by Mariano, Sam
“Sorry I couldn’t come earlier; I just got out of practice.”
Ha, practice. Nice touch, psychopath.
His brown eyes glitter with pleasure as he hands me the folded up sheet of notebook paper. My brain tells me I should, but I can’t even bring myself to say an insincere ‘thanks’ for my mom’s sake.
“How thoughtful! Do you want to stay for dinner?” my mom asks eagerly.
“No. No, he can’t stay.”
Carter’s tone is apologetic. “Yeah, I’ve gotta get home and help my dad with some yard work.”
“Aren’t you sweet? I wish I had a son like you,” my mom gushes.
Ugh, vomit! If only she knew.
Carter laughs, saying lightly, “Hey, maybe someday.”
Oh, my God, that’s enough of this. I don’t understand what he’s playing at, but it’s time for this game to come to an end.
I feel bad when my gaze drifts back to my mom, and for all my confused anger, she is bursting with joy. Of course she’s charmed by him, and even more by his family’s wealth and reputation, no doubt. After I made our whole family look bad by telling on Jake Parsons, now the star quarterback is showing up to check on me and calling me babe.
To her, Carter Mahoney must look like my redemption wrapped up in an already-appealing package.
I can’t even believe this shit.
At least I’m feeling things, I guess. I’ve been completely numb since he left me alone in that classroom yesterday, but now I’m feeling anger. So much anger, my skin is hot with it.
“Anyway, I hope you’re feeling better soon, princess,” he tells me, making me cringe with his use of the nickname he dropped when he was degrading me in that empty classroom. “I want to take you to Porter’s downtown this weekend.”
What the hell is he talking about?
“Porter’s?” my mom asks, before I can respond. “Oh, I’ve heard that’s a really nice restaurant.”
Carter looks back at her and nods, his smile charming. “My sister and her husband actually own the place, so it’s nice to stop in and see family, plus get good food. Win-win.”
Can she seriously not see how full of shit he is? Apparently not, but then why would she? What normal, properly functioning human being would do what Carter is currently doing? None of them. Zero.
Carter looks back at me, like he’s serious. I can’t believe he is serious, but the mocking vibe of a private joke only he gets to enjoy has passed, and his facial cues seem to indicate the forthcoming invitation is sincere. “What do you say? Saturday night?”
I know this word doesn’t mean much to him, but I toss it out anyway. “No.”
“Sunday, then,” he counters, his tone slightly less friendly.
I shake my head. “No, thank you. I’m busy all weekend.” And forever, if going somewhere alone with him is the alternative. What the hell is he thinking? I’m so baffled by his presence in my house, by the soup, by this bizarre dinner invitation… My head is spinning. What kind of game is he playing?
“Zoey, don’t be rude,” my mother admonishes, frowning mildly at me.
I feel my face flush, wondering how rude she’d think he was if she knew he sexually assaulted me yesterday and has the nerve to barge into my home—a place I should be able to feel safe—today. Looking up at Carter, I say calmly, “You should go.”
“All right,” Carter says, nodding, holding my gaze. “Walk me out to my car?”
I open my mouth to say no, but my mother is already rushing forward, glaring at me in confused disapproval. “Of course she’ll walk you to your car. She’s not normally like this, she really must not be feelin’ good,” she adds, bringing the back of her hand to rest against my forehead.
“Mom, stop,” I mutter, swatting her hand away.
Carter smirks faintly, but catches himself, since he’s pretending to be charming right now. “I won’t keep her long,” he promises.
“You take as long as you want,” my mom says, shooting me another look of admonishment.
I’m so angry, I could explode. I definitely don’t want to be alone with him, but I don’t think he’ll do anything horrible to me in the driveway with my family waiting inside. Just in case, as I resentfully walk toward the front door, I warn him, “My step-father will be pulling in any minute, so yeah, you probably want to leave before you get trapped in the driveway.”
“Yeah. Being trapped is no fun, is it, princess?” he murmurs, following behind me.
