by CM Wondrak
Easy enough, or so it was supposed to be.
It was easy, at least until Tuesday. Tuesday things changed. I wasn’t against changes in general; sometimes change was good for you. Take Enzo for example. The change he would create in my life would be wonderful.
But not all change was good. Some change was very, very bad. Some change made your skin itch and your ears want to bleed.
It was lunchtime at school. Grief counselors had been busy with everyone weeping over the sudden loss of Kyle, someone no one here ever thought they’d lose. Granted, I was sure some of those students only visited those counselors because it was a way to get them out of class, but I digress. Those students didn’t bother me.
The person bothering me the most was the girl sitting across from me at our mostly empty table.
Aubree and I had been loners together for so long, it seemed, but she’d always longed for something more. For Kyle. For a miracle to happen and for that boy—yes, boy, for even though he had the muscles of a football player, he was nothing more, nothing at all like Enzo—to suddenly notice her.
It was never going to happen, and now it definitely never would, but that didn’t stop her from ruminating about him over and over like he was Jesus and he’d rise from the dead anytime now.
Give me a fucking break.
I prickled at her the entire time, doing a lot of head-nodding and saying a lot of uh-huhs. Honestly, it didn’t even sound like I cared, but did that stop her? No. No, it didn’t.
Some might call me a bitch for my behavior, but I didn’t care. I finally had something in my life I wanted, someone to spend time with and enjoy myself with, and I was stuck here listening to Aubree. I resented her, I think, because she was allowed to have my time out in public while Enzo wasn’t.
It just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all, and I didn’t know what to do to make myself stop feeling like this.
Aubree didn’t deserve a shitty friend like me. She should have someone else, someone who actually cared about her problems, that her crush had died. She should have a friend who wanted to hang out every weekend and go to the mall with. Me? That would never be me. Even if I forced myself out of the house to hang with her, someone else would always be on my mind: Enzo. How could he not?
God, he was perfect. Even though he was older than me, he was perfect. The age difference didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. That man was willing to walk through hell for me, to commit heinous acts for me. How was I not supposed to fall head over heels for him instantly? It was like the moment I was born that man held a part of my soul, and reuniting with him had finally made me feel whole.
How the hell could I sit there and pretend like I cared about Aubree’s problems?
“My parents are being so annoying too,” Aubree was busy saying, frowning as she broke apart the chocolate bar she’d gotten from the vending machine. She wore a thin sweater, its sleeves pulled down over her wrists. Her curly brown hair was greasy, heavy bags beneath her hazel stare. She looked even worse now than she did at Kyle’s funeral—and she’d been bawling the entire time then.
Meanwhile I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. Not once, not at all. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d never cried, for all children cried over stupid shit, but not anything in recent memory. I’d always been a little different… maybe because of Enzo. Things just didn’t hit me the same way, didn’t affect me like other people. Maybe that made me a psychopath.
“They think I’m going to spiral or something,” she paused, stuffing a square of chocolate into her mouth and chewing it with a pout on her face. “They think I’m going to cut myself again, even though I told them it was never like that—I didn’t do it because I wanted to die.” She’d never talked about it so loudly before, but I guess she was at the point where she didn’t care.
She didn’t care, I didn’t care. We both just didn’t care, so why bother pretending?
I jerked to my feet, saying, “I have to go.”
Aubree blinked up at me. “Where? To the bathroom? Do you want me to come with you?” Ah, yes, because as a girl in high school, I could never go anywhere alone. It was the unwritten etiquette of the place.
“No,” I said. “I just have to go.” I gathered up my lunch, even though I’d hardly touched it—nothing out of my usual—and started walking to the nearest garbage can. I felt jittery. I felt like I was going to scream, to staple Aubree’s lips shut just so she would stop talking. I couldn’t do it.
I needed to see him.
