Текст книги "Breaking Him"

Автор книги: R. K. Lilley

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

It was wonderful.

It escalated too quickly, I later reflected.

I was so drunk on my first taste of him that I let it get out of hand.

He tentatively touched the side of a breast with his palm, the other still on my hip, moving me, urging me to rock against him, and I did, the core of me discovering the hardness of him and exploring it through our clothes.  I felt empty, aching, and hot all at once.  And I wanted more.

The hand at my chest stayed there for a while, and eventually I realized he was asking for permission.

With a little suck on his tongue, I took my fingers out of his hair and gripped his wrist, pulling his hand over and onto the center of my full breast, right at my nipple.

I gasped and he moaned as he palmed the aching globe.  It was quickly not enough, and I found myself lifting my shirt, pulling aside my bra so he could touch skin.

We both groaned.

And that was when my grandma came home, hours and hours earlier than she usually did.

She went into such a rage, and I got into so much trouble that I avoided Dante for a solid week after that, which was not easy.  I had to skip a lot of school to do it.

He finally cornered me at my house, climbing into an unlocked window to get to me where I cowered in my bedroom.

“Listen,” he said, looming over me where I huddled on my bed, “if we went too far, just say so.  I’ll back off.  Whatever we do, all of that sort of stuff, it’s all on you what pace we go, okay?  We won’t do anything you aren’t ready for, not even kissing if you don’t want.”

“I’m okay with the kissing,” I told his feet.  “But the rest was going too fast for me, okay?”  Grandma’s hours of chewing me out had ingrained in me one important fact: I could not give a boy too much or he’d lose interest in me.

He grinned from ear to ear and perched himself on my bed.  “But you liked the kissing, right?

I smiled back.  “Yeah.  But what does it—I mean—are we . . . “ I couldn’t even finish I was so embarrassed.

His entire gorgeous face was flushing in pleasure.  “Yes, Scarlett.  Of course.  We’re together.  We’ve always been together.”

I was bright red and I couldn’t look at him anymore, but I needed more assurances, something concrete.  “S-s-s-so you’re my . . .”

“Ah, Scarlett,” he said softly and fondly.  “I’m your boyfriend.  You’re my girlfriend.  Yes.  Is that what you were getting at?”

I shot him a look.  “Isn’t that something you’re supposed to ask a girl, not tell her?”

He got a real kick out of that, in fact I didn’t think I’d ever seen him happier.  He leaned close, touching our foreheads together.  “Not this.  Not us.  Neither of us have a choice in this.  You and I being together is not a question, Scarlett, it’s a fact of life.”

And he kissed me.  And kissed me.

After that we were making out every day.  Every chance we could get.  We kissed goodbye, we kissed hello, we kissed in the woods on the way home from school.  Anywhere we went where we thought no one was watching, but he was true to his word.  He didn’t take it any further until I was ready.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO

“Go to Heaven for the climate.  Hell for the company.”

~Mark Twain

PRESENT

Dante ripped his lips from mine so abruptly that it felt like a Band-Aid coming off.

He was panting into my face.  “Tell me you don’t miss this,” he said emotionally.

This was what made him such a bastard.  We were over, had been for years, but it didn’t matter.  If he had his way, he’d keep me tied to him in so many ways I could never break loose.  He was cruel like that.

I subjugated every pathetic thing inside of me that jumped to do his bidding.  I would not feel what he was trying to make me feel.

“I don’t miss this,” I managed to get out through my constricted throat.

“Liar,” he breathed at me, madness in his eyes.

I shuddered, my own madness coming out to play.  “No.  No.  No.  I’m not the liar.  You know why I don’t miss this?  Because it’s a lie.”

It was his turn to shudder.

“Because it’s a lie,” I repeated.

He flinched.

“It was always a lie.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It was always a lie,” I repeated.  “Want to know how I know?”

“Stop.”

“I won’t stop.  I’m not finished.  Want to know how I know?”

“Enough.  Stop it.  You’ll say any horrible thing when you’re in a temper.”

“I will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth.  What we had was always a lie.  I know because if it was real it wouldn’t have ended.  It felt like forever, and forever was a lie.”

I’d won the round, I noted numbly as his shaking body withdrew back to his side of the car.

He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, shoulders hunched.

After a few drawn out minutes of silence he started driving again.

“You’re terrible at truces,” I said.  It was an effort to keep my voice from trembling.

He nodded jerkily.  “Ditto, tiger.  Peace was never your strength.  You were born for battle.”

