by J Bree
When I refuse to tell him who it is, he tells Avery I’m running off to fuck Annabelle on the regular. When she doesn’t ruin me, he figures out it has to be Lips.
I stay the fuck out of his way while he gets pissed over it. I’m too fucking busy curating playlists and sketching in my new lyric books. I’m a little fucking heartbroken the Mounty hasn’t opened my present yet and these lyric books are still too new and fresh for my liking.
I gave her all of my favorite ones.
It’s as confusing as hell as well because she refuses to open the box, but then when she thinks I’m distracted she’ll stare at me like she’s craving something only I can give her, like I’m the one person in the world that can fill the need that she has, so why the fuck isn’t she doing something about it?
Avery warned me about upsetting her little Mounty friend when we’d first started studying together so instead of doing what I want to do, which is spread her out on the cushions and eat her out until she screams, I take her little pieces of my soul on paper to try to coax it out of her.
It’s all of the little things that I never talk to anyone about but that Ash, Harley, and Avery all somehow know. It’s the broken and bleeding parts of us all that somehow call out to each other until we’re all circling the same fixed point in time. It’s all the pieces of me that I find so fucking ugly but am completely fucking engrossed by and even though it’s fucking hard to share it with her, the way that she takes them without a word is oddly comforting.
The problem is that the more time I spend with her, the harder it is to ignore the looks that she sends my way. We’ve spread out on the floor where I’m most comfortable on the cushions in front of the TV. I’m dressed for comfort with my shirt unbuttoned and she can’t take her eyes off of me, not even when I look over at her in an attempt to get her to stop.
I’m only human, and I want her so fucking bad.
“Fuck, Mounty, don't make this even harder for me than it already is,” I groan and she looks up through her eyelashes, licking her bottom lip like she wants a taste, and I’m going to fucking break if she keeps it up.
“What's hard?” she says, her voice dripping with sex, and I just about nut myself. She blinks at me and I assume she’s just fucking with me, this is some new sort of torture she’s thought up for me as a punishment for the bullshit that was last year.
Right.
Calm the fuck down, Morrison, she’s definitely off limits. I tip my head back and let out the breath I’ve been holding trying to keep myself in check. When she clears her throat, I look over to find her blushing worse than ever and focusing on my homework again, mumbling under her breath a quiet, “Sorry.”
She looks fucking mortified and I’m fucking lost here.
Does she want me or not?
Fuck, it doesn’t matter if she wants me. Off. Limits. Morrison. I need to get my fucking head together and forget about this girl who is the only person in the fucking world who has ever looked at me and seen all of me without fucking hating me. Fuck, she sees parts of me that I don’t even show Ash or the others and not once has she judged me.
Even when I was a fucking asshole to her.
Maybe that’s the real reason I’m not chasing her like Harley is, because I know I don’t fucking deserve her. Fuck, none of us do. After everything Harley did to her last year, she used her secret connections to sort shit out with his family. She saved Avery from Rory even when they still hated each other. She’s tutored me without ever accepting money or social status for doing it.
I try to focus back on my homework but it’s fucking impossible now, especially with her sitting so close to me without actually touching me. Fuck, even that feels like a tease.
Am I going fucking crazy here? Probably.
Even blushing and twitching like she is, Lips puts together a page of notes for me for an upcoming test which I’m already pretty confident I’ll do well in. Fuck, I’ve never felt this prepared for classwork, and while my grades aren’t what my dad wants them to be, I’m going to ace them this year thanks to these tutoring sessions.
Her phone buzzes with a text from Avery to say she’s heading back from ballet practice and I watch as she packs up all of her supplies. She’s doing everything she can not to look at me and I decide that I really don’t give a fuck about consequences anymore. I just can’t fucking help myself.
I clear my throat but she ignores me, picking up papers and stacking them for no good reason but to look busy, all little movements that she does when she’s trying to blend in when inside she’s filled with that same chaos that I am.
You learn a lot about a person when you’re spending this much time with them.
Yeah, fuck it.
I push up onto my knees and she startles, her head jerking up to finally meet my eyes, and I take the chance to push her gently back into the cushions until I’m covering her body with my own. She stares up at me, holding my eyes with hers for a second before she glances down to my lips, her breath stuttering in her chest as she makes this little gasping sound that fucking breaks me.
As I lean down, her head tilts so her lips meet mine and, even though that’s all the permission I need here, I take it slowly at first.
Mostly because I can’t fucking believe I’m kissing her finally, after months of trying not to think about it. The second she kisses me back, her mouth opening and her tongue dancing across mine, I lose myself in her lips.
She pushes back into the kiss, squirming underneath me, and I try to hold back a little, try not to put fucking everything into this kiss, but she comes alive underneath me.
She parts her legs and rocks her hips just as I break away from her, panting. Fuck. I feel like I should say something here, acknowledge the fact that Harley is going to freak the fuck out—and then there's Avery and Ash—but my brain hasn’t caught up to just how fucking right kissing her is.
I aim for joking but it falls flat when my voice comes out as a sex-filled drawl. “Is that better?”
