by Nina Lincoln
“Hey,” I murmur, ignoring my husky, barely-there voice, one of the many scars I cannot hide. I sound like a chain smoker with a pack-a-day habit, but whatever, maybe I can get into the phone sex operator business? Bright side, eh?
“Hey, I’m so glad you could make it. I love your hair,” she says, touching her own as she admires mine.
Biting back the bitter response on the tip of my tongue, for I had no choice with the new style, after all, it was cut painfully from my head with a dull knife while my ex-boyfriend held me down with his body and raged at me like a lunatic, I rasp, “Thanks.”
Colt steps forward and pulls me into a hug, and it’s perfectly awkward for a minute until I relax into his embrace, emotion pricking at my lids. Physical touch without threat is anathema to me, and I’m simultaneously repulsed and grateful for Colt’s attempt at intimacy.
“Hey douche, let loose the ho and help me set up the volleyball net,” a gravelly voice calls behind us.
Closing my eyes against the inevitable, I screw my mouth into the proximity of a casual smile and thank god I don’t have to worry about my eyes ensconced safely behind my glasses.
Here goes nothing.
Turning away from Colt, I faced the boy turned man who was the object of my obsession since before I knew what being a girl in lust with a boy meant. And in my more pathetic moments, I thought he was my soulmate, pulled toward him by an inexplicable need that could only mean that and more, but I was wrong, so very wrong.
In the end, he was only the guy who took my virginity and left me breathless in a strange room with a fucking picture of the ocean on the wall. Hayden Franks is my kryptonite, and I know this, I’ve guarded against it since forever and left the feeling behind when I was trapped, but now, after everything that’s gone down, inexplicably, my heart picks right up where it left off, pulsing painfully in my chest at the sight of him.
He’s tall and strong, with wiry muscles and beautiful tattoos gracing his body along with a lush mouth wicked with sin. Currently, his obsidian eyes glare at me out of a face world-weary and tired. He’s always been rough around the edges, as though he’s seen things I can’t imagine, but then again, so have I.
Running my eyes avidly over his body, I ignore the pulse in my clit, and cross my arms over my chest to hide the evidence of my desire. I will die before I ever let Hayden know the power he has over me again.
Hayden’s brow dips over his eyes before he pulls his expression back into bored nonchalance. I suspect he didn’t recognize me, not with my new hairdo, slimmer physique, and extended absence, but now he knows, and there’s no hiding.
He ignores me, as he always has, with the exception of the one night where we came together. It was amazing and real, raw, and visceral, and over before it started. It was also the harbinger of the bad decisions to come, and it's hard to separate that stupid choice from the ones I made shortly after.
A path that brought me here broken but not bent, a reminder that I have to acknowledge my sins and forgive myself.
Hayden is bad news, but then again, so am I.
Grunting, Colt says, “I’m coming, dick. What about you, Princess?”
Finn gives him a beatific smile, her face lighting up with her love, and I have to turn my head away from the sight, the beauty so painful it physically hurts my chest.
“I’ll be down in a while,” she says, giving him a peck on the lips, which turns to a squeak when he grabs her in a hug and slides his tongue down her throat, growling as she moans into his mouth.
Sighing, Hayden rolls his eyes and turns away, stalking down the beach. I watch his ass for half a minute, admiring the taut buns flex before I, too, turn away and grab my bag, depositing it next to the fire we’ll have later this evening.
Finn finally breaks away from Colt and comes to sit next to me, where I've dropped to the sand and made myself comfortable or as comfortable as I can be these days.
“How are you?” she asks softly.
“How are you?” I return brusquely.
“I’m, I don't know. It's day by day.”
“Same,” I mutter. “Look, I don't - I’m here because I don't want to think about it, okay?” I ask tiredly.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I get it.”
“Okay, thanks. Sorry,” I mutter, shame heating my skin at my rudeness, I’m spurning genuine concern like a bitch, and it doesn’t look good on me.
“Don’t be,” she says, dusting off her ass as she stands. “C’mon, wanna go in the water? I’ve been dying to since we got here, but the guys have been insisting on setting everything up before it gets dark.”
“Sure,” I say, rising and dropping my shorts and pulling my shirt over my head.