“Look who’s talking?”

His mouth twisted.  “A match made in hell.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

The problem with us was that he and I had become deeply attached in our formative years.  Young me had become essential to young him and vice versa.

We were too precisely built together, each too profoundly shaped by the other. Every part of us had been assembled as one piece.  Of course we did not function well after the construct had been ripped violently apart.

And of course I would despise the one who had done the ripping.

The car was silent as a tomb until we were nearly at the house, both of us trying to regain some composure, trying to reconcile ourselves to the past and come back to the present.       

“Is my dress really too tight?” I asked him as he pulled down the long winding road that led to the house.

Grandma always got her digs in, and they always found a place to fester.  I’d known the dress was flattering, provocative even.  But was it trashy?

Dante cursed.  “God, she always could get to you with her venom.  No, it’s not too tight.  You look amazing.  Perfect.  Gram would be proud.”

“Thank you,” I said simply.

“Damn,” I cursed as I took in the transformation of Gram’s large driveway.  Parking attendants had apparently been hired to manage the large influx of vehicles for the reception.  They were trying their best to valet each one, using the front lawn to fit in as many cars as possible.  “Gram would have hated this.  She loved to keep her lawn pristine.”

Dante cursed.  “What in the actual fuck?  Goddamn my mother.  This has her stamp all over it.  Keeping up appearances when the fact is these people can walk a few fucking feet instead of ruining Gram’s lawn.”

He was right.  There was a paved road a mile long leading up to the house with plenty of shoulder room, i.e. ample parking.

But Adelaide had always hated Gram and it surprised me not one bit that she was messing with the property that had once been hopelessly out of her reach.

Dante refused to use the valet, parking on the shoulder just shy of the chaos.

“I’m going in the back entrance,” I told him as I opened my door.  “I need to freshen up,” I added, feeling awkward.  “Um, see you around.”

I took off.

I carefully redid my makeup and then lingered in my room for a cowardly amount of time.

It was just so unpleasant, the sounds of a large gathering in Gram’s house with the woman herself absent.  It felt wrong and I didn’t want any part of it.

But then I thought about all of the vultures down there circling, all of the blood-sucking opportunists that had come, not for Gram, but to eye up the property she’d left behind, to speculate about who she’d left it to.

I had to go down, had to be there to thicken the ranks of those who were genuinely mourning her loss.

It didn’t start out well for me.  In fact, it couldn’t have started worse.

I took the back stairs down to the kitchen, because I knew the place well.  I went straight for the liquor in the butler’s pantry, pouring myself a liberal tumbler of scotch that I was sure was up to even Dante’s standards.

I downed it, then poured another.

Only when I was in two deep and holding a third did I move to venture out into the melee.

Unfortunately I didn’t get that far.

This place, these people rattled me and so I was uncharacteristically clumsy.

I’m sure the liquor didn’t help make me more coordinated, to be fair.

I moved to open the door that swung out from the kitchen into the formal dining room, but I mistimed it, and  one of the many servers that were taking trays around frantically came in right as I was going out.

Half of my glass ended up on my chest.

The server, a young nervous guy, apologized profusely and brought me a stack of napkins.

I set down my glass, took the napkins, and waved him off.  I started patting at myself, wondering if I should change.

At least I was wearing black.

The liquid came up easily, but the napkins left little white fuzzies all over my bust.

 Fumbling with it, I opened my little clutch, taking out a moist towelette that I kept in it because I was one of those girls that knew the proper purpose of a handbag, which was to be prepared for anything.

It took forever, but I slowly got the front of my dress looking normal again.

I tossed the towelette and napkins into the trash, but somehow ended up bouncing a tube of lipstick out of my open clutch.

It landed right on top of the pile.

I would spend my last twenty dollars on a tube of M.A.C. lipstick.  I took that shit seriously, and so I went in after it.

With a curse I bent down, grasping at it, trying to get a hold before it slipped in deeper.

To no avail, it kept falling deeper, through layers of leftover food and used napkins.

I almost left it, in fact had resigned myself to, when I felt the smooth edge of it touch my finger.  I grabbed it and straightened, but not before the damage had been done.

That was how they found me.  Elbow deep in the garbage.

Fucking typical.

“Trashcan girl is back, and I see that not much has changed,” a laughing female voice told my bent back.

The old nickname was familiar and despised, and epitomized everything I hated about this place.

