by Rebel Hart
Annika nodded. “Truth be told, I’ve got feelings for someone too. I’m not normally so, ‘Nice to meet you. Let me jump all over you!’” She laughed. “This guy in my debate club, Kevin.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been crazy about him since the sixth grade, but I’ve always been just a friend to him. After, like, all this time of never getting anywhere, I was beginning to think I needed to just find someone else. Then you turned up.”
“So we both rebounded after not getting to be with the people we’re in love with?” I asked. “That is quite the coincidence.”
“Maybe we could read it on each other subconsciously,” Annika replied.
“Yeah, maybe.” I had a handful of pumpkin seeds on a griddle sitting atop the fire, and I shook the handle to shuffle them around. “It fucking sucks, right?”
“Yeah. I think we can both agree that we’re fucking hot.”
I nodded. “Hell yeah, we are!”
“Why should we be keeping ourselves on coals for these people who don’t even know how to value us?” Annika asked.
I laughed. “If only it were that easy.”
“Why can’t it be?” she asked. “We’re here, right? We both know the deal. If I’m thinking about it in terms of friendship, I think you’re pretty awesome.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think you are too.”
“So let’s not overthink it, then,” she replied and then stuck out the hand of hers that wasn’t holding an apple over the fire. “A pact. Until those shitheads get it together, we use each other.”
“Like friends with benefits?” I asked.
She nodded. “The best kind. Actual friends with actual benefits.”
That sounded like a pretty good deal. I reached out, took Annika’s hand, and shook. “Uh, yeah. That shit fucking checks out. Deal. Only thing—can we not tell your brother? He will kill me, or try to, anyway, and then I’ll have to kick his ass.”
She laughed as she nodded. “Absolutely.”
The rest of the date was the most enjoyable time I’d had relaxing and laughing with someone since I got out of prison. Annika did decide to push the envelope of our benefits, and once we’d finished roasting our treats, we ended up making out a little bit until we were shooed away by one of the staff for violating the family-friendly atmosphere of the orchard. We snuggled into one another on the hayride back to the front of the property and happily chatted the whole way back to her house.
I’d already called an Uber to take me home, so I walked Annika up to the door and gave her Sicily’s keys to return to him. When she reached out to take the keys, I yanked her hand in for a kiss. “Gotcha.”
She smiled. “You did. I had fun.”
“Me too.”
“It’s nice being with someone without having to worry about the politics of it,” she said. “Can we do it again tomorrow? Is that too desperate?”
“Nope,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
She winked at me. “I’m leaning into the double-meaning behind that phrase.”
My lower half pulsated with excitement at the insinuation. “Good.”
19
Cherri
“Oh, Cherri,” Nathan moaned. “You feel so good.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “You too.”
The truth was, Nathan was on top of me, totally naked and thrusting into me, and I couldn’t be less turned on. Nathan was a good-looking guy, so by all accounts, regardless of the weirdness in our relationship, I should have been able to find at least some enjoyment in sex with him, but between the fact that he was entirely self-serving in bed and the fact that all Deon had to do was look at me to set me on fire, I found myself entirely uninvested in anything Nathan had going on.
Nathan grabbed my thighs and rolled, bringing me to sitting on top of him. His hands worked up my stomach to grab at my breasts, and he squeezed them, giving me a sly smile. “Ride me until I finish, baby.” It borderline grossed me out. I started to move, but it was slow and unenthused. Even Nathan seemed to be able to pick up on how dead I was. He squeezed my leg a little bit. “Come on, baby. Give it to me.”
Was it the phrasing? It was a little cheesy, but then I imagined Deon saying the exact same thing to me. I imagined him sitting me on top of him to ride him, begging me to give him everything until he orgasmed and wiped out.
“Fuck,” Nathan hissed. “There you go.”
