Delinquents (Dusty #2)

by Mary Elizabeth Sarah Elizabeth

“I'm okay,” I tell her. “Just tired.”

  I DON'T know what time it is when I wake, but I feel like love is early, like I just texted him and barely closed my eyes.

  Blinking for focus in my dark room, the first thing I see is Thomas' hand leaving my door. I think maybe the sound of him locking it is what woke me.

  Sleepy but so eager, I sit up and pull my sweater off.

  Clean-shaven and shower-fresh, all low-tops and soft cotton, trouble's golden-lit by my nightlight and so high I can see his pulse. Wordlessly turning and tugging me to the side edge of my bed, he talks to me with his hands around my knees and I listen with my fingers under his tee, pushing it up and off. I whisper to him with my sting-burning legs curving around and pulling him close, and he whispers back by giving me contact so sweet I could die. It sets my heart rushing when he comes down onto me. It's too good, too needed to bear silently.

  Gasping sharply, I grip Dusty's sides as his palm covers my mouth. He presses me down with more of his weight and I push up into him with my whole body.

  Please, please, please, my heart sings.

  Pushing sheets and shorts away, we touch and I bend, and my eyes squeeze closed in the glowing dark as this boy parts my body to hold his. I curve and burn and shake and circle, trembling-needy and pinned beneath undeniable love, and when he presses down on my leg, making me open all the way, it's everything I want in the world.

  But I can't help crying out under his hand.

  All the way open isn't enough when I'm too tender.

  Slowly sliding his hips, not inside, just slick and hard and against, Thomas uncovers my mouth.

  “Shh,” he whispers, lips to lips like a kiss. “Shh.”

  I try to.

  I will myself to be quiet and still and softly strong enough. I feel him sliding and pushing and trying too, but then he presses right where I ache the most for him, and it's too much. I want him so badly but I can't physically handle what love needs.

  Cutting a breath that tastes like copper, I shake my head as Thomas angles his hips, rolling slowly along me like a burning wave.

  “Stop, stop, stop,” I whisper, reaching up to hold on.

  On fire under my palms, his pulse burns insistence and capability, but Thomas stills. His eyes close and he swallows a drawn, yearning sound as he digs his grip into my bedding and my pressed-down leg.

  He needs me and it hurts.

  “Let me,” I tell him quietly, reaching between us.

  His forehead and eyebrows draw tightly, and his breathing is unevenly shallow. He's gone from the relief of feeling found to stifling lost sounds, and seeing him need me like this floods me with heartbeats.

  Touching him carefully with both hands, I watch his breath catch and I feel his arms strain.

  “Shh,” I whisper like he did.

  With my left hand on his hip, I wrap my right around him. I love this boy with one slow stroke, and when I reach his head and rub him longingly against where I can't open enough, his entire frame tenses. He moans, and I kiss him to cover the sound. I bring him closer with my legs, and when I stroke his body down to mine again, he moves with my touch.

  Barely holding himself up, Thomas lets me guide him until he starts to shake. His rocking goes from smooth to instinctual and tight little hurts pang through me as I press my knees as wide apart as I can.

  “Love, love, love,” I whisper and beg and encourage, stroking and palming and sliding sweetly.

  Airless above my lips, Dusty falls, hard and warm and everywhere.

  “HE WALKED right by me.”

  Love is shirtless in his shorts and I'm naked under sheets, and his voice feels so good on my skin.

  “He hasn't said anything at all?” I ask as he lays his head on my chest.

  “No.” Thomas brushes his thumb around my belly button while he fills his heart with the sound of mine. “That's where Becka gets it.”

  Wrapping my arms around him, I know what he means. His sister's tongue gets sharp sometimes, but not like his or his mother's. My best friend has her father's temperament. A turned back is how they say fuck you, and being disregarded by your family has to hurt, but love worked for it. There's no surprise in his tone as he talks about them.

  The prodigal delinquent sighs and his breath is warm over his marks in my skin. Brushing my fingers through clean-cut hair, it's insane to me that hours ago we were a hundred miles away, and no one has any idea.

