Afraid to Fly (Fearless #2)

by S. L. Jennings

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as she locked the front door, securing Toby safely inside. She said she wanted to show me something, but I didn’t expect us to leave.

  “You’ll see.”

  I followed her down the dark hallway and to the decrepit elevator. I had taken the stairs to her place—no way was I going to trust that dinosaur—but she didn’t bat an eyelash at the steel box of death. So, neither would I.

  We rode up to the top, me trying my damnedest to avoid gripping the filthy railing or wondering what the hell that sticky substance was on the floor. Then there was a short stairway and a door that led to the roof. The moment we stepped onto the gravel, I paused.

  “You didn’t bring me up here so you could push me off, right?” My expression was dubious; my heart was hammering out of my chest.

  “No, silly,” she replied, waving me off. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d take you down to the basement. Fifty-five gallon drum, some sodium hydroxide. Much cleaner.”

  I was still frozen in the doorway when she busted out laughing. “Dude! Seriously, I will not kill you! Come on!”

  I followed her on shaky legs as she picked a spot for us to sit near the ledge. That explained the blanket she had stashed under her arm before we left. For a second, my mind was headed straight to the gutter. Hell, maybe it still was.

  “Look,” she gasped, breathing in the breathtaking view of Charlotte’s bright city lights against the indigo backdrop. Mountains of glass and steel and concrete that had been erected in an urban jungle, twinkled like fallen stars. From here, everything looked bigger, scarier, yet exhilaration surged inside me. It was odd, seeing the city like this. I knew these streets like the back of my hand. Yet, from here, I felt like a stranger.

  I hadn’t noticed that Raven was taking pictures, until I heard the whir of her camera. I watched her work, mesmerized at the way she moved along the ledge, eager to catch it all, encasing this moment together in immortality. She was happy like this—I could see it. It was a side of her that I had never known existed.

  “I’ve probably got a million photos from this vantage point, but every one seems different.” Then she turned to me and snapped a picture before I could object. “See? Now you’re mine.”

  She flinched right after she said it, but just went back to capturing the city lights. I didn’t want her to take it back either.

  “If you had 24 hours to live, what would you do?” she asked, her back facing me.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t. That was the honest-to-God truth. “I never thought about it.”

  “Then think about it.”

  I did as she instructed, but kept coming back to the same conclusion. “Uh, honestly? Have sex . . . ?”

  I could almost visualize her rolling her eyes. “Ugh. Lame. And extremely cliché.” She turned around and came back to the blanket to stuff her camera back in her bag. Then she returned to the ledge. “I would try to rent a small plane and see as many places as I could before I kicked the bucket.”

  “Who would pilot it?”

  “Me, of course.”

  “You fly planes?”

  “No. But I will . . . one day. Maybe. There’s just too much world to see.”

  In an act of sheer lunacy, she carefully stepped onto the ledge, balancing herself with arms outstretched.

  “Whoa. Get down from there.” I was on my feet in a flash, slowly moving toward her as to not spook her. “Seriously, that’s dangerous.”

  “Danger is my middle name,” she retorted, smiling.

  “For real. The cement on that doesn’t look stable.” Another inch. Shit, what was this girl thinking?

  “Nonsense. I’ve done this a dozen times. I’m good, promise.”

  “Alone? Are you crazy?” I let out a frustrated groan. “But what if you fall?”

  ““Oh, but my darling, what if I fly?”” She looked at me, conviction and serenity burning in those big, blue eyes, her version of the popular Erin Hanson quote still lingering on her tongue. I could only stare back and long to taste that freedom . . . that fire.

  Something passed between us then—an unspoken truce, yes—but something more. Something bigger than the both of us.

  I reached for her, and she took my hand, letting me pull her into the safety net of my arms. I only had the pleasure of holding onto her—this feral, beautiful creature—for just a moment, before she was already spinning away, jet-black hair dancing in the night breeze.

  Then something both mortifying and unfortunate happened. I tripped. Over my own two feet, taking her down with me as an innocent bystander.

