by Angel Lawson
I see the flicker of disappointment—irritation, maybe—in his eyes. I push up on my toes and kiss him quickly, hoping to soothe it away, and then take the squirming cat from his hands.
“Night,” I whisper, hoping maybe he’ll kiss me again, but he just nods, eyes settled on the house behind me.
Great, I think, dropping Firefly by his food bowl and refreshing his water. He’s probably pissed off, or frustrated, or realizing that I’m basically a prisoner and having second thoughts. No—third thoughts. Maybe even fourth thoughts. It’s hard to forget that this thing I’ve got going with Reyn is fragile. Any little thing could burst the bubble.
I tell my parents goodnight, pulling out my phone as I ascend the stairs.
V: Sorry. I told you my parents hover.
I wait for a moment on the staircase, hoping for a response. It never comes.
Paranoia nags at me as I walk into my room. I’d told him that I’m not a kid, but sure enough, that’s exactly how everyone is treating me. Now, I look like some silly girl with no freedom, home on a Friday night, locked up tight by her well-meaning parents. I kick off my shoes, push down my jeans, and look at the tattoo on my inner thigh. Earlier, I’d felt so brave and special for having it. Chosen. But that’s not actually the case, is it? It’s just another symbol of pity, one that Reyn had to secure for me out of fear of getting in trouble. And who even knows. This thing we’re doing could easily be a ploy to make me forget about the exposé. If there’s one thing my brother and Reyn know how to do, it’s making me complicit in their crimes.
Suddenly, I feel like a complete fool.
The wave of insecurity takes my breath away. It’s abrupt and engulfing, a tidal wave that I haven’t felt in a long time. I hate it. I hate it so goddamn much. In the back of my mind, a little voice is telling me that it’s not rational. Emory would never sign off on something like that. But it makes a perfect kind of sense. What other reason would someone like Reynolds McAllister be interested in someone like me? Maybe I’m being careless, having all these feelings for him. Maybe it’s all a joke.
Maybe I’m delusional, after all.
There’s a way past this, you know…
The impulse settles over me like a heavy cloud. It’s a justification, an excuse. The sad thing is, it’s not even hard to rationalize when I go into the bathroom and approach my jewelry box. I open the top and fish out the small drawstring bag inside. There’s three pills left—one for tonight, two for tomorrow. I restock from my hidden stashes on Sundays, and lately, I’ve tried really hard to ignore how small that’s probably getting. I drop one pill in my hand and contemplate another. Maybe I should take an extra today, just to get past the hump, the insecurity, to calm myself down. Who could blame me?
I’m shaking the second into my hand when I hear three sharp raps. I jump, the two pills falling out of my hand. Worried that it’s my mom, I hastily fish them from the counter and put them back into the bag, locking them away.
But when I get to my door, no one is there.
Tap-tap, tap.
As soon as I realize where it’s coming from, I know it’s Reyn. There’s nothing special about the raps to give anything away, but clues so obvious are unnecessary. Somehow, I just… know.
I feel him.
He’s crouching right outside my window, but it’s too dark to make out anything but the ambiguous shape of him. “Hey, it’s me, don’t freak out,” he whispers when I’ve wrenched my window open.
I watch, stunned as he climbs inside. He’s wearing a loose pair of gray sweatpants and the same Preston Prep football shirt he’d been wearing the day we got our tattoos. He gets inside easily, shirt lifting when he reaches up to grab the window, swinging a leg inside. I catch a quick flash of dark ink disappearing beneath his waistband and my fingers itch to touch it.
Once inside, he quietly slides the window closed and turns to me, dusting his hands off on his thighs. His face spreads into a wolfish grin, cheeks dimpling. “Hey.”
“How did you get up here?” The awe in my voice is apparent and I peer around him to see out the window.
“You’ve got that little overhang just below the window that covers the side door. I pulled myself up.” He inches forward, and his hands fit perfectly on my waist, thumbs sweeping gently beneath my shirt. From here, his eyes look tired, a little bit strained. At my incredulous smile, some of that falls away, softens.
