I hand her some cash. “Just go in, babe.”
Leigh covers her head with her borrowed-from-me hood and pulls the strings tight, tying them in a bow. Red-blond bangs damp from the rain stick to her forehead. She’s all eyes and nose and smile, and kind of, sort of hidden, but not at all.
“No one will even know it’s me.” Bliss laughs.
I look down at her feet. “Yeah,” I say with a smirk, “because wedges in October give nothing away.”
She wiggles her toes under black leather and brass buckles. “It’s my birthday,” she teases, smiling under too much cotton.
I turn off the car and unbuckle my seat belt, saying, “It’s not your birthday, yet.”
She opens her door as I open mine. “No one will see us.”
With my hands in my pockets, I keep my hat low and my eyes down. Leighlee’s at my side, not skipping a beat while my heart pounds in my fucking throat. She stops to ask some lady who’s loading her groceries into the back of her car if we can take her cart. She hands it over with a smile.
My girl runs ahead of me with it. Its wobbly wheels zigzag while they roll too fast. Baby jumps on and glides all the way to the automatic double doors, holding on tight. I up my step to catch her, and when I do, I turn her around and she kisses me.
I want it so bad.
This.
Out in public.
“You’re crazy, sway,” I say, taking the cart.
The store is brightly lit and warm. The air smells like cinnamon apples, welcoming the fall season. My hands sweat on the cart handle, and I can feel my cheeks heat red.
After stopping in the cereal section, I take off my cap and push my hair back. “Get what you need, Bliss.”
She looks around, still tied in a bow. “I don’t need anything here.”
I lean my forearms against the cart and drop my head. “I’ll wait.”
“Thomas, no one here knows us,” she says lowly, but surely. Her soft little hand touches the back of my neck. She scratches teal painted fingernails under my hat. “And who cares if they do?”
I look up and meet green eyes full of uncertain determination. “You do,” I answer.
“We can leave. Go through a drive-thru or something,” she says in an annoyed tone, looking at each cereal box.
“We’re already here,” I say, exhaling.
She walks away.
“Leighlee,” I call after her, but she keeps walking.
When I catch her at the end of the aisle, I circle my arms around her stomach and press my lips to the side of her neck.
“You can have a chocolate milk,” I bribe, lifting her up. I set love inside the cart and tell her to stay down while I push. “Hide.”
My girl drinks a Yoo-Hoo out of a straw and tells me what she wants as we go up and down each aisle. Boxes of junk food and juices pile at her feet. I take baby though the produce section and she makes a face. I throw in a couple of apples anyway.
“That stuff will kill you,” she jokes.
By the time we make it to the register, I’m no longer worried about being seen. The check-out lady scopes me and Bliss like we’re crazy, but my girl is sitting in the cart up to her knees in trans-fat, so I don’t blame her.
“You’ll never eat all of this,” I say on our walk back to the car.
She searches through the bags and finds her box of Whoppers. She opens the seal and pops one in her mouth. “Watch me,” she says with a wink and crunches chocolate malt between her teeth.
THE SUN goes down as we drive toward the beach, and the momentarily clear sky turns blue, then pink, then purple and orange, before fading to black. By the time we park, clouds cover the stars. The scent of rain is heavy in the air, tied with ocean salt and sand.
We’re the only ones on the shore and it doesn’t take a genius to guess why. The wind chill coming in from the ocean is bone-shivering, and the echo of thunder in the distance guarantees more rain. There’s electricity in the air, and it’s not only from Leigh and I.
Thaddeus and Teri McCloy’s blissful wonder is supposed to be sleeping safe and sound in my sister’s bed tonight, not catching pneumonia under the clouds with a secret she shouldn’t be keeping.
Leighlee unfolds and lays our blanket flat onto the sea-sprinkled dock, the same aged boat port that’s been our stomping ground since we were old enough to get away for a while. This wood knows us. It carries our names carved in its panels. It’s heard our conversations, seen our bodies, and kept our secrets.
