Shallow River

by H. D. Carlton

  And probably at a strip club, I think bitterly.

  “Come over,” she says. “Me and David are making chicken tacos and margaritas. Well, my margarita will be a virgin, because this vagina is definitely not.”

  I smile at her crass words. That sounds fucking amazing. My mouth nearly salivates at the thought.

  Then, all hunger dries my mouth to the point of nearly choking me when the conversation from Ryan's office comes filtering back. His demands for me to stay away from Amelia. To never see her again. A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead as I concoct several excuses for leaving the house. I’m forbidden from Amelia and my mother, the only two people in my life. I have no other friends—at least not anyone I could go see and it not look suspicious to Ryan as to why I’m suddenly hanging out with someone I never have before.

  “I don’t know, Amelia. I’d have to ask Ryan,” I say before trapping my bottom lip between my teeth and biting it raw.

  She’s silent for a moment. “Is he home? He can come,” she offers sweetly, which only serves to make me feel worse. Here she is, putting in an effort to invite someone she probably loathes. I haven’t asked how she feels about Ryan now, and I don’t think I will. I’m not ready to hear her say how bad she thinks he is for me.

  “He’s out with some friends,” I admit.

  “Then I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you hanging out with your bestest friend in the world, right?”

  My mouth opens, on the verge of spewing the truth and telling her I’m not allowed to see her anymore. The words stop, but so does my excuse that follows. Ryan’s out doing lord knows what with who knows what people, and I have to stay home and do… nothing?

  I look over to Bilby resting on his spot behind me, snoozing comfortably. As if sensing my stare, he opens his golden eyes—eyes that drew me to him in the first place because they look exactly like my own—and meows at me softly, as if he is telling me one word.

  Go.

  “I’d only be able to stay for a few hours,” I hedge. I’ll just go over and come back before Ryan gets home.

  He told me not to wait up for him before he kissed me goodbye. Last time he went out with his friends, he didn’t come back home until two o’clock in the morning. It’s only seven o’clock now. Being home by ten or eleven would give me plenty of time to settle back in my pajamas and act like nothing happened.

  “O-okay, well dinner will be ready in fifteen,” she replies, tripping over her words as if she’s confused. I don’t think I’ve ever given myself a curfew before.

  “Okay, on my way.”

  I hang up and run upstairs to change into leggings, and a long-sleeved university shirt. Nothing too flashy and revealing. It’s ninety degrees outside right now, but Ryan’s words are stuck in my head.

  You dress like a whore so men will look at you.

  Brushing my hair and putting on light make up takes all of two minutes before I’m out the door and driving over.

  My hands shake and adrenaline surges through my veins. I’m sneaking out of the house to see my best friend. My best friend that’s never done any wrong to anyone in her entire life. Someone who doesn’t deserve to be ostracized from me like she’s a deviant slut, when the only one that acts like that is me.

  I frown. No wonder Ryan gets mad at me. I’m always lying and sneaking around on him. He doesn’t trust me, and I’m still not giving him a reason to. Still, I don’t turn the car around.

  While disobeying Ryan’s demands sends highly toxic doses of anxiety though my veins, I’m not going to pass up time with my best friend—and especially not chicken tacos and alcohol.

  WALKING INTO AMELIA AND David’s house always brings me a sense of peace and warmth that I can’t find anywhere else, though Julie and Matt’s house comes close. Amelia’s house is smaller, homey and well-lived in.

  Her art decorates the walls, due to David’s insistence. Amelia is too humble to display her art in her own home, but David isn’t. He’s always been one of her biggest supporters, right next to me of course. If I didn’t know Amelia’s art so well, it’d look like a professional photograph printed and hanging in a store.

  Amelia specializes in realism painting. She spends months and months on one painting, perfecting it until it looks like you’re staring at an actual photograph of someone. Her talent is absolutely breathtaking.