Although I’m calm on the outside, my stomach cramps painfully. I’m about to reveal yet another piece of me that I can never get back. It's mostly healed, now only a bright angry red scar that spans my lower pelvis and races across my stomach in a wide arc, but it exposes my battle, and I’m not sure I’m ready for anyone to know the extent of my horror.
I may never be.
I’m lucky to be alive, and this points to that more than anything, but I feel shaky, vulnerable, and exposed, even though I knew it would come to this, and I refuse to hide or feel ashamed.
This isn’t my weakness. This is my strength.
Finn ignores the scar, smiling at me sassily before heading down the beach. Purposely I chose my most revealing suit to get the ogling over with right off the bat. I’ve been blessed with a natural caramel tone to my skin, so my tiny white bikini glows nicely against it, despite the weeks I’ve spent hiding away inside.
My boobs have shrunk from my weight loss, but they still fill out the tiny triangles of my top nicely, and the bottoms barely cover my ass.
Leaving my glasses firmly in place, I saunter slowly down the beach, my pulse speeding through my veins at odds with my casual demeanor. Colt wolf whistles at Finn as she walks by in her own fire engine red suit, and she waves her hand at him with a giggle as the guys turn in unison to check her out, which means I’m next.
Clenching my hand at my side, I keep my eyes forward, but for the small weakness of glancing out of the corner of my eye. With a shiver, I acknowledge the heated gaze of Hayden as it caresses my curves, and my breath hitches in my chest as heat surges through my veins like liquid fire, my nipples tight little beads in my barely-there clothes.
But then, all at once, the heat turns cool, and I turn my head just enough to see him turn away, the loss clenching my chest painfully, just as it always has.
Fuck. Will the universe ever toss me a break?
Joining Finn at the water’s edge, I dip my toes in the lapping waves and swear, “Christ Finn, this shit is fucking cold.”
Giggling, she wades in and drops her body under the waves, calling out, “Don't be a pussy.”
Gaping at her for a moment, I roll my eyes at the little shy rich girl turned spitfire and wade in after her, gasping when the icy water covers my head.
“Fuck!” I shriek when I emerge, pushing my hair off my face with a shiver.
Laughing, she turns into the water, letting the gentle caress of the waves push her toward the shore, and with a small smile, I join her, relaxing into the moment as we bodysurf for a while, laughing when the surge is too great, and we go under.
It’s freeing to laugh and feel without it being painful, bittersweet in the wake of the past few weeks, which have been filled with laughter, but it’s been bitter and raw, an ache that sits perpetually on my frozen chest.
By the time Colt appears, my jaw aches from smiling, and there’s a joyful feeling behind my heart that I don't want to fade.
“Princess, c’mon, the crew is here, and we want to play a game before it gets too much darker.”
Finn rolls over in the water and gives him a small smile, to which his own widens, and I glance away, with a sigh emerging from the water.
It’s colder now that the sun is going down, and I’m perfectly numb, my to
es curling in the rough sand as my skin pebbles with goosebumps.
“You too, Ramie, we need all hands on deck.”
Dubiously, I gaze at him. I suck at sports, always have. This is a known fact with all of these jerks. We grew up together, after all.
“C’mon,” Finn says, looping her arm through mine, “we can suck together.”
“Excellent,” I mutter dryly.
Immediately I seek out Hayden to find he’s got two bitches hanging off his arms, both dressed as skimpily as I, I note with distaste. Dirk, Colt’s best friend and incorrigible flirt, canoodles with his flavor of the week as they wait for us by the net.
Nate steps into my view, and I breathe a sigh of relief. At least he’s friendly, alone, and harmless.
He’s also appropriately subdued after the shit that went down a few weeks ago. Caught up in my brother’s games, he was accused of being Finn’s stalker after having been found with Sarah’s body.
Although I hated Sarah for capturing the attention of Hayden, to which he pursued with a bewildering intensity, I would have never hoped for the end she received. She may have been a bitch, but she didn’t deserve to die.
As it turned out, it wasn’t Nate, but my own brother who did the dirty deed, and only after Finn was attacked during our senior camping trip was Nate set free.
My brother earned a one-way ticket to the psych ward, and Nate emerged a shell of himself.