I straightened with my lipstick in hand to face a small group of snickering women.  There were three of them, all girls from high school that I recognized instantly as being part of the mean girl pack that had done their best to terrorize me back when I’d been a stuttering mess.

I was not a stuttering mess now.

“I see the bitches still travel in packs around here.  And by the way, guests aren’t even supposed to come into this part of the house.” I told their leader, Mandy, my voice steady, eyes flashing.  That had been a strict rule of Gram’s.  No guests in the kitchen, ever.

Also, I was extra defensive and hostile with the way they had caught me, the sore spot they had rubbed right off the bat.

“Oh, guests aren’t welcome, but charity cases are?”

She had a point.  Mandy was a bratty little bitch, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Just because Gram had treated me like family didn’t make me any less of a charity case.  I’d just been too stupid to see it myself back then.

No, I shook off the thought.  No.  Just because Dante had thrown me away didn’t mean Gram had.

Gram had really loved me.  I was as sure of it as I was of anything.

I smiled unpleasantly at Mandy.  She hadn’t grown up to be an attractive woman, but then she’d never been an attractive teenager.  Looking at it in retrospect, I could see clearly now at least one of the reasons she’d hated me.  I may have been trash, but I was beautiful trash, and there was not one beautiful thing about her.  Her weasel face was as ugly as ever.

“Well, this charity case is allowed in the kitchen, and you’re not.”  I waved at the door that led to the front part of the house, the section where company was allowed.

Mandy took a threatening step toward me.

I laughed, setting down my clutch.  I held my arms out wide.  “Please.  Is that a threat?  Come at me.  I dare you.  If all three of you attack, it’ll be just like old times, right?  I remember how you thought the odds of three to one would help you.”

Of course they backed down.  When they went in for the kill, it was usually with words.

Because mean girls don’t kill.  They dehumanize.

A few times they’d tried their luck with me the other way, but I could see that they still remembered how that had gone for them.

That was the moment that Dante walked into the room, and damn him, and me, I was actually happy to see him.

He zeroed in on Mandy and strode right up to her.  “I’m only going to say this once,” he told her harshly.  “It’s your first and final warning.  If you can’t be civil, if you try to pull one of your childish stunts, or I catch you making one snide comment, or even hear that you did, you’re out of here.  Also, no guests in the kitchen.”  He pointed to the door.

The pack of bitches left, shooting murder at me over their shoulders.

“God, do you have any idea how you just crushed her?” I asked him, smiling.  “She’s had a thing for you since high school, and don’t ask me why, but it looks like she still does.”

“I give less than zero fucks how she feels.  That one is a coward and a bully.  I don’t even want her in this house.  I haven’t forgotten how she treated you in high school.”

“You haven’t?” I asked him.

He looked at me.  “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

I looked away.  “Well, this started as badly as it could have.  I already got caught digging in the trash and almost got into a fistfight, all before I’ve even walked into the reception.”

“If anyone else gives you any problems, I’m kicking them out, I swear to God.”

My eyes flitted to him and then away.  “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“It’s not hard, Scarlett.  In fact, it feels a hell of a lot more natural than what we’ve been doing.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”

~Herman Hesse

PAST

Something awful had happened when we started going to high school.  It wasn’t immediate, more of a gradual shift, but nonetheless detrimental to me.

Dante was physical and he always seemed to need an aggressive outlet for it so, much to my chagrin, he was often in some sport or other.  Football was his favorite so every fall from the time we were in sixth grade, he had practice.  Every year practice seemed to eat up more and more of his time.

I tried to take it well, but I was so jealous of his time and attention that I didn’t.  But I did try.

I started taking drama after school myself, and it suited me.  My stutter still plagued me at the worst of times, so I never got a speaking role in the school plays, but I was happy to fill extra spots and work on the set.

I thought for a while that it would work.  We both had things to do, opposite interests that took up our time.

I’d finish drama and go watch him from the bleachers, sometimes I’d do my homework, sometimes I’d read, sometimes I’d just ogle him, and then we’d either drive or walk home together.

On paper it sounded great, but that’s not what happened.

In high school it became apparent that he was quite good at everyone’s favorite sport and for some reason it started to matter to people and seemingly overnight he was one of the popular kids.

It was awful for me.  I was no more popular than ever.  In fact when jealous girls got wind that I was his girlfriend and just how long we’d been an item, and how smitten he was with me, I was more hated than ever, which was saying a lot.

