I wish I could say I react normally to this. But I feel pretty sure I do not. For a start, the longer he goes on, the harder my heart beats. By the time he finishes I think a thunderstorm is going on in my chest. It feels as if someone is trying to escape from inside there with the help of a hammer. My eyes are stinging, even though I really do not want them to be. I want to be calm, but how can I? He just said something right out of a romantic movie—one that three years ago I would not have been allowed to watch.
I barely have experience of the fiction.
The reality is like a house of emotion collapsing on top of me. I thought my foundations were strong and my roof impenetrable—but I was wrong, I was wrong. Everything is coming down in a shower of dust and rubble. When I finally manage to speak, my voice is shaking. And they are not the words I ever imagined myself saying.
They are the words of the person I am becoming.
The one who will not take no for an answer.
The one who thinks his idea of himself is bullshit.
“And if I laid my hands on you, what then?” I ask him, and though he answers as fiercely as I have ever heard him be—though he takes a step back and points one big finger at me and says, “Do not lay your hands on me, Bea, I fucking mean it. You keep your hands over there,” in this real warning sort of voice—I hardly care at all.
Maybe because I can see this look in his eyes. I can see it now, like the light breaking through the clouds. He backs off, but that light is there, just as wary and broken up and unsure as I have ever been. And that makes it very easy to step into the space he just occupied.
“I told you. I have very little control over them,” I say, and I even have this little tease in my voice. I can hear it. Hell, he can hear it. His voice immediately goes up one sharp notch, in an attempt to stop that tease in its tracks.
“Then get some. I ain’t playing with you—this is not some cute movie cliché where I turn out to be the best guy ever, only from the wrong side of the tracks,” he snaps, but the thing is, he has to know that this is never going to work now. Not after he said that about laying his hands on me. Not after he made himself the one who barely believes in his own goodness or understands the effect he has on other people. It was fine when that was me, heartsick and heartsore and so sure I meant nothing. But not when it’s him. Never when it’s him.
“Good, because I am not some sweet girl excited by danger, ready to run away with a bad boy. In fact, the very last thing I wanted in my life was that. Tommy is the one who wants to cut his collar and run. I want kindness. You have no idea how badly I want some kindness, and if you had never shown me any I would have stopped thinking about you the very day, the very minute, the very second we met. But you know that isn’t true. You know that no one has ever been kinder to me than you.”
A lot of silence happens when I’m done. Too much silence, really. The urge to fill it comes on me in a wave about halfway through—maybe with apologies or takebacks of some kind. But when he turns his face away and tells me Maybe I should get some other friends, with that pain on his face not for himself but for me, my resolve strengthens.
It gets a spine of fire again.
“Or maybe you just have to accept that you are that good. Better than anyone. Better than my own family, better than my friends, so much better that you can come here and save my life and still have to be convinced of your betterness.”
I take another step toward him, then.
But this time he doesn’t back up. He puts no hands out to stop me; he makes no sharp remarks to keep me where I am. He glances down at the distance between us—now so small I feel as if I could cross it just by sticking out my tongue—and nothing more. Nothing except the shaking and shaking, like the judder of some enormous machine.
The idea of which he finds even more staggering than I do. After a second of it he seems to break or burst or something. He lets out this breath that sounds more like a curse, half laughing and half disbelieving.
“Fucking Christ, I never shook like this in my whole life. Seriously, you got no idea what you talking like that does to me. No idea what you standing so close to me does and that kiss, holy fuck, that kiss.”
“Tell me, then. Tell me what it does. Tell me why.”
“Never been kissed like that by anyone. Never been wanted like that—like this. I swear when you put those hands on my back just now I almost lost it.”
“And what happens when you lose it?”
“Nothing you want to know about.”
“Kind of feels like I want to know about it. Kind of feels like I might burst if I never get the chance to find out. Kind of feels like I might burst anyway,” I say, in part because I want to know, but mostly because it appears to be true. I have grown a heart between my legs, and the longer this goes on, the harder it thumps and pulses. By the time he talks again I can feel it reverberating through my body.
His words don’t even stop it—though I feel sure they should.
“Yeah, I can tell. Fuck, I can tell just fucking looking at you,” he says, and I brace myself for a wave of shame. I wait for my brain to read it in the worst possible way, and somehow find myself doing the opposite. Instead of drawing back, I push forward.
I ask him for more, near knowing that it will never be bad.
“Why, what do I seem like?” I ask him, and he repays my faith a hundredfold.
“You seem really fucking turned on, girl, all flushed like that with those stiff little nipples sticking through your top—Christ, I bet they feel so sweet, right? So sensitive. Can you feel that material pulling against them? That why you keep shivering?” he asks, after which I think the heart between my legs has some kind of episode. Suddenly I can feel it in my stomach and the tops of my thighs, which does not seem right at all.
