Clipped Wings

28

HAYDEN

Lisa and Chris stopped me at the front door. Judging by their concern, I must have looked like a complete mental case.

“Where is she?”

“Sarah took Tenley home,” Lisa said. “I tried to talk to her, but she was too upset.”

“What the hell happened? Tee was flipping out.”

“Sienna happened. She and Trina cornered me in the upstairs bathroom. Those two are a fucking nightmare. Sienna wouldn’t walk away. She just kept coming at me and running her mouth.”

“What?” Lisa looked ill.

“Are you kidding?” Chris practically snarled.

“I wish I was. Tenley walked in when Sienna was trying to hump my leg. You know how she is, Chris. I just wanted to get away from her without doing any damage.” My eyes felt wrong, weird. Like they were watering. It was getting harder to breathe. I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead, hoping to fend off what felt like the beginning of a panic attack. “I need to get to Tenley so I can explain. Make her understand.”

As I headed for the door, Lisa got in the way. “You can’t drive.”

I started to argue but thought better of it. I’d been drinking and I was pissed, not a good combination for getting behind the wheel. “Fine. I’ll run.”

“I can take you,” Chris offered.

“How are you in better form than me?” Chris was usually the first to tie one on.

“He’s had two beers all night. Jamie will vouch,” Lisa replied.

“Sarah said she was coming. I didn’t want to get hammered and do something stupid,” he said with an apologetic shrug.

“I wish I’d been smart enough to do that.” I tossed my keys to Chris. “I’m not getting on the crotch rocket.”

He snatched them out of the air. “It’s not a crotch rocket.”

Before I could follow him out of the house, Lisa threw her arms around me. “I’m really sorry, Hayden. I didn’t invite Sienna. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I know.” I gave her a swift peck on the cheek and took off after Chris.

He was already in my car, gunning the engine. I dropped into the passenger seat and he pulled away from the curb.

“I’m sorry, man. This whole thing is my fault,” he said, downshifting as he turned the corner.

“No, it’s not. I made my own decision to go to The Dollhouse. You didn’t hold a gun to my head.” I tapped my fingers on the dash, anxious to get to Tenley.

“I don’t mean that. I invited Sarah to the party the last time I was there. Damen overheard and asked about it.”

That explained a lot. I couldn’t be mad at Chris, though. It would have gotten back to Sienna somehow.

Both the Tercel and the Prius were parked behind Serendipity, which meant they’d made it home okay. I just hoped Tenley would speak to me. Chris followed me up, prepared to act as a distraction if necessary.

Sarah answered the door. Her eyes widened a fraction when she saw Chris standing behind me, but she remained impassive otherwise. “You’re really not all that attached to your balls, are you?”

I lowered a hand protectively, uncertain about her intentions and the safety of said balls. “I can explain.”

“Oh, really? You can explain why you were in a bathroom fucking around with two women?” The calm façade dropped. “I’d love to hear the story, but I’m busy keeping my friend from going off the deep end because her boyfriend is a cheating fuckwad!”

None of what she said shocked me, except the “boyfriend” part. Was that what I was? Sarah started to slam the door in my face, but I put out a hand to stop her. “Listen. I get that you’re upset with me right now—”

“ ‘Upset’ doesn’t even begin to touch how I feel about you—”

“—and I appreciate that as Tenley’s friend, you want to protect her. But you have no idea what happened, and neither does she. Tenley’s spinning worst-case scenarios in her head and I can’t have that. I need to explain so she can understand, and you’re preventing me from doing that. Do you see how that’s a problem for me?” I asked, struggling to remain calm.

“I’m having difficulty understanding why I should give a shit.”

“Because you, like me, care about Tenley. I wouldn’t be here negotiating with you if I didn’t.”

“You have one minute to explain.”

I briefly considered moving her out of the way to get to Tenley, but if I wanted to make things better, it wouldn’t go over well to manhandle Tenley’s friend.

“I was searching for Tenley. I knew she was pissed at me for being a dick earlier.” I motioned to my neck, like I needed to point out the obvious.

“Excuse me,” Chris said from over my shoulder.

Both Sarah and I turned to look at him with disbelief. I wasn’t sure if I should be more shocked by his polite address or the fact that he was interrupting my time-limited explanation.

“I know you don’t want  Tee to get hurt, Sarah, but in this case, it would be better for H to talk to her. Why don’t we give them a few minutes to sort things out? If Tee wants him to leave, I’ll take him home and make sure he stays there.”

