by Mj Fields
Still can’t.
Her little sister, Lexington, announced once at dinner that London had gotten her period years ago. I felt bad for her, like really damn bad, until she walked around the table and whispered to me, “I am all woman now.” I was aware.
Still aware.
I about died. Since then, wanting her to like me came second to wanting to make her even more of a woman.
Still won’t.
The problem now is she’s too fucking close, and I have agreed to watch over her. Something she can’t know. No one can. It’s between her brother and I. Something I was damn sure I could handle, but fucking London is like that little girl still, with a smartass mouth still, and awkward as fuck...still. But so fucking unprotected from herself for the first time.
Do I still want her? More so now that I have seen those things aren’t little nubs. Her tits are what all those women’s doctors I have been with should be selling them. They aren’t nubs, they are little red cherries, and they were hard. It’s not even cold in here, for fuck’s sake. I glance at them as she walks toward me, and they still are.
I want to ask her if they hurt. I want to take them in my mouth and make that pain turn into a pleasure she has never known, one I gave her first.
...I want to not get a fucking hard on right now.
It was all fine when she entered middle school. At that point, I just felt protective of the little girl. Then the period talk and her basically telling me it was there for the taking...But so is jail for an eighteen-year-old boy who fucks with a fourteen-year-old girl, and rightfully so. But anyone who looked at her—and I saw it—knew she was off limits.
When I graduated, she was coming into high school, and yeah, I pulled a dick move and made sure every guy knew who her father and brother were, possibly embellished a little about...maybe some insanity and making damn sure they knew I was, albeit self-appointed, going to make sure no one messed with her, too.
Her junior prom date, he didn’t get sick. He got scared.
Her senior dinner dance date, he didn’t just decide he wasn’t into her. His tires got slashed. Was it wrong? Fuck yes, it was wrong, but what else can a guy do?
I had a moment after that when I knew I had probably stepped way the fuck out of line, so I tried my best to leave it alone.
My parents’ divorce and the mind fuck that was, my mom tried to brainwash me into thinking Dad was the problem, not her. That he had been in love with Tessa and that caused their marriage to fall apart. Then I found out she was the one who had the affair that ended their marriage.
My dad, he never once held it against me. He stood strong to who he was. He was always there, always my coach, my workout partner, by biggest fucking supporter. I doubted him because of her. Bitch.
Then shit went down with my sister Ava, her pregnancy, her fiancé getting killed. I was really fucking busy trying to fill in for my mother who has been a piece of shit for five years now, filling in for her absent-ass when shit got bad for Ava.
So, yeah, I was supposed to be out of here last semester, but life happens, and shit changes, and now here she is. My fucking weakness. And she’s untouchable, because I’m doing Maddox a fucking favor. Maddox, my sister’s dead fiancé’s best friend, my father’s new wife’s son-in-law. Maddox, London’s brother.
Talk about fucked. This is hell.
“What?” she asks, standing next to the bed.
“You can sit, London. I’m not gonna bite you.” I look away, because I really want to fucking bite her.
She sits, arms crossed over her chest. I can’t help taking one more peek, which is fucking stupid because as “cherry” as she is, she’s observant as fuck.
I sit up, because let’s face it, if I did pop wood lying down, there is no way in hell to hide it. Sitting up, I have a fighting chance.
Her pissy, little pout immediately rubs me the wrong way, and I get...defensive, which happens to be a position I play really fucking well.
“You don’t leave without—”
“Can it, Links.” She scowls.
“Excuse?”
“I didn’t feel well, and you were dealing with baby momma drama that you clearly needed—”
“Look, I don’t give a fuck what other people think, but I can promise you that Keeka isn’t carrying my kid.”
“So, why care what I think?” There was that tone, the hopeful little chirp in her voice. Fucking adorable, but certainly didn’t help me to not think about eating tit.
“Because you fucking know me.”
“So?”
“So...” I try to come up with some shit, but the only person I ever have to come up with shit for is London, and sometimes Ava, but everyone else gets one hundred percent raw from me.
She looks at me like I’m crazy, and honestly, I kind of feel like I am.
“And...” I pause, still trying to figure it out. “And even if you’re Elle here, you’re London to me. I don’t need you calling home and spreading around that I got Keeka knocked up.”
“Because you’re afraid that they’ll be disappointed?”
“What?” I am now teetering on the edge of insanity. “It’s not fucking mine, London. It’s Truckers.”
She covers her mouth then quickly recovers from the shock. She recovers a hell of a lot faster than I, because I just fucked up. I told London whose kid Keeka is carrying.
“Trucker, your friend from home?”
“No one knows that,” I warn her.
“Mitch?”
I shake my head. I didn’t even let that cat out of the bag with my best friend. “She told me she wasn’t sure who the daddy was, which is shit. I know it’s his.”
“Then you should tell him,” she says, placing her soft, little hand on mine.
This is different. We don’t touch. It’s still fucking wrong.
I pull it back. “No, London. She...It’s hers—her deal. If she’s not telling him, it’s for a reason. I shouldn’t have said a fucking word to you.”
“I won’t tell,” she huffs. “I’m not like that, Logon.”
