“It stopped the night of the party. Even though I was leaving Dad and Wyatt, everything I’d ever known, the house I grew up with Mama . . . Her grave. It was so hard leaving her behind, Meekai. I knew I couldn’t visit her anytime I wanted, I was so torn. But even with all of that, the hum just stopped. So, in answer to your shitty question, that’s how I know I love you. Because you took away the hum.”
She shook her head like the answer was there the whole time, she was just too blind to see it.
“I didn’t realize it until now. This was raw, what just happened here. I never thought I would get to have this. But here I am; here you are. You’re my peace, Meekai. My safe place. You’re the one I search for in hallways, you’re the one who loved confidence into the broken girl I was. Because you loved me, I got to grow into loving you back, and when that happened, I found me.”
I stopped the hum.
I was her peace. Her safe place.
By my loving her, she found herself.
My chest burned with emotion. My eyes stung. I took in every word and let it roll over me like a full breath. She was finally here with me. Complete surrender.
“The way I love you, Radley? There is no end. I don’t remember anything much before that night. It’s like we’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, and that scares the fuck outta me.”
“You’re supposed to be the brave one,” she smiled. “Why does it scare you?”
“Because now I have everything to lose.”
“Well guess what? Now I have everything to lose, too.” She shrugged her shoulders, resigned to the fact that there was no going back. “Let me love you in spite of the fear, and I’ll try not to give you an excuse to run away.”
“No matter how far . . .” I began.
“. . . I run, you won’t stop until you find me,” she finished.
I winked at her. “And even then.”
“And even then,” she echoed.
24
Radley
It had been almost three weeks since that night. Nothing else had happened. There hadn’t been any more naked FaceTime sessions. But it didn’t stop Meekai from letting me know what he wanted to do to me. And it didn’t stop me from letting him know we would only be moving forward.
“Did you feel it, Violet? Did you feel everything that night?”
“Close,” I baited. “But I’ll feel everything the day you sink inside me and claim me completely.”
Silence.
More silence.
“Fuckkk . . . Violet, you can’t say that to me!”
“I know, you’re vulnerable.”
Meekai couldn’t keep his hands off me. He had to hold my hand everywhere we went. When we were sitting at lunch, he either kept his hand on my thigh or had one arm perched over my shoulder as his thumb ran lazy circles in the crook of my neck.
He joked that he was conditioning me. He said one day he knew I’d cave. I’d throw him down and mount him like a prized cock on the cafeteria table in front of the entire student body. Apparently, I wouldn’t be able to contain my need for him any longer.
Even though there was probably complete truth to his physical need for me, he’d stated over and over, “I’ll never push you, even though I say this stuff, I’d rather have you with me and have no sex than be without you and let the sex tear us apart because you weren’t ready. It’ll happen when it happens. I’m not fucking this up, Violet. You mean too much to me. I won’t be without you.”
It was Friday afternoon and I wouldn’t be seeing Meekai tonight. He and Linc had a game at another high school a few towns over. He loved me at his games but had said he probably wouldn’t get a chance to see me afterward. They had to travel back on the school bus because it was a school event. So, I made plans with Becca and Brooks.
Brooks didn’t take much convincing, even though she swore to me on that first day we met in the school office that she didn’t paint anyone's nails but her own.
“I don't do sleepovers in cute jammies and gossip about the bad boy. I sleepover at the bad boy’s, don't wear jammies and fuck him.”
It seemed like a whole lifetime had happened since then. Just as I’d suspected that day, Brooks was coming from a place of hurt and drew a line in the sand to keep a safe distance, but she’d come to trust Becca and me, and we’d all been back and forth to one another’s places to hang out on a pretty constant basis. We usually went to Brooks’ house on Wednesday afternoons to study.
It was weird that first Wednesday when I saw Mrs. Dyke mindlessly singing along to It Was Always You, as she strode into the living room, Meekai’s ringtone blaring. She was in jeans and an AC/DC t-shirt, rocking some serious babe that was usually hidden under her ugly tweed skirts and beige-toned blouses.
