Whoever took me on would have to put me in a body bag, or quit like a b.i.t.c.h because I felt no pain and I showed no remorse.

I'd had more fights in the last two years than I could remember broken more bones and spilled more blood and it did absolutely nothing to stem the anger inside of me.

Anger at being abandoned.

f.u.c.king hatred at being let down by the one person I had put my trust in.

Thorn...

Some nights, I forced my mind to pretend that she had never existed in the first place. It was just easier to live in denial than to live with the f.u.c.king betrayal, hurt and G.o.dd.a.m.n torture of it all.

But then there were other nights.

Nights when I dreamed about kissing my girl; of feeling her body against mine, flesh against flesh, no barriers. Those nights the memories of being inside her kept me company. Thoughts of Thorn, naked and spread open beneath me, kept me company at night.

Fisting my d.i.c.k, I would envision f.u.c.king her in every orifice in her body every night from my jail cell. Trapped in the silence, I would mentally paint her image on the ceiling of my cell.

Her hazel eyes.

Those plump fleshy lips.

That long blonde hair I f.u.c.king adored, and her sa.s.sy spirit.

There was a time I would have done pretty much anything for that girl. Anything. I would have torn the skin off another man's flesh just to keep her safe. But she betrayed me in the worst f.u.c.king way abandoning me when I needed her most.

It wasn't like I wasn't used to being let down and betrayed.

I was.

h.e.l.l, my whole life consisted of disappointment after disappointment, but with Teagan, I always knew deep down in my bones that I had found something different special.

Something permanent.

She was the polar opposite of every woman I had ever known. She never wanted me for my d.i.c.k, or my fists, or the popularity that came from being with the local bad boy. Teagan had never been interested in any of that s.h.i.t. She saw through it she saw the real me.

That's why it hurt so f.u.c.king bad. I swear to G.o.d, nothing had ever hurt me like she had.

Now my anger was all I had.

My anger and my thirst for revenge.

"YOU ARE MOVING f.u.c.kING MOUNTAINS in this place, Messina," Lucky announced later that afternoon when he sauntered into our cell.

Walking over to where I was lying on my bed, he slipped his hand into his pants before tossing half a dozen packs of cigarettes on my lap. "You did some number on Campbell," he said, grinning. "Poor f.u.c.ker's still p.i.s.sing blood."

"He needs to learn how to rein in his emotions," I told my cellmate. "The guy fights with his feelings. That's never a good thing."

"It's a good thing for us," Lucky shot back with a s.h.i.t-eating grin on his face as he crouched down and pulled the small bottle of amber liquid out of his sock. "It's a f.u.c.king great thing for us."

"I'll be in the weight room," I told him, refusing the bottle when Lucky offered me a sip. Grabbing the packets, I shoved them into the hole in the side of my mattress before climbing to my feet and heading down the corridor to the only release I needed.

"YOU SAID IN," NOAH WHISPERED as he held himself above me, smiling down at me. "You said you're in love with me."

My cheeks reddened. "Yeah, so?"

"That's the most important word." Noah bent his head and pressed his lips to mine. "And for what it's worth, my in belongs to you," he whispered.

"It does?" I asked, barely breathing as my heart hammered in my chest.

"Of course." Noah scorched me with a kiss that ignited a fire that burned a hole right through the center of my heart. "You're my Thorn," he rasped between kisses. "If you leave me, I'll bleed out."

We were lying on my bed in Uncle Max's house. Noah had his arm wrapped around my shoulders and I had never felt so safe.

Twisting onto my side, I curled into him and smiled. "I'm glad you feel that way," I admitted, biting down on my lip to stop myself from grinning like a lunatic. I couldn't help it. He made me that happy. The thuggish boy next door had well and truly won me over. I knew I would never be the same again. Noah Messina would forever own me. Heart and soul. "I want you to need me." Stretching up, I pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "I want to be the one to make you fall apart to make that hard exterior crack clean open."

"Mission accomplished," he rasped, cupping my cheek. Using his free hand, he dragged me on top of him. "You own me," he added, kissing me again. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Keep you forever," I whispered against his lips...

Beep...beep...beep...

The shrill sound woke me from the best dream I'd had in months and I could have cried. Stretching out in my bed, I curled and uncurled my toes before reaching underneath my pillow for my phone. "What the heck," I croaked out, voice thick and sleepy when I checked my screen to see who was calling.

Holding my phone between my ear and shoulder, I covered my mouth to stifle a yawn. "It's like..." I glanced briefly at the screen of my phone. "Half past one in the morning, Sean, come on."

He was always doing this. Phoning me at outrageous times of the night even though he lived on the floor below us.

