by Tijan
His jaw clenched and he looked back down at the photo. I went to the bathroom, grabbing the rest of my things that Mia had left behind.
I could hear Stone and Nicole talking, but both were murmuring softly, and for a moment, I hoped he wasn’t telling her about my dad and Gail. I was still mourning my mom. I hadn’t even allowed myself to think about everything else I’d lost since then.
I was finishing up when my phone started ringing.
Going back to my room, I was looking at the screen.
“Who is it?”
I held it up. Screen said Jared.
He muttered a curse, then reached for it.
I wavered, but Stone was who Jared really wanted to talk to. Why fight it? I handed it over.
Stone took my phone, my bag over his shoulder, and headed up the back exit. “Jared, hey, man…” The door closed behind him, and I could only hear the faint trace of the call before that too faded.
“Wow.” Nicole gulped. “So, you like, really know Stone Reeves?”
“Uh…”
“That night he came, everyone was in shock. He asked if there was a back exit, and when Mia said yes, he took off. It was like he just knew, and we came around the corner and you both were wrestling. Then your stuff got dumped and he tried to help you and you shoved him away. Everyone kept talking in the background and I was getting so irritated with them. I wanted to hear what you guys were saying, but I couldn’t. The guys wouldn’t shut the fuck up. Then you were getting in your car. He seemed like he wanted to stop you and bam!” She clapped her hands together.
I winced.
“You were out, like out out when we got to the car. Mia started screaming. And Lisa, you know she’s in the nursing program, right?”
A faint memory surfaced being told that.
“She took charge. Started yelling no one could touch you. Stone was on the phone, already calling 911 and I swear, if Lisa hadn’t looked ready to ream him, he would’ve yanked you out of the car and drove you to the hospital himself. The Rampage Reeves we see in the games sometimes, he was here. He was going nuts, cursing, threatening. Once he realized Lisa wasn’t letting anyone touch you, he was on the phone, yelling at whoever would pick up. I lost track, but Lisa felt for your pulse and said you were breathing, too. Ambulance got here quick. I think that was one of the places Stone called to yell at, since it took them twelve minutes to show up.” She had to stop for oxygen. “Wow. Just wow. He asked us for a bag. Mia’s the one who packed it and gave it to him, then he took off with the ambulance. He came back later, and I’m pretty sure one of the other wide receivers dropped him off to get his truck. The guys were half-watching cause it was so late, but he looked absolutely wiped.”
Stone hadn’t told me any of this. Then again, I hadn’t asked.
“I didn’t realize all that happened.”
“Just so you know, we all took a vow. We didn’t tell anyone what happened. Nothing. No one knows about you knowing Stone Reeves.”
“Really?” The ‘we’ she talked about was probably twenty-plus people. That seemed to be the core of their partying group. The football team. Them. And they had a few extra girls sprinkled in. I’d paid attention the two weeks I was there.
“Yeah. I mean, our group, but we didn’t say anything to anyone else.”
“Well, I got three Google alerts. I think it’s out there.”
“I’m just letting you know that since you’re big on privacy, there’s probably a whole sector of nerds on campus who don’t know. So you know that much.”
That was comforting. “Thank you.”
“But I mean, like the regular sixty percent of campus probably knows. And when you come back, only maybe thirty percent will remember. And from even that, ten percent will recognize you. From that, maybe three percent will say something.”
Around sixty-nine-thousand students went to our school. I got to look forward to a little over two thousand of them mentioning something about Stone and myself.
Two weeks in isolation at his house suddenly started to look good.
“So, yeah.” Nicole’s smile was still awed. “I just, I can’t get over how much you know Stone. I mean, coming in and seeing you in his lap, and I know you said you and he aren’t, you know, but man. Mia and Lisa are such bitches. They were saying you sucked his cock somewhere, but this—” She motioned to the bed where she’d seen me in his lap. “That’s not what they’re saying. I don’t think they know how to handle this. It’s awesome.”