She baked us cookies as we studied, and she and Brooks argued in good humor. Brooks had done a complete one-eighty, and was beginning to show her vulnerabilities. She’d told Becca and me that Mrs. Dyke had lost her five-year-old daughter, Ruby, when she was twenty-seven.
Apparently, Mrs. Dyke's husband blamed her for Ruby’s death and their marriage couldn’t survive it. She’d been on her own ever since. Brooks was convinced she took in foster kids to atone for her sins. Brooks had found out she had nothing to atone for. It wasn’t her mistake. It wasn’t her fault.
Her husband was drunk, and he hit their baby girl with his car as he careened up the driveway way too fast on his way home from the bar. Mrs. Dyke had been picking lemons from a tree close to the driveway, Ruby playing on her tricycle right beside her. He drove so haphazardly that he veered right into her. She’d died in Mrs. Dykes arms before the paramedics arrived.
She was only thirty-eight, I’d thought mid-forties, but I now knew it was the trauma of losing her baby girl that had aged her. When Brooks learned of this, their relationship changed. She began to trust Mrs. Dyke, or Anita, as we called her after hours.
Brooks’ parents had given her away when she was ten, and she’d been in and out of the foster care system before Anita took her in and made it permanent. She never revealed the abuse she’d suffered, but she hinted that it was most likely something she’d never be able to talk about.
She wanted us to see her as Brooks Easton, the girl we’d come to know. She’d told me about a week ago that she finally felt free, loved, and protected. She still had her attitude and preferred to wear black, but she was open to trust for the first time because it was the first time that anyone had proved to her that they were worth trusting.
“Hey, baby.” A familiar arm wrapped around me from behind, and warm fingers gently moved my hair from one side to the other as tender lips kissed and sucked on my neck.
“Meekai,” I moaned. I reached behind me to pull his head further into the crook of my neck, his hard body growing harder as I gently ground into him. I’d grown to love the feeling of him hard against me, the way his body responded, the way my body tightened and loosened all at once. I wanted more, but he refused me. This was as good as it was going to get, for now.
He lifted his warm lips from my bare skin, a gentle breeze catching hold of his wet imprint which rocked a delicious shiver up and down the length of my body.
“I’m gonna miss you tonight, Violet.” His voice was needy, his hands firm as they grabbed my waist and turned me to face him.
“I’m gonna miss you too, but remember we leave for Adalita in just over a month. What are you gonna do for thirteen hours stuck in a car with me?” I smiled, knowing full well what I wanted.
“Firstly,” he started, “I’m not driving thirteen hours straight. That’s what hotels are for. I might even let you kiss me goodnight before I leave your room and go back to mine.”
I grabbed his face in my hands and stood on my tippy toes as I kissed his nose. “You’re still going on about that? Really? We’re both old enough to sleep in the same room and keep our hands to ourselves,” I rolled my eyes.
“No. I won’t survive it, Radley. Separate rooms.” He wasn’t joking. He
called me Radley.
“I don’t want my own room in the middle of God knows where, Meekai. We’re sharing a room.” I let go of his face and readjusted my back pack on my shoulder, rejection searing my insides.
“I want to, baby, I do. I just . . . I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“I’d be a mistake?” I knew he wanted to take this slow, and even though I knew he didn’t mean it that way, the hurt side of me held onto it and ran with rejection. Sometimes I refused to hear the truth, because the echoes of the past screamed too loud for me to think straight.
“You know I don’t mean it like that, Violet.” He grabbed my shoulders and inched himself down until he could look into my eyes. Always had to look into my damn eyes.
“I don’t want the situation to dictate the outcome. Things have a way of getting out of hand, and just because we’re in a hotel, I don’t want you to feel the pressure, subconscious or otherwise, and make a rash decision. You know how much I want you. I don’t think I could say no to you. Please, don’t test me on this.”
His eyes pleaded with me to understand, and I did, but it still tasted a lot like rejection to a mind only now just learning to believe the truth instead of a lie. I had my moments, and this was one of them.