  She let out a squeal as I reached out for aid and accidently grabbed her breast in the process. The gravel bit into our skin when we hit the rooftop floor, although I tried to absorb most of the impact with my back. We had somehow ended up chest to chest, face to face, like we’d been transported into one of those cliché chick flicks Kam and Angel liked to watch. But there was nothing staged or scripted about what was happening between us. The way she looked into my eyes—those blue depths flaring with some unnamed emotion—it was inevitably real. I felt every bit of it as if I was reenacting the story of my life.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t pause to consider the ramifications of crossing that invisible threshold. I leaned forward and kissed her, acting in a haze of lust and adrenaline. I pulled her body closer to mine, pressed mine into hers. Tried to taste and feel every bit of her. My hands roamed the soft expanse of her curves, kneaded the mound of her ass and teasing the skin at the edge of her sweatshirt. Just that little patch of skin had me growing in my slacks, and I surged upwards, wanting her to feel it. Wanting her to feel what she did to me. She made a garbled noise in the back of her throat, which only spurred me on. I wanted to make her moan. I wanted to make her scream. I didn’t care if we were on the rooftop, exposed to prying eyes. I wanted the stars to watch in envy as I made her mine.

  It only felt like mere seconds had passed when her warmth and weight were stolen from me. Ravenous, I reached for her, drawing her back to me, but she jerked away with a scream.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped, scrambling from her place against my chest.

  “I thought . . .” I thought she wanted it. I thought she wanted me. I was sure she did.

  “You thought you had permission to kiss me? To touch me? What the fuck were you trying to do?”

  Permission? Oh God . . . Did she think I was pushing—forcing—myself on her?

  “No, of course not,” I explained, jumping to my feet.

  “How dare you touch me like that. Who the hell do you think you are?” Raven hugged her body tight, almost dissolving into her loose sweatshirt. “You don’t get to do that to me. You don’t get to hurt me. I don’t want . . .”

  She didn’t finish her thought, but I knew what came next. She didn’t want me. My kiss, my touch, had been unwelcome. I was an intruder . . . a trespasser to her body. And that realization pierced deep inside me, straight to my center. I felt dizzy, the blood whooshing inside my head so loudly that the noise of the city below us became muffled. She was saying something . . . asking me something . . . but I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t look at her. I was too overcome with my own revulsion.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” I stammered, my voice hoarse. I was going to pass out if I didn’t get out of here. And if I did . . . she wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t possibly be able to comprehend the level of self-hatred I harbored. Or the pain of rejection that brought every insecurity, every fear, right to the surface.

  I swallowed around the knot in my throat and began to stagger past her, struggling to escape the darkness of dread that had begun to eclipse my vision. “I have to go. I have to go,” I kept repeating, desperate to put some distance between us.

  “Wait! You don’t have to . . .”

  “I have to go.”

  I didn’t look back. I didn’t say goodbye. I just forced myself down flight after flight of stairs, frantically trying to get away. I hadn�
�t meant to offend her, but I had.

  Oh, God. Had I hurt her? Had something so small and insignificant as a kiss been a gross violation?

  The moment I reached my car, I locked the doors and tried to disappear inside myself, hoping the shame couldn’t touch what it could not see.

  I STOOD THERE ON the rooftop for at least five good minutes before moving again. Before breathing again.

  I couldn’t tell you what had happened. First, we were talking, laughing, playing around, and then I was on top of him, and he was kissing me. Groping me. And I just . . . snapped. I had been in that very situation before, and I knew what it felt like to be wanted by Dominic Trevino. Just as I knew what it felt like to be abandoned by him. Left vulnerable, bare and alone. It was true—there was nothing like being touched by him. The only thing that was comparable to that level of insanity was being rejected by him.

  I knew he was gone, so I took my time getting back to my apartment. I could still smell his scent hanging in the air, could see his thumbprint tattooed on the glass picture frame of one of the photos. While I’d had my reservations about allowing him in my humble space before, now everything seemed shabbier, and the lights seemed dimmer. It went back to being just walls and paint and junk.

