Free Sex Machine: A Standalone Contemporary Romance by Marie Force

“daddy complex,” whatever that is. I promptly shut that down and told them I’d better never hear them talk trash or anything else about her again. I nearly came to blows with one guy who didn’t like me telling him what to do. Whatever. No one was going to talk that way about Honey in front of me and get away with it.
    The reminder of that incident in the context of what happened last night makes me feel out of sorts and off my game. Of course I’m protective of her. I pinched her on the playground. That’s how long I’ve known her. I’d do the same thing for Lauren or Julie or Scarlett or any of the other girls we grew up with.
    A pang in the usually numb center of my chest makes a liar out of me. If I’m being entirely honest, Honey is different from the others. She’s always been different, from the time I was pinching her until last night, when I finally got the chance to touch her the way I’ve wanted to for as long as I can remember… She’s been different.
    Way back when, and we’re talking sixth and seventh grade here, I thought Honey might turn out to be my girlfriend, but that didn’t happen. Then Jordan moved to town the summer between eighth and ninth grade, and I never looked at or thought about another girl in the years I was with her. We had plans. Lots and lots of plans. I stopped making plans after I lost her. What was the point? Life will fuck with you no matter what you have planned, so why bother?
    At least I’m aware of the fact that I’m a fucked-up mess of a man who appears to function well on the outside. My successful contracting business is proof of my ability to fake it till I make it. I do everything I can for the men who work for me, for my parents, who still live in town, for my siblings, who are all married with kids, for Jordan’s parents and for the friends I’ve managed to hang on to in the twelve years since my heart stopped beating normally.
    But on the inside, where I live with myself and my regrets and memories so painful I can’t bear to revisit them, I’m a disaster. A no-good, broken-down mess, and I own that. It’s why I don’t let women get too close to me. It’s why I don’t get involved. I refuse to risk more than I can afford to lose. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s just not worth the agony when it all goes wrong. And it always goes wrong.
    How else to explain why smart, beautiful, happy, always upbeat Jordan is lying in a hole in the ground while so many horrible people are allowed to roam this earth? In the beginning, the only way I could cope with the loss was to frequently drink my way to full-on blackout. I quickly learned that I still had to wake up the next day and confront the loss while feeling like total hell. I stopped that before my parents and siblings made good on their threat to hold an intervention and then cart me off to rehab. Now I’m a one-or-two-maybe-three-on-Saturdays beer drinker who rarely overindulges anymore.
    No matter what I do, the unrelenting pain never lets me forget. I see Jordan’s death as my cross to bear. She died. I lived. The pain is the least of what I owe her.
    During the first few unbearable years, everyone in my life urged me to move on. They told me it’s what she’d want, and I knew they were right. I’ve always known that’s what she’d want for me, but I’ve never been able to actually do it. After five years, my friends and family blessedly stopped trying to fix me up with their single friends and colleagues and sisters “who’d be perfect for me.”
    I’m sure they were all nice girls, but I refuse to inflict myself or my demons on anyone. It simply wouldn’t be fair. So there I was, going along with my life, such as it is, when Honey Carmichael came strolling into my favorite bar and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse even if I knew at the time that I probably should.
    I’ve had a lot of meaningless, get-my-rocks-off-and-move-on sex since I finally got past that first awful time