Baby unbuckles her shoes and takes them off one at a time, dropping each one on a different corner of the blanket so the breeze doesn’t lift it. Then she zips her jacket up, but leaves the hood down. I give her my hat and hope it helps a little. The bill falls over her eyes, and she looks pretty when she peeks at me from under it.
“If you get sick and die, I’m killing you,” I say.
She pushes my arm and scoffs, but her eyes are forgiving. “It’s not that cold, overprotective boy.”
Leigh sits between my knees with her back against my chest and uses my coat to cover her legs and bare toes. The wind has died down and the air doesn’t seem so cold, but rain is near and thunder is loud. Waves hit the rocks under the lighthouse with more force, and the sky is pitch-dark and taunting, promising a downpour.
“Do you remember when your dad had that charity thing here?” she asks, falling deeper into me.
I remember Bliss under street light, lying to me about where my sister was. I told her we didn’t pull wings from butterflies.
“You made me smell your shirt.” She laughs, looking up at me.
“You had Oliver’s sweater on,” I remind her, kissing the tip of her nose.
Baby rolls her eyes with a disregarding simper. “You were grass and vanilla-scented—trouble,” she says. “You’ve always smelled like difficulty to me, Dusty.”
I rub my lips across her right cheek and whisper in her ear, “That was a long time ago, princess.”
“Nothing’s changed,” she says. Leigh sits up straight, crossing her legs. My arms fall from her body, but I pull her back. She can’t take herself from me.
She couldn’t then, and she can’t now.
“Watch out for bed knobs,” she says. Her eyes fill up, but she doesn’t cry.
“What?” I ask, holding a little firmer. She might run, but I have her. She won’t get far.
“You wrote it on Becka’s shoe.” Leigh tries to free her arm from my grip, but I won’t be undone.
I hook my arm around her stomach and press her entire body against mine. With one arm around her middle, I use the other to pin hers at her sides. Leigh tilts her head back and turns her face into mine.
“I wanted that so bad,” she says, like the memory slices her throat. “I wanted bed knobs. I wanted something that was just ours. So I went to your room.”
My hat falls from her crown and lands on the blanket. Red-blond hair sticks to her forehead. She tries to shift her way out of my arms, but I’m not letting go. She elbows me in the stomach, but I only grip closer. With her back completely against me, she arches but gets nothing.
I kiss the side of her face. “Stop, stop, stop …”
“Your pillows used to make me sleepy,” she says. “Those sleepy, trouble-sweet pillows.”
She twists and jerks and turns, but I give her nothing.
“Thomas,” she groans, but doesn’t panic. “I can’t breathe.”
“I can’t let you go,” I say, under the thunder. I don’t even know if she hears me. “I can’t. Just stop.”
Leigh uses her legs to try to lift and bites the side of my neck. She thrashes and screams into the so-close-to-storming night. But when nothing works, she gives up, and I’m still here, holding her down with heavy love.
“I made so many excuses for you. It’s a Thomas thing.” She scoffs. “When everyone finds out about us, do you know how stupid I’m going to look?”
My betrayals surface: Valarie, Mixie, Katie, Dolly … so many mor
e. Some I can’t remember. Most I don’t remember.
Her.
“I’m sorry.” I kiss Bliss’ cap-creased forehead. I kiss over her watery eyes. I let go of her arms and grip her chin so I can turn her head and kiss her lips.
She kisses me back.
Lightning strikes and cracks, and the entire world turns silver.
Baby’s kissing to deflect. She forces my arm away from her stomach and she turns in my arms. On her knees between my legs, her lips are so fucking soft and cry-salty from her … from me.
We kiss with our eyes open, and hers tell the story of us: dependence, lies, and misery.
I kiss over and under her lips, licking her teeth and sucking her tongue. I slide, glide, linger, and slip. I kiss her until she can only breathe out of her nose. I kiss her until she can’t breathe at all. I kiss her until the corner of her mouth splits.
I kiss her until her eyes close.
“I love you,” I say against swollen lips.
