Crush

by J. C. Emery

  Jeremy’s house is less than a five-minute drive, and there’s no traffic in a small, boring town like Fort Bragg. Soon enough, I’m pulling up to the yellow ranch house whose driveway plays host to two Harleys and a Toyota Corolla. The living room light is on, and through the front window, I can see the TV is on as well. I’m hoping Jeremy’s not in there, because there’s no way I’m going to the front door if Nic and Duke are awake. Nic would keep her mouth shut, but Duke would personally escort me back home. I used to like him, but he’s kind of a wet blanket these days.

  I opt for parking in front of their neighbor’s house in order to avoid getting busted. My stomach flips uneasily with the worry that I might get caught, so I’m particularly quiet as I cross the front lawn and press my nose up to Jeremy’s bedroom window.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if ambushing him like this is a good idea. He could be with another girl. That would break my heart, and as much as I don’t want to believe it, I think a part of me is waiting for it to happen. Even Jim screws around on Aunt Ruby at times. I know Uncle Chief was hooking up with Chel on the regular before he died. Aunt Barbara knew about it, and she disliked it, but it was something she accepted. Until I met Holly, I’d never known a woman who had demanded exclusivity. Most just demand silence.

  I can’t see much of anything through the shrouded window. There seems to be little movement in the room, if any. Holding in a deep breath, I check my nerves and tap the window just hard enough to make a distinct clicking sound against the glass. Anticipation builds in my gut, and my hands practically shake. I’m working myself up into a frenzy over a fear I don’t know I’ll ever be able to shake.

  CHAPTER 20

  March

  13 months to Mancuso’s downfall

  The aged forest-green curtains rustle from behind the glass and swoop to the side, revealing Jeremy’s tired face. He looks like he’s been put through the ringer, which motivates me to get through this glass barrier and wrap my arms around him that much faster. He blinks twice before smiling wide and working the window open with fast, knowledgeable movements.

  “Hey,” he says as he slides the glass to the side and reaches an arm out. His fingers curl around the back of my head as he pulls me in for a kiss. I slide my lips over his and savor the calm that overtakes my entire body. This is right. This is us.

  I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything before. I lift my arms up and pull him in closer, needing more. My tongue traces the inside curves of his bottom lip. He opens to me immediately and gives a low growling noise. It’s the same noise he makes when I know he wants to go further but restrains himself for my benefit. Pulling away slowly, I lick my lips and look into his hazy eyes. My heart practically thumps out of my chest, and my palms are sweaty when I place them on the window sill.

  “Help me in,” I say. My foot finds purchase on the brick retaining wall that holds the budding yellow daisies that Duke had a few prospects plant for Nic. I’m careful not to disturb the flowers as Jeremy reaches out and helps guide me in the window and around the crap he has piling up on his bedroom floor. Once I’m inside with my feet firmly on the carpet, I snake my arms around his neck and grin up at him.

  Jeremy’s wearing sweat pants and an aging Forsaken Custom Cycle T-Shirt. His hair is damp and slicked back from his face. He always looks good in my eyes, but right now he’s especially attractive. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a sort of epiphany since the last time I saw him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks. His brows draw together, and a scowl forms on his face. I notice the beginnings of a nasty bruise on his temple that extends down to his cheekbone. With a light touch, I trace the slight discoloration of the bruise. I hate seeing him hurt, especially not knowing how it happened. I don’t ask because it’s club business, and I’d rather not be told that. He knows I only want to know if it has to do with Mindy’s rape. The rest is up to him whether or not he feels he needs to share.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to be with you,” I say and let my fingers slide from the bruise on his face down the line of his jaw to his chin and then down his throat to the center of his chest. He’s silent and fully aware of my touch, but he doesn’t move. For weeks now, we’ve been dancing around the physical aspects of our relationship, sometimes careful, sometimes cautious of the limitations of privacy. Now that I’ve staged my breakout and I’m here, I just want him. No explanations, no talking—nothing. Just him and me, together in a way I don’t want to be with anyone else.