Loud laughter of the obnoxious variety snapped my attention away from Meekai as my gaze landed on Reign Beckett, Linc’s twin sister. Bitch extraordinaire, and shamelessly pathetic flirt. Her laughter faded and her mouth curled up at the corner, trouble written all over her face.
“Hey, Kai,” she said in a pitch that would make a dog howl. “I’ll save you a seat on the bus.” She winked.
My stomach turned and my mind started running. She was so beautiful. She was the girl you measured yourself against, knowing you’d fail every time. Her beauty was effortless, classic. She was the girl everyone but me wanted as their friend, and every guy wanted to spend the night with.
“Don’t bother, Reign. I’ll be sitting with your brother.” Meekai’s voice said one thing, but his face held a mischievous grin. I knew they grew up together. There was a history there, but the way he told her one thing while his smile insinuated another, left me unsettled.
“Whatever, Kai. I know where you’ll actually be sitting. I packed you a Red Bull and Mama’s chocolate chip cookies. I know how you like them after a game.” Her words grated like nails down a chalk board, and she got off on the scowl I directed at her.
“Hey, Boo,” she chortled.
My heart dropped. I was five seconds away from walking over and punching her in the face where she stood with her gaggle of cheerbitches.
“Reign!” Meekai snapped. “Enough!” I’d told Meekai about my name, about how he used it over and over, and I could only just bare it when Dad, Gamma, and Wye used it. His face flared red and his eyes turned dark. “This,” he pointed between himself and Reign, “It’s not happening.”
I smiled to myself as a few of her friends giggled at his response, and a few others chanted, “Burn.” Maybe the cheerbitches weren’t so bad, after all.
Her face dropped and she adjusted her messenger bag. “We’ll see,” she challenged, and with that, she instructed the others to follow her to the buses that waited for the football team and cheerleaders.
“You know she’ll never stop, right?” Meekai asked. “She knows there’s no chance in hell, but you . . . I need you to believe there’s no chance in hell.”
I swallowed past the rising trust issues that whispered and clawed at me, and looked into his honest and loving eyes. Of course, I knew.
“I know,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around his waist and snuggled my head into his chest. He placed an arm around my back and ran the other through my hair. The closeness, his smell, the way he’d only ever shown me that he was completely trustworthy, it settled my thunderous heart and pushed down the voices that tried to convince me otherwise.
“Have fun with the girls, okay? I’ll come around tomorrow, and we’ll do something. Maybe we can watch a movie at my place. I’ll throw in some homemade pineapple pizza.” He winked. “Maybe I’ll even get you to show me the ink you’ve been hiding from me for weeks.”
Nerves hit, a slight gasp escaped and struggled to stay hidden. All it took was one innocent comment to force me to remember the only physical scar he’d left behind. I wanted to show Meekai the tattoo, but I couldn’t. I’d been avoiding it. I didn’t want him to see the permanent memory I’d tried to forget every time I ran my fingers over the soft indentation or caught site of the faded mark in the mirror.
I’d told Wyatt it was a birthmark when he’d tattooed straight over the top of it, my poor attempt to erase what my mind couldn’t forget. Wyatt had barely seen me in a bathing suit, so he wasn’t curious enough to ask questions, but if Meekai ever saw it, I knew he would. I didn’t want him to be reminded of what had happened to me. To be disgusted, for him to see me as tainted as I felt.
I flinched, unsuccessfully yanked from his hold as he ran the tip of his finger so hard and deep, that it punched the breath out of me. I ached, suffered with barely a whimper, a cry that couldn’t be heard by anyone but him.
“This should scab over perfectly, Boo Girl. It should leave a nice, deep shade of pinky brown just like the tips of these luscious fuckin’ nipples. Look how they respond to me,” he mocked.
“They know who they belong to. You’re mine now,” he whispered. “This is to remind you that you’ll always be mine. I’ll come for you again. Never fear, sweetheart.”