“I love you more,” she whispers.
“I loved you first.”
“I love you always.”
I smile against her cheek. “I love you crazy.”
IN THE backseat of the Continental, the windows are foggy and the cab glows orange-yellow from the street light we’re parked beneath. Rain comes down in sheets on the hood. Lightning strikes and thunder rolls, but it’s nothing compared to my girl. She’s alive and raw, lost in the middle of our own storm system.
“Love me,” she moans, arching her back and tilting her head. “Love me. Love me.”
Under this light, Leighlee’s hair has never been so red and her eyes never so green. Her voice has never been this bare, and her words never this honest. She pours legitimacy and roars trueness.
She rolls her hips, riding my cock and rough-handling my heart.
“Did any of them fuck you like this?” she whispers in my ear with an unmistakable edge in her tone. “Did it feel like this?”
Baby’s nipples harden and brush my chest as she strokes up and down my dick. She places her hand on the side of my neck and moves her lips from my ear to my mouth.
“Could you not even stop yourself every time you were in someone that wasn’t me?” she asks.
With my left hand holding hard on her hip, I push my right up the length of her spine until my fingertips touch the nape of her neck. I tangle and grip and pull, locking my fingers in her hair. I hold until she cries out and rides deeper. I guide her head back, and when her neck is completely exposed, I sink my teeth into the made-just-for-me place right above her collar bone.
I bite until I taste princess blood and she moans my name, battling the fucking thunder for power.
I stroke hard, and I stroke full; I fuck her until my cock and my love are the only things in her world—until her mind is blank and all that is left is me.
With one last, long moan, Leigh goes slack. I don’t stop pushing and hold her weight, stroking mine into her. As I pull her neck away from my mouth, open teeth marks bead the tiniest bits of blood. I lean forward and lick them away.
Baby circles her arms around my neck and keeps us close, forcing me to slow. Lighting hits the ocean, illuminating the car, turning yellow-orange light chrome.
Leigh’s eyes are back on mine, but they tell a different story now. One that splits my chest and bares my soul: belonging, happiness, and sacrifice.
“How could you give this away?” she whispers through tear-coated lips. “How could this belong to anyone but us?”
I gently hold her closer, shaking my head with can’t-be-told-with-words disagreement. I brush my fingers over teeth marks and apologize over and over and over.
“Can you feel me?” I whisper into her skin. “Can you feel what you do to me?”
Baby wraps her legs around my lower back and her arms tightly around my neck. She cries out, nodding her head. Our sticky-wet bodies push and rub and press together.
Pressure builds. Fire rages. “Fuck,” I barely breathe.
I shake. I always do.
She has no concept of how much I love her. To mark her this way—the only way one person can mark another from the inside. To fill her up and know that after, I’m still there.
Only ever me.
“Never,” I say. “Never like this, Bliss. … Only you. There’s only ever been you.”
FARTHEST TO the right in my backseat, I sit against the door with my girl coiled up beside me. Her head rests on my lap, and her hands are prayer-like under my left thigh. Late night passes and early morning has arrived. Bliss might have fallen asleep for a little while, but I’ve been wide awake and repentant, questioning my authenticity and hoping I’m strong enough to do what baby needs me to.
Because it doesn’t feel like it.
And I can feel everything.
All of it.
She’s still in me, under my skin, scratching at me from inside, ripping me up. She chews on veins and kicks my heart, demanding, listen to me!
I press my hand over my life-beat and push pressure until Her bombardment stops.
With a change in tactic, my dirty habit sweetly tiptoes on bones, pleading false promises.
Don’t abandon me, she says. Let’s go get high.
I sit up and clear my throat. I run my fingers through my hair. I sniff.
Leigh reaches for my hand and holds it over her heart. It helps.
Slightly.
I press my cheek against the misty window until the glass warms by my heat. I pull my hand from Leighlee and reach for my jeans. My pack falls from the back pocket.
I can’t find my lighter.
I groan.