  “It doesn't matter,” he says, turning onto his back, resting his head level with mine. He bends his knees and pats his shorts where there are no pockets, but he wouldn't smoke in here even if he had his pack.

  Turning to my side, I tuck my legs under where his are bent while he stares up at nothing in particular. He's here, curving his left arm under his head and touching my skin with his right hand, but he's inside himself, and we're quiet for a long time. When he draws his fingertips over the bruise on my hip that's the same shape as his thumb, I don't wince. His with-me-but-not-with-me touch is so light it almost tickles.

  Almost.

  “I told them I'd go to Springbrook, Leigh.” Drawing a slow circle around his mark, love gives me hope I don't want.

  Two hours away in Springbrook, Oregon is a rehabilitation center called Hazelden that I've heard Tommy and Becka talk about. I've scrolled through pictures, and it looks like a fancy cabin meets a renovated church, but results are promised between mediation, stress management, shame resilience, and treatment plans.

  My head spins with words like transition, motivation, and stabilization. Prevention, dependency, development of a sober support network dizzy me with nervous uncertainty and stupid optimism.

  More than anyone, I want Thomas clean, but his blue has been gone so long that just the thought of it feels unfamiliar and inaccessible, and what if he does straighten out? Then what? Aside from being together, he's given less thought to the future than even I have.

  Curving closer, I wrap both arms around him and lay my head over his heart.

  I try not to hope, but he started it.

  TWO NIGHTS later, it's almost three in the morning and love is wide awake in his anxiousness.

  “Springbook's only half an hour from Portland,” he threatens. “You know that, right? You know how easy it would be—”

  I cut him off by bringing the blunt back to his lips.

  In the back of the Lincoln, we're in pajamas and jeans with holes in the knees. We're bare, violet-tipped toes and old Etnies, sleepy blue-greens and restless blacks. We're pressed together palms and fingertip touches, and kisses—so many unsteadily given forehead, cheek, and chin kisses that ask for any and every assurance.

  “You know I can't take my phone?” he pushes. “I can't even take reading material that isn't recovery related.”

  Bitter around the last two words, my boy looks away and shakes his head. I climb into his lap.

  “I know,” I tell him gently.

  “Do you? You know it'll be at least a month?” He meets my eyes, and I can see his frustration tipping, nerves and bad habits and his mood all flipping too quickly.

  “It's not like …”

  He stops.

  “I can't take my fucking phone, Leigh.”

  Cupping his face, I brush my thumbs under his eyes until he looks up at me. “I'm not going anywhere, Dusty. You'll never be without me.”

  Black eyes seek and plead. Dusty looks young and lost.

  “Can you do it?” he asks, searching my face. “Can you live on nothing for that long?”

  Lost and caught between I don't know and haven't I already, I'm more scared of feeding love uncertainty than I am of his absence.

  Pressing close to keep him with me, I fill my eyes and heart and voice with confidence.

  “We'll make it work.”

  HOURS LATER, sitting at my dressing table with a song about home and burning reminders turned up, I tap my feet to piano beats and dust shimmer across my eyelids. Dad's at work and Mom's at the library with her book club. I
t's a little after ten a.m. and I'm waiting for Becka to call like she said she would.

  The Castors are making the two-hour drive to Hazelden together today. They're going to pick me up on the way.

  Pulling a pink petal skirt up my legs, I grab a white tube top and tug it high enough to keep secret marks covered. I let my hair air-dry because end of July heat is going to have its way regardless, and I rock to my tiptoes as I cross my room. My thighs still tingle-sting a little, but the ache in the rest of my legs and in between is getting better while the hope love put in my heart caresses every part of me.

  I've lived without Thomas before. I've survived his runaways, and this is different. It's for something good, and I want to try.

  Downstairs, I grab organic powdered sugar and dip strawberries from the garden right into the bag one at a time for breakfast. I think about calling Becka and asking what the holdup is, but decide to just head over there instead. This is a family thing and I'm invited because I'm family. Driving myself will save them the trip here and make my nervous boy smile.

