by Megyn Ward
I lean back and pull a wad of cash from my front pocket, jerking a few bills loose. I’ve been doing the occasional oil change and tire rotation at Tess’s dad’s garage. I didn’t really want the money—I was just glad for the distraction. Now I’m glad he insisted on paying me.
“There’s a hundred,” I tell him, feeding a bill through one of the holes in the partition. It drops onto the seat next to him. I plaster the second bill against the partition like I did the address. “Make it a round trip.”
The cabbie looks at the cash I practically dropped in his lap. “You’re the boss, kid,” he says, turning in his seat to shift into drive.
I don’t answer him. I just sit back in my seat and stare out the window.
Twenty-eight
Henley
2017
When I open my eyes, Conner is awake and lying next to me, propped up on his elbow. The shirt I borrowed from his drawer is pulled up, exposing my back. I’m not wearing panties.
And he’s looking at me.
“Don’t let those sparkly vampire novels fool you.” I narrow my gaze on his face, doing my best to scowl at him, despite the way his eyes on me makes me feel. “It’s considered creepy to stare at people while they’re sleeping.”
He cracks a smile.
“I’m not staring.” He leans toward me to whisper in my ear. “I’m counting.”
I’d like to count them someday.
My freckles.
Conner is counting my freckles.
I can’t help but laugh. “Still the weirdest guy I’ve ever met.”
I feel the lift of his mouth against the shell of my ear. “Still not ashamed of it.”
I have a feeling there’s not much he is ashamed of, but instead of pointing it out, I close my eyes. “How long have you been up?”
“I don’t know...” His mouth moves lower, following the curve of my jaw. “A while.”
Worry slams into my gut like a wrecking ball. “You didn’t sleep?” I open my eyes and pull back, turning enough to look at him. “You closed your eyes… I thought—”
“I slept.” He flattens his hand against my back and presses me flat again. Catching the hem of my shirt, bunch up under my arms, he pulls it higher. Over my head and down my arms until it’s off and tossed over the side of the bed. “Four hours.” He trails his fingers along the nape of my neck. Between my shoulder and down my spine. “That’s more than I usually get in a week.” His callused hand skims over the curve of my ass, taking the sheet that’s pooled around my waist with it. My hips lift off the mattress, instinctively pressing into the rough warmth of his hand, even as I feel my face fall into a scowl. A real one this time.
“That’s not enough, Conner.” His name catches on a soft gasp when I feel the brush of his fingertips against me from behind. “You need to go back to sleep.”
“That’s not going to happen.” He drops his hand from under his head, sliding down until he’s lying on his side, his face inches from mine. “I’ve been lying here for hours, wide awake and bored out of my skull.” The fingers between my thighs reach lower, skimming the seam of my wet pussy and my gaze drops to his mouth. “And you know what they say about idle hands…”
Instincts take over again and I draw my knees underneath me, opening them wide enough for him to push into me. When he doesn’t, when all his does is tease me, his fingertips stroking my entrance, I let out a frustrated sigh, shaped around his name.
“I want you to look at me, Henley,” he murmurs. “Not until you look at me.”
When our eyes connect, he gives me what I want, sliding two of his fingers so deep inside me I moan, long and low in my throat.
“This…” He breathes the word, the push of it hard and guttural against my neck, his gaze still locked on mine. “I should have been doing this, every fucking day I had you with me.”
I tilt my hips into the pressure of his hand, pushing myself against him. Taking him in deeper. Until I’m whimpering and gasping with each stroke he’s giving me. “Conner…”
He slips the hand that’s still between us under my hips, his fingers finding and slicking over my clit in slow, lazy circles. Suddenly, I’m trembling on the edge. “I’m going to come…” The words tumble out of me even as I feel my thighs begin to shake. The rush of heat snaking down my spine to pool, low in my belly. “Wait—”
“I want you to...” He pushes his shoulders off the bed, his abs contracted to raise his mouth to mine. “Fuck.” He groans like he’s the one who’s about to come. “Henley...” He skims his tongue along the line of my upper lip. “I should’ve been kissing you. Touching you. I’m so—”
I don’t want him to say it. I don’t want to talk about regret. What we should’ve done. What we shouldn’t had said. I want this. What he’s doing to me now. I to feel him moving inside me. To feel how much he wants me.