“You pulled up?” I gape at him. “Twelve feet?”
He shrugs and tightens the grip on my waist—my bare waist. I’m still not wearing pants, something I slowly realize as my heart rate shifts from shocked to…well, something nervous and undeniably wanting.
He ducks his head to press a slow, soft kiss to my neck. “I may have been the pull-up champion of Dixon Hall for three years running.” His kiss travels up the spot below my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. “Had no idea it’d be so useful.”
I accept his kiss enthusiastically, our mouths parting, tongues gliding against one another. He tastes like warmth, a lot like how he smells. Something complicated and new and undeniably masculine. His hands drag down my hips, fingertips skating across my outer thighs so gently that it’s as if they’re merely flirting with the idea of touch.
I break from the kiss with a sharp inhale, feeling too exposed. “I’m glad the training paid off, but…” I bite down on my lip when he noses behind my ear, breathing me in. Scared of putting him off, I reluctantly ask, “Can you give me a second? I was just cleaning up in the bathroom.”
Luckily, he takes it in stride, pressing a deep, “Sure,” into my neck. His fingers drag as he steps away, eyes dropping to my legs. “Want me to lock the door?”
My throat clicks with a loud swallow. “Yeah, good idea.”
I close myself in the bathroom, and sure enough, my reflection is telling me what I already know. My face is beet red, eyes a little bit wild around the edges.
I brush my teeth and look down at the white bikini panties, a little horrified there’s nothing sexier in my drawer. All those trips to the mall with Sydney and never once did it cross my mind to buy something to be prepared.
Not like I’d ever have been prepared for Reynolds McAllister. In my bedroom. On a Friday night. With my parents downstairs.
I reach in my drawer and tug on a pair of soft cotton shorts, unhooking my bra. I take one glance back at the jewelry box, nerves craving a hit of something to chill me out, but I know one thing for sure.
Whatever is about to happen with Reyn, I want to be able to remember it. Every little detail.
I walk into the room and find him sitting on the cushioned chair by the window. Distantly, I’m surprised that he’s not on the bed. But it’s hard to focus on that when his sharp green eyes drink me in, roaming from head to toe and lingering heavily on my thighs. The tattoo is completely visible in these shorts.
“Is this okay?” he suddenly asks, gaze fixing to mine. “I know I just barged in. I probably should have texted you first.”
“No, it’s good! Great, really.” Quieter, I admit, “I wanted to see you.”
He smiles, fingers tapping the arm of the chair. “Yeah, I wanted to see you too.”
I step in front of him. “I just…I’m not sure if I’m ready for...” I make a gesture that’s meant to encompass the very concept of sweaty sexual relations, but instead is just a spastic jerking. “That. Yet.”
His forehead creases—for about three seconds. Apparently, my gesture was informative enough, because his face goes slack in realization. “I didn’t come here to have sex, Vandy.” His voice is low, and despite his words, he barely has to reach forward to brush his fingertips over my legs. “Just what kind of guy do you take me for?”
I give a nervous smile. “The kind of guy who has a lot more experience than me?”
His hand drops, fingertips dragging away. “Not with this,” he says, eyes boring into mine. “It’s not like I’ve exactly had an active dating life. I was trapped in a school with three
hundred other guys.”
Dating life, my brain screams.
I relax, nudging him with my knee. “That’s a good reason not to date.”
“Yeah,” he reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling me close, “but there were other reasons, too.”
He wants me to ask and, like a fool, I do. “Like what?”
“Like,” he says slowly, looking up at me through his lashes, “this girl I knew was still back home. I hurt her pretty bad, and I wasn’t going to be satisfied until I saw she was better.” He lifts my hand to his lips, and he kisses me on the back of the knuckles. “And then when I saw her, suddenly I knew why I’d waited. She was even prettier than before. Funny. Determined. Sexy.” He drags me, stunned, between his knees, hands stroking my legs. “I’m not here to pressure you, V. I just want to hang with you, and if we can’t do it in public, we’re going to have to make our own opportunities.”