  I step out of my sandals and then slowly unzip my hoodie. Jeremy watches me cautiously, like he’s not sure I’m really here in the room with him. The hoodie falls to the floor. My hands shake as I lift my shirt over my head to reveal my old and faded sports bra. It’s not what I expected I’d be wearing the first time I had sex, but that’s okay. It feels right with him. In fact, I can’t imagine it being right or better with anyone else.

  Jeremy’s eyes widen just slightly before he regains his composure and purses his lips in appreciation. I give him a soft smile and slowly unbutton my jeans. They slide down my legs and collect at my feet. My thighs feel like Jell-O as I step out of them. My panties aren’t the newest in my collection either. So that kind of sucks, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

  Following my lead, Jeremy reaches up over the back of his head and pulls his shirt off and lets it fall beside him. His sweats are next, leaving him in a pair of light gray boxers. Despite his experience, he seems as nervous as I am, which actually soothes my nerves some.

  “Are you sure?” His voice is full of hope and restraint. I’ve barely nodded my head before he’s on me with one hand on my ass and the other tilting my head up to kiss him. Rubbing my thighs together and pressing myself even further into him, I relish in the feeling of his hard dick. Jeremy gets hard about as often as I assume any teenage boy does, but it’s something altogether different when I’m enticing him on purpose.

  I reach up and press my lips against his. Our kiss soon evolves from something chaste that we manage to sneak in when Dad’s not looking to a wild frenzy of tongues and lips and even a clank of our teeth. We smile together through the kiss and slow our movements. Jeremy’s hands move up and down my nearly naked body, caressing my pliant flesh. I press into his warm skin and bask in his muscled frame. He’s always been well built, but the last several months of maintaining a rigorous weight-lifting routine is paying off big time. He reaches around and unhooks the wide clasp of my bra. Any other sports bra and I’d be awkwardly trying to shimmy out of it and likely elbowing him in the eye. A bundle of nervous anticipation, I hold my breath until my lungs strain for air, trying to be grateful for at least having chosen accessible, if not pretty, undergarments.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he whispers, putting me at ease.

  “I’ve just been thinking about this for so long.” I drop my shoulders and peel my bra away. It falls to the floor without a sound.

  “You think about this?” he asks with a husky voice. He keeps his attention on my face, surprisingly, and doesn’t let it veer toward my chest. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I expected him to practically maul me. But he isn’t, and the fact that he’s being so slow and gentle makes me more confident in what I’m doing. I just have to get past the wobbly feeling in my knees, and then maybe I’ll be able to fully enjoy it.

  We slowly and awkwardly peel away the remainder of one another’s clothing. My panties and then his boxers join the rest of our clothes on the floor. I’ve fantasized about having this with him. I’ve even tried to plan it. None of those fantasies or plans worked out so well. We kept getting busted and thwarted at every turn.

  Feeling brave, I reach down between us to feel him, but he guides my hand back up at the elbow.

  “I love you,” he blurts out. His navy-blue eyes slide over mine, his brows draw together, and his expression darkens. His arms lock in place, and it’s like he’s turned to stone.

  Then I realize that he’s told me he loves me. And I’m standing her
e like an idiot. I breathe in deeply, smile widely, and laugh happily like a moron.

  “I’m naked,” I whisper with wet eyes.

  “I mean it,” he says. “I love you.”

  I nod my head before realizing that I should probably say something back. I barely get the words out as I say, “I’m so totally in love with you.”