Raising myself up onto my hands, I angle myself over him, so I can take his mouth with mine. Pushing my tongue between his lips, he groans again when I find and keep the rhythm he’s set between my legs. I kiss him with my eyes open, watch his expression flicker and dim with every stroke of my tongue against his. Lifting one of my hands I let my fingertips glide over his pecs. His tightly packed abs. The soft skin below his bellybutton, to hook around the waistband of his flannel sleep pants so I can pull them down around his hip. Tearing my mouth from his, I wrap my hand around his cock. “I don’t want you to be sorry, Conner.” My thumb sweeps across the head of his cock, gathering the pre-cum leaking from it. “I want you to fuck me.” I give him a long, slow stroke. “Yes or no.”
Something in his gaze flickers, something that tightens around the back of my throat like a fist. Something that causes prickly heat to rise behind my eye but before it can register, I’m on my back, staring up at him, his hips pressed into the cradle of my thighs. The head of his cock straining against my throbbing entrance. “Yes.” He stokes into me, slow and deep. “Yes.” Making room, he slips a hand between us, his thumb finding and teasing my clit. “Yes.” Bracing a hand against the wall above my head, Conner gives me what I want. He fucks me, each pump of his cock inside me harder and deeper than the last, his thumb a sweet, unyielding torture as it sweeps over me, again and again, until I’m writhing and moaning beneath him, legs wrapped around his waist. Pelvic tilted against his. Nailing digging into his shoulder blades. I feel them sink into the flesh of his back and I immediately ease up when he hisses out a curse.
“Do it,” he growls at me, his command punctuated with the sound of his hips slapping against mine, hard and rough. The moans and whimpers crowding and pushing out of my mouth. “Fuck… I need you to do it.” He closes his eyes for a second, his shoulders rolling and pressing against my fingernails. His cock, hot and heavy, pounding away inside me. His jaw clenched tight. His thumb, relentlessly stroking my hot, swollen clit. When he opens his eyes again to look down at me, the green of them are nearly black, shot through with gold that looks like hellfire, the heart of them wild, almost feral. So far from the boy I fell in love with it scares me, even as it tips me over the edge.
“Do it, Henley.”
I rake my nails down the length of his back, from his shoulder blades to his ass and scream his name, the sound of it getting lost in his mouth as he lowers it over mine. His tongue and teeth nipping and swirling against me. Inside me.
Every part of me invaded.
Every inch of me claimed.
I come hard. Shoulders pressed against the mattress, the slick walls of my pussy gripping and flexing around the stiff, swollen length of his cock. He says something, the sound of it getting lost in my mouth, and he starts to jerk and spasm inside me, filling me with his release.
I stare up at him, eyes wide, hands pressed against the weeping red welts I scored into his back, breath heaving against my chest, fast and harsh. As soon as his eyes refocus they skate past mine, finding another place to land.
“What was that?” I say softly. When he doesn’t answer me, I slip
my hand around to the front to push against his chest. Against the Claddagh inked across his pecs, the point of its heart aimed toward his own.
My heart.
He looks down at my hand, where it is, and visibly stiffens. I push harder, trying to get him to look at me. “Conner. What just—”
He leans into my hands and grins, but it looks wrong. I’ve been around him enough now to know when he’s pretending. “That was the fuck of the century, Daisy.” He skims his lips against my cheekbone before levering himself up and away from me completely. I sit up and watch him walk naked to the fridge to pull it open. The welts I left on his back are raised and red, blood pebbling, smeared against his skin in spots where I dug into him. Hurt him.