Leigh sits upright. “Here,” she says, handing it to me.
Without meeting her storytelling eyes, I take it and light my smoke.
Cocaine plays with my heart strings.
Leigh slips my hoodie over her naked body and curls her feet under her bottom. I roll the window all the way down, needing the icy October air on my face.
“Are you okay?” she asks carefully.
He will be.
I take another drag and smile at my girl. “Yeah,” I say.
Baby settles in next to me. She extends her legs and stretches before propping her feet on the back of the front seat. Still sleepy, she yawns, and it breaks my fucking heart.
Because she shouldn’t be here.
I try to remember the last time I looked at my girl through non-addicted eyes.
I've been lit through each I love you, spun through each touch, and drunk-wasted through each don't ever leave me. All the affection I've ever shown this girl has been habit-stained and guilty. She never had a chance against a monster like me.
I can make this go away, Dusty.
“Bliss,” I whisper with a throat lodged full of regret. I shake my head in an attempt to clear too many thoughts.
“Hey,” she says soothingly, brushing my too long hair away from my eyes. Baby smiles and my insides constrict. “Tell me,” she says.
“Princess,” I say, brimming with anxiety and regret and self-disgust and how could she let me love her like this?
Leigh moves in closer. My body turns toward her and submits to her touch. Now I have my head in her lap, but my hands are not pray-like. They clutch and grab, and push and move.
She rubs my back and speaks quietly. “Tell me, Thomas.”
So she turns my head with her hands on my face, forcing me to be still, giving me no choice but to look at her.
But looking at her is too hard.
It's all there, on every part of her … It’s her heart speaking to mine.
It’s in me, able to ignore all of it because I’ve been too fucked-up to care.
I cry.
“I'm clean.”
She’s salty kisses and sandy toes.
My girl sits behind me with her legs draped around my waist, and her arms around my stomach. With lips pressed into the back of my cotton-covered shoulder, baby’s eyes barely peek over the top. We’re watching
the sky, waiting for the sun.
It’s ten past way too early in the fucking morning—six or seven maybe. The car got too small, so we got dressed and got out. It’s warmer today than it was yesterday. The wind is gone and the sky is mostly clear. Last night’s storm left the sand packed and firm, keeping our footprints stamped until it dries. Driftwood litters the shore and the waves stole our blanket but left Leigh’s shoes on the dock.
We’re still the only ones on the beach, but it won’t be this way for long. Every weekend this place hosts a town-wide flea market. Soon, it will be filled with people looking to sell, trade, and buy, and we’ll have to go.
She’s silent and sweet as the closest and hottest star rises. Leigh rubs the back of my neck and twirls my hair around her fingers. She whispers things in my ear like, “You were so fucking sexy last night,” and “Do you know what your smile does to me? It knocks me out. It sends me flying.”
So I do it. I smile.
She doesn’t fly, but she stands up and wipes sand from her bottom. “Take me over there and buy me something for my birthday, knockout.”
Barefoot and morning-messy, we get a few funny looks. The birthday girl’s wearing my basketball shorts and sweater while my jeans are rolled up and my tee shirt’s pulled out at the neck. She’s covered, but my kissed-purple neck is showing, and these people know.
Two knit beanies, a scarf, and an Indian blanket later, Leigh’s stomach growls, but she doesn’t want to eat here. On the walk back to the car, we pass a vendor selling vintage jewelry. My girl doesn’t pay it much mind, but I call her back when pearl and pink catches my eye.
I point it out, and Bliss smiles.
“What is it?” I ask the vendor, touching the heart pendant.
An older man with dark, wrinkled skin and all gray hair stands beside Leigh and me. “Pink Jadeite—the stone of Heaven.”
“Can she try it on?” I ask.
Leighlee holds her hair up as I fasten the necklace. Pearls lie softly on pale skin, and the pendant touches right below the hollow point between her collarbones.
“It’s too much,” Baby whispers as we walk away with the symbolism of love and compassion around her neck.
Delinquents (Dusty #2) Page 27