by Mae Doyle
“A god?” I drop my shirt and stand up, my temper flaring. Part of my brain is screaming at me to be careful, but that part can shut the hell up. “You think that you’re a god? You’re just a vindictive asshole who killed his girlfriend and takes his guilt out on other people.” I’m so angry that I can’t see straight.
I also can’t think straight, apparently.
“And you’re a little whore who opens her legs for the first man who shows her any compassion or pity.” He reaches out and gives my ponytail a little yank. “If you weren’t so frigid then I may offer you to the rest of my team, but they’d get bored fast.”
“Fuck you.” The words are out of my mouth before I realize that I’m thinking them, but now it’s too late to take them back. His eyes darken.
“What’s that, Elle? You already did, and I must say, I don’t know that I was too impressed.”
“I hate you.” Tears spring to my eyes, but I don’t even try to fight them back. He saw me cry earlier and he took advantage of it. Of me. “I hate you and this stupid fucking school.”
“Then leave!” Clay holds his arms out from his body and drops them in exasperation. “Then leave the fucking school, Elle! Get out of here! Get out of my head! What are you waiting for?”
He’s so loud that I’m afraid that someone will come to the door, but nobody does. He really is a god around here.
“I would.” The words spill out of me. “Believe me, I would love to! I’d love to put you and all of the assholes at Kennedy Academy behind me, but I can’t! Don’t you think I’d rather be anywhere else than here?”
I’m planning on leaving. I already know that I have to get as far away from here as possible, but I can’t until I graduate. I can’t until I have more money saved up.
“You wouldn’t. You like playing the victim, don’t you, Elle? You probably love all of the attention that you’re getting, right? Sweet little kitten with no friends. Plays the violin like an angel, but apparently has some fucked-up shit going on in her home life. Poor thing.”
The sarcasm is too much.
“You don’t know shit about my home life.” My voice is stronger than I knew it could be, and even Clay looks surprised. “You don’t know what I’ve gone through. You have no clue the shit I’ve lived through, Clay. So, fuck you.”
I expect him to be angry, but he looks more amused than anything else, which pisses me off. I grab my pants off of the floor and try to pull them on, but it’s difficult to angrily struggle into clothing without looking like a fool.
Especially when I just had some of the best sex in my life.
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?” I glance up at him and find my socks.
“About your home life.” He’s leaning back against the counter, a smirk on his face. Even though I’m struggling to get my clothes on as quickly as possible, he hasn’t even reached for his clothes. My eyes flick down to his cock, which is hard again.
Fuck.
I’ll admit, I consider it at first. But then I shake my head. “You don’t want to hear it.”
I’m worried, and I can’t imagine why he wants to know. Morbid curiosity, probably.
“No, I do. Tell me.” He hasn’t moved but it suddenly feels like we’re closer. Like the room is smaller.
I swallow hard, thinking. He’s already taken everything that he wants from me.
I have nothing more to lose. He already knows exactly how to hurt me.
Clay Bryson has gotten under my skin in a way that I never thought possible. He can make me come and he can make me cry and I never know which one it’s going to be.
Opening up to him puts me in danger of just giving him more ammunition to use against me, but I want him to know what I live with. It’s dangerous information for him to have, but I want him to feel for me, to hurt for me.
I want Clay to want me as badly as I want him.
“Okay. But you can’t interrupt. Just listen.”
Clay
Elle doesn’t know this about me yet, but I’m actually an incredible listener. I think about putting on some clothes while she talks, but I don’t want to make her nervous.
I know that there’s some fucked up shit in her past and I want to know what it is.
I do take the risk of grabbing my shirt and tossing it to her. She hesitates for a moment, her eyes locked on mine, but then she pulls it on. There. Now maybe she’ll feel less exposed and like she can open up more.
“I’m all ears.”
She nods, a small movement that I almost miss, except I can’t keep my eyes off of her. “It’s okay, Elle, you can tell me.”
What could possibly be so bad that she looks terrified to tell me?
“My dad died when I was six, and for a long time it was just me and my mom.” She pauses and looks at me, waiting for me to make a comment, but I don’t move.
When she sees that I’m not going to interrupt her, she continues. “Okay, so she got bored of it just being the two of us and started dating, I guess. I don’t know what else to call it. She’d bring home any guy that she wanted and then they’d live with us for a while before she moved on.”
Elle won’t look at me now. I want to move into her line of sight and get her attention, but that’s not what she needs. She looks like she needs to be left alone to figure this out. I’m here in the room with her, but she needs to confront her demons, and if that means that she pretends I’m not here, then that’s what we’ll do.
I’ve found her crack and I’m going to work it until she breaks open under my touch.
From the moment I saw her, I thought that she was exactly like Tiffany, but now, as she talks, I’m beginning to see how vastly different they are.
There’s a lot more to Elle than I ever gave her credit for.
“Some of them were okay, but a few of them were violent and drank a lot.” She shrugs and sighs. “I guess that’s why I don’t drink. Anyway, my music was an escape for me. I remember sitting with my dad and listening to his favorite classical pieces, and playing makes me feel closer to him, so that’s what I did. I kept playing the violin, just to survive.”