Because he asked me to.
I think about the library. The way he encouraged me to bite him. Seemed to need it. Want it. Last night when I pulled his hair. The fact that he practically begged me to, even though his scalp was still tender from slamming his head into the hood of the car he was working on only minutes before.
That’s when it hits me.
He wants me to.
He wants me to hurt him.
“I won’t do that again.” I sound a lot more convicted than I feel. The truth is, I would. I’d do anything he asked me to do. Not because he asked but because I’d want to. I like the out of control, careening-around-a-blind-corner-at-break-neck-speed feeling that being with him gives me. I like it so much that I’m starting to need it. Crave it like a drug.
“Won’t do what?” He bends slightly, rooting around for something. I expect him to pull out one of the beers I brought, but he doesn’t. He pulls out a bottle of water. Turning around, he faces me, hips leaned against the counter. Cock half-hard and still glistening from being inside me. “Fuck me or hurt me?” His tone is light. Casual. Not my Conner. Not anymore.
I feel the blood rush away from my face so fast it makes me glad I’m not standing. If I were, I’d probably lose my knees and fall on my face. “They’re the same thing, aren’t they?” I’m not sure why I say it. The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s true.
He cracks the cap on the water and takes a deep drink before lowering it from his mouth. “Yes, they are,” he says, tightening the lid on the bottle before tossing it to me. It lands in the bed next to me. I don’t even reach for it. “And yes, you will.” He pushes his hips away from the counter to stand up straight. “You’ll keep fucking me because you can’t stop.” He grins at me again and it’s the same grin as before. The one I watched him give countless girls when we were younger. Dozens of women since I’ve been back. It’s a grin that says he knows exactly what we think when we look at him. What we see. What we want. Feeling the cold weight of it aimed at me is like a knife in my gut and I press my hands to my stomach to keep them from spilling out. “Because when it comes to my cock, you’re a goddamned junkie—” He looks down at himself and laughs. “—and I’ll keep letting you hurt me because I’m in love with you, Henley.” He lifts his head and shows me his palms like his hands are full of something I’ll never be able to see. “Fuck, I’ll even beg you to do it because I’ve been so goddamned desperately in love with you, for so fucking long, that I can’t remember what it feels like not to love you and I’ll do anything—anything—you want me to, because I learned my lesson. I said no to you once and you sent me away. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
I just want to be with you, Henley. Why won’t you just let me be with you?
Before I can even fully comprehend what he just said to me—that he loves me, that’s he’s in love with me and has been for years—he turns away from me and disappears into the bathroom, followed by the distinct sound of the door being locked. A few seconds later I hear the shower turn on.
When I look down at my hands, they’re streaked with Conner’s blood.
Twenty-nine
Conner
For the next few days, I hide. Either in my apartment or under a car, but I don’t step a foot outside the garage. Not because I regret what I said or because I’m ashamed or whatever. I hide because I don’t trust myself.
Because I know what I’ll do if I allow myself so much as a millimeter of slack.
I’ll go to her. Tell her I’m sorry. Get down on my fucking knees and crawl if I have to. I’ll beg her to forgive me. Tell her I’m sorry. That I’m a fucking asshole. That I’ll do anything she wants, for as long as she wants me to.
Anything, as long as she lets me stay.
Or even worse, I’ll pretend it never happened. That I never said it out loud. That I didn’t look her dead in the eye and tell her that I’m still in love with her. That I’ve always be in love with her.
That I’ll never stop.
Worse because I know it would hurt her. Even if she doesn’t love me the way I love her, hearing something like that would hurt her. She’s always been fragile on the inside. Never trusted me. The way I feel about her. Even now that I’ve given in, given her what she wants, she can’t believe a word I say. Confirming her suspicions would devastate her.
It’s either hurt her or keep hurting myself and I don’t want to do either one.
Not anymore.
So I hide.
