Maybe it’s because I like to look at her. Because I could look at her for hours and hours.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I’m staring at the slope of her shoulders and the line of her fragile neck. I’m smelling her hair that’s in my face, rubbing my jaw in it. While my hand is tucked in the nook of her waist and my palm is open wide on her stomach.
Every now and then, I press on it.
On her soft flesh, and she sighs and wiggles around my cock, making it hurt like a motherfucker.
Making me hurt.
But it’s too little punishment for me and what I want to do to her.
For how selfish and bad I want to be. How goddamn possessive and dominating.
Even if I forget the fact that I had an unhealthy obsession with a barely legal girl, what I said to Brian still stands true.
She deserves better.
So much better than me. Better than a middle-aged man who has no interest in a relationship. I’m not going to date her. I’ve never dated anyone before. I don’t even know how.
I’m not a teenage kid who’s going to change his ways for the girl he wants.
I can’t.
I’m too hard, too severe for her. I’ve seen too much roughness in life, too much reality, too much abandonment to ever be foolish enough to hope for anything else.
And she’s too young to know anything else but hearts and dreams.
As much as I love my son and admire how he did the right thing, he has hurt her. I’m not going to do the same. She has known too much hurt already.
I refuse to do that to her.
Besides, she’s going to college, isn’t she?
This is her vacation. Come fall, she’ll leave. She’ll find someone who’ll suit her better.
I have to do what I told Brian to do the other day, then.
I have to do the right thing.
I have to give her a chance to leave. One last chance to back out before I lose all semblance of decency and goodness and keep her here selfishly, for myself. And take and take and take from her.
Without promises. Without hearts and dreams and all the bullshit I’ve never had the time for.
That she deserves, anyway.
Because she’s made of moon and magic.
He left me a note.
A note.
It said: I want you to leave before I come back from work tonight.
That’s what he said to me. In a note.
The man didn’t even have the decency to say it to my face. After everything we talked about, after everything we did last night, he left me a note on his freaking side table.
Asshole.
I’ve been seething since then. Seething and stewing with every second that passes. Oh, and I snooped around in his room.
I did.
He lost all his rights to privacy when he told me to leave on a fucking piece of paper. Not that I found anything. His room is almost bare.
Just a king-sized bed in the center with dark sheets and wooden slats for the headboard and a tiny side table with a lamp on it. A dresser with his clothes that are neatly folded like they used to be back in Connecticut, and a small closet full of his plaid shirts.
Although I did find a stack of gardening books in a corner, left all abandoned and forgotten. So I pulled them out and read them one by one.
That’s how I spent my day.
Reading his books on roses and seething and seething until my anger turned into sadness and I started crying.
How could he do this to me? I thought we’d crossed a hurdle. I thought we became closer last night and he turns around and pulls this shit.
It’s midnight now and I’m hugging his pillow.
It was dry once but now it has wet splotches all over it.
Good.
He should sleep in my tears and realize for once how much of an asshole he is. How much he’s hurting me. How he’s breaking my heart.
A second later it looks like I can tell him, myself.
I can show him my tears and make him realize his cruel and mean ways.
Because he’s here. He’s back.
He’s standing at the threshold of his door, wearing an untucked, messy plaid shirt and wrinkled jeans. His boots are muddy and sloppy.
As sloppy as my heart right now.
At first, I can’t believe he’s here. He’s back and he’s staring at me with a blank face. Although, there’s something there.
Something that might resemble relief, but I can’t be sure.
“You’re here,” he says like he did the first night I showed up at the bar, his tone abraded with a touch of disbelief.
Finally, I come out of my daze.
My heart starts to beat really loudly. So loudly that it’s a wonder the windows don’t rattle. It’s going louder than I was screaming last night.
When his mouth was on my pussy.
Slowly, I get up on my knees and clutch the pillow to my chest, fist it really. Even tighter than before.
If I don’t fist something, I’m going to punch him in the face.
On second thought though, fuck it.
I am going to do some damage here. So I launch the pillow in the air. I throw it at him with all my strength and it hits him in the chest.
“Where the hell am I supposed to be?” I scream at him, my hands fisted at my sides.
He hardly bats an eyelash at my throw. All my pillow did was ruffle some of his gorgeous hair – damn him – and fell on the floor with a thud.
Although, my voice does something.
My supposed-to-be angry voice that sounded a little broken and a lot tear-thickened.
That makes him frown and study me. That gets him moving too. He crosses the threshold and comes over to stand by me.
Not only that, he stares down at me and puts his hand on my face. Or tries to before I slap his stupid hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“You’re crying.” He states the obvious in a low, raspy tone.
“Fuck yeah, I’m crying.” I push at his chest, tears falling down my cheeks. “You left me a note. You left me a fucking note, Graham. You told me to leave like nothing happened last night. Like I didn’t tell you my secrets and you didn’t tell me yours. Like you didn’t do those things to me. Like you didn’t kiss me back.”
