Page 17 of Ruin (Hell’s Mayhem MC: Maine Chapter #2)

Chapter Sixteen

Kolton

I stare down at my dick, furious that it has the audacity to be hard.

Me and sex have an interesting relationship, and I don’t normally have a problem being hard for no reason at all.

Usually it only happens when I’m with the person I want to fuck—or have convinced myself to fuck.

Which isn’t too many people. If I’m being honest, there isn’t anyone that I want to fuck.

I miss being fucked.

I miss the way my body responds to demands and harsh touches.

I miss the way a little praise sent me soaring and made the stress melt from my body.

I miss the way my brain shut the fuck up over a certain tone of voice.

That’s the problem with my dick today. I’m sure of it .

I had a dream about Lucian last night. I woke up to this problem.

It hasn’t gone away, which makes it even more of a problem because I need to leave.

It doesn’t help that I keep thinking about him and the way he used to touch me and speak to me.

The things he told me to do, how he told me I was being so good for him.

Always for him.

“Fuck,” I growl, snatching my jeans from my bed and shoving them on.

I groan when I zip and button them, the tension on my erection feeling too good.

Annoyed by the situation, I grab my keys, phone, and helmet, then yank open my door to find someone standing there. I’m stunned, yet I stumble back.

It’s a nice day, the sun shining down from a clear sky. It’s hot, but with a soft breeze that’ll give a reprieve now and then. It’s too beautiful a day to deal with bullshit, but this is my life and I should be used to it by now.

Lucian stands before me, dressed in slacks and a button down as if he’s going to the office and not standing on my porch in a town with people who don’t know the difference between a button up and a button down.

I snap out of my shock, ignoring the way my dick aches at the sight of him and knowing he’s the only person who can make it go away. No one else would be as satisfying.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I grit out .

How does he know where I live? That’s what I want to fucking know. I’ve only lived here for five years. “Did you throw your money around to find out where I live?” I add before he can get a word out.

He gives me a simple smile.

“That would have been less creepy,” is what he says.

It takes a moment, but then I realize what he’s saying.

“You followed me.”

He shrugs.

I huff out a disbelieving laugh. “Fucking ridiculous. What do you want?”

I shouldn’t ask him because it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know what he wants. What I need is for him to get the hell off my property and never come back. In fact, he should leave town altogether. He doesn’t belong here.

“To talk to you.”

“About what?”

Stop talking, Kolton. Stop fucking giving in. You don’t need to know what he wants to talk to you about. It doesn’t matter. He’s an asshole. He hurt you. He fucking broke you. Tell him to get off your property or you’ll shoot him.

But of course I do none of that.

I stand in my doorway, letting the cool breeze wash over me as I wait for him to answer. Though, I already know what he’s going to say. All the while, I’m being tortured because his smell has already creeped into my house.

“I think you know. ”

“Tell me anyway.”

With a sigh, he shifts his feet.

“Us.”

A bitter smile crosses my face.

“You fucking joking?”

He shakes his head once, his expression pained.

“Not at all.”

I hear the torment in his voice. But why should he be allowed to feel that way after what he did?

I step over the threshold, slamming my door behind me and getting face to face.

“You did this to us. Now you get to fucking deal with it.”

I shove past him, hating the way my skin warms where we touch and hating even more that his scent follows me.

“Kolton, just give me a chance,” he calls out, but I keep going.

I hop on my bike and from the corner of my eye, I see him standing on my porch, still watching me.

As I drive off, part of me hopes he’ll be waiting there when I get back.

Despite battling my feelings all day, I still think about Lucian being on my doorstep when I get home.

I wonder what it would be like to pull up my driveway and see him standing in that same spot.

How would I feel? On the outside? Angry.

But deep down? Relief. Joy. But none of that matters because it won’t last. My happiness with Lucian will never last because I will never be who he chooses.

Why is that so hard for me to grasp? It’s been long enough.

He isn’t on my porch when I get home. Even through the darkness I see how empty it is. It hits me harder than it should.

This is the problem with him. He’s the king of creating disappointment. I see him and I get my hopes up and he lets me down. I’m not sure he’s capable of anything else. He’s hurt me more than anyone in this entire world, and yet I still can’t let it go.

I’ve been through this. I’ve been here, I’ve done this, and I was hurt. I’m still fucking hurt.

Yet here I am like a pitiful dog, looking for scraps of affection from a selfish man.

I’m looking for affection from a man who is married with a son who is my age. A man who destroyed me once and would do it again without a second thought.

I accepted a long time ago that if he wasn’t going to leave his wife then, for me and what we had, he never would.

No matter how badly she treated him, no matter how bad their marriage got.

If what we had then wasn’t enough, nothing ever would be.

What I gave him then is what I have to offer. That’s it. And it wasn’t enough .

All my concerns of being his side piece and using me as an escape start to make more sense.

But it was so much more than that, wasn’t it? That’s why it hurt so much. I knew I meant something to him and he was too much of a coward to take that step into the unknown. I wasn’t worth the trouble a divorce would take.

Beth treated him like shit. I saw it on many occasions. He didn’t have a happy marriage, and though as I’m older now, I do understand more that divorce isn’t so easy, especially when you have a child, he still should have done it. Not necessarily for me, but for himself.

Why stay in a toxic marriage? Because you’re worried about what people think—what the high society rich assholes will think?

It shouldn’t matter. But it mattered to him.

It mattered to him more than I did.

And over the years I always wondered where I sat on his list of things that matter.

For a long time I thought I was number one.

I thought I was the only thing he loved.

It was a hard realization that I was never even close to that spot.

He had a wife. A son, which would matter more than her any day.

He had his reputation and his job. He had his friends and his stupid dinner parties and all the things that I could never be part of because I wasn’t born from that mold. I didn’t fit into his lifestyle.

So maybe I was just a side piece. Maybe all I was to him was an escape from a life he didn’t want .

So then why is he back? Boredom? Guilt? Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be worth my time.

It shouldn’t…

But he’s already broken me beyond repair—how much more can it hurt?

If giving in will feel good for just a little while, won’t that be worth it?