Unease creeps down my spine. “Stop calling me that.”
“I’ll get right on that, princess,” he mocks.
“Was that fun for you?” I demand, wanting to know what possible reason he could have for whatever that was.
Shrugging, he says, “Kinda. I like playing with you.”
My jaw locks and I try to breathe without expelling fire. “Why did you come here?” I ask, pulling the front door closed behind us.
Since we’re alone now, he doesn’t bother feigning his golden boy bullshit. “I brought you soup,” he says, amusement clear in his tone.
“Is it roofie soup?”
“Of course not,” he says dismissively. “I wouldn’t roofie you. You’re no good to me unconscious. I like mentally and physically stripping away your will. A pill is cheating.”
“You’re sick,” I inform him.
He shrugs, apparently unconcerned. “Why don’t you want to go to dinner with me?”
Eyes wide, I stare at him. “Is that a serious question? Did you hear all the words that just came out of your mouth? Also: you sexually assaulted me yesterday.”
Hissing apologetically through his teeth, he says, “Hope you’re not planning to tell anyone about that. I mean, you just accused Jake of the same thing, and your mom even knows we’re a thing now. Seems like you just like throwing around accusations, doesn’t it? Maybe you like the attention.”
If he thinks I’m interested in playing this game with him when we don’t have an audience, he is seriously mistaken. “Whatever, Carter.”
I stop in front of his car—a pricey, deep red Mustang with two black stripes running down the center. It looks like something a spoiled asshole would drive, so of course this is his car.
“Here’s the thing,” he tells me, opening his driver’s side door and tossing his gym bag inside. Then he closes the door and leans against it, shoving his hands into the pockets of his gray sweats. “Remember yesterday I said I’m not a tit man? I’m not, but I can’t stop thinking about yours.”
Shaking my head as I look off at the street to avoid looking at him, I say, “That’s… I honestly don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“I suggest lifting your shirt and giving me a peek,” he offers.
“Suggestion denied.”
He shrugs. “It was worth a shot. So, dinner.”
Is he for real right now? “You can’t seriously think there is even a sliver of a chance I’m gonna willingly take my clothes off for you, ever. After what you did to me yesterday, you should spend the football season wearin’ an orange jumpsuit and afraid to bend over in the shower to pick up the soap. I told you I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I won’t, but I thought it went without saying that I wanted you to leave me alone going forward. You are legitimately insane if you are seriously askin’ me on a date. Not if you were the last man on Earth. There’s no way you thought this would work.”
“I’m giving you an opportunity to say yes this time,” he informs me, like it’s quite the boon.
“An opportunity. How considerate of you,” I deadpan. “And I’m saying no,” I add, immovably.
“I can work with that, too.” Pushing off the car, he grabs my arm and yanks me against him.
My heart stalls, then hammers hard in my chest. I try to pull back, but he gets his arms locked around me, trapping me against his hard body like he did yesterday. “Get off me,” I tell him lowly, struggling to get free, but he’s too strong.
“You don’t have to fight tooth and nail, you know,” he tells m
e casually, moving my arms behind my back so he can keep me restrained and free up his other hand. “I like a little struggle, but you can take it down a notch.”
He is so infuriating. I struggle harder, looking out at the road for potential help. There’s no one outside across the street, no one driving by, so I cast a desperate glance back at my house. Right now would be a convenient time for my mother to be spying on me through a window, so of course she isn’t. “Carter, seriously. Forget me telling on you, this is a good way to get caught red-handed.”
“Stop fighting me and you’ll get me out of here faster.” His free hand moves to my chest now, groping my right breast. He palms it, his dark eyes locked on my face.
For a sliver of a moment, there’s a break in my focus on getting away from him. Curiosity tugs at me. He’s searching my gaze for something, but I don’t know what. He knows I don’t want to be touched—he’s admitted as much. It’s part of the fun for him. So, why does it feel like he’s looking for interest? He can’t honestly think he’s going to find any, can he?