Sarah stared at him, clearly contemplating the request. “Fine. But I’m leaving the door to my apartment open.” She gave me a hateful glare and stormed past.

As soon as she cleared the door I went into the apartment. Tenley was sitting on one of the bar stools, her hands clasped in front of her, a pile of shredded tissue on the counter. I could still hear Sarah in the hall, followed by Chris’s gentle coaxing. I ignored them, my focus on the veil of dark hair obscuring Tenley’s face. She lifted her head when I closed the door. Her eyes were red, puffy, her cheeks blotchy from crying. And I was to blame.

Tenley eyed me as I crossed the room. When I rounded the counter, she put her hand up and shook her head.

“That’s close enough.” It came out a gravelly whisper.

I raised my hands in supplication. “I’m sorry, kitten.”

“Don’t call me that.” Her hand shook as she touched the angry mark on her neck. Mine was worse. “What was the purpose of this? Were you looking to mark your territory in case you decided you might want to finish up with me when you were done with your exes?”

“They aren’t exes.”

“Oh no? How would you define it then? Booty calls? Fuck buddies?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like? Please enlighten me, because from where I am, the picture it paints isn’t very pretty. I may not have the wealth of experience you do, but I’m not stupid. Clearly you’ve been with both of those women at some point. From the look of it, neither one of them minded sharing you. Is that what you want?”

“Are you fucking serious?” I asked, shocked she would think that. But it made sense, considering the messed-up situation she’d walked in on.

Her shoulders bowed and she looked down at the counter. “Wasn’t that what the text was about? Some sort of sick invitation to join you?”

Nausea washed over me.

“That’s not how things went down. It had been an hour and you still hadn’t come back. I couldn’t find you on the main floor so I checked upstairs, but you weren’t there. I called so I could come get you, and when you didn’t answer, I sent a text. Sienna and Trina barricaded me in the bathroom when I tried to leave.”

Tenley scoffed. “You didn’t seem to mind the attention.”

“I know how it must look from your perspective, but Sienna is messed up. Dealing with her is a challenge when she’s sober, let alone when she’s hopped up on amphetamines and loaded. I was trying to get her off me without hurting her.”

Tenley regarded me with skepticism.

“Think about what you saw. I was holding her wrists so she couldn’t touch me.” I waited for her to see the logic and acknowledge it could be true.

“Do you have any idea how humiliating tonight was for me?” She’d gone flat, like I drained all the emotion out of her.

The sinking feeling in my stomach grew heavier. “I didn’t mean it to be that way. Look, Tenley, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. This is new to me.” When she gave no response, I sighed. “This . . . thing, relationship, whatever we have, I’ve spent my life avoiding this, so I’m at a loss here. My past is unpleasant, and truthfully I don’t like the idea of sharing it with you.”

“It’s that bad?” She peeked up at me.

“I don’t know, maybe. I guess it depends on who you’re asking. I can’t change it. It’s part of who I was. Past tense. All I know is that I want you, all the fucking time, every day, endlessly. I don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t know how to make sense of it without overwhelming you, and I don’t want to tell you anything that’s going to jeopardize it.”

“Do you think I know what I’m doing any more than you?”

Of course that’s what I thought. Tenley went to college. She must have dated. Had boyfriends. Probably several, which made me want to hurt someone. But that was an assumption, because we never talked about it. “Don’t you?”

“I’ve had one long-term relationship.”

I stared at her, my brain slow to process. “You’ve only fucked one other person?”

She cringed, maybe at my crass terminology. “That’s not what I said.”

Her cheeks went a brilliant shade of red, and I couldn’t tell whether she was lying or embarrassed. While part of me didn’t want this kind of information, there was a certain degree of satisfaction in knowing I was one of very few, double standard notwithstanding.

“Elaborate, please,” I said.

“Are you asking for a head count?”

“Yes.” As soon as I said it, I wanted to change my answer.

“Are you going to give me one?” she asked, brow arched defiantly.

“I don’t have an exact number.”

“Do you have a ballpark estimate?”

I swallowed. The answer would not work in my favor. “Fuck, Tenley. I don’t know. I didn’t keep a journal chronicling my sexual exploits. I’ve done a lot of shit I’m not proud of. I don’t need written documentation to prove how much of a deviant I’ve been.” I took a step closer and she stiffened, so I stopped. “I’ve always rebelled against normal codes of behavior. Even when I was a kid with great parents who gave me just about anything I asked for. I have always pushed the boundaries. Socially, physically, sexually, all of it.” I needed to shut the fuck up before I said something that would make her run, or worse. But at the same time, part of me wanted to be done with pretending that the way I was with Tenley was the way I’d always been. She was different; she made me different. Better. She had to see that.