I make sure Tess sees me eat. I make sure she knows that my no-sleep streak is over. I don’t tell her why or how and she doesn’t ask. Tess is smart, I’m sure she figured it out. Not like it’s rocket science.
It’s Saturday and I stick close to home.
I eat the last of the chicken salad Henley made for breakfast. I spend three hours in front of my computer watching her play Mahjong Titans and shelve books on my computer screen. I work on cars, bent over until it feels like my spine is permanently fused into a curve. I read Gatsby, cover to cover, a few times. Make myself some eggs and force myself to eat them. Fuck around on my computer. Work on my Millennium Problem—the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap. I know if I buckled down and really gave a shit, I could’ve solved it years ago but that would mean publishing my findings. Defending my work. Giving lectures. Let the mathematics community trot me around like a goddamned show pony.
No, thanks. I’d rather eat glass.
When Tess texts and asks me to meet her for a drink I don’t ignore her like I want to. I tell her that I’m in the middle of something and I’ll see her on Monday. I don’t tell her that what I’m in the middle of is laying in my bed because it still smells like Henley and while I’m feeling more stable than I have in a while, I know better than to believe it’s going to last.
It’s Sunday and I’m in my car.
When I climbed behind the wheel this morning, I told myself it was because I have cabin fever and needed to get out from behind the same four walls I’ve been staring at for the past four days. It’s been a while since I made one of Cap’n’s games. I’ll go. Watch from my car. No big deal. I won’t even stay for the whole thing.
I back into a spot at the far end of the lot under the trees, in direct sight of the ball field but at enough distance that I’m not noticeable. It’s not because I’m a fucking weirdo stalker. It’s not because I know she’s going to be there. It’s not because I need to see her. He’s been hounding me for years about sponsoring a team. Maybe I will. Maybe I’m tired of doing the same thing, over and over. It’s been years since I got serious about anything except banging chicks, picking fights and killing my liver. Maybe it’s not even Henley that I want. Maybe I want what she represents to me—who I could’ve been if she’d stayed. Normal. Real. Not the fucked-up freak I turned into.
Yeah—and maybe I’m goddamned liar.
Christ, she looks good.
Long auburn hair pulled through the back of her ball cap, tugged low over her face. Jeans and team shirt tied into a knot at her hips. She’s third-base coaching, posture hunched over so she can talk to her runner. The catcher is a big kid. Wide and muscular. The type who won’t give an inch. I know what Henley’s telling her runner to do. I can practically hear her from across the field.
Take the plate.
The batter swings and is rewarded by the crack of the ball. Like’s it’s a starting pistol, Henley’s runner explodes off third, bolting for home while she keeps pace, coaching and cheering her way down the baseline.
I watch the ball, a deep fly that drops perfectly between fielders, rolling across the grass while they scramble for the catch.
Henley’s runner is halfway to home plate when one of the fielders recovers the ball. He’s too far away from the plate for a direct flight so he relays it to the shortstop while the catcher plants his feet, hunching slightly to wait for the ball.
I can hear Henley yelling.
You’ve got this! Keep going! You want it more! You can do it!
Her runner turns on the gas, sprinting down the baseline, chin tucked. Steps away from collision, she lowers her shoulder without missing a step. At the same time, the ball rips through the air, exploding out of the shortstop’s glove like it’s been shot from a gun, a white blur rocketing toward home.
Henley’s runner gets there first and trucks the catcher like a semi, knocking him on his ass, right before she claims home plate and wins the game.
Henley pops up from her crouch, the second the ump calls her runner safe, pumping her fist, grinning and yelling like a lunatic.
The players rush home plate, whooping and hollering. Patrick carrying a huge trophy onto the field and hands it to Henley who in turn gives it to the girl. Trophy hoisted, her teammates lift her onto their shoulders and cart her off the field while Henley high-fives and fist bumps everyone around her. I feel my face split in its first real smile in days.
Right now, she doesn’t just look good to me.
She looks like the girl I remember.