She stops talking and stares at me. I know that there’s more to this story and I want to make sure that she spills all of the details before I let her out of this room, but I don’t say anything.
Not yet.
“Then she met Ted. They found each other online and she flew up to meet him a few times. I’d just stay at home by myself, which was great. I was happy. Things went south when he would come to visit us, though. He’s super controlling of my mom and…”
She stops and swallows. If she were any other girl and I was any other boy, I would cross the room between us and pull her into me for a hug, but I can’t do that.
Not with Elle.
Not even after we just did.
“He started to hit her when she didn’t do what he wanted her to. I begged her to go to the police, but she wouldn’t. Then, one night, he came into my room. He never…but he tried. He keeps trying, but I keep fighting him off.”
Here she stops, and I know that she’s done. There’s nothing else that she needs to tell me, because I can easily fill in the blanks of what happened.
“The police didn’t get involved?” I told her that I’d be silent, but I have to ask this. I have to know.
She shakes her head, frowning. “He told me that he’d kill my mom. I believe him, Clay. He’s…evil.” Her voice cuts through me as she says this.
She thinks that Ted and I are the same.
Maybe we are.
“And I’d move out, if I could, but I’m afraid to leave my mom there. She’s just totally brainwashed by this guy and thinks that the world revolves around him. He has her convinced that she has to have him, or she’ll never be able to manage on her own.” Elle crosses her arms in front of her chest and gives herself a little hug. “It’s fucked up,” she finishes.
It is fucked up. In fact, it may be more fucked up than me, which i
s saying something.
I open my mouth, not even knowing what I’m going to say, but she cuts me off. “How did you kill Tiffany?”
Clamping my mouth shut, I stare at her. This was not part of the agreement. Instead of answering her, I pull on my boxers and jeans and then hunt for my shoes.
“Tell me. I told you why I’m fucked up! I deserve to know what you did to her.” Her voice is strained and she sounds like she’s going to cry. Before I can think about what to do to stop her, Elle steps in front of me and kicks the shoe I’m reaching for across the room.
“That was a bitch move.” Standing, I tower over her, my arms crossed. I can feel my heart racing when I get too close to her. This bitch is electric. Magnetic. Something.
Everything.
“I deserve to know.” She juts out her chin, looking like a petulant kid.
“Fine. I was drag racing with Teague and we got in an accident. Tiffany died and I walked away. You happy now?” Without thinking, I slam my fist down on the desk next to me, making her jump.
She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but I wave her off.
“I killed her because I fucked up, kitten, is that what you want to hear? I shouldn’t have been drag racing, and I certainly shouldn’t have done it with her in the car. She was the best thing to ever happen to me, and I fucking killed her because I’m stupid.”
The one thing that I keep thinking about when I remember that night is how she had begged me not to race with Teague. She knew that the roads were wet and she was scared. I didn’t care. I wanted to know her that I could handle anything that life threw at me.
I made her get in the car. I made her ride with me.
It may have been the accident that killed her, but I murdered Tiffany.
“You’re not stupid,” Elle begins, but I cut her off.
“You know what? This was fucking dumb. I don’t want to talk to you. If you ever tell anyone about this, kitten, I will kill you.” All of the other times I threatened to kill Elle, I didn’t really mean it, but if she so much as breathes a word about this to anyone, I’m not sure that I’m going to have a choice.
I can’t have it al dredged back up. I will kill her.
Her eyes flash, but she doesn’t respond. I realize that she’s heard this threat already so many times. You can only be threatened a certain number of times before it wears off.
Ted. That fucker has threatened her and her mom more times than she can probably count.
And then I started doing the exact same thing. Maybe Elle is right. Maybe Ted and I are more alike than I want to admit. That thought is enough to make me sick.
Fuck. I’ve got to get out of here.
“I need air.” I push past her and throw the door to the classroom open, stumbling out into the hall. Bending over, I grab my stomach and take deep breaths.
That was too much. I shouldn’t have let myself get so close to Elle.
Without turning back and looking in the classroom, I walk down the hall. I’m shirtless and barefoot, but I don’t give a fuck. Nobody here is going to say anything to me. Nobody besides Elle has the balls to call me out on anything, and I left her behind me.
There’s no looking back now. Right?
***
“You sure that this is what you want to do?” Teague leans over the center console to look past me at the house. The lights are all off and it’s completely dark inside. At 2 am, I expect nothing less, but sometimes people do stupid shit.
Like right the fuck now.
“You pussing out?” I can see Teague shake his head out of the corner of my eye, but I don’t turn to look at him. “What about you guys?” I raise my voice. “You two gonna be pussies with Teague?”
“Man, I’m not pussing out.” Teague slaps the dash of my car to emphasize his point. Robby and Brett laugh in the back, the sound too loud in the quiet of my car.
Good. They’re fucking idiots sometimes, but I know that they have my back. At least, they fucking better.