Sean Hennessy and I had struck up a conversation one day when we were pa.s.sing in the hallway, and in the two months that had pa.s.sed since he had moved into our building, I had come to know him as very lovable and very gay. Sean had stepped in as a sort of surrogate Hope for me. Ever since she hit the NYT bestsellers list with one of her books last year, she had been hitting the town hard on the weekends, partying with the newfound friends she had found since hitting the big time and drinking her memories away. During the week she still barely left her room.

Sean was fun, and I needed that in my life.

The night I discovered his s.e.xual preference during an extremely clumsy and surprisingly amatory game of charades on my birthday I had rushed upstairs to my apartment to drown my sorrows with three bottles of wine and an entire box of After Eights. Not that I would ever admit it, not to a soul.

I had been trying to force myself to move on from Noah. I was feeling so lonely and in my drunken state I had thought Sean to be the perfect candidate. He was the polar opposite of Noah thin, with baby blue eyes and choppy light brown hair, happy and outgoing. Where Noah was a fighter, Sean was a hairdresser. It should have worked. But it didn't because I wasn't over Noah and Sean preferred male company.

Ugh, the shame of forcing myself upon my gorgeously gay neighbor would forever haunt me. My heart still hurt a little at the memory...

"Time for you to get your skinny a.s.s out of bed," I heard Sean chuckle down the line. "I'm outside, babe, and I come bearing gifts of the Foxy Dan kind."

"It better be some good whiskey," I grumbled, throwing the covers off my legs, and climbing to my feet.

"You're looking a little flushed there, Teegs," Sean announced, studying my face with his brows furrowed, when I let him inside. "Have you got a fella hiding in your room that I don't know about?"

"Oh yeah," I muttered, rolling my eyes. "He's hiding in the closet right now." Grabbing the bottle of Jameson out of his hand, I made my way over to the couch, curling up in a ball as I unscrewed the cap and swallowed a mouthful of whiskey. "I'm all alone, Sean," I told him after I forced down the alcohol, grimacing as it burned my throat. "Same as always."

"Babe," he replied sadly. Sinking down on the couch beside me, he patted my thigh. "Come on."

"It's true," I hiccupped, handing him the bottle. "I wouldn't know what to do with a man anymore."

"Well that makes two of us." Sean slumped back and took a deep draw from the bottle. "I'm going through a serious dry spell, Teagan. Six months."

"Ha," I grumbled, not feeling one bit sorry for Sean. "That's nothing." If six months was cla.s.sed as a dry spell then I was living in a drought. "Try going without any for two years and then come back to me."

"You could always have Liam," Sean offered after a moment before bursting out laughing.

"Funny," I shot back crankily. "But no, thanks all the same."

"Why not?" Twisting on the couch, he faced me. "He's crazy about you, Teagan always has been by the sounds of it. And you two had that thing back in secondary school."

"Liam and I are just friends," I declared, fl.u.s.tered at the thought of being anything more than that. "Seriously, Sean," I said crossly when he waggled his eyebrows at me. "We are just friends."

"Then you might want to tell him that," Sean scoffed. "That guy has a soft spot for you."

"No he doesn't," I grumbled, not liking where this conversation was going. "Can we change the subject now? Please?"

"Fine. Suit yourself," he replied, holding his hands up in the air. "But I really think you ought to give the guy a chance."

"I can't give Liam a chance, Sean, because I'm still not over the last guy I gave a chance to," I snapped. "So just back off. Okay?"

Sean's mouth curved into a knowing smile. "So that's it," he whispered as if the whole world suddenly made perfect sense. "You've been burned."

"I guess if you call having your heart annihilated burned, then yes, I've been burned before," I grumbled. "I'm still burning."

"Want to talk about it?" he asked.

"Nope."

"Want to get drunk?"

"Definitely."

AS TIME Pa.s.sED BY, and my heart grew harder, shriveled up and died in my chest, I allowed myself to forget all about JD Dennis and his threat that night. I knew he was still out there, somewhere, but I didn't care. I had nothing left to lose. All I cared about now was fighting...well, fighting and the s.a.d.i.s.t sitting on the bunk in front of me.

"Stop moving, man, f.u.c.k!" Lucky hissed, shoving me backwards with the palm of his hand.

"I'm trying," I hissed out through clenched teeth, as I wrapped my hands around the metal bunk and braced myself for the pain. "f.u.c.k, Lucky, I thought you said you knew what you were doing?"

"I do," my one friend in this s.h.i.t hole of a place replied as he inked the side of my ribcage. "So stop crying like a b.i.t.c.h and let the master work his magic."

"Look at me," I snarled, clenching the bars of the bunk when it felt like he was going to cut through my ribs. "I'm f.u.c.king bleeding out here."