“I call bullshit.” I sigh and grab my hat off the nightstand, pulling it down over my eyes.
“Call it whatever you want. I am not a drama queen.”
“Just a drama major,” I half-joke.
“I can keep a secret.”
“You can’t keep a thought inside your head,” I state the obvious.
“Can, too. Trust me,” she sighs out, “I can keep a lot inside.”
I chuckle. “Like what?”
She looks down at her hand then pulls the blanket up under her chin and looks down. She’s quiet for a minute, and damn if she doesn’t look older, more beautiful.
I am enjoying this London, a little too much probably.
“Doesn’t matter, Logan.” She looks up at me. “I can keep a secret, and I’m not threatening to expose yours, but I am telling you, if I’m doing this for you, you need to do the same for me.”
Before I can tell her that I will, she starts yapping again.
“You may think I’m a loud mouthed little girl, but I am telling you, that’s not me. That’s what you get, what my family gets. Around them, I can be like that. I don’t have to hide everything. I don’t have to act like I’m ‘fine’,” she air quotes. “I can let it go, and they will love me even though I am that girl. I don’t have to think the only thing someone sees is the girl whose parents got divorced and her mom got cancer. I don’t have to pretend I didn’t hang upside down in a car for two hours before anyone found us, watching my father die. I don’t have to pretend I call Brody Dad because, to me, he is my dad, since I never had a relationship that wasn’t horrible with my real father until he decided to change then died.” She swallows hard holding back her emotions.
I can’t fucking handle emotions. Ava’s nearly killed me. Still do.
“London, you don’t have to—”
“I don’t have to be Brody Hines’ stepdaughter, or Maddox Hines’ stepsister. I
don’t have to have people look at me like I don’t deserve good grades or to get leads in plays because of them. I don’t...” A tear falls, then another and another. I want to wipe them away, but I’m afraid to fucking touch her.
It’s fucking useless trying to hold my hand back—it’s fucking trembling—so I wipe them away, and that little bird chirp escapes her throat.
“I don’t want to be me here, and that makes no sense. I mean, I want to be me, but me without, you know, just me.”
I shake my head because I can hear and feel every word she’s saying, but I can’t look at her. I’m too busy trying to rid her of those fucking tears.
“You’re going to ruin it, Logan.” She pushes my hand away.
I look down at her. “No—”
“You are, and you don’t even see it. I don’t need you to lord over me because you think you”—she pauses and lies down, her back to me—“you think you like me.”
Defenses up, I ask, “What the hell does that mean?”
“You and I, we have some weird ten-year-old way of communicating. It comes off as hate and friendship, and maybe you think you need to be like Dad and Maddox, and maybe like a crush and—”
“A crush?” I jump right on the defensive line. “I’m a bit old to have a crush, London.”
“Whatever. I’m at least mature enough to acknowledge it,” she snips. “But fine, maybe it’s just that we, you and I, don’t know how to be anything other than those two kids everyone enjoys watching act like a couple of cute kids trying to find their way while avoiding each other.”
“I don’t avoid you,” I huff.
“Well, Logan, we sure as hell aren’t friends.”
“Only female unrelated that I’ve spent any amount of time around that I haven’t succeeded in fucking, so I’d say—”
“You are such an asshat.” She sounds pissed but there is also humor in her voice. Thank God she didn’t hear the slip in that sentence.
“Girls and guys don’t just stay friends. Hell, guys don’t do friends without the thought of fucking the chick. So, remember that, London. Guys like Jones, they want to fuck you.”
She rolls to her back and looks up at me. “Is that why you hit him?”
I have no idea how to answer that without revealing I am fighting...the crush. Therefore, I give her a half-truth.
“You told him you were a little ho, London. That there will get you one of two things. A reputation that you clearly haven’t earned, nor do you want, or fucked in an alley. Then I realized you were fucked up, so I assumed he put some shit in your drink.”
“I did shots,” she says, looking up at me with a self-congratulatory smirk.
“You shouldn’t be doing shots, London,” I tell her lips—I mean her.
Now she’s looking at mine. I try to pull out every ounce of self-restraint I have, and a bit of the asshole in me.
“Logan, here I’m Elle, and I am going to live and experience and—”
“You think they don’t see you? That they don’t see how cherry you are? Fuck, London, you’re like a newborn baby calf trying to walk for the first time.”
She huffs and rolls to her side, her back to me again. “Good, then I’ll be quick to figure it out. Because, like those calves, no one is gonna tell me I can’t or shouldn’t, or make me feel like I am unable.” She looks back at me. “I don’t care what you or anyone else says. Go ahead and tell them all that my shaky legs, my cherry personality, my virgin ways are because...”
She keeps talking, but I’m having a fucking party inside.
London is still a virgin. I mean, I knew it, but after she made me question it tonight...
Finally, I am able to hear her again.
“I’m gonna shine, Logan.”
“I have no doubt you will. But I’m gonna make sure you do it without getting hurt.”
“I’m here to be me, or to be me without the spotlight reflecting off someone else, indirectly shining on me, as it has my whole life. I’m here to blend, not just be Brody Hines’ stepdaughter, or Maddox Hines’ stepsister. I am London Fields, aka Elle.”