Knowing my step-dad will be pulling in any minute, I swallow down my feelings and curiosities. Meeting Carter’s gaze as if his actions don’t rattle me, I ask, “Are you done?”
His hand leaves my breast, but only to slide up under my T-shirt so he can touch me without the fabric barrier between us. “Not just yet.”
Over the shirt, I thought I could deal with, but under the shirt is a different story. My arms are still locked behind my back, though, so I can’t fight him off physically. “Carter… please stop touching me.”
“I like when you say please,” he tells me, smiling faintly while he ignores my request. “It’s cute.”
“Then I’ll never say it again.”
He shakes his head as he catches the weight of my breast in his palm, running his thumb over my pebbled nipple. “That’s the wrong tack, Ellis. I don’t find it cute when you’re petulant.”
“I don’t want you to find me cute. I want you to leave me alone.”
He nods his head toward the car. “Then take a ride with me. I’ll fuck you now and get you out of my system.”
“Go to hell,” I tell him, shifting to try to dislodge his hand. I gasp as he squeezes my nipple. There’s a bite of pain, but a strange sort of tension lying just beneath it. It feels weird, but I actually don’t completely hate it.
I hate him, though.
“I don’t know why I like these so much,” he murmurs, playing with my breast. I seethe as he brushes his thumb across the nipple, caresses my flesh, gives it a squeeze. As if we’re friends and he’s sharing something in confidence, he tells me, “I’m normally an ass man. Haven’t even touched yours yet.”
“There is no yet,” I say, trying again to pull back, but his arm just locks around me tighter. “Look, I am really tryin’ not to make trouble with you, Carter, but you’re makin’ it impossible. What is wrong with you assholes? When you get in trouble for something, you’re supposed to stop doing it, not come back for more and make it worse.”
His explanation is simple and crushing at the same time. “You have no power over us, Zoey. I know you fucked up Jake’s year, maybe you feel all proud of yourself, but we both know you can’t fuck up mine. You can’t touch me. You can try, if you want to. I’ll bury you if you do. I wouldn’t advise it, but hell, if your honor is so damned important to you, go ahead and take me on, princess. Let’s see who emerges the ultimate victor.”
I know he’s right, but that injustice is difficult to swallow.
“Or,” he says, releasing my breast and cutting his gaze toward the road as a car slows to a stop in front of my house, “you can roll with it. Reap the benefits. You’ve already sucked my dick, so I owe you a dinner, don’t I?” he almost teases, smoothing his hand down the outside of my arm for the benefit of our approaching audience. “Just say yes.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself,” he murmurs, releasing me and taking a step back. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Make sure you study those notes. You might learn something,” he says with a wink, before dropping into the driver’s seat and pulling his door shut.
I wrap my arms around myself as he fires up the engine, but I don’t wait around to watch him back out of the driveway. Instead, I head inside the house to retrieve those notes. Now that he said that, I’m worried he wrote something my mom shouldn’t see, and I left them out on the kitchen counter.
I barely make it inside the door and she comes at me, her eyes wide with excitement. “You didn’t tell me you were seein’ Carter Mahoney. How in the world did that happen? Especially with all this Jake business. They’re teammates.”
“I know what they are,” I mutter. “I really don’t want to talk about it, Mom. Carter and I are not a thing. He’s an asshole.”
“Now, Zoey, that boy just brought you soup because you were home sick,” she says, her tone skeptical, verging on lecturing. “He doesn’t seem like an asshole to me. I think maybe you’re bein’ a touch judgmental. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”
Of course she does. Because why ask if I have a legitimate reason for feeling this way about him when she can just hope and pray I’m dating him instead? My mother is the physical embodiment of blissful ignorance, and while usually I can handle it, right now it’s too much.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, heading into the kitchen and grabbing my notes. I glance at them, seeing lines of words, but I fold the paper and shove it in my pocket without so much as skimming them.