Everything is usually restricted to one particular area. Even when I have my little fantasies about Ryan Gosling I get only the faintest sense that my vagina actually exists. Now I could never deny that fact if I tried—and not just because of the pounding and the warmth and the fuzzy feeling spreading up and down and out.
There is also that sensation whenever I move.
The slick sensation that makes me want to stay still and keep moving all at the same time. Most probably explains why he just noticed me wriggling around on the spot, but I feel he should shoulder at least some of that blame. He just said nipples. He noticed my nipples with his eyes and made reference to the thing they do.
He made a better reference to it than I probably could.
This is almost definitely his entire fault.
“I keep shivering because you are saying a lot of things.”
“Yeah, I got a dirty mouth once I get going.”
“Can you keep on going?” I say, even though this time I really do not mean to. I want to pull back now, I do. But he said dirty and mouth, and then that just happens. I have no control over it anymore—just like with my hands when they get let loose on his body. He sets the table and puts the meal out and I simply have to eat.
No matter how often he tries to tell me the food is poison.
“I think I’m hitting my limit for virgin girls who have no idea what they might be getting into. Seriously, this is beyond where we can go together,” he says, and then, oh, Lord, I think I kind of beg him. I beg him, yet still feel very little shame.
“Just one more thing, please, one more thing,” I say, and all I get is this electric sensation at the sight of his expression. He looks as if he would give his right arm to do what I ask—or at least give something to have the restraint that would make him stop.
“One more?” he says, as though stressing that limit will be enough. Holding up that single finger will keep it all neat and tidy. He can have this and I can have it, too, and then that will be the end of whatever we are doing.
“One more,” I agree, then watch as he gives it to me.
He leans down in what seems like slow motion.
And licks my spiky little nipple w
ith one wicked flick of his tongue.
Chapter 7
I do my best to not react too much. Partly because I suspect too much will scare him off again, but mostly because the whole thing scares me. I see his tongue curl out and feel it make contact with a part of my body that I barely knew existed until five minutes ago, and everything just crackles out of control. My hair practically stands on end. A great tingling bloom spreads outward from that one point, so good I hardly know what to do with all of it.
I kind of want to shove the sensation under a metaphorical bed, so I can deal with it in parts and pieces later on. Just tease out a little at a time, instead of having to deal with a big glut at once. The big glut is way too intense for me to take in a single sitting. I find myself wanting to wave my hands around his head or maybe make a big animal sound, so I suppose I should be proud of myself for managing less than that.
I just don’t feel proud about the gasp I let out.
It seems very loud to me. Very loud and also like something people do in sexy movies. In certain lights it could almost be called a moan, which feels pretty excessive to me. He only touched my nipple. He only licked it through my shirt. He only palmed my breast while he did the whole thing as though he could hardly resist and holy crap maybe this is a lot. It could be okay that I make a noise like a horny porn star and go all red and sort of squirm around a bit.
But if it is I barely get a chance to find out. He jerks away and holds up a single finger the moment I put a hand on his shoulder—as if he knows the secret intention behind the gesture. He gets it completely, even though it takes me a good thirty seconds to understand and I was the one doing it. I thought I was just trying to steady myself, and then I see his warning expression and that one and I know.
I was trying to hold him there.
I was trying to get him to do more.
I still want him to do more, in spite of his wariness and my wariness and oh, yeah, the fact that the door is off its goddamn hinges. At the very least we need to move to a less visible area if this is going to carry on—though I think it might be a little late for that. I glance in that direction, building up to a suggestion that we go somewhere more private to talk, and see Tommy just standing there in the empty space. Circumstances like those definitely warrant some modesty—so how come I feel the need for none? I almost bat my hand in his general direction and tell him to come back later. Much later, after I’ve had the chance to experience the full and complete gamut of nipple-licking and the resulting sensations.
I mean, if one through a jumper is that good, then what exactly is skin to skin like? What does the hot wetness of a mouth do to that tight little bud? I have to believe it is something amazing, yet may not now get to find out for sure. Persuading him to do this much was hard enough. Asking him to try underneath my top after my brother caught us is going to be another level altogether.
Because I can see Serge feels caught. His jaw locks up. His hands go behind his back, as though to say Hey, we were definitely not doing anything. And when he speaks there is an undercurrent of something really unlike him in his voice. A kind of resentment or bitterness, I think, or maybe just plain old deflection. It works as the latter, at the very least. “Come to see what trouble you caused, kid,” he says, after which Tommy immediately flicks from What were you just doing? to frightened apologies.
He stops giving us both the side eye and starts seeing the door close to my feet and the forlorn hinges by his side and the red on my face, and then comes to an obvious but wrong conclusion.
One that puts a hand into my chest and squeezes.
One that almost makes up for all of this mess.