I should have kept my fucking mouth shut.
She blinks at me for a second and then it’s as though the little bubble we’re both in shatters, her face blanching as she scrambles out from underneath me so fast I barely notice she’s moving.
The moment she’s on her feet she starts shaking, taking another hasty step away as she shoves her hands in the pocket of the sweater she’s wearing. “Avery is going to be back soon. I need to get ready for bed.”
Her voice is all croaky from the kiss, but she’s back to looking anywhere but me.
Fuck.
Fuck, I’ve ruined everything.
I only stick around for as long as it takes to grab my shit, shutting the door on my way out and stomping my way back to my room.
Thank fuck I don’t see Avery on the way.
That’s my only saving grace.
I wake up the next morning from a fucking terrible night’s sleep in an awful mood.
Okay, yeah, it’s definitely guilt because I keep playing everything over in my mind to see where exactly I went wrong, to see some cue that I must’ve fucking missed, but nothing jumps out at me.
I’ve never had a girl run away from me like that before.
Things only get worse when Avery arrives at breakfast with a look on her face that tells me exactly how fucked I really am. She doesn’t say a word to me, doesn’t look at me or attempt to call me the fuck out, she just lets me sit there and sweat about it like the true evil freaking dictator she is. Harley eats his breakfast next to me, completely oblivious, and Ash is too busy snarling about something that went on in fight club to notice.
Lips doesn’t join us to eat.
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a fucking terrible sign that my life is about to be ruined, all over a kiss that ended too goddamn soon thanks to my fat mouth. Fuck, I’d spent half of the night trying to forget how she felt underneath me and just how badly I wanted to strip all of those layers off of her to taste her skin.
Jesus.<
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I have to try to discreetly adjust myself so I don’t have a glaringly obvious boner at the fucking dining table. I shouldn’t be thinking about this again and definitely not now with Harley sitting next to me and Avery’s harsh judgement hanging in the air.
I stupidly think that Avery is going to leave her vicious scolding until later when we don’t have an audience, but fuck am I wrong about that. When Ash leaves to head to his class with a kiss to her cheek, she only waits long enough for him to be out of earshot before she finally looks at me.
I stand up like there’s a chance I can get the fuck away from her before she starts, but we have choir together and I’ll be walking her down there to make sure Joey doesn’t attack her.
Again.
Harley finally notices something is up, his eyes darting between us as a smirk stretches across his lips.
“You fucked Annabelle again, didn’t you? Fucking idiot.”
It kills me to keep my mouth shut but the smug, shit-stirring air rolling off of him will disappear pretty fucking quick if he finds out what the real reason is.
Apparently me keeping my mouth shut isn’t good enough for Avery. “It wasn’t Annabelle so he gets to keep breathing for now, but if he ever attempts to touch my friend again, I will end him in the most cruel and creative ways.”
My teeth clench but I manage something close to a nod at her, stalking a little faster to class so I don’t have to see Harley’s reaction to this.
It doesn’t work.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Floss, what the fuck did he do?”
He gets a hand around my arm and yanks me back until we’re facing each other. I stare him down because I’m not afraid of him and even if we weren’t friends, I can hold my own.
Avery wedges herself in-between us and gives Harley a little shove. He barely moves because he’s a fucking wall of pent-up anger issues but her scathing tone gets his attention. “Neither of you are allowed to kiss her. Don’t throw stones, Arbour, now get to class.”
Harley clearly doesn’t want to let this go but Avery is a force of very deadly nature when she wants to be and she finally convinces him to get to his own class. She doesn’t say another word to me for the rest of the walk but when we walk into the classroom, she tucks her arm in mine and smiles at me, a show for the other students because there’s nothing she hates more than gossip about us all fighting.
Neither of you are allowed to kiss her.
Her words bouncing around in my head are enough of a distraction to get me through choir without losing my fucking mind about Lips pretending I don’t exist. She just stares at the floor the entire time and I start to obsess about everything that happened last night because, Jesus fucking Christ, she’s making me feel like I was a fucking predator or some shit.
Was I?
Fuck.
I need to just stay the fuck away from girls; this shit always blows the hell up.
Why did she have to be so fucking… perfect. Why did she have to be everything that I needed, everything I didn’t even fucking know that I wanted, and also be completely unattainable? So fucking off-limits that I might lose my dick if I can’t get my shit together.
Because even if she had reacted well, we’d still be fucking doomed.
I make it through my morning classes without hearing a word my teachers are saying and when lunchtime rolls around, I head straight back up to my room because there’s no way I’m sitting through another meal down there.
I’m supposed to go study with her tonight.
I’m not fucking going.
I decide that there’s no point in going back down for the rest of my classes, because I’m not fucking getting anything out of them, and I’m about to get absolutely fucking hammered when the door opens and the person I least want to see walks in.
Well.
The friend I least want to see.
I really don’t want to see any of our parents or guardians.
Harley doesn’t look surprised to see me, slinging his bag onto his bed and kicking his shoes off.
“I’m going down to the gym, grab your gloves.”