Awesome.
My dad and Gail died.
So awesome.
“Right.”
There was nothing else to say. I was fine letting Nicole think what she thought, and I picked up the rest of my stuff. “Okay. I’m going to go.”
“You need homework gathered for you or anything?”
I went to the door, but looked back. I thought about it, really thought about it. “No. I don’t need that, but I do need to come back here after these two weeks are done. I need to be a normal student, and I need Mia and Lisa to continue being bitchy to me. I need that because—well, I don’t know why, I just need it. Please don’t say anything about me being in Stone’s lap. We have a weird history.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. No problem. I won’t say a word.”
Right.
Awesome.
Chapter Twenty
“Your friends are just great.”
Stone greeted me with that biting comment as I slid into the passenger seat, shutting the door. I knew what he saw. He knew I knew what he saw. There was no point in arguing. I just sat back and held my bag on my lap. “I told you before, I didn’t know anyone before I moved down here.”
A few of them were sitting on the steps outside, pretending to talk, but mostly still watching Stone. They waved as Stone pulled from the curb.
“Yeah.” His hand flexed over the steering wheel. “Let’s talk about that.”
Which was code where he said the command and I was expected to confess everything.
Fuck that. I wasn’t his bitch. I looked out the window instead.
“Dusty.” A low growl from him.
A snap back from me, “Stone.”
A second growl. “I care. Fucking hell. I care, okay? I wouldn’t be doing any of this shit if I didn’t still care about you. Those people didn’t give a fuck about you, except the one girl. Not a goddamn one of them, and you’re asking me to look away from that? I can’t. Me being a guy and caring about a girl, I can’t do that. It’s not how I was raised.”
He cared?
I couldn’t.
That statement was swimming around in my head, but I couldn’t. Not right now.
I focused on what I could process. “There’s a big fucking debate that could be had for your last statement, so I’m not sure I’d be all high and mighty over that comment.”
“I am trying to make up for that.”
Low and quiet and controlled by him. I’d pushed a button and he was reacting, but he was trying to contain it. And I knew that was just another extension of the whole ‘I’m trying to make up for that’ part.
But still.
I wanted to clip out, wanted to throw it in his face by saying, ‘Do better.’
I didn’t, but I wanted to. “A movie. A blanket. We shared snacks. Then the next day, I was a stranger to you.”
He sighed, his shoulders falling down. “Dusty.”
“That was years ago.” It was pent-up, and I had to get this out. “You were my best friend growing up. I loved your dog like he was mine. I know you were hurt when you walked away from me. I know you missed my mom, but since then, during those years, I lost my best friend. I lost my mom. I lost my childhood home.” I had to skip a beat. He didn’t need to know what else I lost before coming here. “And I have now lost my father, my stepmother, my car, and the second home that was never really a home to me. But I got you back? Is that the takeaway for me? The consolation prize?”
He cursed sil
ently under his breath, hitting the turn signal and easing onto the interstate ramp.
“I would give you up in a heartbeat to get them back.”
Still, he remained silent. A beat. Then, “So would I.”
Oh. Damn.
Damn!
That broke the wall. I felt it crack in two, heard it even, and everything I’d been stuffing away and suppressing, I had a second’s notice before I turned to him. I knew the tears were already shining in my eyes.
He saw, and his jaw firmed as he reached over for my hand. He kept a death grip on me. “Just let it out. You have to let it out.”
The hole inside me was there. His words, my words, had punched a fucking fist through it and I felt as if the roof was caving in. The entire building in me was crashing. I was demolished inside and I’d been holding onto a thin fucking frame to keep me upright. That was gone now, and I was crumbling.
No. It was worse than that.
I couldn’t keep it together.
“Stone.”
His hand tightened on mine. “Just hold on. I promise.”
I tried. I did. I was failing.
But then we were pausing. The gate was opening. And we pulled into his garage.