  He smiles in a way I’ve never seen. The corners of his eyes crinkle slightly, and his cheeks are so high up on his face it almost looks painful. The nervous energy fades into the background as we move toward the bed, still holding one another, and still smiling. Kissing is great, but this is better. As he lays me on his bed, I try not to think about how he learned his moves. The way he runs his hands up and down my thighs to the light touch over my dark brown curls sends blissful waves through my entire body. His lips press light, purposeful kisses to every peak and valley of my pale flesh, and when he finally crawls up my naked frame, I wrap my hand around his silk-soft member as he shows me how to roll on a condom. Everything about this is as perfect as perfect can be. Bringing him inside of me stings for a moment before it dulls to a raw ache. Still, I won’t let him stop. No pain could make this so uncomfortable that I wouldn’t want this with him.

  Through all the new sensations and the buzz of my building orgasm, I make myself a promise that I won’t ever leave him and I won’t ever hurt him.

  IT’S NEARLY THREE in the morning when I realize that I really need to get home. Dad won’t stand for my being out all night, especially if he finds where I’ve gone. Not that he would have any doubts. Duke and Nic—but more importantly, Robin—are all asleep, so once we’re dressed, Jeremy leads me out the front door. It feels slightly more respectable than sneaking in his bedroom window.

  When I pull up to the house, I breathe a sigh of relief that all the lights are off. Thankfully it seems like Dad and Holly are tucked safely in their bed. I cut the engine and slowly climb out of the car. My thighs are sore and I feel little bit grimy, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Being with Jeremy like that was better than I even could have imagined.

  I want to do it again. Only, I hope it doesn’t hurt so much next time. And maybe next time I’ll actually orgasm and it won’t fade away at the last moment.

  The front door unlocks with ease, and I cancel the alarm before it makes a sound. If Dad really wants to keep me in the house all night, he should probably change the code. I’m way too good at this for his own good.

  I make it past the kitchen and into the living room, at the foot of the stairs, before it happens. The light switch clicks, and the room is suddenly basked in artificial light from one of the end-table lamps. I’ve been caught sneaking out and sneaking back in before, so that’s not such a big deal. It’s the fact that my hair is a complete disaster, I’m pretty sure I have a few hickeys on my neck, and I smell like Jeremy that worries me.

  “You better have a good fucking explanation for this,” Dad says.

  I still haven’t turned around to meet his eyes, both out of fear and embarrassment. My heart beats loudly in my chest, and my hands shake at my sides. This is going to be bad.

  With a stiff upper lip, I turn around and face my fears. Dad is wearing a pair of his old black sweatpants that Grandma’s asked him to throw away more times than I can count. As always, he hasn’t worn a shirt to bed, and his wavy hair is pointing in a hundred different directions.

  “I’m an adult,” I say. Something moves in the corner of the room, and it’s only then that I notice Holly in the chair by the fireplace. She’s wearing one of Dad’s big T-shirts and, from the looks of it, nothing else. Of course it’s okay for him to have sex with his girlfriend, but it’s not okay for me to have sex with my boyfriend. At least we’ve had enough respect for household furnishings not to do it on the fucking kitchen table. He is such a hypocrite.

  “You are way too wrapped up in that boy,” he says. He folds his arms over his chest and shakes his head. I can tell that he’s trying his best to hold back his temper, but it looks like it’s barely working. That’s okay because my temper is shot, so this is about to get real good.

  “What’s your problem with me and Jeremy? Is it because I want to spend every minute with him? Is it because I don’t want to be away from him? What is it, Dad?”

  “Yeah,” he says. His tone is more biting than it was a moment ago, but that’s probably in reaction to mine.

  “Then what the hell are you doing with Holly? You’re always together, you hate to be away from her. You live together. If I need to take a step back, so do you.”

  I think I’m going to throw up. My stomach is uneasy, and my back is stiff. I don’t talk to Dad like this very often, and when I do, we always end up in an enormous fight that leaves us not speaking for weeks at a time.

  “What did you just say to me?” he barks and strides across the room so fast that I almost don’t expect it when he’s in my face and breathing rank breath down on my cheeks. My stomach flips, and my body feels like it’s weighted down with hundreds of pounds of concrete. I just want to sink to the floor and play dead.