“Radley? Baby, are you okay?” Meekai’s voice sounded concerned as he drew back and moved his hands to my face. “What happened? Where did you go? Why are you shaking?” I was shaking? Shit, I was. “I’ll never go near her, Radley, if that’s what’s got you upset. I’ll bail on the game. I can’t leave you like this. She was goading you to get a reaction. You’re mine, and I am yours,” he professed, the sentiment ran an unwelcomed shiver down my spine as I heard his voice telling me exactly the same thing.
“Radley, fuck . . . I’m not going anywhere. Radley!” His voice raised in a tone he’d never used with me before, full of concern, but also tipped with an attitude. “She isn’t you. Do you want me to throw the game? If it’s proof you want . . .” More of the attitude.
I pulled away, still reeling from the aftershocks of the memory, not able to construct words fast enough for him. He was deciphering my silence as mistrust, when really, I was trying to kick my legs, desperate to surface from the memory.
“No,” I finally managed to say. “I trust you, I do.”
“Then what is it? You’re shaking.”
“It wasn’t you, I promise. I just had a flashback. I wasn’t expecting it, I’m so sorry,” I told him, my voice frustrated and bitter.
He ruined everything. He ruined me. Meekai doesn’t deserve this.
“Violet, shit.” He pulled me back into his arms. He slowly swayed and rubbed circles on my back, trying to soothe the unwanted memories into submission. “Do you need me to stay?” he asked, his voice full of regret now he understood the reason for my reaction. “I don’t wanna leave, baby. I don’t think I can,” he whispered into my ear, laying a gentle kiss to my temple.
“No, I want you to go. They need you. Linc needs you. He can’t play without you. This isn’t the first time this has happened. It won’t be the last. Just please . . .”
“Please what, Violet? Tell me what I can do.”
“Please don’t give up on me.” He stopped swaying us and pushed me back so he could look at me.
“The only thing that will separate us is death, Radley.” He stared at me with conviction and made sure I heard him before he took my mouth hard and deep.
His kiss told me that he didn’t have the ability to give up on me. My kiss was asking him to keep his promise. He pulled away, and looked down at me, his chest heaving, his breaths labored as I tried to steady myself against him.
“Fuck, I love kissing you.” His dopey, after-kiss smile, one of my favorit
es. “I love you so much, Radley. There’s . . .”
“Nothing you wouldn’t do for me,” I finished his sentence. I was always finishing his sentences.
He’d always follow. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. There’s not a length I could run that he wouldn't travel to get to me. I always caught the end of each proclamation and finished it off. It had become our thing. He loved it, held tight to it, because it meant I heard him.
“Hey, Kai! Gotta go, man,” Linc yelled from somewhere behind me.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” he asked, apprehension lacing his words; a push to go, a need to stay.
“It’s fine, I’m okay now.” And I was. “Becca and Brooks will be here in a minute. I told them I’d meet them here on the entrance steps. Go!” I smiled. “I have to come up with a failsafe plan to hide my peanut M&M’s from Becca. She ate a whole bucket on me once, and I’ve had to hide them ever since. I fail every time,” I joked, reaching up to give him one last kiss. “Yum,” I said as I pulled away. “Maybe you should stay.” I winked.
“Voilettt,” he whined. “You can’t say those things to me.”
“I know, you’re vulnerable,” I laughed.
“Well yeah. I totally am, but right now, I’m really fucking hard. And I have to try and walk my way over to the bus without anyone noticing the outline of my cock straining through my uniform.”
“Use your duffle bag. I mean, it’s big enough.”
He burst out laughing and kissed my forehead. “Yeah, one day you’ll see first-hand how true that is. Maybe then you’ll stop teasing me.”
“If memory serves, I remember seeing it hard and angry, desperate for me to make it come, desperate for my tongue-”
He clasped a hand over my mouth as he cursed under his breath. “I’m gonna need a clean uniform and a bigger duffle bag,” he said in a pained voice.
“Meekai! For fucks sake, man. Coach is about to have a coronary,” Linc yelled out again.
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