He clamps his jaw, his hands fisted at his sides. He’s silent but his eyes are fraught with all these things that I can’t decipher right now.
All the things that I want to know, though.
“It felt like you didn’t kiss me back for the kiss I gave you ten months ago,” I whisper, all heartsick and sore.
He exhales a tight breath and tries to cup my cheek but I push him away again.
“Let me touch you,” he says, huskily.
“No.”
“Violet,” he warns.
“No.” I fist his shirt. “You don’t get to touch me after being such an asshole. After making it all seem like a dream.”
At this, my tears fall harder. Harder than before, making me hiccup. Making me think that maybe it was all a dream.
All of it. His confession. His kisses on my mouth and between my legs.
His whispered happy birthday, baby.
God, that still wakes up goosebumps all over my body.
No one has ever wished me a happy birthday before. No one has ever even remembered it. He not only remembered it, he came back early from his date for me that night. He saved that special kiss for me all this time like it was a precious gift.
And it was.
Until he ruined it.
His eyes are piercing, as if looking into my soul, when he says, “It wasn’t a dream.”
I try to shake him, pulling at him by his shirt, but of course it’s useless. He doesn’t move. My knuckles dig into his harshly breathing chest and that’s it.
He probably doesn’t even feel that.
He doesn’t feel any of the
pain I’m feeling.
“Then how come you told me to leave?” I sniffle.
“I was doing the right thing,” he grits out.
“What?”
I’m so confused. What is that supposed to mean?
He takes advantage of that. He takes advantage of my confusion and puts his hands on my cheeks. I grab his wrists and try to push him away again but he doesn’t let go.
“I can’t write poetry for you, Violet,” he rasps and my struggles come to a halt.
“What?” I say again but really, I don’t understand what he’s getting at.
His rough thumbs swipe off my tears slowly, gently as he says, “I don’t write poetry. I don’t do hearts and flowers and all that stuff, do you understand? I can’t. I’m not capable of those things.”
I frown up at him, breathing brokenly. “Okay…? So?”
“I don’t do them but you deserve them.”
“I deserve what?”
At this, he really gets frustrated with me. He grabs my face with an increased force like he wants to stamp it on my brain, whatever he’s going to say, and all I can do is hold onto his wrists and watch his impatient, anguished, pained features.
“You deserve someone who gives you his heart out of his chest. Someone who can reach into his own body with his hands and pull it out for you. Pull out that thing that beats only for you.”
My eyes pop wide and my own heart causes a ruckus in my chest, more than it already was causing. “I-I do?”
He breathes out angrily. He’s angry at me for asking that question.
“Yes,” he says sternly. “You deserve that. You deserve someone who takes you out on dates and to movies and someone who holds your hand and walks on the goddamn beach with you or whatever the fuck you want him to do. Paint your toenails and chat with you all night on the couch while eating cheap pizza. You deserve someone who wakes up every morning and gets down on his knees to thank God that you belong to him. And then he does it all over again before he goes to sleep. You deserve someone who lives in awe of you, understand?”
He presses my face and almost shakes me, and I’m left wondering how he does that.
This is the beautiful thing again, isn’t it?
This is where he turns all my beliefs upside down.
He thinks I deserve things. I deserve hand-holding and walking on the beach. Although I never really liked the beach; too crowded.
But I’d like it if he was the one holding my hand.
The man I love.
The man who’s looking at me with so much impatience right now.
“Violet, tell me you understand or I’m going to fucking lose it.”
His growl makes me jerk out a nod. “Yeah. Yes. I do.”
Breathing out noisily, he nods. He goes so far as to almost close his eyes. “Good. Fantastic. Now, I want you to listen to me and promise me something.”
I walk my knees closer to him then. I go to him and touch his heaving chest with mine because touching him with just my hands on his wrists isn’t enough.
I want our bodies to touch and keep touching forever and ever.
“Okay,” I whisper as I look at him with wonder.
He goes back to wiping my tears off. “I can’t do that for you. I’m not going to do that for you.”
“You’re not?”
“No.” He shakes his head and nails me with his gaze. “I’m not going to hold your hand and take you out to the beach. I’m not going to take you out for a movie or dinner, either. I don’t even believe in god, let alone going down on my knees for him. I’m not a believer, okay? I never have been and I’m not going to learn now. Not when I’m practically pushing forty. You deserve everything that I can’t give you. Everything I’m incapable of giving you. So I want you to promise me something.”
“Promise you what?”
“That you’ll find someone, some dumb college kid, who can give this to you.”
“A college kid?”
“Yeah. When you go back to your college, you’ll find someone who’ll give this all to you. But more than that, you’ll find someone who doesn’t make you cry.”