  Already, she’s featured in some of the top art galleries in L.A., and has her art hanging in several celebrity’s houses. In the art world, she’s a pretty big deal, but you’d never know looking at her or her house. Growing up with nothing has humbled Amelia, and she’s perfectly happy living like she’s middle class. Even if millions of dollars are sitting her bank account.

  “Hi, my love!” Amelia greets loudly, rushing over to hug me. I saw her last week, but it feels like it’s been months. Usually we hang after class for a couple hours before going our separate ways. We haven’t gotten the chance to actually visit each other in far too long.

  David walks over to hug me next. David is a six-foot-four, burly guy with a big beard, sky blue eyes and a gruff voice. He’s also an absolute teddy bear and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless that fly was trying to kill Amelia or something—then he’d murder the fly slowly. He’s attractive in a way that grows on you the more you look at him and get to know him. You wouldn’t notice someone like David right away, but once he catches your attention, he makes it hard to look away.

  “Hi, River,” he says quietly. Tears prick my eyes when David’s arms wrap around me. He’s been my friend as long as Amelia has, and he’s always been such a good hugger. It feels warm and safe in his arms and I haven’t felt that in so long. David’s always been good to me, even when I’d act reckless. Instead of judging me like most people would do, he offered me a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen.

  I don’t think I could’ve picked a better person for Amelia to spend the rest of her life with.

  Before I can start bawling like a baby and embarrass myself, I squeeze him hard and remove myself from his arms. If Ryan knew I hugged David, he’d be so angry with me. My heart drops into a pool of anxiety resting in my stomach and another frown threatens to weigh down my lips. I'm always defying Ryan and then wonder why he doesn’t trust me.

  Stupid, River. I shouldn’t even be here.

  Just as I turn away from David, Amelia’s returning with a massive margarita in her hand.

  “Watermelon?” I ask, forcing a smile onto my face. I can’t let them see me upset. They’ll ask questions that I don’t know how to answer.

  “You already know it,” she says with a roll of her eyes. Watermelon is my favorite, and so is my best friend. She always remembers.

  I accept the drink with a large smile and suck a quarter of it down in one swallow.

  “Pace yourself,” David warns lightly, an amused glint in his eyes.

  I quirk a brow and suck down another big swallow. “No can do, my friend, no can do.”

  He laughs and leaves me be. David knows I can hold liquor better than any man he knows. He’s witnessed me shit faced and still able to walk a straight line at the end of the night. And Amelia always buying breakfast the next morning because she puked first.

  In the back of my head, I know it’d be smart to pace myself. I can’t get drunk because I have to drive myself home. Amelia and David would be more than willing to offer me the spare bedroom, but Ryan would flip if he came home to a missing, liar of a girlfriend. With that thought in mind, I sip slower and gorge myself on the best chicken tacos I’ve ever had.

  What Ryan doesn’t know, can’t hurt me.

  BLARING LIGHT ASSAULTS MY senses, painting my eyelids tomato red. Slowly, I crack them open, holding a hand over my eyes to assuage the pain.

  “What the hell?” I mutter. When my vision focuses, a calm, blank-faced Ryan is standing at the door, his finger nocked on the light switch. I just stare at him, confused by the sudden light and cold look on his face.

  It’s early morning, the sun bare
ly cresting over the horizon. Bleariness still muddles my brain, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out something is wrong.

  “What?” I snap. I pull a face, smacking my lips in disgust when I realize how gross my mouth feels.

  Dragging myself into a sitting position, the blanket falls from my bare breasts. A lift of the blanket reveals the rest of my naked body. A frown pulls at my lips, confused how I got naked. I went to bed dressed in my pajamas.

  A quick glance down at the floor solves that mystery. They’re lying haphazardly next to the bed. The strings to my tank are snapped clean from one end. My bottoms are cut in half. Neither of them were torn. I slowly pursue the room, taking note of the scissors lying on the end table, along with a bottle of water that has a white residue at the lip.

  The more I see, the more horrified I grow. Hurriedly, I push the blankets back further to see dried semen on the inside of my thigh.

  “Did we have sex?” I ask, even though the answer is currently slapping me in the fucking face. I should’ve asked, did you rape me?