  Setting the bag of sugar down, I grab another strawberry and head upstairs for my shoes and phone. I only make it a few steps before I hear the low rumble of trouble outside.

  My heart skips a double-beat. My stomach flips and turns with confusion. I'm not sure why Becka didn't call or why they're letting Dusty drive the Lincoln, but I grab my keys from the post near the stairs and continue up the steps for my things.

  Knuckles knocking on the other side of the door stop me again and my heart flutters triple.

  Love is reckless when he's nervous. He's one-tracked, and I should probably be more wary of his inconstancy, but it's him. I sort of crave it. I kind of cherish it.

  Heading back down with my keys in my left hand, I set the strawberry I'm still holding between my front teeth and open the door.

  Wayward and willful stands tall in brown cutoffs and a faded black Used tee shirt from when he was sixteen. He starts with cut-short-again hair, new sunglasses, and a clean shave, and ends with old low-tops, sockless, and untied. Showered-fresh and coke-straight, Dusty open-mouth laughs as soon as he sees me.

  Remembering the strawberry between my teeth, I roll my eyes and bite down, tossing the green top past rebellion in all his glory.

  “Hi,” he says, pressing his hands into the doorframe on either side of me. He leans down but still has to bend his knees more than a little.

  “Hi.” I smile.

  “Hi,” he says again, leaning his weight into the frame. With his lips barely parted, slick pretending to be innocent kisses me just once.

  I like my lips. They taste like my strawberry and his Crest, and it's almost too sweet.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Thomas nods behind me, toward the stairs and steps inside, making me step back.

  “Come on,” he says, cool and relaxed, leaving his shades on. “Go get your shoes.”

  Turning, I start up the stairs as he shuts the door and follows. I remain a few steps ahead, but his energy and proximity radiate.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder as he follows me into my room. I buckle a sandal as he looks around my sunlight-filled space.

  “Albany,” he says casually.

  My heart drops into my stomach with the weight of what I should have known all along.

  Thomas picks up an eye shadow compact while I slip on my other sandal. He looks it over while I stand on one foot trying to buckle the stupid buckle, but I'm frustrated now and I can't get it. My leg wobbles, and I hop to keep my balance, but I still can't get the stupid thing, and this hoodlum punk with his stupid sunglasses and his stupid grin, all selfish and disappointing and out of place in my girlie-girl room, laughs.

  I grip onto his arm for balance, and he holds my hair out of my eyes so I can buckle my sandal.

  “What's in Albany?” I ask, refusing to keep resentment out of my voice.

  Thomas hands me my sunglasses.

  “Absolutely nothing,” he says with a sharpened edge.

  Setting my sunnies on top of my head, I grab my purse and even though I don't understand, I take his hand when he holds it out. With our fingers together, he continues.

  “Miles and miles,” he says as we take the stairs, “of bullshit, small town nothing.”

  I close my eyes and swallow sunken hope, but biting back my anger is harder. By the time we get to the front door, I stop walking when he opens it. When he turns to face me, I pull my hand from his.

  The letdown in my heart hurts, but it's how fed up I feel that is so consuming I can't even find words. Raising my brows and glaring up, I demand answers with my eyes, and when he doesn't answer I cross my arms.

  In true Thomas Castor fashion, cynicism curves his smile into a smirk, and he doesn't have to lift his shades for me to see his impatience. Stepping toward me, he takes my hand back.

  “Linn-Benton,” he says. “Community College, that's what's in Albany.”

  Love gives my hand a tug.

  It's light, a pull I could easily resist, but I don't.

  Locking my parents' door behind us, I drop my sunnies to my eyes and follow my boy to his car. He opens my door first, and I reach over to open his as he walks around. As he turns the key, I'm torn as usual between my guilty conscience and my trouble-loving heart, but the second he drapes his arm across the bench seat, closeness invites and overwhelms.

  “What are you going to tell them?” I ask as he backs out.

  Thomas shrugs. “The truth.”