  I didn’t see him the next afternoon when I picked up Toby from Helping Hands, or the afternoon after that. Apparently, Dominic hadn’t shown up for work, which made something twist in my gut, and Toby was worried that he may have been sick. I didn’t know what to tell him, considering that wasn’t really the case. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—reveal what had transpired between us. I couldn’t go there without telling my truth, and that was out of the question. My anger and hatred had covered me like a security blanket for the past seven years, and taking it off would leave me naked and exposed. Again.

  Thursday night at The Pink Kitty was unusually slow, affording me too much time to think. The only bright side was the fact that Velvet was working the evening shift. I hadn’t seen her since Monday, and since Sal had sent me home early after the “incident” to diffuse the situation, I hadn’t had the chance to talk to her about what went down. Word was, the toolbag had threatened to sue the club, stating I had led him on, even asked him for it, when he was unjustly attacked by some thug. Sal didn’t believe a word of it, but also didn’t want the heat surrounding the establishment, so he took care of it. Neither one of us was sure what took care of it meant, but we hoped the jackass wouldn’t come around anymore.

  “Shit, I wish I could’ve been here, love. I would’ve throttled the bloody wanker on his pasty arse,” she said, twirling a violet lock around her finger. Tonight she wore a black and purple plaid skirt, a white shirt that covered her arms but not much else, and black-framed reading glasses. She was playing the role of preppy goth girl and slaying it.

  “It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” I replied, waving it off before rushing off to deliver an order. When I returned, she was still at the bar. I dropped off the ticket in my hand and started loading my tray again.

  “However, I heard you met my friend,” she beamed, placing a whiskey sour on my tray.

  “Your friend?”

  “Yeah. Remember . . . my mate with the golden cock. The one that makes me all quivery inside. The guy that shagged me so good, I very nearly fainted.”

  “I got the point, V.”

  “Well, he saved me the awkward introduction, apparently.”

  “How so?”

  I turned to tend to my tables, and she was right on my heels. “Your rescuer, you twit! Was that purely coincidence, or do you know him from somewhere?”

  I paused so abruptly that she ended up running into my back, causing the drinks to slosh all over my tray. “What did you say?”

  “Dominic? Better known as Dirty Dom? He’s the guy I was telling you about. Don’t you know him?”

  Dirty Dom? Dom was fucking Velvet too?

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How the hell could a guy who had more lovers/girlfriends/fuck buddies stashed around than Hugh Hefner, have had time to eat crappy spaghetti and meatballs at my crappy table, and allow me to carry on about my silly hobby on the rooftop of my crappy apartment building? Obviously, his hope was to make me just another bunny on the ranch, but that didn’t explain his reaction. He was remorseful for kissing me—fearful even. Seeing the look of horror on his face actually had made me feel sorry for the guy. So it didn’t make sense that he was so . . . generous . . . with his body in one breath, yet so sensitive with his heart the next. A guy as promiscuous as he wouldn’t give a damn about kissing someone like me.

  “No. I don’t know him.” I said, resuming my walk to a tableful of thirsty, faceless customers. “I don’t know him at all.”

  I WAS JUST SHY of thirteen the first time I experimented with my sexuality.

  Naturally, I’d always had questions about who I was . . . what I was . . . but I had no one to guide me through the confusion. And honestly, I didn’t want anyone. I couldn’t relay the terror, the shame, to another living soul.

  The state had taken me out of my uncle’s house after he’d been arrested, and I’d been placed in a group home until they could find a reliable family member to take me in. It was positively hellish, but it was an upgrade from going to sleep in my own blood and filth every night.

  I was smaller than I should’ve been at that age after years of malnourishment. It wasn’t that my uncle wouldn’t feed me. I was just too sick with fear and revulsion to keep food down, sometimes for weeks at a time. On the outside, everything seemed normal. I had clean clothes, a roof over my head, and I went to school. But the truth was, I was being held captive by a rapist that I happened to love, as sick as it was.

