how the fuck was I going to hide some of these marks from the guys and Drew himself? How the hell was I going to put on my diner uniform and conceal some of the very obvious bruises that would peek out from the capped-sleeves and short skirt?
I had a couple of days until I had to worry about that, at least. For now, I just needed to vacate The Hut and find somewhere to lay low.
I knew just the place.
I cut the engine of the truck and stared at the bike parked outside of Autumn’s house.
Deeks was here.
He was usually a source of comfort, but as I looked down at my arms, I sighed out a heavy breath, grabbing one of Drew’s hoodies and pulling it on. It wasn’t too warm out, so they wouldn’t question why I was wearing it, but the weather was heating up swiftly, as it often did around this time of the year. I trusted both Deeks and Autumn, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain to one of my favorite people why I was covered in angry bruises. I’m sure Deeks was more than aware Drew and I had sex, I just felt weird having a neon sign thatsaidGuess what I did last nightradiating from my skin.
I climbed out and slipped my keys into my back pocket, amused by the fact that the damn sweater was almost to my knees. The soft and well-worn material still smelled like Drew, so I huddled deeper inside and skipped up the porch steps to knock on the screen door.
Deeks was the one who answered, his gray beard twitching at the corners as he saw me. A telltale sign that he was smiling.
“Autumn said you were heading up here,” he greeted in his usual welcoming tone.
“Needed some girl talk,” I responded as he pushed against the screen door in a silent invitation to enter.
I took the invitation and kissed him on the cheek as I passed, feeling calm and at peace as I entered Autumn’s home. The house was another one of those places where I felt at ease, and welcome. It was one of my favorite places to kick back and get drunk because there was no way I was going to make that much of an ass of myself in the middle of nowhere with an audience of two.
“Well, that’s my cue to get the hell out of here then,” he replied, chuffing out a laugh.
“You don’t have to.”