Aubree, however, didn’t get the hint, for she got up, following me to the trash, hovering near my shoulder as she said, “What’s going on? What’s wrong? Tenley—”
I whirled on her, shouting, “Stop!” The word came out loud enough that the tables near us stopped talking and turned to watch, but I didn’t care enough to lower my voice. “You talk and you talk and you talk. You never stop long enough to realize that I don’t give a shit.”
She looked wounded, and for a split-second, I felt bad, but it was only for a brief moment.
I lowered my voice, whispering, “I don’t care. I don’t. Not about Kyle, not about your parents… not about you.” As the tears formed in her eyes, I said nothing else as I walked away, hurrying out of the cafeteria even though it wasn’t time yet. Like I’d told her, I didn’t care.
I didn’t go to my locker. I pushed out of one of the school’s many side entrances, and no one was there to stop me. Within a few moments, I had my phone out of my pocket and was dialing Enzo’s number. He’d given it to me on Sunday, though I didn’t save his name in my phone, just in case. Only his number.
The phone rang as I walked away from the school. You’d think there would be more security or something, because students weren’t supposed to be able to just walk out and not look back, but there wasn’t. I guess no one thought we would want out. Stupid.
I made it to the sidewalk near the road when he finally picked up. “Tenley,” his low voice fell onto my ears and instantly soothed my annoyance. “Is something wrong?”
I could explain everything to him over the phone, but I didn’t. I simply said, “Can you come pick me up? I’m on the road near the school.” Just for a few hours. I’d have him drop me back off before school let out so I could run in and get my bag, act like I never saw him today.
This game of pretend… I didn’t know how long I could keep it up. Each minute I spent apart from him felt like an eternity of torture, and I’d just rather not.
He didn’t ask why, didn’t demand answers like Aubree had tried to. Instead, he simply said, “I’ll be there in ten.” And then he hung up, leaving me to wait for him.
I chose a shady spot near a tree to sit down in the grass, running my thumb over my phone screen. Not many cars were on the road, since the school was located in a residential part of town. It wasn’t like we were on a main road or anything, so it was quiet. It was so much quieter than the cafeteria inside, and that helped to cool me down.
Don’t get me wrong, I was still intensely frustrated at Aubree and her incessant complaining and whining, but I didn’t think that mattered anymore. I’d hurt her feelings, so she’d probably want to put some distance between us for a while. Maybe forever.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut, shouldn’t have said anything to her. I should’ve swallowed it down and acted like the good, meek little girl I’d been these past few years. The problem, of course, was that I was not that girl, not with Enzo in my life. The only person I owed anything to was that man, not Aubree, not Kayla, not any of the teachers or other students in Banner High.
The girl I used to be, the Tenley Goddard that had existed for the last ten years, she was nothing but a lie. A mask. A face I’d worn while the real me lied in wait inside of me, waiting for Enzo to come back to me. This was the real me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Enzo’s car pulled up on the road, slowing to a stop, and I got to my feet, hurrying to the car. When I got in, I threw my arms around him, hugg
ing him, bringing that stubbly, serious face toward me as I whispered, “I missed you.”
His chest hummed as his arms wrapped around me and returned the embrace. “I always miss you,” Enzo spoke, ending the hug only so he could drive away.
I made no attempts to hide the fact that I stared at him as he drove. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him in the daylight, but today was a much brighter and nicer day than Sunday, the day of Kyle’s funeral. Even though the sun shined above the car, he still carried a darkness with him, and it was a darkness that called out to the deepest, most primal parts of me.
He was definitely, without a doubt, the most handsome man I’d ever seen. A certain maturity to his face that boys from Banner High just didn’t have, his body much more impressive than any stupid quarterback’s. His jaw was square, lined in stubble, and even though his nose was a bit crooked—my guess from being broken sometime in the past—it made his profile that much manlier. Couple all that with his black hair and his equally pitch-dark eyes, and he was everything I wanted.