“They told me it was all done with. That it was all okay now—but even if it isn’t, it’s me, not my sister. She has nothing to do with it. She doesn’t even know I ever owed people so you can just let her go and work things out with me. I got plenty of money and I can give you all of it now. Just let her go first, then we can talk,” he says, somehow sounding both older and younger than he really is at the same time. I can almost believe if Serge really was some drug dealer holding me to ransom that Tommy would convince him—though I thank God we aren’t actually in that position.
If we were, I could never let him do that. I would have to stay, and I think staying would have turned out very badly for me. So bad that Serge is horrified by the assumption. His face drops three feet. He gives no quarter or credit for the offer Tommy made. He just barks at him loud enough to shake the walls.
“You think I got something to do with this, you little shit? I came here to help—what the fuck were you doing, huh? You couldn’t have warned her? I knew you must have fucking known. No time for a goddamn text? Not a phone call, nothing?”
“I did send something—I told her to keep away.”
“Not loudly enough. Not well enough,” Serge says, which sounds kind of unfair until I remember what Tommy did actually do. That garbled, most likely drug-addled message. The one I could never have possibly deciphered in a million years and so will not bring up here. If I do, God knows what will happen. I’m already kind of scared that Serge might decide he needs a thrashing, too. After all, that is the default setting in my mind when we do something wrong.
We get a thrashing.
Tommy even looks as if he thinks one is coming. His shoulders curl in just like they always do. He starts nervously picking at the cuff of his sweater, in a way that makes my stomach churn. Not as badly as it once might have, but still, the sensation is there. The agony of indecision is the same—half of me terrified to step in, but the other half just about dying to do it. I was always better at taking it than he was. It was always easier for me to persuade Dad to stop, and I think it will be even easier here.
He probably won’t even hurt me at all, I think.
But I’m wrong about that. I’m wrong about all of this. I should have guessed or at least understood, knowing the way he has been with me through every single interaction. Yet somehow it remains completely unclear until Serge strides toward Tommy. Even during the striding I don’t fully get it—I take a step forward, too, and put up a hand. I go to grab his arm, the idea of his elbow coming back so stark in my head it’s as though I’m feeling it already. I taste my childhood on my lips, mean and bloody.
And then watch as he puts his arms around Tommy’s shoulders.
He cuddles him. He goddamn cuddles him, and I could just cry. I sort of collapse on the inside, so full of the weight of old beliefs that once they go, I can hardly hold myself together. The urge to lie down is almost insurmountable. Literally the only thing that stops me is the disgusting floor. If Tommy had cleaned recently I’d be sprawled there now, most likely blubbering out thanks and apologies that would barely even make sense. He never saw me try to stop him. He has no idea what I thought.
Only I know, and only I have to feel awful now—and thank God for that because not only is he hugging Tommy, he also seems to be giving him a pep talk. He says things to him like We got to get you some help and I know you’re just trying to escape and You got no reason to worry about this now, I’m handling it, while I do my level best to not break down.
I have no idea why I try, though. Tommy barely bothers at all. He just starts crying immediately and fiercely, in a way I swear I never knew he could. It looks as if someone found a part of him that was full of poison, and somehow took a knife to it. Slit it up the side and let it all out.
Or is that just me projecting?
It feels as though it could be me. I can almost feel the new wound in my side, no longer festering but fresh and clean and so ready to be healed. Then when Serge passes me on the way to help Tommy get some stuff together, and stops for just a second to put a hand on the nape of my neck and a kiss to my temple, and tells me in a low voice that he would never hurt my brother, that he would never, please, never worry…
That’s when I feel the first stitch.
—
I wonder on the way down how this is going to work.
The rehab center Serge talks about is miles away, but Sam has my car, and three people are unlikely to fit on his bike. I almost ask if he intends for me to stay here while he buzzes off with Tommy nestled between his arms. The day might end with my brother flinging himself at my almost-boyfriend in a forest if he does—so thank God Serge came with something else instead. He came with a big, red, brand-new-looking truck, which could be a coincidence, I know, but somehow suspect that it wasn’t.
He knew what he was coming here to do.
He knew they were coming.
He knew he would stop them.
And he knew he would need a more practical vehicle to get Tommy out of here. Whether the plan was rehab all along is unclear. Whether the place he mentions is even really rehab is a further question—can you just check someone in like that? Is this just something you can do? I have absolutely no clue, but Tommy seems very willing to put his faith in the hugging punk.
And God knows I do, too.
It’s all I can do to stop myself thanking him a thousand times. My hands keep wanting to wander to him, even though I still don’t know if wandering is okay. He might not be a fan of the kind of gentle touch I want to give him on his side or his back or his arm, as he secures Tommy’s stuff in the back. He could hate the hand-holding I want to try the moment he sits next to me up front, with those big fingers just resting on the gear stick between us and those rings winking away at me.
Never Loved Page 9