I didn’t have to think about moving. Stone was out of his door and mine was thrown open in a flash. His arms went under me, and he scooped me out. Cradled to his chest, he maneuvered us through the house. Me, I was useless. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear what he was doing until we were in a room, on a bed.
A phone was ringing.
It was silenced.
He moved us both back so he was sitting against the headboard. It was similar to the other night, but this time, crying wasn’t enough. My insides were being ripped out. One organ at a time. One tendon being slowly pulled from inside, shredding and being dropped on the floor.
I couldn’t handle it.
My dad.
Gail.
All her texts. Her calls. She just wanted to be helpful and I thought she’d been annoying, and now there’d be no more calls. No more texts.
God.
I couldn’t… I screamed, the sobs choking me.
A rough hand brushed down my face and I felt Stone’s forehead to mine. “What do you need? What do you need right now?” He was breathing so hard. “Dusty. Please. I can’t take hearing this from you. What do you need?”
Need?
Not to feel.
I couldn’t think. Feel. I couldn’t live. I didn’t want to live. I needed to go, but I didn’t dare say those words. Another scream came out, tearing out of me of its own volition.
I couldn’t handle any of this. It was too much.
“Stone,” I was sobbing, my hand on his chest. “Stone. I can’t!”
I was clawing at his chest.
An invisible hand took a knife and was sheathing at my skin, but it wasn’t working. It wasn’t a clean cut. And that hand just kept going, digging in, trying to tear me open, and the more it wasn’t working, the harder that hand was stabbing me. Twisting.
I was being tortured.
He adjusted me, throwing me up in his arms. A firm arm clamped around my back and his other hand was behind my head. “Dusty. What. Do. You. Need?!”
Finally. His words pierced through and I opened my eyes, to see his. They were wild. He was almost manic, desperate, but the hunger. I saw it in there. It was covered by something else, fear, maybe? Horror, more likely.
His hand dropped to my hip and he was kneading into my skin.
That other hand, the invisible hand, was trying to pry me open. I felt every inch, centimeter, millimeter, and I couldn’t live through this.
I just knew it.
I gasped out, “Please. I can’t feel. Not this.”
“What do you want?” He was almost shaking me from the force of his own need. Savage. His eyes were filling with rage, but he was blanketing it. He was containing it. “Drugs? Alcohol? What do you need from me?”
I stopped just as the invisible hand opened me enough and was reaching in, all over again.
“I can’t feel what I’m feeling—”
His mouth was on mine.
Hot. Hungry. Angry.
I gasped, and everything stilled. The world paused and I sat back, dragging in oxygen. A moment of peace, but the hand was coming back for more destruction. I could feel its impending reach and I acted, not thinking. I couldn’t do that either, and I almost launched myself at him.
My mouth was on his. Desperate and starving.
He paused, pulling back. “Are you sure about this?”
I crawled up on his lap, my hands going right to his pants and I was frenzied in my movements. That was my response, and he took it as such. His arms swept me up again, he rolled us so he was on top and he paused above me, his eyes on mine.
Blind desire was in there, and I closed my eyes, my mouth searching for his again.
This wasn’t gentle. This wasn’t romantic. This was an escape and it was ugly and ragged. We were animalistic. There was no foreplay. God. I couldn’t have handled that type of touch right now.
I wanted rough. Hard. Almost punishing.
He sat up, his eyes stormy and wild on me, and his hands finished undoing his pants.
I raced him.
I unzipped my pants, lifting my hips and shoving them down. My underwear, too. He leaned down, his hand coming to my thigh, and he helped me pull the rest free. He jumped off the bed, tossing both our pants to the ground, and he went to his nightstand. A condom was pulled out, then he was back.
I didn’t give a fuck if both our shirts were still on.
That wasn’t the goddamn point of this, but he was back. Condom on. And I reached down to wrap my hand around his dick. He was big and hard, and exactly what I needed to make me not feel. I guided him, almost like his cock was my personal dildo. I caught his grin, but I didn’t give a fuck about that either. I was in control of this situation and he was giving me that.