It was entirely subconscious, but my pace was quickening. My head was going fuzzy as I imagined Deon’s hands on my breasts, the colorful ink that covered his arms down to his wrists flexing as he squeezed down. Suddenly, my whole body was hot, and my eyes were beginning to water. I snaked a hand between my legs and closed my eyes to try to recall the dusky huff of his voice in my ears when we had our close call. I thought about some of the sexts he’d sent me as I teased myself with my hand, pretending he was saying those things to me directly and turning me into putty in his hands.
“Why’d you stop?” Nathan asked.
When I had stopped, I wasn’t sure, but I ignored Nathan and continued to rub. Deon’s face was all I could see, and his voice was all I could hear. My ears burned as my arousal continued to climb, and the space between my legs started to tingle. I bit down my lip, just barely keeping myself from moaning out his name as I came. My brain lost its tether to reality and flew to a place where Deon and I could just be together without worrying about it.
“Cherri.” In my mind, it was Deon calling my name. I started to rock my hips again, and when a set of hands clenched my hips, I pretended as though it was Deon’s huge, chilled hands clasping on. “Cherri.”
The hot member sliding in and out of me as I lifted and fell, it was Deon attached to it. We were in bed, and we were naked and writhing and moaning and having sex until neither of us could move anymore. My hands dropped to the chest below me and clawed into the pecs as another powerful orgasm started to creep up on me.
And I lost control of myself. “Fuck me, Deon.”
“Cherri, stop!”
A shake jolted me back to reality, and I looked down, not into Deon’s eyes but Nathan’s. “Nathan?” I huffed. “What? Why’d you stop?”
“What the fuck! You just said Deon’s name!” he barked before throwing me off of him and onto the bed. He clamored off the mattress and stood up to look down at me. “Are you fucking sleeping with him?”
I’d fucked up. Being an asshole or not, no one deserved to be used as a replacement. “No, I’m not.”
“You just said his fucking name!”
“I don’t know why!” I lied. “It just came out.”
“It just came out?” Nathan said. “Why that name? Why not any other name? Why not my name? You’ve never called my name before.”
“Yeah,” I said, finally letting the realization wash over me that, by all accounts, I was using Nathan to masturbate while thinking of Deon. “I’ve never felt compelled to before.” Not once had Nathan ever made me feel as good as just thinking of Deon made me feel. Nothing Nathan and I had existed with any sort of substance. “We’re empty, Nathan.”
“What?” he asked. “Empty. What does that mean?”
“It means us, this,”—I motioned to us—“it doesn’t mean anything. It’s empty. There’s nothing in it. I’ve never said your name before because you don’t excite me like that.” I wasn’t sure where the sudden confidence came from, but I suddenly looked up at Nathan and said the words I’d been struggling to say for months. “I think we should break up.”
All of the anger in Nathan’s body knocked sideways in a second. “What?”
“We should end this,” I said. “I don’t even know why I’m still doing it. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
“How can you say that?” Nathan asked. His sadness at the thought was evident in his voice. “We’ve been together for four years. I gave up everything for you.”
I scoffed. “What did you give up? You didn’t even stop sleeping with Miss Abrams!” I snapped. “You’re not doing this again.
You’re not going to gaslight me into thinking things are different from what they are. I’m not an idiot.”
“Is this because of Deon?” Nathan asked. “You’re in love with him?” Unlike the anger I might have expected, he seemed genuinely saddened. “You’re sleeping together.”
“We’re not sleeping together. Honestly, I tried when I saw you and Miss Abrams in her class a month ago, but he found out we were still together and wouldn’t do it,” I explained.
Nathan’s eyebrows went up. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s not a cheater, unlike some people.” I hated the way I could honestly be looped into that category as well.
Nathan walked over to me and knelt in front of me. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t see me with Miss Abrams.”
“I bet you were,” I snapped back. “Most cheaters wish that.”