“Why not?”
“Because it fucks with my head when you cry,” he snaps with clenched teeth. “It makes me want to destroy something. I can take anyone’s tears but I can’t take yours. So promise me you’ll find someone who won’t make you cry.”
“Like you did?”
His features bunch up for a second before he rasps, “Yeah. Someone who doesn’t leave you shitty notes like an asshole. Someone who’ll give you everything and more.”
My chest is shuddering against him. Shuddering and rattling with the furious beats of my heart.
I want him to stop talking. I want him to stop saying these things.
These things that are breaking my heart.
I get what’s happening here. I get what he’s saying to me as he sounds like a concerned guardian of mine and he’s making sure I know what my worth is.
“Are you saying that I should find someone who loves me?”
My question makes him flinch. It makes him draw back. It’s a slight shift but it’s plenty. It’s plenty to answer my questions.
Although he does reply as his fingers flex on my face, which is dry now; he took away all my tears while he was crushing my heart with his words.
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. You deserve someone who believes in all that shit. Love and unicorns and things like that.”
“And you’re not that person.”
He swallows. “No. I’m not. I never will be.”
I stare at him. I study his features. His forehead is lined with a turbulent frown and his jaw is ticking as he lets me look at him.
God, he’s beautiful. Even more beautiful because of how open he looks. Cracked open. Vulnerable almost, his eyes dark and melting with feelings, with all the things he wants me to understand about himself.
He’s never looked like this before. So angsty, so broken up about the fact that he can’t be who I deserve.
But the thing is, I never even thought I deserved something to begin with. I never thought anyone would even see me, let alone love me. And that’s why it never even crossed my mind to tell him.
To tell him that I love him.
Not once did I think to tell him that I’m in love with him.
To tell him that I love him enough for the both of us, that I don’t want his love. I can survive on my love alone.
I’m hopeless and I’m a romantic. I’m a masochist. I’m addicted to less. I’m addicted to the pain. I’m addicted to him.
I can live my whole life on this little piece of him that he’s giving me right now. His care. His concern. His anguish. His frustration that I don’t understand my own worth.
His confidence that I’m going to college and I’m going to find someone there.
When all of it is a big fat lie.
I’m not going to college; I’m too afraid for it. And even if I was going, I’d never find anyone because I don’t want anyone else.
I want him. Whatever I can get from him.
“Okay.” I swallow and put my hands on his chest. “I promise. I’ll find someone. Now your turn.”
“My turn at what?”
“I gave you what you wanted. I gave you your promise. What do I get?”
I raise my eyebrows at him, waiting for his answer.
His anguished frown disappears as he senses the shift in the air. The shift that I created with these desires that I can barely keep hidden.
These desires and dreams that I’ve had since I was sixteen. The dreams that I want him to make true now that I’m eighteen.
He pushes into my chest with his large breath. “What do you want?”
His heart is beating under my palm.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
My own is going at a rhythm complementary to his. A Morse code of some sort.
�
��I want you to make my dreams come true.”
“And what are those dreams?”
“First, I want you to buy me all those dresses you promised,” I say with a turned-up chin.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You can’t say it and not do it. And then, I want you to grow me all the roses that I want.”
A flicker of something amused and seductive all at the same time passes over his features. “You want roses?”
“Yup. And you have to give them to me.”
His fingers creep up and bury themselves in my hair. “Okay. So my baby wants roses. What else?”
My baby hits me in the stomach and a spasm goes through my pussy and I whisper, “And most importantly, I want you to fuck me.”
His heart thunders at this request.
It punches his chest and I feel it on my palm.
His heat intensifies and I feel it on my skin. If this is what he’ll give me, his body, I’m going to take it.
In fact, I’m going to demand that he give it to me after everything he’s put me through.
I deserve it.
That’s what I deserve.
His fingers, buried in the mass of my hair, tighten and bundle the strands together. “You want me to fuck you.”
“Yes.”
“You do know what I just said to you, right? I’m not going to give you more. I’m not going to change my ways for you.”
I narrow my eyes at him before I go to the top button of his shirt. “I don’t want you to. I’m not a child. I’m eighteen. And ten months. I understand what fucking is.”
I pop it out and go for the second one but he stops me with his hand on mine. “You do, huh?”
Biting my lip, I peek at him through my eyelashes. “Yeah. I don’t know where you think I came from, but I am from this world.”
“You don’t feel like it.”
I swallow a lump of emotion at his reverent tone and say, “I am. And I don’t want you to be noble or good. I don’t want you to do the right thing. I don’t want you to write me notes telling me to leave because you should know by now that I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yeah?” He pulls my neck back slightly, by the hair and whispers, his face over mine, “So what do you want me to be?”
“I want you to be what you said I make you. I want you to be bad.”
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