He guides me from my knees to my stomach and covers every inch of me with so much of him. I feel his lungs expand on my back. His hips press against my bottom, and I feel the outside of his thighs against the inside of mine. He pulls my hair, but only enough to make me moan. Thomas uses his teeth, but they barely brush the surface of my skin.
He loves me patiently.
He loves me kindly.
He loves me like this should have been our first time.
Overcome and overwhelmed, I sink into the bed and let go. The weight of his body pushes me into the bed, but the weight of his despair slaughters me wholly.
As he rides me, love’s movements shift from measured to unconcerned. Guided strokes become negligent thrusts. Gentleness gives way to crudeness, consideration to mindlessness.
He gives me what I wanted.
Only now that I’ve had what love can really feel like, this is a sick sadness.
The love I know is gone. I have his body. I have his lips. I have his hands. I have his voice, but the energy is missing. Our ever-present-until-now intensity is forced. He tells me he loves me, and my heart drinks it up, but his words are empty.
I’m soaking up and down my thighs, and he’s slippery between me, but I wrap my legs around him and let him fuck me through what I know is right and wrong like I always do as my heart shatters and I go numb.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, aching.
Coming is unhopeful and renders me helpless. My knees fall open and my arms drop to the mattress, and in this moment where I’m supposed to feel closest to the one I love, I feel utterly alone.
“Love stays, girl,” he says as my eyes close and the fire burns out.
Looking over at Thomas while he smokes a cigarette behind the wheel of his car, it’s hard to believe he’s the same person who told me he liked my hair color on that first day of school.
That was the beginning of us—a princess and a troublemaker.
I trusted him then, but now that’s gone.
“Thomas …” I start.
He kills the engine and leaves his hands on the steering wheel.
“Promise me,” I say with my heart in my throat.
My boy breathes through his nose before turning his body toward me. “I said I’d be back.”
“When?” I ask, turning my eyes down.
“I’ll call you,” he replies, patting his pockets.
His pack is on the dashboard.
“Come inside with me. It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say, finally looking over just as he turns the end of his smoke cherry-red.
Nicotine fills the cab of the car. He cracks his window.
“It does matter,” he says with tobacco-filled lungs.
I shake my head. “Dusty—”
“Leigh!” he cuts me off. He forces me to look at him and studies my eyes, my nose, and my mouth. “I’ll be back.”
With tears that feel like fire, I pull my face free from his grasp and open my door. My house is as dark as it should be at three in the morning. I thought I might not come back here; I’m disappointed I was wrong.
As I exit the car, Thomas grabs my elbow and pulls me back in. There’s a rashness in his expression that wasn’t there a second ago.
“What?” I ask.
“I love you,” he says, clearly. “Only you, you know. I love you only.”
I pull my arm free and get out of the car.
He sniffs.
Before I close the door, I lean in so he can see me, and say, “I love you too, boy.”
TWO HOURS later, the sun’s come up, and I’ve torn my bedroom to pieces.
By the grace of God, my parents didn’t hear me come in. They didn’t hear the Lincoln drive away, and they didn’t hear the neighbor’s dogs.
I might have kicked the fence as I snuck by.
Fuck those dogs.
Everything I own is thrown across my bed and spread across my floor. I choose pieces at random, tossing cotton and silk and lace and whatever-the-fuck-else will fit into my bag.
Once I’m packed, I leave my room before my parents come in. The house smells like coffee and syrup, and the local news is on the television.
Mom, still in her nightgown, leans against the stove. My dad, who’s sitting at the kitchen table, stabs at his healthy version of pancakes. He looks up and nods his head, shoving a whole grain mess into his mouth.
I come in and sit down across from him.
“What time did you get home?” Mom asks, looking over my shoulder toward her husband, awaiting her backup.
I pick at my already-chipped-polish under the kitchen table, and shrug. “About one.”
Lie.
Dad points his fork at me, swallowing his bite. “I told you to be in early, Leigh.”
I shrug again. “Sorry.”
I leave before they ask any more questions, and after retrieving my cell phone from upstairs, I grab a blanket and wrap it around myself before curling up on the couch.
My parents try to call me back into the kitchen. My mom even comes into the living room to glare, like I fucking care.
“This is why we don’t let you out, Leigh,” she says. “You won’t be one of those kids who disrespect their parents.”
I ignore her and text Thomas instead.
I’m ready.
He doesn’t reply before I fall asleep.
I’M WOKEN up by my mother trying to reach under the blanket for my cell phone. It’s clutched not-so-snugly in my hand, and she already has her fingers on it. I tighten my grip around the only way I have to get a hold of my boy and pull it deeper into the blankets, away from her. I slip it between my thighs and hold onto red fleece with both hands so she can’t get in.
“It was ringing,” she says, like she wasn’t trying to invade my privacy.
She begins to clear off the coffee table, stacking together a few loose magazines. She wipes away some dust with her open hand before brushing it off on the jeans she changed into.
“You know, Leighlee,” Mom says, restacking copies of Home and Garden, “you’ve never given me any reason not to trust you …”
I sit up and clear my throat. I can’t be still. I can’t be down here at all.