“I get it,” I tell her. “Just gonna have to do it smarter.”
“You can’t be around me, Logan, because you have the same spotlight shining on you.”
“Well, tough shit,” I tell her then lie down. No chance I’m going to get hard when she’s on a point-proving mission. “You’ll deal for the next four months.”
“No.” She shoves me.
I laugh. “You can’t move two hundred pounds of dead weight, kiddo.”
“You,” she grunts, now shoving me with her feet and hands. “Get out! I don’t want them thinking you’re trying to bang me.”
I can’t help laughing. “There’s no chance they think that, Elle.”
“Right, I’m brunette and my boobs are real,” she says, still trying to push me.
“Right.” I chuckle. “That and Mitch has a hard-on for Jamie.”
“Christy,” she corrects.
“No, Elle, Jamie.”
“But...”
“Trust me; it’s Jamie.”
“Trust you?” she huffs.
“Fine, go look out there yourself.”
She immediately jumps up, legs not shaking like a little calf, but strong and lean like the dancer she is. She looks out of her room, then she quickly shuts the door, leaps across her little room, over me, and sits, looking down at me.
“This is going to cause soooo many problems.”
“Will not,” I say through a yawn.
“Logan, you need to fix this!” She shoves me again.
I grab her hands, flip her onto her back, and roll her to her side, facing away from me and my growing chub. “Go to sleep, Elle. I need at least two hours of sleep before practice.”
“You can’t stay in here,” she snaps.
“And you aren’t strong enough to make me leave.” I snicker.
I get an elbow to the ribs.
“Exactly.”
“Logan, you’ll ruin everything I am working on,” she huffs out.
“No, London. I can promise you, I won’t do a damn thing to ruin that. You gotta promise me that you’ll let me do what I need to do.”
She’s quiet, thank God, and I start to fall asleep.
* * *
Standing outside her room, she throws a pillow at my face, then a blanket, and then she glares at me as she shuts the door then locks it.
Well, son of a bitch, I laugh to myself. She is stronger than I thought.
And that...that’s sexy as fuck.
I lie down on the couch that was once occupied by Mitch and close my eyes. I know he’s in her room.
I wake to being poked. I open my eyes and see Mitch, hair all finger-fucked and grinning.
“We gotta go, man.” He licks his fingers. “Freshie meat is much better than I expected.”
6
Dining out
London
I was wrong about him. I thought Mitch was a good guy. But once again, I have learned a lesson, and school has yet begun.
Jamie isn’t one to hold back, even if it makes her look like the villain.
“The morning after,” we sat at breakfast, Mitch and Logan at another table. Lisa was nudging Christy. I assume she was trying to get her to talk to him. Christy looked at Jamie, and Jamie mouthed “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Christy smiled politely.
“Well, I am. I thought he was into you,” Jamie replies quietly.
“What did we miss?” Lisa asks me, clearly shocked.
I shrug.
“You passed out,” Jamie reminds her. “You were asleep,” she says to me. “And Christy, I’m seriously sorry, and will back off if you—”
“Back off?” She smiles that polite smile again. “He’s into you. You told me to go for it, and I’m telling you the same.”
“I think he was just trying out milk chocolate,” she tries to joke, glancing sideways in his direction. He’s not even
paying attention.
Jerk.
“Wait, you’re black?” Lisa asks, serious as a heart attack.
“You didn’t know?” Jamie replies.
“Nope, completely shocked. So, in case none of you knew, I’m Asian,” Lisa says, and they both laugh.
We all look up when Mitch and Logan stop at the table.
“Good morning, ladies.” Mitch winks at Jamie. “What’s so funny?”
Jamie’s reply is fast. “Lisa just found out I am black.”
“And Jamie just found out I am Asian,” Lisa jokes.
“What does that make you?” he asks Christy.
“Not your type,” she replies, and we all laugh.
Mitch looks between her and Jamie, then back at her. “I have a type?”
Jamie looks at him. “Last night, Mitch. Was that your first taste of chocolate?”
Mitch doesn’t reply. His face turns red as he just stares at her.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” she asks in a way that makes him even more uncomfortable. “What’s wrong, player? You had a lot to say last night...until the cat actually had your tongue.”
“Oh, my God.” I palm my face and look down.
Everyone, except Mitch, and including Logan, start laughing.
Then Mitch comes to life.
“Best protein shake you ever had, right?”
Jamie now turns red, and I am sure I’m even more so.
“I was drunk, so if I said that to you, it was the alcohol talking.”
He shrugs. “Drunk mouths speak sober thoughts, sweetheart.”
“First time drunk, Mitch,” she tells him. “And the only thought I had about you up until you kissed me was, damn, he’s into Christy.”
“Maybe I was talking about me,” Mitch admits, a look of regret immediately washing over him.
I look at Logan, who rolls his eyes slightly.
This time, it’s different. This time, I think it’s the first that look wasn’t directed at me.
I smile, and then he smiles back, giving me a quick look at those dimples.
My stomach does a slight flip.