“What does that even mean?” she asked on a whisper.

“It means I didn’t follow the normal rules.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Do you really want details? Because I’m pretty sure you’d be much happier without them.”

“And I’m not sure I agree with you. Do you know how it felt to walk into my friend’s house and be bombarded by an entourage of women you’ve clearly been with?”

“I would hardly call it an ‘entourage.’ ”

“Oh no? Just out of curiosity, how many people at that party have you slept with? I counted five.”

She was spot on, but admitting it didn’t seem all that smart. “I didn’t sleep with any of those women.”

“Semantics, Hayden. Sex, fucking, whatever you want to call it, it amounts to the same thing.”

“Like hell it does!”

“What’s the difference? They get off, you get off, everybody’s happy,” she said acidly.

“I was never happy!” I shouted. “Shit.” I ran my hands through my hair, paced the length of her kitchen, and tried to calm the fuck down.

Tenley chewed on her nails, staying safely on the opposite side of the counter. I couldn’t blame her. I was acting like a psycho.

I took a deep breath. “I’m not doing a very good job explaining myself.”

“Or answering my questions.”

“Look, this isn’t a topic I’ve had to discuss before. I’m not exactly comfortable with it.”

“Maybe not, but tonight might have been easier if I hadn’t been blindsided,” Tenley fired back.

I threw my hands up in the air. “What did you want me to say? ‘I fucked this stripper back in the day. She likes to make my life hell by not letting me forget it. I hope you’re cool with that. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, there might be several women at this party that I’ve fucked before, too, but no biggie, they were just one-timers.’ Excuse me if I wasn’t all that excited to share those lovely details with you.”

Tenley looked shocked, and a little repulsed, which was the reason I didn’t want to tell her in the first place.

“Sienna is a stripper?”

“Was. Now she’s just a slut.”

She grimaced, like my words left a bad taste in her mouth.

“And you only had sex with her once?”

She looked so goddamn hopeful. It was like being stabbed in the chest with a rusty butter knife. I wanted to be able to answer in the affirmative. It would make things so much easier if I could say yes, but I’d omitted enough truths.

“Not exactly.”

She glared at me.

“I don’t usually do repeat offenses.”

“Excuse me?”

“That came out wrong.”

“You better hope it did,” she snapped. And this was why I wanted to be with her—for all of her naivete and her tragic past, she was still so full of fire.

“I was with Sienna more than once. We didn’t have a relationship, but she let me do raunchy shit with her and she didn’t mind tag-a-longs, so I kept it up for a while. Usually they were one-shot deals.” I cringed at how awful it sounded.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why were they usually one-shot deals?”

“Because that was all it was.” I had no desire to explain any further.

“Elaborate, please.” She threw my words back at me.

I took a step closer, the urge to touch her almost debilitating. “After my parents died, I didn’t give a shit about anyone but myself. I didn’t want to connect with anyone, and I was fucked up on enough booze and drugs to make it easy to avoid falling into that trap. If I never went back for an encore, then I didn’t have to worry about someone wanting more than I had to give.”

“But you slept with Sienna more than once.”

I paused, caught up in memories from the past. I didn’t want to tell Tenley about the shit I did. I was snorting through my paychecks faster than I could cash them. Jamie, who was also working for Damen at the time, started talking about opening his own shop, but he didn’t have the money to go it alone. Even with Chris, they couldn’t manage it. There was all this money I couldn’t touch until I was twenty-one, and another chunk that would be freed up at twenty-five. My dad was a smart fucker in that respect. He set things up so that I wouldn’t piss it all away if something happened to them. He probably knew from the beginning how badly I would fuck things up when left to my own devices.

Nate and Jamie essentially saved my ass from becoming a brain-dead cokehead. I signed over temporary control of my finances to Nate so I could buy what eventually became Inked Armor. Jamie was the one who cut off the coke. Chris made sure I stayed clean. Nate ensured I didn’t piss away my money. But it came with a cost, because I couldn’t cope without vices. Sienna filled that role. Or rather, I filled her. Whenever. Wherever.