“But after last night,” she starts again.
With the blanket still over my shoulders and my phone in hand, I stand and head upstairs. I don’t listen to what she tells me as I go, because no matter what she says, neither one of my parents has ever trusted me a day in my life.
Halfway up the stairs, I stop. “Where’s Grandma and Grandpa?”
Mom scoffs but answers, “They left.”
When I get to my room, I close my door and drop the blanket. I shove clothes I don't need any more from my bed to the floor and sit down with my phone.
It's already after noon, and I don’t have any missed calls.
I tell my speeding heart to calm. I bite on my bottom lip while I slide my finger across glass, unlocking my phone. I check my text messages just to make sure my mother wasn’t lying and hope that maybe Thomas sent something while I was sleeping and she read it first.
My inbox is empty.
I scroll through my call history.
She said it was ringing, but the last call I received was from Becka, yesterday before the party.
She lied.
I pull my legs onto the bed and cross them while I sit back against the headboard. I press Thomas’ number and watch until the call goes through and I hear it ring. I twirl and curl on my hair until some of it pulls from the root right as Thomas’ voicemail picks up.
I don’t cry.
I call him again.
When his voice mail picks up a second time, I still don’t cry.
I call a third time.
And a fourth.
The fifth time it goes straight to voice mail. He’s turned his phone off.
Instead of panicking, I lie flat on my back and stare up at the ceiling with my cell on my stomach, and I wait.
And I wait.
> He’ll come for me.
I know he will.
I’VE BEEN lying in bed for over an hour, staring at the walls, motionless. I don’t breathe too hard or roll up and cry like I want to. I keep my arms at my sides and my head on my pillow and stay silent so I don’t miss his call.
During my quietness, I consider packing up my car and leaving. I could go to him instead.
But what if he’s coming here as I’m going there?
“Please, please, please—” I whisper achingly as I dial him. “Please answer.”
It rings.
And it rings.
And it rings.
When his voice mail picks up, I crumble and hide under the safety of my blankets and sob into my pillow. I dig my toes into my mattress and pull at my bedding. I cry until my lungs burn and my face tingles, and my body goes numb.
I cry until I sleep.
WHEN I wake up, my room is exactly as I left it. The radio plays some random station, and a song I’m still not listening to belts its chorus. My curtains are open and my window lets in the breeze. The sky isn’t gray anymore, but pink and orange and purple, coloring my room with its setting sun.
I’m buried by my blankets, and my sheet is bundled underneath me, tangled at my feet. My pillow is wet from my crying.
The only difference:
My bedroom door is wide open and my mom is standing in its frame.
I blink a few times, trying to clear my head. I reach for my phone, but I already know he hasn’t called.
It’s a little after seven, and my heart sinks when my phone proves me right.
“Are you going somewhere?” Mom asks, her tone partway condescending and partway afraid.
She steps into my room and picks up a dress from the end of my bed. She kicks my packed bags with the toe of her shoe.
I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say.
The person who gave me life walks around my room. She looks inside my empty closet and stares at my bare vanity. Mom brushes her hand over the corkboard on my desk that used to have tons of pictures of me and my friends pinned to its surface but now stands bare. She opens the top drawer of my dresser, but says nothing when she discovers it’s not filled with my socks anymore.
“You’ve been up here all day …” She picks up the smallest of my three bags from the floor. She unzips it and looks in. “It’s a little early to be packing for school, don’t you think?”
I shake my head.
“No?” she asks angrily, raising her voice.
She drops the bag to the floor. Some of my things fall out.
“Get out of that bed, Leighlee,” she orders, more upset than I have ever seen her.
I immediately start to cry again, but I don’t get out of bed. I don’t even move.
Her feet pound on the carpet as she storms over to me. Mom pulls the blankets off of my body and grabs me by my left wrist, sitting me up. “So help me Leigh, get out of—”
I cry out, and she lets go.
She takes a few steps back, and I know what she sees. My wrists are discolored and swollen, and I’m holding the one she grabbed against my chest.
I go for the blankets, but my mother reaches them first, pulling them completely off the bed. She runs to my bedroom door, and with her hands on both sides of the door frame, she yells for my dad. “Thaddeus!”
I lie back down, still cradling my hurt arm against my body. Mom comes back and forces me to sit up, this time by my shoulders. She clutches my chin and moves my head back and forth, searching me for more injuries. When my dad comes into the room, she has my hands in hers.
“What’s going on?” he asks, taken by surprise.
Mom turns my arm over and finds my elbow.
Dad takes a few more heavy steps into my room.
“Who did this to you?” Mom asks, down on her knees in front of me.
“Answer her, Leigh,” Dad’s deep voice echoes off my bedroom walls.
I shake my head, pulling my hands from my mother’s. I wipe my nose. “It was nothing,” I lie. “There was a fight, and I got pushed into—”
Mom falls back on her heels, and she looks at me like she never has before: suspiciously.
“You’re lying,” she says, her voice eerily calm.