I started getting into fights again.  Bad ones.  And I was old enough now that I was getting in serious trouble for it.  I almost got kicked out of school for one incident with a girl in the locker room (a girl who unfortunately also happened to be the daughter of one of the local sheriffs) that involved her dumping Gatorade on my head and me slamming her face into the locker.

It’d predictably started with the familiar mocking chant of, “Hey, trashcan girl.”

I was resigned to the fact that I would never live this down.  It was a part of me.  It was a thing I had to own that would always make me an outcast.

I was odd.  I had been shaped by uncommon, un-relatable things.  This I knew.

And since I couldn’t get into a fight every time I heard that, even with my temper, I ignored the first verbal jab.

We’d just finished gym class.  Normally I liked gym.  I didn’t talk to any of the girls in my period, but there weren’t many kids I talked to.  I was good at being a loner.  It suited me.  The things I heard the girls talk about couldn’t have interested me less.

All they seemed to do was complain about things they could easily change or things that were so insignificant they sounded like petty brats for complaining about them.

One didn’t like her thighs.  One hated her butt.  One was too flat-chested, her best friend had huge boobs that she hated.

This one had fat fingers, that one had big feet.  One complained for an entire mile that her mom had cut off her credit card when she’d overcharged it.  Another couldn’t believe her daddy had bought her a used car.

Oh the humanity.

I had no patience for it.  I didn’t feel like humoring them with their petty, wonderful lives with parents that loved them and normal problems.

Some of us had real problems.  Ones that weren’t skin deep.  A real problem was waking up every day to a world that had cast you aside, a world that had no place for you, with peers that hated you and cards stacked against you.

A real problem was being trash and having everyone around you know it and point it out regularly.

A real problem was being fundamentally unlovable.  Struggling everyday not to hate yourself.

So I tried my best to tune them out and apply myself to whatever physical thing they had us doing.  Today it had been tennis, which I liked just fine.  The smaller the teams the better.  I wasn’t the best team player.

I was actually in a good mood before she’d said that.  I was a terrible student, so P.E. was naturally my favorite class, and it was last period.  Now I was changing fast because I got to see Dante for a bit before he went to practice and I went to drama.

But then, “Hey, trashcan girl.”  The words had me setting my jaw, a familiar feeling moving through me.

My mind flashed to that infamous trashcan, my baby self somewhere inside of it.

I had no real idea what it’d looked like, but I’d obsessed about every little detail of it.  I imagined that dumpster, lid closed.  I don’t know why, but I always imagined that it was only half-full.  How else could my mother have fit a baby into it?

I imagined my baby self somewhere inside of it.  Sometimes I was wrapped in dirty blankets and set neatly on top of the trash.  Sometimes I wore only a diaper, was buried halfway down, and they’d had to dig for me when I’d been discovered.  I liked to fantasize that some kindly paramedic had picked me up tenderly, maybe even cried for me.

Some of these imaginings came from nightmares, some merely my imagination, but the taunts always brought it all back.

Still, I was going to ignore her.  I wouldn’t let her waste any of my precious Dante time.

“Did you hear me?” the girl said, her hand shoving lightly at my shoulder.

I shut my locker and turned to level an unpleasant look at her.  “Leave me alone,” I said simply.  It really was that simple.  Why couldn’t they just leave me the hell alone?

She sneered at me.  I tried to place who she even was.  Brown hair, medium height, familiar weasel-like features.

Oh Lord, I was oblivious.  I’d been going to school with her since third grade.

Mandy, I recalled.  Her dad was a sheriff, I remembered too.  Cops made me nervous, so of course I’d made a note of that.

She took a long swig of her red Gatorade, wiped her mouth, and asked snottily, “What’s your deal?  Is Dante really dating you?”

“Yes,” I said tonelessly.  Maybe if I was as boring as possible she’d leave me alone before I lost my temper.

“Since when?” she asked.

I didn’t know how to answer that even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t.  I’d been devoted to him since that first fateful meeting outside of the vice principal’s office.

“Answer me, trashcan girl!”

“No,” I snapped back.  Hello, temper.  If she’d wanted an actual answer, she had a lot to learn about me.

“What the hell does he see in you?” she sneered.

I eyed her, top to bottom, letting her see in my face what I thought of her.  Not one attractive thing about her, inside or out.  “As opposed to what, you?  Keep dreaming.”

She gasped and dumped the contents of her Gatorade bottle over my head.

Loud giggles echoed in every corner of the locker room.  Apparently a lot of the girls had enjoyed that.  As I’ve said, I was far from popular.