  I buckle my seat belt.

  ALMOST AN hour later, we've stopped for Slurpees, agreed to disagree on music, and taken two wrong turns. The boy behind the wheel laughs, but it's bent and sort of brackish, and it doesn't escape me that just because this isn't rehab, it's still not his first choice.

  Thomas is sticking around for another year because he can't let me go and I don't want him to.

  Even if he had checked into treatment, who's to say that was going to last longer than this? After my initial anger burned off into the breeze, I remembered that everything with love is a risk.

  He's staying.

  He's trying.

  And at least this way he gets to play ball.

  Thinking about the future in any capacity always sets me on edge. Becka's, my own, Dusty's, ours—we can all make our own choices, but there's so much we can't control. It's all dependent on more than just our own dreams and needs, and loving someone only increases those variables.

  This is becoming clearer to me every day.

  My best friend wants me to go to California because that's what's right for her.

  My parents want me to go to Oregon State because that's what's easiest for them.

  If Thomas had his way, we'd keep driving right now and never look back.

  The only person taking any actual interest in what I want, in what's right and best for me, is Oliver.

  Instead of thinking about lounging on the beach with Becka between folklore and mythology, or getting lost for hours on end in French poetry in some far away library, I think about what I could be that would make the most money, because facts are facts and they're moving fast.

  For a teenager, Dusty's inheritance was huge, but there's no way it's going to carry us. I have no idea what he wants to do. So maybe this whole college-classes-for-a-year thing isn't just okay. Maybe it's good. Maybe it will open ideas up that neither of us has had yet.

  I look over as we turn onto Linn-Benton's campus. We spot the main office, and I unbuckle as he parks. Cutting off the engine, incorrigible love leans back. He rubs his nose with the backs of his fingers, and he sniffs. His smile remains, but he's unsteady.

  While my optimism has been growing, right next to me, his anxiety's been increasing.

  Bending my leg underneath me, I face him as he pats his pockets and takes his legal habit out. He taps the pack against his palm, but cigarettes aren't what he wants.

  She's in his other pocket.


  She's calling him.

  She's crying for my boy's attention so loudly I want to tell her to suck my dick.

  Blowing out a breath, I look around the semi-crowded lot and weigh my pros and cons in silence. If Thomas doesn't use, he'll be twitchy, distracted, and quick to flip both his middle fingers. If he uses, he'll be detached, condescending, and all the more audacious. Both options are twisted sick, but we can't change who we are now, and if I, sober, can't tell him which choice is better, how can I expect him, spun, to know what's right?

  My addiction stares out the window while he continues packing his cigarettes, and I smile softly, truly sincere.

  This decision is his, and either way, so am I.

  “I'm going to go in and grab a number or a place in line or whatever,” I say, loyal-hearted and willing to stand by love in any condition as long as he shows up for me to stand by.

  “I'll see you inside?” I ask. “Unless you want me to wait?”

  Finally looking over, Thomas smiles tightly, like he wants to, but doing so is effortful.

  “You're okay,” he says.

  I kiss his cheek before I get out.

  NINE MINUTES, six excuse me's, and one clipboard sign-in later, I sit in a lobby with my legs crossed and my purse in the orange plastic chair next to me. I swing my dangling foot sort of nervously and unwrap a roll of SweeTarts.

  I feel my heart before the double glass doors on my right open.

  Walking toward me, leering at skirts and ties as he passes, Dusty doesn't unlift his shades or unsmirk his lips for anything. I don't need to see his eyes to know, but when he moves my purse and sits down next to me, I reach for his sunglasses anyway.

  He lets me, but as I nudge his Ray-Bans to his crown, his cockiness tightens up. His jaw tenses a little and his eyes narrow.

  Black.

  Black.

  I take a good, long look.

  He didn't bail, and maybe that's small, but it's something.

  “We're number twenty-four,” I tell him.

  “What are they on?” he asks in turn, low-toned and stretching his legs.

  “Fifteen,” I say, hoping the wait isn't long.