  “I love him,” I whisper. Because I do, and Dad needs to know it.

  “What about school?” he asks.

  “I got my GED. I can work in town.” I know how it sounds to his ears, even if I don’t want to admit it. It sounds like I’m giving up my dream of culinary school to stay in town with a boy. But it’s more than that. So much more.

  “Fuck that,” he says. His eyes travel down to my neck where, sure enough, he spots the bruises that are forming. “He use anything tonight besides you?”

  “We were careful, and he didn’t use me,” I yell, leaning in to him. I know men Dad’s size and bigger who won’t say a cross word to him. I wouldn’t piss him off if I wore a patch either. But I don’t, and I’m not afraid of him. “He loves me.”

  “The hell he does,” Dad seethes. “You gonna feel real grown up when your dad shows up and rips his dick off? You gonna feel like an adult then, huh, Chey?

  “Is this the first time?” he asks. I’m tempted not to tell him. It’s none of his business, but this is bad enough. Refusing to answer is only going to earn us a longer fight and a trip to Nic and Duke’s, which will wake up the baby. And that, I’ve learned, is worse than scratching Duke’s bike. Sleep is precious these days in that house.

  “Yes,” I say. Tears well in my eyes. This isn’t how the night of my first time was supposed to go. I was supposed to crawl into bed and reminisce about it, not stand here and fight with my dad over something this private.

  Asshole. He is such an asshole.

  “Is this shit the reason you haven’t applied to that school you been talking about?”

  “I changed my mind. I just don’t want to go anymore.”

  I can’t tell him that I’ve not gotten far enough on Mindy’s case to leave. I can’t tell him that I want to be here when he and Holly have a baby—because she’s so going to snow him into that one. I can’t tell him any of this, so we go back and forth and back again. He asks a question, and I respond with increasingly unkind words. I don’t want to talk about this with him, but even if I run upstairs, he’ll just follow me. Because he won’t listen, and I can’t find the words he needs to understand.

  “You’re throwing your future away for a boy who isn’t going to give a shit in six months. You want me to stop getting in your business, then you need to start making better choices.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say through falling tears. “He loves me.”

  “I’ll bet he thinks he does,” he says. “But you’re going to school. Holly has worked too hard to keep you on track with your education for you to throw it away because you want some asshole’s attention. As it is, you had to get your GED because you couldn’t get your ass to class.”

  “It’s not like that,” I wail. I don’t even bother to wipe the tears away. Every word he says is meaner than the last. They slam into my gut and practically pierce my heart one after the other. He need
s to stop before his words split me in two. Maybe if he knew the reason I missed so many classes he would understand. Maybe then he wouldn’t look so disgusted with me. No, then I’d have to deal with the entire club’s disapproval.

  “I was eighteen once,” he says. “It’s always like that. He wanted your pussy, and now that he’s got it, he’s going to leave you behind. He’s Forsaken now, Chey. He won’t be faithful.” Dad’s words have fallen to a whisper. His shoulders have dropped, and the intensity of the moment has passed. He just looks pained.

  Good. Misery loves company.

  “I’m not going to leave him no matter what you say,” I mutter through a series of hiccups. “You don’t get it. It’s painful thinking about going away, and I won’t do it to him or to me. I love him, sometimes so much it hurts. It feels like it’s crushing me from the inside out.”

  “You are going to regret this,” Dad says. “I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did.”

  I sniffle and wipe my nose. Dad reaches out to hug me, but the last thing I want is his comfort. I just want Jeremy.

  Dad backs up and blows out a heavy breath. I shake my head at him as I pass and head for the front door. On my way out, I hear him calling for Holly, who screams something at him before her voice trails off, probably downstairs to their bedroom. I hope she’s angry at him for how shitty he just was to me. But even if she is, I’m not all that happy with her for sitting in the corner and not saying or doing a fucking thing. So much for having my back.