  Ryan’s jaw ticks. “You mean you don’t remember me fucking you?”

  I hate when he answers my question with another question.

  I glance toward the water bottle with the suspicious substance dried on the inside of it. He notes my expression. A sinister smile cracks across his otherwise cold face. There’s no other emotion to the action but bitter amusement.

  “I don’t need to drug my girlfriend in order to sleep with her,” he says bitterly, guessing my train of thought.

  But you do, sweet Ryan.

  “It’s Alka Seltzer. I had a bad headache last night from all the drinking,” he explains dryly. The urge to grab the bottle and sniff it is overwhelming, but that would only add insult to injury. He’s already pissed about something. Something that doesn’t have shit to do with my ravaged body or a fucking water bottle.

  When I just stare at him, he finally walks towards me until he’s standing at the foot of the bed. The position leaves me feeling vulnerable. I feel at a disadvantage. Naked, scramble-brained and… sore. Very sore.

  If it wasn’t for the fire-breathing dragon staring down his nostrils at me, I’d look for bruises.

  Calmly, I ask, “Is there something wrong?”

  “Where were you last night?”

  My heart feels like a stone dropping into a well. It drops so far down, I fear I’ve lost it somewhere in the acidic pit of my stomach. Yet I can feel it pumping at an alarming rate, the adrenaline leaking into my bloodstream.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, my voice surprisingly even.

  “Don’t play fucking stupid with me, River,” he snarls. He clenches the duvet in his fist and rips it from my body. My attempts to hold onto the blanket are in vain. Instinctively, I cover my naked body, curling my legs against my chest protectively.

  “Tell me what the hell you’re talking about, Ryan,” I demand, forcing steel into my spine. It feels like I’ve just emptied a syringe full of jello into my spine instead.

  How is that I’ve faced big, scary men since the dawn of my existence, yet this man still manages to put the fear of god in me? He’s much smaller than a lot of the men I’ve gone up against in my life.

  “You went to Amelia’s last night,” he spits, his chest beginning to heave with increasing anger.

  How the fuck does he know that? Anger punches through my chest. It takes all of two seconds to figure it out. The fucker bugged me. He’s tracking my goddamn phone to see where I am.

  “How would you know that, Ryan?” I ask, my voice still deceptively calm. I don’t like my privacy being tampered with. I received so little of it my entire childhood—or rather, absolutely none of it. It’s precious to me. Sacred.

  He smirks at me, more than likely noting my growing anger. The shaking starts in the tips of my fingers, travelling up my limbs and throughout the rest of my body like lightening travelling alongside a metal pole.

  How curious. He likes that I’m angry.

  Do you want a fight from me, sweet Ryan?

  I slide out of the bed in one swoop, standing before him in all my naked, pissed off fucking glory.

  “Why would you track me?”

  “You obviously give me reasons to,” he answers simply. “You’re deflecting your mistake. Instead of focusing on what you did, you’re trying to spin it back on me. Instead of owning up to your mistake and admitting you did wrong, you’d rather try to act like I’m the one in the wrong.”

  “You are!” I shout, taking a step towards him. His eyes blacken as evil washes over his face. He takes three large steps towards me, getting directly in my face. A hand shoots out, wrapping around my throat and squeezing.

  My nails claw at his hands as he grits through his teeth, “You better watch how the fuck you talk to me. You disobeyed me last night, River. I strictly told you to stay away from that whore, and you didn’t listen. Bad girls get punished. And when you’re done getting punished, I’m taking your phone. You can have it back when you act right.”

  Before I can spit in his face, he’s spinning me around and pushing my face into the bed. I struggle against his unforgiving hold. The more I fight, the harder his grip tightens. He scoops both of my wrists in one hand, while he uses the other to push my head into the mattress.

  I open my mouth to let out a scream, but the sound is muffled by the bed. The pounding of my heart is strong in my ears, drowning out all the noises I need to be hearing right now. If I would’ve calmed down, I would’ve been able to hear the rustling of clothing as he drops the basketball shorts he was wearing.