Then, poised at my entrance, we both paused.
His eyes went to mine again. I bit my lip, and he sheathed himself inside.
I lifted, and he pushed, going even deeper, all the way in. Then his body enveloped me. My arms were around him. His around me, his hands sliding down to cup my ass and he lifted me up to him for better access.
Then, so fucking amazingly then, he began to move. And I felt it all. Every movement he made. Everything that I didn’t want to feel was gone, suffocated by the enormity of him.
I cried out from the sensations. That peace, it was back. It fell on me, replacing the storm inside me, and I would literally come apart if he pulled away and stopped touching me, but then he began to move harder and faster.
His hand came up, grabbing my hair, and he yanked.
My eyes opened. His face was right there. I should’ve felt his breath, but he was watching me. His hips surged against mine again. So fucking forceful. So wild and out of control. Exactly like how I needed this to be.
“What do you want?”
I knew what he was asking.
“I need you to fuck me.”
His eyes shuddered, but I wasn’t done.
I added, “I need you to do it again, and again, and again. You got me?” My words were clipped and to the point. I wanted to pass out from fucking, not from the agony I knew was just waiting to claim me again. This was a Band-Aid. My wounds wouldn’t be repaired by a simple fix. He knew that and I knew that, and then he nodded, and we were both agreeing to whatever it was that we were doing right now.
His mouth caught mine again. I allowed it. The sensations were hurtling through me and his tongue in my mouth was helping, but I reached down, took hold of his hips, and I reared to go back against him.
We fucked that night.
There were no nice words. No loving touches.
After the first round, he lay still inside of me. We didn’t have to wait long. I waited. He waited. Maybe it was minutes. Maybe it was longer. I was a complete vacuum of nothing unti
l I felt him start to harden again.
I looked at him. He looked up.
Silently, he pulled out. The used condom was thrown in the trash and a new one was put on. He climbed back over me. Seeing the bruises again, I reached for one on his side.
He knocked my hand away.
He was right. I saw the reminder in his gaze.
This wasn’t a nice touch kind of night.
His eyes were hard. Well, good. I just hardened everything in me again, and he reached for me, taking my hips and he flipped me over so I was on my hands and knees.
Still no sound. No gasp of surprise from me.
We were almost in a battle now, whoever made the first sound lost, and his hand was rough running down my back. He lined up behind me, and I had a second’s notice as his hand spread, his palm flat on me, and he thrust inside.
My head went down.
I would’ve moaned from the pleasure, but I couldn’t make a sound. Not a goddamn sound. This was the lingering element of hatred still between us. Maybe things had thawed. He’d been there for me. He was still there for me, literally right now, but underneath those layers, there was a level of loathing between us that neither of us could see fit to let go.
I didn’t know if that’d ever change, but it was there, and I needed it. It gave me a sense of familiarity.
As he rammed back in me, I pushed upright.
Oh no. He wasn’t going to punish me that way. I wanted it. I yearned for it. I would probably ask for it, but I was going with him. This was a joint venture, and he wrapped a hand around my waist, his face falling to my shoulder. I felt his teeth scrape against my skin, sending a shiver down my spine, as he kept moving in and out of me.
I reached back, my hand on his hip, and I moved with him.
Our bodies were sensuously rolling as we both knelt upright. I kept up as long as I could until the climax was building, and I fell forward. His arm caught me, holding me so I didn’t fall completely down. I pushed up on my hands, on all fours, and I heard a smothered grunt from him.
His hand went to my ass, flexing. He smacked me.
Had he… I twisted around. Those eyes were waiting for me, boring into me, and there was a hint of amusement, but then he hit me again and I almost cursed at him. Now he grinned, just slightly, before he paused, holding both my hips, and he pushed in once more, all the way inside. He held still, rotating around, rubbing everywhere before thrusting slowly back.