“Sienna and I fucked. That was it. And yes, it was more than once, but it wasn’t like either one of us was particularly attached. It wasn’t monogamous. She was up for pretty much anything. I was twenty and looking for ways to deal with my shit. I needed another outlet. It worked for a while, until I got bored and she got . . . whatever she got. Then she fucked Chris and we instituted the rule.” It was the only thing we brought with us from Art Addicts to Inked Armor.

“Chris had sex with her?” Tenley seemed disturbed by the idea.

“A couple of times.”

“And you were okay with that?”

“No. I wasn’t okay with it at all, but I couldn’t do anything about it after the fact.” I’d been furious with Chris. He was one of my closest friends. It had felt like a betrayal. I expected it from Sienna; that was how she worked, but never Chris.

“And that was it, then? You were done with her?”

“Not quite.”

I went back, again and again. For years. I went months without seeing her, and then she’d magically appear at Inked Armor asking for touch-ups or whatever bullshit excuse she could come up with. Other times I’d cave and end up at The Dollhouse looking for some kind of release from the endless fucking torture of living in my head.

She would be there, promising no boundaries, telling me it was okay that I was angry with her and she would make it up to me. And like a fucking idiot, I bought it. Every time. Desperate for the escape. It took me almost four years to finally get a clue and stop feeding into the bullshit. My uncle would probably have a field day with that if he could ever shrink-ify me. So far I had evaded his offers for therapy. I already knew I was fucked up. I didn’t need to pay someone to tell me that.

Tenley looked dumbfounded. “Why would you go back?”

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

But that wasn’t it at all. Sienna was all I thought I deserved. She reaffirmed my inherent sense of worthlessness, because she suffered the same affliction.

“But it’s been more than a year since I’ve been with her,” I explained, wanting to be sure Tenley knew I was done with all that.

I understood now why I’d never tried to do anything like this before. Why I avoided getting close to anyone, or even giving a shit about them. Because I would have to explain my previous actions. And not just to Tenley, but to myself.

Tenley had lost nine people in a plane crash, and she wasn’t fucking every guy who looked at her. She was with me, and that led to a whole barrage of questions I didn’t want to ask. But she hadn’t gone off the deep end like I had. In fact, aside from a massive tattoo and a cupboard full of prescription pills she didn’t seem to take much anymore, she had picked up the pieces of her life and figured out a way to move on.

I didn’t want to believe that Cross or Sienna could be right—that eventually Tenley would wake up and see what a mess I’d made of her life. All my baggage, all my shit, all the ways I would corrupt her if given the chance. Now that she’d seen who I really was, how could she want me?

She lifted her eyes to mine and asked meekly, “Sienna and that other woman, were you with them both at the same time?”

I exhaled a heavy breath. Why the fuck did she have to ask that question? When I didn’t answer right away, she made a little sound. “Is that what you want from me?”

“What?”

“The . . . sharing. Is that what you want?” She looked utterly terrified.

“No! Absolutely not. If anyone but me touches you, I’ll cut off his dick and beat him to death with it.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “That’s not what I meant. Let me rephrase: I don’t want to share you with anyone. Ever.”

Her shoulders sagged. It sickened me that I’d made her think it could ever be a possibility.

“But what if I’m not enough?” Her eyes lifted, and that hollow stare scared me more than her words. It was as if someone had pulled her soul out of her body and left a shell behind. “It would be exactly what I deserve.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you’re enough. Don’t you get it? I don’t want anyone else. I want you.”

“What happens when you’re done with me?”

“I won’t be.”

“You can’t know that. You got bored with Sienna. What if you get bored with me? I can’t share you like that, and I don’t want to be shared.” Her lip curled in disgust. “I would hate myself if I allowed something like that to happen.”

There was so much more behind her admission than I could process. It confirmed in so many ways that Tenley and I were on the same page, maybe more than either of us realized.

“But it wouldn’t. I did that shit a long time ago. I haven’t done anything like that since her. That’s not what I want anymore.” When she remained silent, I took another step closer and reached out. She flinched away.

“Tenley, you’ve got to see that it’s not like that with you.”

Her fingers drifted over the edge of the counter. There was a mar in the Formica. A pit in the otherwise flawless surface. Her finger kept sliding over that divot, back and forth. “I think you should go,” she said, and her voice broke. Her head was down, her hair masking most of her face as droplets splashed on the counter in front of her. She was crying, and it was my fucking fault.

“Please—”

“I just need to be alone right now.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to fix this.”

“I don’t know that you can.”