Mom is right on my heels. “I think you should give him a chance, Zoey. Not all boys are bad. And he wants to take you out to Porter’s. Wouldn’t that be so nice? Just imagine the look on Betsy’s face after all those snide comments she made about you and Jake.”
“I’m not interested in him, all right? Let’s drop it.”
“But why?” she asks, following me. “He’s handsome and popular, he comes from a great family, and he seems to really like you. Maybe if people see he’s takin’ your side, they’ll stop givin’ us all such a hard time about your dust-up with Jake.”
She is so transparent. I hate that she cares so much what other people think that she’s willing to turn a blind eye to my problems if Carter can make them all go away. As a kid, I followed in her footsteps and worried endlessly over what other people thought of me, too. As I’ve grown up, I realized that putting the opinions of others in such high regard is a shortcut to misery, and I don’t want to take that path. My mom never found her way to that conclusion.
If she’s going to campaign for him all night, I’m not going to sit here and listen to it. Instead of going in to the table to eat now that Hank’s home and dinner is ready, I head for the stairs.
“Where are you goin’?” my mom calls after me.
“To my room. I’m not hungry. I’m gonna take a nap.”
Since I’ve been “sick” she lets me go without argument, but I suspect this will come up again. It’s so uncomfortable to even think about what happened yesterday, so I really don’t want to have to tell her, but I might have to if she keeps pushing me at Carter.
He’s a peculiar guy, and his abnormality does stir an academic interest within me, but he’s also at such a clear social advantage that he’s legitimately dangerous. Carter thinks he’s above the law. He has money, talent, popularity, and the carefully constructed façade of an all-American golden boy. He has it all, so he can do as he pleases. Case in point, I haven’t done a damn thing wrong, yet I’ve been targeted, bullied, and abused three times now—and that was for messing with Carter’s best wide receiver, not Carter himself.
When I get to my room, I close my door and curl up in bed. I dig Carter’s notes out of my pocket and read them. The first line is, “Of course I’m not really going to take notes for you, but while Mr. Hassenfeld is yammering on and you’re hiding out at home like a coward, I thought I’d share with you the dream I had last night.”
Oh, boy.
I shouldn’t keep read
ing. It’s going to be stressful, but it might also be evidence. Is he so cocky he would leave me a handwritten page full of threats? If so, I’m definitely hanging onto this. This could be gold.
Of course that’s not what it is, but it is filthy. It’s not the confession I hoped for, it’s not even a depiction of the rape he suggested interest in yesterday, it’s just pure filth. He talks about nibbling on my breasts and eating me out until I come, crying out his name. He talks about me touching him and tasting him again (as if I did it willingly the first time). He talks about fucking me, but he makes no mention of force—nothing that would stick, anyway. Nothing some people wouldn’t be into anyway.
There’s heat beneath my skin and an uncomfortable sexual stirring inside me as I read his filthy words. They’re explicit, so I guess that’s not insane, but they come from him. They depict sex between the two of us, and after what he did, that makes it so much more perverse.
I definitely can’t keep this to use against him. The way he talks, anyone reading this would think we’re involved in a consensual sexual relationship. It would hurt my case more than help it—especially his slick mention of me tasting him again. No sane, guilty person would refer to what he made me do in a love letter. It’s a he-said she-said situation, and without Shayne or Jake attesting to my unwillingness—which they never would—it just sounds like I willingly blew Carter. If anything, if I tried to speak out against the asshole, this letter would probably make me look more like a liar than him.
I want to throw it out, but I tell myself there’s a reason to keep it. A logical reason, not a shameful one. Maybe there is some scenario where it could prove useful, and I just haven’t thought of it yet. Just in case, I fold the sheet of lined paper and shove it under my mattress.
Then I curl up in bed and try not to think about tomorrow, and what it might bring.
Chapter 5
Just pulling in the parking lot of my high school is daunting today. I sit in the car for several minutes trying to gear up to show my face. It kills me. I haven’t done a damn thing wrong, and I’m the one who has to hide.