“No,” Nathan said, and there was a terrifying seriousness to his voice. “I didn’t want to have to tell you.” He sighed. “Miss Abrams is blackmailing me into carrying on with her. I don’t want to. Cherri, I swear to god, I don’t want to do it anymore with her, but I can’t stop.”
Nathan seemed frightened down to the bone, and more horrifying to me, he seemed sincere. “Are you serious?” I asked. “What does she have over you?”
Nathan’s eyes shifted anywhere but back to mine. “It’s too horrible to talk about,” he said, and only then did his eyes shoot up to meet mine, “but you have to believe me. If there were any other option, I wouldn’t be doing this. I think that’s why I’ve been so agitated lately.”
“Nathan, she’s ra—”
Nathan shook his head. “No! It’s not like that. It’s not that. I was willing.”
“Yeah, but now you’re not. That’s—”
Nathan put his hands over my mouth. “Don’t say that, okay? Don’t.” I nodded, and Nathan pulled his hands away. “It’s fine. If I can get through the year, then I’ll be fine. I’m sorry. I don’t want to do it, so please don’t end things with me, okay?”
The fear and sadness in Nathan’s eyes were too much to bear. Everything he had said seemed to have a ring of truth to it, and when I looked at the fear in his eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to go through with breaking up with him. I just couldn’t. I nodded, looking down at him, and said, “Okay.”
Nathan wrapped his hands around me and buried his face into my stomach, reminding me a lot of what happened at the store a month ago. It wasn’t fair to myself, but I couldn’t break up with Nathan while he was going through something so horrible. That’d make me downright heartless.
Eventually, Nathan and I found ourselves back in the throes of passion, at least for him. I did the best I could to give him as pleasurable an experience as possible before he finally finished and fell asleep. No sleep found me while I watched him snoozing next to me.
What was my way out now?
What he said made sense to me. Nathan’s behavior had been uncharacteristic for a while now, and even though he’d always been something of a rich douchebag, an abuser he was not. If he was taking his frustrations out on me because he was being abused, that made much more sense than just a random shift, but what was I supposed to do with that? If I could find out what was really going on with Miss Abrams and Nathan, I could put a stop to it, and then once Nathan was better, I could end things between us for good. How was I supposed to do any of that, though, if Nathan wouldn’t tell me? Asking for Nikita’s or Jaxon’s help would probably just get back to Nathan, and he’d be upset with me for interfering.
I had no idea what to do, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I didn’t figure something out, things were only going to get worse.
20
Cherri
There was no telling how long I’d been sitting in one place, staring at the same college application on my computer screen, unmoving until a knock at my bedroom door dragged me from my thoughts. I pushed my computer to the side and climbed off my bed, walking over and opening the door to see Avery standing on the other side. She had a bag with what looked like ice cream and chocolate in it in one hand and her backpack in the other.
“Hi,” I greeted. “Did I call you over and forget?”
She chuckled. “Um, no. Your mom called me because she said you were like a ghost when you got home Saturday morning, and you haven’t come out of your room once since then. Mix that with the fact that you haven’t updated Snapchat or TikTok for two days, and you’ve got yourself a freaked-out best friend.”
“Sorry,” I grumbled. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind. Has it really been two days?”
After spending Friday night with Nathan, I came home and was still in such shock that I didn’t really feel like talking to anyone. I guess I could see how my behavior would freak my parents out. Not emerging from my room at all on Saturday and Sunday would probably seem a bit weird for a social butterfly like me. If we didn’t have Monday and Tuesday off for teacher prep days, they probably would have relied on school to set me right, but with the days off, they had to call in reinforcements.
“Yeah, babe. It’s Monday night. Jeez.” She pointed at my bed. “Sit. I’ll make you a sundae while you explain what’s going on. I’m spending the night, by the way. Mostly because your mom is making spaghetti.”
I giggled, knowing that was Avery’s favorite of the dishes my mom made. “Fine. I don’t really like you all that much, but I suppose.”
Avery rolled her eyes. “You’d die without me.”