  Many of the boys at the home taunted me or ignored me all together. However, there was one boy . . . Matthew. He didn’t just talk to me; he was nice to me. The other boys called him a sissy . . . a fag, they said. I didn’t know to care. I was just glad that one person didn’t see me as a pariah.

  Matthew was sixteen and had more privileges than me. He went out every evening and sometimes didn’t come home until very late. I asked him what he was doing when he left. He told me he was seeing friends. I asked him if I could come too, but he told me that these friends were older, and wanted to hang out with him alone.

  Some nights, Matthew came home with treats for me—candy, soda, cookies. Sometimes even wine coolers. They tasted sweet and made me feel more mature when I drank them, so I asked Matthew to bring me more. I asked him where he got all this stuff—he didn’t have a job, yet always had money. He told me he got it from friends.

  It was late one night, and everyone had already gone to bed. Matthew snuck in with a six-pack of hard lemonade and a bag of Swedish Fish. We shared them both, tenting a blanket over our heads and whispering under the light of his cell phone, another gift from a friend.

  “You ever kissed a girl?” Matthew asked when we were two Mike’s in.

  I didn’t know where that question came from. We never talked about girls, although I would have expected it, considering his age. I just shook my head, telling him the truth.

  “You want to?”

  I shrugged. Did I? I should, right? But I didn’t know if I could.

  “You ever have sex before?”

  I stayed silent at first. I knew there had been rumors about what had landed me here. Since I was a minor, my case was kept quiet. However, nothing was ever really a secret. And even though my file was supposed to be sealed, I didn’t doubt that there had been chatter amongst the adults who were supposedly helping me.

  I nodded. I don’t know why I was honest about it. All I knew was that Matthew was my only friend, and I didn’t want him to be mad at me. I didn’t want to disappoint him.

  “With a girl?” he added on. I knew he knew the answer, so I didn’t bother responding this time.

  “Did you like it?”

  A sick, sinking feeling roiled through my gut. I assumed it was the alcohol, but I didn’t stop dr
inking it. I would need all the help I could get with this line of questioning.

  “It’s ok if you did. I won’t tell.”

  I wanted him to stop talking. I wanted to tell him to get off my top bunk and go to his bed below. But, I stayed quiet, just as I was taught. Speaking up made people angry. I couldn’t stand when people were unhappy with me.

  I don’t remember what happened afterward that had motivated Matthew to kiss me, but he did. His lips were firm and warm, his breath hot and sweet with a tang of citrus. I stayed perfectly still, and when his tongue swept the roof of my mouth and began to move, I didn’t reciprocate. But I didn’t push him away either.

  I had thought that it would feel natural when it happened. I thought it would be the moment that would define me and give a name to what I was. But it didn’t. It simply . . . numbed me. All my emotions had shut down, and only my body was present. No feelings of warmth and acceptance stirred in my chest. No ravenous hunger overcame me, causing me to give over to my desires. I just sat there and let him do what he pleased. Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?

  After Matthew pulled his lips away, he smiled at me, satisfied with himself. Then he told me he wanted to give me a massage. Since we were sitting knee to knee, I didn’t understand how he expected that to happen. But when his long, thin hands began to knead my thighs, I realized that he didn’t want my back. He wanted my front.

  His hands were firm, and his touch was confident, like maybe he had experience . . . massaging people. I was wound so tight and rigid that it was a surprise that his fingers didn’t ache. He just kept kneading, slowly moving upward. And when his hands reached the tops of my thighs, he stopped.

  “I have to pull down your shorts to massage the rest,” he said.

  I was perfectly still, perfectly silent, as he pulled my pajama shorts down. I was compliant. That was what all good boys were.

  When he wrapped his hand around me, I expected to feel . . . something. Whether it be joy or desire or disgust, I wanted my body to make the choice for me so my heart and mind didn’t have to. It was easier that way. But instead, I felt nothing. And looking down at my limp penis in Matthew’s palm, he could tell.