It’s more of a demand than an invitation but I stupidly think that this means we’re cool.
Boy, am I wrong.
My eye is fucking killing me when I get to the girls’ room.
Fucking Arbour and his shitty temper.
Avery sent me a text while we were in the ring to say that I had to show up to my tutoring, so my mood goes from fucking abysmal to borderline reckless nihilism. I shouldn’t be around people, let alone being around the girl I’m not allowed to like and her fucking keeper.
But I’m not a pussy so I show up, shit mood and all.
Avery takes up watch on her bed like she thinks I’m going to molest the Mounty against her will if she leaves us alone—which only makes things fucking worse—but I ignore her entirely.
It’s a hard thing to do when she’s glaring fucking daggers into my back the entire time.
Lips and I sit on the floor like we always do but everything is different now. Her eyes dart around everywhere like she doesn’t quite know where to look and my gut churns over it. I’m pissed off, I’m embarrassed, I’m fucking gutted, but I can’t say any of that.
There’s silence as we work, thank God.
When the excruciating hour is almost finally over, Avery gets a phone call and ducks into the bathroom for privacy. I shouldn’t do it, I know I shouldn’t, but I finally fucking snap, “You’re such a hypocrite. You ran straight to Avery.”
She blushes like an innocent little fucking maiden as she nods, and my heart squeezes in my chest. “I know. I told her exactly how embarrassed I was with my actions and I owe you an apology.”
What the fuck?
She clears her throat and fumbles over her words a little. “Look, I’m sorry I was staring and making you uncomfortable. I was tired and not thinking straight. I’m also sorry Avery yelled at you for the whole…thing, I was embarrassed that you had pity kissed me and I moped to her about it. You know how she gets when she’s in protect mode. Can we just forget it and move on?”
Pity kiss?
She thinks I’m uncomfortable?
When am I ever going to understand what the fuck goes through this girl’s head? I’d put good money on never.
I can’t help but gnaw on my lip as I think. I can’t just say whatever pops into my head because that’s how we got into this mess in the first place.
She’d kissed me back before I opened my fat mouth.
“That’s not what I was expecting you to say,” I finally murmur.
She shrugs, her eyes dropping back down to her hands in the perfect pose of sheepishness.
I get one chance to fix this and make her mine.
But the moment I open my mouth again, Avery walks out of the bathroom and pegs me with a look.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I don’t want her meddling in our shit, there’s already too many people involved in this, so I play it off. I raise an eyebrow at her, all of my cocky attitude back in spades now I have a little more of the story.
“Where did you get that lovely black eye from, Morrison?” Avery croons, poking at me to start a fight. She struts into the kitchen and begins to make hot cocoa. Two mugs, so I’m not getting one, but I don’t drink the shit anyway so no skin off of my nose.
I deflect her question, because it’s both true and none of her business. “Arbour was defending his love. He thinks I’m trying to steal his girl out from under him and he can be a jealous shit.”
Lips starts to fumble around with her supplies, avoiding both of our eyes, as Avery snarks back to me, “I didn’t know he had a girl.”
He doesn’t and maybe, just maybe, she might pick me instead. I grin and pack away my textbooks and notes. “Try telling him that. Have a good night, girls. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ash
Father called, he has a new
crop of sluts coming in from Europe. I’ve picked one out for you already; she looks so much like the Mounty slut that you might just break and play with her too.
I don’t understand how exactly it is that I spend all of my time trying to stay the fuck away from Joey but he can still read me like a fucking book.
The morning I wake up to that text only gets worse as the day goes on. It’s almost impossible to push down the blind rage inside me, the need to walk over to my brother’s room and just fucking slit his throat so consuming that I take an hour in the shower. The cold water does nothing to put the burning in the pit of my stomach out. Fuck, nothing is going to calm it down today.
Nothing.
I eat breakfast with everyone and thankfully the Mounty doesn’t join us. I can’t fucking look at her right now, not without seeing that text in my mind over and over again, until I’ll lash out and fucking ruin everything.
I get angry at her for being here all over again.
I can’t afford to have something else for Joey to use against me. Protecting Avery is a full-time fucking job, even sharing some of the load with two other people, and adding another vulnerable girl to the mix just isn’t fucking smart.
Even if she has invaded every aspect of my life like some sort of insidious disease.
Fuck.
The worst sort of attraction is the kind that you hate because it really does become all-consuming. All. Fucking. Consuming. I hate her and I hate that no matter how fucking hard I try to stay away from her she just keeps drawing me back in.
I’m fucked.
I barely notice the absence of Harley and Blaise all day, or the fact that the Mounty doesn’t show up for lunch or dinner at the dining hall either. It’s not until I’ve showered and sat down with a glass of bourbon to take the edge off my anger, that Harley and Blaise get back to the room from boxing and I find out the drama I’ve missed from the day.
The second the door swings open I realize something has shifted in our family that won’t ever shift the fuck back.
Fucking Mounty.
Morrison stalks over to the freezer and grabs an ice pack to hold against his eye, glaring at Harley like he’s going to slit his throat in his sleep.