I flopped down onto my bed. “I really would.”
Avery pulled out the contents of the bag in her hand. She had a couple of bowls, strawberry topping, and caramel syrup amongst the ice cream and chocolate. She held up the carton of ice cream, caramel apple, my favorite, and I was starting to feel better already just watching her compile a sundae that she knew I would enjoy.
I really did love my best friend. She was the one good thing that came out of The Royal Court.
“Okay. Out with it,” she said. “What happened?”
My cheeks burned as I admitted, “Nathan and I were having sex, and it was it’s typical, boring stuff.”
“Right,” Avery replied.
“Well, then, all of a sudden, in the middle, I started to think about Deon, and I got all turned on and started, quite literally, using Nathan as a sex toy. I said Deon’s name.”
“Yikes!” she yelped. “What… Uh… What did he do?”
“Well, he freaked out, understandably. Then we got into this big fight, and I tried to break up with him.”
Avery froze in place and looked over at me. “Seriously?” I’d threatened to do it many times, but I never followed through, so the shock must have been huge.
“Yeah,” I said. “Seriously. I said the words, ‘Let’s end this.’ I told him that we were empty and that I didn’t know why I was even with him.”
“Wow.” Avery finished adding toppings to the bowl of ice cream she was putting together for me and then handed it over before starting on a bowl of her own. “I guess it didn’t work. You said you tried.”
“No, Avery. He told me that Miss Abrams is forcing him to have sex with her. She’s blackmailing him,” I explained.
Avery brought her bowl over and sat on the other side of my bed, facing me. “Are you sure he wasn’t just—”
I shook my head. “No, no. He wasn’t. He looked terrified, and then, when I tried to tell him that it was rape, he literally covered my mouth and wouldn’t let me say it. It was awful.”
“My god,” Avery said. “Based on your description of sex with Nathan, I wouldn’t think someone would want to blackmail him into continuing sex.”
“I know. That’s why I think there’s something else going on. He wouldn’t tell me what she had over him, so I’m gonna need to find out for myself.”
“Why not just tell Nikita?” Avery asked. “She’s in love with him and certifiably insane, so she’d find out. Or just kill Miss Abrams.”
“If I tell her,
it’ll get back to Nathan. I need to try to get him out of this on my own.”
“Here you go again,” Avery said. “Why do you have to save everyone? Just worry about yourself for once.”
“I can’t. It’s not in my nature. Just think, if I can get him out of this, I can say goodbye to him for good. I’ll apologize to Deon, and everything will be fine.”
Avery took a bite of her ice cream. “Somehow, hearing you describe the situation doesn’t give me confidence that it will be fine, but I trust you. Just please be careful, okay?”
“I will. I promise.” I took a bite of my ice cream. “Actually, I don’t really know what I’m gonna do just yet. Some ideas would be nice if you had them.”
Avery thought about it for a minute and then perked up suddenly. “Oh! What about Sicily? He knows everything about everything, and if he doesn’t, he can find out. At least that’s what I hear.”
“Sicily, huh?” She wasn’t wrong about the rumors about Sicily’s abilities, but he also happened to be Deon’s best friend, despite the odds. Throwing some awkward interactions with Deon into this mess did not strike me as desirable, but it might be the best way forward. “I’ll think about it. Thanks.”
“Of course. What are best friends for if not shady contacts?” she asked with a chuckle.
Avery and I finished our sundaes. Having gotten out some of what was clogging up my brain, I was finally able to go back to working on college applications. Avery had already been accepted to her dream college, but I had no idea where I wanted to go. I got an almost immediate response from one of the colleges I submitted to, a local Maine college who’d heard of The Royal Court. They were excited about my involvement with them and wanted to set up an early interview. I left the email to sit while I thought it over. Not only did I not have any idea where I wanted to go, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. My whole life had been The Royal Court for four years. What did one do with those skills after high school?