Our eyes meet, and she sees through me, staring every lie I ever told her right in the face.
I look away first.
Mom stands and holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
I hold it tighter. “No.”
She looks at my dad, whose ample and daunting presence makes him look more like a judge and less like my father. His arms are crossed over his chest while he watches how I react, looking for evidence to prove my untruth.
“Ask why her bags are packed,” Mom suggests, looking back at me.
Dad’s entire body stays as it is, but his eyes move. They notice the same things my mom did when she came in: my closet, my vanity, my dresser—all packed up.
The only familiarity in my dad is in the same eyes that roam over all of my things. They’re soft light brown unlike my green, and unwrapped. While his chest fills up with a frustrated breath and his arms drop to his sides, his eyes are unwilling to believe what he sees: the evidence he was looking for.
“What’s going on?” he asks me, clearing his throat from any real emotion.
“Dad,” I say softly, looking away from him.
“The truth, Leigh. Now.” His voice is firm.
Meanwhile, my mother opens everything, searching through my things. She opens my makeup bag and dumps it out; pink Jadeite falls with my lip gloss and blush.
“Give me your phone,” she demands once more.
I hold onto my cell, turning my knuckles white.
“Leigh, don’t make me—” she starts, but Judge McCloy cuts her off.
“Teri, enough!” he finally yells. “Tell me what the hell is going on, Leighlee, or I will turn this whole room upside down.”
He’s not lying, and they’ll find out eventually.
I look up at him and as calmly as I can, through steady tears and shortness of breath, I say, “I’m leaving.”
“What?” he asks with an unbelieving tone.
“I’m leaving … with Thomas.”
I’ve never taken much consideration into the way my parents look. My mother has always worn her hair the same way, and my dad will never shave his mustache. They look just about the same to me as they did when I was two, or five … or ten. They’re typical—they’re my parents.
But if it’s possible to age a person with words, I’ve done it.
Like lifting a veil, they’re seeing who I am for the first time. The light from both of their eyes dulls. Wrinkles I’ve never noticed on my mother’s face suddenly appear. My dad’s hair looks more gray than black. Their shoulders sink and their expressions change, making them seem less alive, wary of everything.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dad says, like he’s not sure.
“Dad,” I begin, sincerely sorry for how I’ve hurt them.
But I knew.
I always did.
As hurt as they are, and as bad as I feel, none of it makes a difference. They will always be my parents, but a life without Thomas wouldn’t be living at all.
“You’re not leaving this house,” my dad speaks loudly, making me jump.
As my family breaks apart, my cell phone finally rings. I don’t answer it, but I look down and see his name and picture.
Then I hear his car.
So do my parents.
All three of us look toward the window, but my mom is the only one who moves.
With her hands on the windowsill, Mom leans out. “Thaddeus, go down there now.”
He’s already halfway down the stairs.
When the front door opens, I rush off the bed, but my mom’s arms act as barricades. When I try to push past her, she has no problem pushing me back.
“You’re not leaving this room, Leigh,” she says with tears finally falli
ng from her eyes.
My heart beats against the inside of my chest. I feel it in my throat and in my bruised wrists. It races in my stomach and under my fingernails. It echoes between my shoulder blades and under my kneecaps.
I turn away from her and run to my window. The curtains have fallen closed, and instead of pushing them apart, I rip them down.
Wearing what he wore when he dropped me off, my boy stands at the end of the driveway with his hands in his pockets and his head down. Dad walks straight for him, and even though I can’t hear his words, I know he’s forbidding and threatening.
To anyone else, it may seem like my dad has the upper hand. He’s bigger and older and louder than Thomas. He’s a judge. He’s a father. He’s feared and respected, but love has never had much respect for titles. This is his world. Thomas doesn’t have to shout or cuss or hit to get his point across unless he wants to.
As my dad speaks, stepping closer to my so-obviously-high boy, Thomas finally looks up and smirks.
It sends my dad over the edge.
Gripping my upper arm, mom pulls me away from the window. I twist until her grip slips and I’m let loose and take the stairs down two at a time. The front door is partly open, but when I reach for the knob, my mom comes from behind me and slams it shut.
I manage to open it again, but she’s stronger.
“Get back to your room,” she demands with a shaky voice. Her eyes are glossy, and her cheeks are red, but she isn’t crying anymore.
I turn and run through the kitchen instead of fighting with her. The back door is unlocked and open by the time she catches up with me, and I take off through wet grass and over rocky gravel. I run past the barking dogs and around my car. I outrun my shouting mother, who’s trailing behind me, nowhere near as fast as I am.
As I circle around the house, the sun is almost all the way down, lighting the front yard in dark purples and heavy blues. The street lamps have turned on, and the front porch is lit by a 40-watt bulb.
Thomas and my dad have moved from the driveway to the lawn. My boy sees me as soon as I come into view, but my dad’s back is to me. Love’s dark eyes linger, and he holds his hands up, as if surrendering. He shakes his head. He looks down.
Dad pushes him.
Delinquents (Dusty #2) Page 34