“Okay then. Let’s do this.” I convinced Bethany to have Elle stay over at our house tonight. She should be passed out in bed with her, which means that there’s no risk of accidentally running into her or waking her up.
The four of us climb out of my car and quietly shut the doors before we walk across the driveway. There aren’t any streetlamps on the street and everything is pitch black except for the light from the moon. I don’t want us to use flashlights unless absolutely necessary.
Getting caught would be terrible. Accidentally waking up Ted may be even worse.
The back door is wide open, just like Elle said. Apparently, Ted doesn’t like to sleep with all of the doors shut.
“Do you know where their bedroom is?” Robby’s so close behind me that he’s practically breathing down my neck. I shoot him a withering look that he can’t see.
“Obviously, you fucking genius. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be risking this. But I want you and Brett to stay outside the house to make sure that nothing goes south. Teague and I will go in.”
Teague follows me when I push the door open a bit more and slip through. We’re both quiet in the kitchen and feel our way around the counter and to the door. “First room on the right,” I whisper to him as we start up the stairs.
The first stair squeaks. “Dammit,” I mutter under my breath, standing still, but nobody comes. Teague wisely steps over it as he follows me up the stairs.
Once on the landing, I hesitate a moment. I know where to go, and I know what we have to do, but I’m risking a fuck ton to be doing this.
All of this for a girl who has the face of my dead ex. She’s barely spoken to me since we fucked in the classroom last week. She has no idea I’m here.
Teague gently pokes me in the back, and I nod, pushing open the bedroom door.
Moonlight falls in the window and lands in a strip across the bed. Ted’s on the side closest to us. There’s a phone on the bedside table and a glass of water, but I don’t see any weapons.
Good.
When I point to the other side of the bed, Teague immediately walks around it and stands over Elle’s mom. She’s sound asleep on her back, her hair spread around her head, and she doesn’t move. Ted, on the other hand, shifts a little as I walk up to him.
“Ted.” I get close to his face and whisper his name. When he doesn’t respond, I try again. “Ted, you old fuck, wake up.”
His eyes fly open and he gasps when he seems me just inches from his face. I see when he reaches out his hand to grab for his phone, but I’ve already moved it from his bedside table.
“Get up, you asshole, we have something to talk about.”
Carefully he flips the covers off of him and slides his legs out of the bed before glancing at his wife. Teague is standing over her, ready to act if she wakes, but she doesn’t move. I shake my head at him, and he focuses on me before standing up.
He’s wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. From the way Elle described him and how he acted the first time I met him, I expected him to be a larger than life monster, but he’s not. He’s just a pathetic man who beats his family and abuses her.
“Downstairs. Go.” I prod him in the back and follow him as he walks out of the room and down to the kitchen, being careful to keep an eye on him so that he doesn’t try to break away and run. Teague is right behind me, a large knife in his hand.
“Listen, asshole,” I say, when we’re all in the kitchen, “you need to cut your shit out.” I turn on the kitchen light so that I can see him better. He looks cocky, but I can tell that he’s scared. Good. He should be. He leans against the counter, trying to act casual, but when I walk towards him, he flinches.
I’m in charge here, and he needs to learn that.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He looks confident and arrogant and I hate him for it. He’s more confident than any man in his situation should be.
“Really? No idea? No idea about beating your wife? About abusing Elle?” I walk up
to him and reach down, grabbing his cock through his boxers and squeezing hard. He gasps and reaches for me, but I grab his wrist with my other hand. “Maybe if you kept your cock in your pants where it belonged and stopped hitting women, we wouldn’t have to be here.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he gasps out. “Please, listen.”
I don’t want to, but I let go of him and step back. “This is gonna be good. Lie to me, asshole.”
“She loves it. Elle. She begs me to come to her in the night. I know that she needs me, I…” he says, but I don’t let him finish.
Rage fills me when I hear him talk about Elle – my Elle – like that, and I launch myself at him. He may be older than me, but I’m bigger and stronger than him, and I land on him, fists flying. The sound of his nose breaking under my first punch should stop me, but it only eggs me on.
“Asshole! Liar!” I slam my fist into his stomach and he doubles over, crying out.
“Quiet, now, Clay,” Teague warns from behind me, but I barely hear him. All I can think about is making this asshole pay. He’s done more than enough already, and he needs to suffer for the pain he’s brought Elle.
Ted stands up, panting as he tries to catch his breath. There’s blood splattered down his front and he reaches behind him to grab the counter for support.
I hit him again, this time in the throat, making him fall to his knees. After a minute he slowly stands up, his breathing a gasping wheeze.
“You need to go,” I tell him, once he’s back on his feet. My voice is dark and low. “You need to go and leave them alone, or I swear to God, I will come back and kill you.”
He looks at me, fear in his eyes. Good. This fucker should be afraid of me. I’m the golden prince, and what I say in my town goes.
“Fuck you.” He spits the words at me and reaches behind him for something on the counter. Before he can swing it up and over his head, I’ve tackled him to the ground and have him pinned there, my face inches from his.
“Try again, asshole.”
Chapter 16
Elle