Maybe he can learn from these cruel lessons, for in his own way, he was no better than the other dicks playing their cruel games. To hear Finn tell it, Nate, Hayden, and Colt didn’t pursue Sarah and even Portia before her for any reason, but as a cruel competition, and the game only ended when Colt laid eyes on Finn and declared the game over.
It’s not surprising, these boys ruled our school with an iron fist and in many ways treated women as arm candy, easily discarded when the newer, sweeter version arrived. Case in point, with the exception of Sarah, who was part of their cruel game, I’ve never seen Hayden with the same girl twice, but I’m quite sure he’s fucked every one of them.
You would think this information would turn me off from Hayden, but it’s his darkness I’ve always been attracted to, and this is no different.
Of course, as I approach, Nate checks me out, he’s a dude after all, and I watch carefully, my heart clenching brutally when he sucks in a breath at the sight of the angry red scar that covers my belly from hip to hip.
This was Ben’s attempt to cut out my insides like gutting a fucking deer, and I’ll never forget the insanity of his greed as he sawed away at me and took in my pain with macabre pleasure.
Thankfully just as quickly as Nate’s horror comes, it fades, and taking a deep breath to make the ache go away, I remind myself, one down the rest of my fucking life to go.
“Hey Ramie,” he says with his cute smile, the dimple in his cheek coming out to play.
“Hey,” I rasp, ignoring my new ugly and smiling at him. “How are you?”
“Good,” he says, “thank fuck, we only have a week left, and then we can blow this shithole.”
We’re a week away from graduating, and everyone’s basically checked out of the rigamarole of homework and tests.
With a chuff, I agree, and we turn to the game.
Hayden, Dirk, and their bitches take the opposing side, and I close in with Colt, Finn, and Nate. Almost immediately, I’m bombarded by the fucking ball, and the guys shove me this way and that to hit it back over the net. They’re so fucking aggressive that I wince every time the ball flies at my face.
After one such move, where I land in the sand none too gracefully, Colt shoving me aside, I mutter as Nate gives me a hand up, “Why the fuck you guys like to play a game where balls fly at your head is beyond me.”
Nate chuckles, and my head whips around when Hayden says silkily from the other side of the net, “Aw, sugar, isn’t that what every chick dreams about?”
Narrowing my eyes, I ignore the way my heart pulses at the same endearment he called me that night so long ago, fighting the images of his expression as he surged into me brutally and took my innocence casually even as my body heats against my will, and goosebumps break out over my skin.
He may have left me without a word, beyond that was fun, but he’s still the one who played my body like a piano, and I can never forget what it felt like to come together.
Thankful he can’t see beyond my shades, I say in my sweetest raspy fucking voice, “I guess it depends on the balls.”
Turning away, I maneuver to my next position and ignore Hayden’s heated glare. He’s not so much as glanced at me since we fucked two years ago, and now he breaks his silence? Dick.
The game continues, and I continue to suck, reduced to cowering away every time the ball flies over the net, positive it’s headed for me every damn time. It’s so bad, my team has been reduced to two and a half players, and Finn’s responses are half-hearted at best.
I’m tired, my muscles, which have surely atrophied after weeks of lying low, ache like a bitch, and my frustration is at DEFCON levels when Hayden pipes up again, “Surely you know better how to handle a man’s balls, baby?”
My whole body goes rigid, my fingers spasming at my sides as Ben’s voice rolls through my brain.
You wanna make me happy, don’t you, baby?
With him, the inherent threat was always just beneath the sweet words, and everything he said was with purpose and to keep me in line. Everything.
With a whole-body shudder, I turn to Hayden fiercely and say, “Don't call me that. Don’t ever fucking call me that.”
With that, I stalk away back toward our fire, which the stragglers of our group have started in our absence. Nodding at Hanna, I pull my shirt on over my top and take off down the beach, tears pressing at my eyes.
The thing with healing is you never fucking know when something will trigger a reaction, and apparently, being called baby is that for me. I can’t control my body’s visceral response, and it frustrates me. I want to move past this, I don’t want to be held down by the memories, but I can’t fucking erase them.
Ben’s face looms over me in my nightmares, fuck even apparently in my daymares, and it’s like adding insult to injury knowing it was Hayden I exposed my pain to because he deserves nothing from me, not even a glimpse into my horror.
Hate So Sweet – Coming Soon!
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