“Run away from school?” he asked, glancing at me, a slight smirk to his lips. Those lips… I wouldn’t mind feeling them roam across every part of my body. Not a thought the old me would’ve had, but the old me was dead and gone.
I shrugged. “I couldn’t take it in there anymore. I needed to see you.” Leaning my head on the headrest behind me, I stared at him with a small smile on my face. “Plus, Aubree would not shut up about Kyle and how annoying her parents were being.”
Shadows danced across his features, his eyes clouding over as he drove us… wherever the hell he was taking me. “What do you mean?” In reality, it didn’t matter where we went, as long as we were together. Surely that was all that mattered, so why couldn’t we just leave this town right now?
Leave it all behind. Leave everything. Toss our phones out of the window and just drive someplace new. It would be an adventure of a lifetime.
Groaning, I rolled my eyes and explained, “I guess they think she’s going to cut herself again. Especially with how Kyle died, suicide is on her parents’ brains.” I couldn’t blame them. When your brain worked right, it was difficult to understand the people whose brains didn’t work quite on the same wavelength. “I kind of freaked out on her. I might’ve made her cry.”
Enzo chuckled. “Really? My girl, making someone else cry? I can’t see it.”
I glared at him, and he chuckled again. I could be mean. Mean or cruel. Whichever one I’d been to Aubree, I knew things would never be the same. Just one more reason to hightail it out of here and get going.
We were at a red light when he reached over to me and set a hand on my leg, fingers dipping down to my inner thigh as he whispered, “As long as you’re my good girl, I don’t care how mean you are to anyone else. Fuck ‘em.” The light turned green far too soon, which made him return his hand to the steering wheel. I felt the loss of his warmth immediately.
“Where are we going?” I asked, watching as the scenery passed us by. We were in a part of town Kayla hated driving through, a part of town where trash rolled around in the streets and people pushed shopping carts full of their own belongings.
“My place,” he said.
“Can you take me back to the school at two-thirty?” I paused for a moment before adding, “Unless we’re going to run right now.” It was just a suggestion. A suggestion I really wanted to turn into reality.
He nodded as we pulled into a tiny parking lot full of potholes. Once he was parked, he turned off the car and looked at me, those dark eyes eating me up and making me squirm. “I told you to be patient, Tenley.”
“I know, I know. I just… it’s so hard to wait now that we’ve—”
Enzo stopped me from saying anything else by leaning over and taking my mouth in his, setting a fire burning inside my gut and stealing the very breath out of my lungs. “Trust me,” he whispered, lips grazing against mine, “I know.” He said nothing else, getting out of the car.
I trailed him to the building beside the parking lot, a three-story apartment complex that looked like it’d seen better days. As we walked inside, I was greeted with the smell of old, dusty air. The halls were dark, barely lit. It reminded me of the days I’d spent in his basement, before. The good old days.
Some people might hold their nose up at places like this, but this was where Enzo and I belonged. We weren’t destined to own a mansion with a ten-acre yard. No, we would be locked away in the darkness, but we would be together, and we would be happier than those tucked safely away in their big homes.
Enzo lived on the third floor, and we had to walk up the stairs because the elevator was out. He let me walk in first, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. It was clean inside his place, but it was… bare. Like he was hardly here to enjoy the space. No decorations, the bare minimum.
Although, I guess that could also be due to him just recently getting out of prison and not having a steady job, so there was that. Plus, I bet he spent an awful lot of his time watching me instead of being here.
“How do you afford this place?” I asked, moving to sit on the couch. It was a one-bedroom apartment, and everything here looked second-hand, not that there was anything wrong with it. Even the TV was old. An old-fashioned tube and not the flat screens the stores sold nowadays. “Do you have a job?”
Enzo reclined beside me, his leg brushing up against mine. He stretched, putting his arm behind my head and pulling me against his chest. He wore a soft, dark t-shirt, along with dark jeans. Everything about him was so dark—I loved it.