His left hand trails from my thigh to my hip, pushing at the hem of my shirt. He stares at my stomach and rubs his fingers over the numb ridge of the scar. The surgeries left me with little feeling there, too much nerve damage, but I can feel his touch, the warmth of his breath as he kisses the puckered skin.
“Tell me about it.”
I swallow, already knowing my voice is thick with unshed tears. “You were there.” I wasn’t expecting him. Not like this. Not sweet and soft and the way he looks at me, like I’m something special. Chosen. I hope he understands that the wetness in my eyes isn’t bitterness or hurt. It’s an ache, for sure.
But a good one.
“Not really.” He shakes his head and looks up at me, eyes brilliant and sure. “Not for what happened after. In the hospital, at home. I want to know.” His voice is so soft that I can hardly make out the words, “I need to know.”
I reach out to touch his cheek, cupping it in my palm. “Are you sure?”
I ask, because it’s ugly and I know it’ll stab him in the heart, but he nods and says, “I’m sure.”
I take a deep breath. “Will you tell me about yours, too?” I ask, thumb rasping against the stubble covering his jaw. “Where you’ve been?”
“If you want.”
“I do,” I say, taking the hand he has on my hip. I tug, reluctantly explaining, “Eastside’s softball bleachers weren’t very friendly to my back. Can we just…” I nod toward the bed.
His eyes follow and he nods, standing to follow me to the bed. He perches on the edge, untying his shoes, and leaving them there, lined up perfectly, laces tucked inside. “Do your parents come to check on you?”
I watch his gaze ping nervously to the door. “Once I’m in bed for the night, they generally leave me be. How about you? Where’s your dad?”
He scoots up against the pillows, stretching out next to me. “God knows.” He wedges his arm beneath his head, eyes fixed on my ceiling. “Probably some hot date. How the hell he manages to pull so much trim is beyond me.”
“Trim?”
He looks at me. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, but his eyes are smiling. “You know, tail? Pussy?”
“Oh.” My face heats, but once his smile finally breaks to the surface, I can’t help but bury a laugh into my hands.
He tugs a hand away from my face, dimples shining at me. “You’re so fucking cute, sometimes it kills me.”
I playfully bat his hand away, but something warm and joyous radiates from the center of my being, and he’d have to be blind to not see it. “The feeling is mutual.”
“Good to know,” he says, smirking at me. With his arm up behind his head like that, his shirt has risen up the scantest inch.
I ask, “Can I see it?” and reach tentatively toward his stomach.
He looks down, realizing what I’m requesting. “Can I see yours?”
Mine isn’t exactly hidden, but I lift my knee anyway, putting it on display. It’s pretty much healed, no longer red around the edges. He lifts himself up on an elbow to look, teeth pulling at his lip as he reaches out to graze a rough fingertip around the ink. He makes a couple of those shiver-inducing loops before his fingers start roaming out a little further, grazing up and down in slow circuits.
He whispers a soft, “Fuck,” and then falls back, hand pulling away. “God, that drives me crazy.”
“Yeah?” I ask, even though I know it does.
He looks at me, and then down his body, lifting an eyebrow. “Yeah.”
The outline of his half-hard erection is so visible through his sweatpants that it makes my mouth part in surprise. Reynolds McAllister is in my bed, with a boner. It doesn’t even feel real.
“Your turn,” I say, reaching for his waistband. He watches, but doesn’t stop me, letting me tug it down until the pitchfork is revealed, as if my hand isn’t mere inches from the hardening length of him. His tattoo is healed as well as mine, the ink settled in well amongst all his hard muscle. I brush a thumb over it and his stomach flexes, twitching. I push his shirt up a little, revealing more of his toned stomach. It’s just crazy really, how perfectly he’s cut. I get this crystal-clear vision of myself climbing on top of him, slotting that hardness under his pants right up against my core.
I groan, falling onto my back. “That drives me crazy,” I confess.
Jesus, when did it get so hot in here?
I feel more than hear his chuckle as he turns on his side, watching me. “Good.”