I wasn't a stranger to pain, but letting Lucky tat me with his f.u.c.ked up concoction of ink was almost unbearable. "f.u.c.k!" I hissed, when he nicked me for what had to be the fiftieth time. Throwing an arm forward, I swiped the cigarette that was balancing between his lips, and put it to my mouth, inhaling deeply.

"There," he mumbled, "Done."

Inhaling one final drag, I pa.s.sed Lucky his smoke and climbed off the bed. "Jesus Christ," I growled, looking down at my tender, bloodstained skin. "You f.u.c.king butchered me, man."

"You wanted a thorn in your side, Messina," Lucky drawled, leaning back from where he was perched on the bottom bunk. Chuckling, he admired his handiwork with a s.h.i.t-eating grin on his face. "And it looks like you've got one."

TODAY WAS NOAH'S BIRTHDAY and I found myself, like every birthday before that, standing in front of the postbox at the end of my street with a crumpled envelope in my hands. I had lost count of the number of times I wrote him a letter, only to chicken out before mailing it.

Crowds of people brushed past me, carrying on with their day-to-day lives, oblivious to the turmoil churning around inside of me.

Maybe I had too much pride, or maybe I was a coward, but as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months and then years, I found myself too afraid to send that d.a.m.n letter. I wanted to, but I was frightened of what he would say, or worse, what he didn't say if he chose to behave the way I had in the beginning.

My life wasn't like the f.u.c.king Notebook. My Noah wasn't at war, he was a criminal serving time for a serious crime, and I sure as h.e.l.l wasn't anybody's Allie.

I didn't have money or a rich fiance.

No, all I had was a stack of bills longer than both my arms, and a best friend who was more emotionally f.u.c.ked up and closed off than I was.

Tucking the envelope back into my coat pocket, I closed my eyes and whispered, "Happy birthday, Noah."

"KILL ME NOW."

The half snarl, half roar that came from Hope's bedroom was my first warning of trouble.

The large stuffed gorilla she slept with at night being hurled halfway across the landing from her room into mine was my second.

"What's wrong?" I dared to ask, unsure if I really wanted to know.

"I've lost sixty thousand words," she hissed, stalking into my bedroom, looking somewhat deranged with her hair in knots and standing up in forty different directions. "Gone, freaking lost. Forever. That's what's wrong."

With a yodel of sheer despair, Hope threw herself down on my bed beside me and grabbed my pillow. "That piece of c.r.a.p computer just crashed again and wiped all of my work again. I have a deadline I can't meet, I have obligations I can't fulfill, and now I'm officially screwed," she moaned, covering her face with my pillow as she lay on the flat of her back. "All that work for nothing. Just leave me here to rot. I'm done. I quit. I retire."

I told you to back up your work, was on the tip of my tongue, but I forced myself to refrain.

Hope was right about one thing.

Her computer was a piece of c.r.a.p.

It had been giving her trouble for months now. "Don't be so dramatic, Hope. You work for yourself and your readers will understand if you need to push the date back a few months. So just calm your s.h.i.t and buy a new computer," I told her. She really needed an upgrade. "But maybe take a shower before you go into town." I took a quick whiff of my friend and gagged. "I get that you're in your hermit, locked-in-the-house writer mode, but I think you should get out of the apartment for a day." With me, I silently added. I knew full well why Hope preferred to hang around with her new friends; they didn't remind her of the past. They didn't know about Jordan, and she could pretend when she was with them. G.o.d knows, I understood it, but I didn't like it. Hope was vulnerable and I hated to see her being taken advantage of.

"You don't get it, Teegs," she moaned, ignoring the shower part. "I started on that one I wrote my very first book on that piece of c.r.a.p. It holds sentimental value. And I don't want to jinx myself. For all I know I've been incredibly lucky. That computer could be my lucky charm."

I rolled my eyes. "You're not lucky, you're b.l.o.o.d.y talented." Jumping off the bed, I reached forward and grabbed her hand, pulling her miserable, stinky, overgrown a.s.s off my bed. "The words are in here," I told her, tapping her head, "not in that piece of s.h.i.t plastic in there."

I was used to Hope's crazy writer mode, and I understood when she needed to dive into a book and stay there, but she was like a dazzled baby bunny when she came back up for air.

This time was more severe than usual. Hope only got this bad around the anniversary. It kind of ruined her, and her being ruined kind of saved me from going down that similar spiral.

"I don't know," she mumbled, tugging on the sleeves of her hoodie the same hoodie she had been wearing since Wednesday.

"Well then it's a good thing I do," I countered. "Come on," I told her. "Clean your a.s.s up and we'll hit the shops."

"I do need ink cartridges," she offered, slightly optimistic at the thought of our shopping spree. "And some sharpies too."

"Yes." I nodded, as I shoved her towards the bathroom. "We can get all of those and more. Just clean yourself up first."