  I would’ve been able to prepare myself for the slide of his dick against the crack of my ass. He lets go of my head long enough to spit on his hand and wet his dick. I use that time to scream at the top of my lungs.

  A punch to the back of my head nearly knocks me unconscious. My screams cut off while stars explode in my vision.

  There’s nothing that could’ve prepared me for the feeling of his dick shoving inside me. Inside my ass.

  Fire detonates from that area and outward to the rest of my body. Another scream is ripped from my throat, this one involuntarily. He pays me no mind, continuing to sodomize me. His hand goes back to my head, pushing me down so far my screams are beginning to choke me.

  The pain is so intense, I can’t see or feel anything past it. I’m slowly suffocating, and I can’t even feel the panic of it when his dick is eliciting so much pain from my backside. My vision blurs as the pain intensifies. His thrust grow choppy as excitement takes over his body. It’s permeating the air.

  He’s loving this.

  And as he groans out loudly, shudders wracking his body as he releases inside of me, all I can contemplate is the tool I’ll use to shove into his ass when he’s least expecting it.

  Thirteen

  River

  I FEEL HIS PRESENCE first. Strong and intoxicating. Like the smell of a sharpie when held under your nose. It’s almost ironic when I see said marker whipped out in front of me, halting my steps.

  With an irritated huff, I glare at his hand holding the marker. His hands are massive. Long, thick fingers and callouses dotting his knuckles. His tattoos leak to those hands, the colors fading off at his wrist.

  I want to touch them. I bet they’re rough. I bet they’d feel so good inside me.

  “Go away,” I say, pushing his hand away in the same manner I push those filthy thoughts away. Roughly and with undisguised disgust. I lift my chin and resume my walk to the car.

  The sharpie stops me in my tracks again. Angrily, I rip the sharpie out of his hand and throw it at his feet. Flutters assault my insides when my eyes meet his. I hate that I’m attracted to him. I hate that I missed him.

  “What do you want, Mako?” I demand, glaring at him.

  “I want you to use that,” he says quietly, his baritone voice getting to me. Every fucking time.

  I raise an eyebrow. “Use it on what?”

  He directs his eyes to
my hand. “When you feel unsafe, I want you to use it to draw a circle on your hand. Most people who work customer service know what it means.”

  I can’t help it. I laugh.

  “You’re kidding, right? I’m not drawing anything on my hand. I don’t feel unsafe.”

  Liar. You were just hiding out as his house a couple months ago because you felt unsafe.

  I shift, subtly wincing at the pain in my backside, despite two weeks passing since that night. I’ve been ripped open in a way that a person should never be. I passed out after a few minutes. When I came to, I was left on the bed naked and my phone gone.

  For a full week, he refused to give me my phone back. It took me two days before I realized fighting him wasn’t going to get me access to my phone. So, I started being good. I listened. Loved on him even though I felt he didn’t deserve it. And reverted back to a docile, mindless girl.

  That weekend, he ran me a warm bubble bath with roses and wine. Ryan sat behind me, crying into my shoulder, asking for forgiveness.

  It wasn’t until the water grew cold that I told him I forgave him. He was so broken, sobbing until he couldn’t breathe. It didn’t take long before I was crying with him. He swore that would never happen again. He took off the tracker to my phone right in front of my eyes, gave it back to me and promised to do better. Having my phone and privacy back is what ultimately broke my resolve. I’ve never seen Ryan so upset in my life, so I knew he had to be truly sorry for what he did.

  Mako’s eyes darken into a moss green. Just like his brother. Everything goes dark when they get angry. It’s like the evil shadow dwelling inside of them comes to the surface.

  He nods his head slowly, a strand of hair falling across his forehead. My fingers twitch with the urge to brush it back. Bending over, he picks up the sharpie. Then he steps closer to me, bringing his body flush with mine. With bated breath, I don’t dare look away from his eyes, even as he wraps his arm behind me and slips the sharpie into my back pocket.