I mirror him, rolling to pillow my hot cheek on my hand. I blow a lock of hair from my face. “Seriously, I’ve never felt so—” I cut off, not knowing how to explain it without delving deeper. But that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? He’s looking at me curiously, waiting. “When I was on the pills, I didn’t feel stuff like this,” I admit.
Gently, he asks, “Like what?” and tucks that piece of hair behind my ear.
“Well, I didn’t feel much of anything back then, but especially not…” I have to look away, already cringing. “… horny?”
He puffs a surprised laugh. “Baby V.”
I give him a weak shove. “Shut up. Like you don’t know the effect you have on girls.”
He blinks at me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he looks almost bashful. “I haven’t been around girls for a long time.”
I remember now how Reyn got all those cut muscles, and my smile slowly bleeds away. I’m almost afraid to know the answer when I ask, “At your school…did they hurt you?”
His forehead creases at the abrupt change of topic. “At Mountain Point?” When I nod, he brushes a thumb over my jaw. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”
I frown. “Then how?”
He sighs, looking away. “It’s not really about rehabilitation there. It’s about…scaring us. Telling us that we’re nothing, making us feel small, worthless. Tell us that, despite the therapeutic mumbo-jumbo, we are defined by our actions. The more you feel like an individual, the more you start feeling rebellious, or falling into your old habits. It’s shitty, and a bit of a mind-fuck, but I don’t know, it’s probably effective for a certain type of kid. Some of those guys made me seem like a fucking do-gooder comparatively, but they didn’t know how much damage I’d done. How much penance I owed.”
I watch him talk, his face growing into that same stony stillness I’ve alternately come to love and loathe. “You didn’t,” I say, capturing his hand in mine. “It was a mistake.”
He looks at me again, eyes dark. “Yeah, I did.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Vandy.” His gaze flicks across my face; cheeks, mouth, nose, chin. “Your turn.”
But suddenly, the thought of telling him makes my stomach hurt. In a small voice, I confess, “I’m scared.”
He tilts his head. “Of what?”
“That it’ll make you believe what all those people at Mountain Point told you,” I admit. “That I won’t be able to have this again.” I pull his arm around my middle, reluctantly meeting his eyes. “That you’ll pull away because you feel guilty and responsible.”
/>
“I am guilty, V.” He pulls me closer, arm tightening around me. “But that’s not going to happen.”
I fidget with the sleeve of his shirt. “Promise?”
He presses a kiss to my forehead and holds it there, muttering against me, “Promise.”
Quietly, I tell him everything. About the first surgery, and how it was the scariest. How I woke up in recovery alone, and I thought I had died. And then the second surgery, weeks later, and how it’d been painful to recover from and ultimately ineffective, and how blindingly angry I was. Not at Reyn, but at the surgeons, for making all these promises they couldn’t keep. For putting me through something so traumatic, for zero gain. Then I tell him about the third, and how it was better after that. The years of PT, the gait training, how slowly I got my strength back. How much work has gone into where I currently am, able to walk without crutches or braces. I tell him about the party Emory threw for me the first time I spent a whole day walking on my own, without any tools to help me, and how he even bought me a cake and balloons. I tell him how high I was through all of it, and how badly I feel about it now, looking back, being unable to muster a fraction of my brother’s enthusiasm.
“He was so happy,” I remember. “He was happy enough for both of us, I guess.”
I hear Reyn’s swallow. “Em’s a good brother.”
“He is,” I agree, nestling my head into the curve of Reyn’s shoulder. “I’m always caught between never feeling grateful enough and always feeling suffocated by him. It’s hard. But I know I’m lucky.”
Reyn whispers, “He’s going to fucking kill me.”
I pull back to look at him, at the dread swirling in his eyes. “Reyn, I can’t—” I touch his face, coaxing him to look at me. “I can’t keep not living my life just because my family is like this. I can’t.” My voice is full of an old, secret fear. “It’s like every day since the accident, I’ve faded, and I’ve just become this ghost of a person. Part of it was the pills, but I know that isn’t all of it. A bigger part is just not being allowed to grow into the person I’m supposed to be. It’s crushing me.”