“I work for the guy who owns this place. He lets me live here for free as long as I take care of any maintenance,” Enzo said, turning us so we both were laying on the couch, me resting on top of his strong, solid body.
“What’d you do before that?” I muttered the question against his chest, feeling so at ease with him, so calm and peaceful. How the hell could this be wrong when it felt so right?
“I made things work” was all he said, and I didn’t push him on it. I knew if I needed to know, he would tell me. What he’d done before, what he had to do to get back to me, none of it mattered anymore. He was here, and I was here, and we had everything to look forward to.
Our future. Together. At fucking last.
“I’m glad you did,” I said, nuzzling against his body, sighing when I felt his arms wrap around me. “I’m glad you came back to me.”
His arms tightened to steel around me; I could not escape his embrace if I tried. Not that I wanted to, anyway. “Me, too,” Enzo murmured, and I moved my head to stare at him, snaking up a hand to his face and rubbing the stubble on his cheek. Lust and pure desire flashed in his eyes, and I could feel the same yearning inside of me.
“You make me feel alive.” I felt my lips curling into a smile as his hands moved downwards, one of them dropping to cup my ass and squeeze it. “I never knew I could feel like this.” Maybe it was cheesy, maybe it was too soon, for it hadn’t even been a week since he showed his face to me, but I knew it in my heart of hearts, so there was no point in denying it, no point in keeping it to myself.
Besides, I had the feeling we both already knew what I was about to say.
“I love you,” I whispered, the words weightless as they came from me.
Enzo smirked, grabbing my face and bringing it up to his, forcing my head to hover over his, my blonde hair draping around us, cocooning us from the room. His fingers weaved through my hair, his dark eyes sparkling as he murmured, “Say it again.” An order, an urgent plea.
“I love you.” This time I spoke them softly, breathy, my heart in my throat as I gazed down at him. This man… he was literally my everything. I didn’t care if his hands were stained with blood, if he’d killed my parents and kidnapped me. I didn’t care if he forced me to live with Kayla for the last ten years.
All that pain, all that suffering, the unknown I’d waded through waist-deep all these years… it was all worth it. Every single thing in my past w
as worth it, just to reach this point.
His chest rumbled beneath me, and I felt my inner core ache with a need that had only emerged recently. The need to be connected to him, the desperate desire to be full of him. “I will never tire of hearing that,” he promised me. Within a moment, he had our bodies flipped; he pinned me down to the couch, his hands still in my hair. A comfortable place to be, stuck between the couch and his body. “You know I love you more than life itself. You know I would do anything for you.”
I nodded, as much as the hands on my head would allow me to. “I know.”
His lips found mine once again, and all thoughts flew out of the window. We were both nothing more than greedy mouths and grasping hands, trying to tear away at each other’s clothes, needing to feel the other’s skin bare against ours. His hands roamed down from my head, pushing against my chest as he gripped my tits over my shirt, pawing at them, his teeth nipping at my lips and making me moan.
“Come on,” he said, pulling himself off me, the hardness swelling in his pants a sign of how turned on he was. I knew girls didn’t get boners, but if we did, I’d have a raging one for him right now, too. He took my hand as he pulled me off the couch and tugged me along, right into his bedroom.
Another empty, sad-looking room. Another space that didn’t quite feel like a home because he simply used it as a base of operations.
We stood beside his bed, and he helped me out of my clothes. It was not a gentle, slow thing, either. It was fast, wild and free, Enzo making it clear he needed me naked and on that bed as soon as possible, and I burned with the knowledge that I drove this man crazy. To have such power over someone like him, it was intoxicating. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Once I stood before him naked, he pushed me down on the bed, grabbing my legs and helping me swing them up before working on his own clothes, tearing at them and leaving them in crumpled heaps on the ground near mine. His bare chest heaved with ragged, hungry breaths, and when his cock bounced free, I let myself rake my eyes over every inch of his body.