I didn’t even think, my body just reacted.  I grabbed a handful of the hair at her nape and bam, slammed her face against the locker.

On the tail of that, only one week later, I almost went to Juvie for an incident with the same girl.  Again in the locker room, she (bruises still on her face) and three other girls snuck up behind me, slammed my face into the lockers, and dragged me to the toilet, then proceeded to try, with a stress on the word try, to dunk my head into the bowl.

I fought like a wildcat.

Here’s the kind of fighter I am:  I don’t care if you’re bigger than me.  I don’t care if you’re so massive you could take me out with one punch.  Hell, I don’t even care if there are three of you to my one.  I will take you on, and I will keep swinging until someone either knocks me out, drags me away, or kills me.

I fought them like a wildcat, and they were not fighters.  They were little princesses who thought that they knew what revenge was.

When they realized I was going to struggle, that I wasn’t going to make it easy on them, they started slapping at me, smacking at my head and face like that was going to do anything but piss me off more.

I clenched my hands into fists and started punching.

It wasn’t my first fight or even my tenth, and as far as grappling went, I wrestled with Dante, a boy twice my bodyweight, for fun.

These girls were nothing.

I didn’t lash out indiscriminately.  I’d learned a long time ago to go for the spots that debilitate.

The first girl I punched hard in the nose.  I heard a crunch and blood started spurting everywhere.

One down.

The second girl, Mandy, the sheriff’s princess daughter who had freaking started it, I kneed hard in the stomach because she was almost on top of me, still trying to get me into the stall that I’d just escaped from.

She doubled over.  The third girl was grabbing my hair, trying to pull me away from her friend, but I grabbed the side of Mandy’s head and viciously slammed it sideways, right smack into where the stall protruded sharply.

Third girl started backing away when she realized that both of her friends were crying huddles on the floor, but I wasn’t having it.

I stalked after her.  When she turned to start running away, I grabbed the back of her long black hair and yanked.

She went flying like a rag doll and ended up on her back.

I was raising my foot up to stomp on her when the gym teacher walked in.  She was a big, athletic woman, and she had to physically drag me away from the girl before I stopped fighting.

Of course I got blamed for all of it.  I’d broken the first girl’s nose.  Mandy they thought had a concussion, and I assumed she did.  I’d smashed her head hard into the stall.

The cops were called, three besides the usual on-campus officer, and they took turns threatening me, chewing me out, and trying to scare me.

When I tried to argue that they had started it, I’d been defending myself, and there had been three of them, my stutter predictably came out to play.

I almost decked one of them, a large man that kept getting right in my face, close enough that I could feel his spittle and smell his breath, but I managed to control my temper at least that much.

After about an hour of them harassing me behind a closed door (they’d borrowed the principal’s office to interrogate me), I heard a commotion outside, someone getting loud.  Someone losing their temper.

My chest warmed and I felt instantly safer.  I even managed to get out a few sentences through my stutter.  “Th-th-they attacked m-me!  There were three of them.  H-h-h-h-how can you not see that there were th-th-th-three of them?”

One of the cops (the second girl’s father!) took a menacing step toward me.  “Are you calling my daughter a liar?”

Oh no.  I was going to lose it.  Nothing got my temper going hotter than injustice like that, the supposed mediator in the situation blood related to one of the culprits!

I nodded at him, glaring.  “Y-y-y-yes.  H-h-h-how can you deny it?  Th-th-there were three of them!”

Dante crashed into the room, the principal, a small middle-aged man, right behind him, grabbing at his arm, clearly trying but failing miserably to hold him back.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he started shouting the second he cleared the door.  “Four male officers harassing one teenage girl behind a closed door?  You can’t detain her like this!  You need to arrest her or let her go, but just so you know, my lawyer will be here in ten minutes and Vivian Durant will be here in five.  You might want to start acting like real cops now.”

I ate up every rage-filled inch of him with complete adoration.

I don’t know how he made it across the room to me, it wasn’t easy, no one wanted to let him, but he made his way to my side, touching my cheek lightly, crouching down beside my chair.

“You okay, tiger?” he asked me softly.

Even with how angry I was that made me smile.

In short order Gram showed and barely kept them from taking me into custody.

It was the first time I’d gotten to see her in action.  She was a glorious sight to behold.  She had a way of declaring a thing and making it so.  She was like Dante, the opposite of me, able to articulate exactly what she meant to with absolute, precise effect.

I made a promise to myself right then and there to grow up to be just like her.