“What happened?” I point at the bruises on her wrists.
She swiftly moves to tuck her arm behind her, but I capture her arm, my fingers gently folding around her wrist. I lean in so my lips are close. Tell me, I mouth.
Her chest heaves as she breathes raggedly. She’s not wearing a bra, something I noticed when I arrived at her house. Her nipples are visible through her shirt, and the sight is driving me mad, but not as much as the bruises on her skin. Someone hurt her. And recently.
“I can’t tell you,” she says again, her voice cracking. “I can’t tell you anything anymore.”
Frustrated, I release her wrist and lean back. “Look, I know I fucked up telling your father, but I didn’t have a choice. I promise if there had been a way out of it, I wouldn’t have told him.” I scoot closer to her and her breathing quickens, her chest heaving. “I want to help you, but you have to tell me what’s wrong or else I can’t. And I promise that this time your secret will be safe.” When her lips remain fused, I search for the right words to get her to open up to me, because I need to know who hurt her more than I need anything else at the moment. “Look, I get the whole secret thing. You don’t trust me, and it’s my fault.” I reach over and switch on the lamp before sitting back on the bed.
Emery blinks her bloodshot eyes against the bright light. “I want to, but I just can’t anymore.” She rests against the headboard, staring at me as she aligns the pads of her fingers with the bruises on her arm. “I don’t trust you, Ryler. And honestly, I don’t think you understand how hard it is to keep secrets.”
“But I do… I keep secrets every day.”
“Keeping my father’s secrets isn’t the same thing as what I’m talking about. I mean, your own secrets, the kind so potent it nearly kills you every day not to utter the truth.”
“I’m not talking about your father’s secrets… I’m talking about my own secrets.” The gun pokes at my back as I situate against the wall. How far do I want to go with this? How close do I want to get to her? Really close, I think, but not like this.
Stale’s text replays in my mind. You can’t trust her.
Looking at her right now, with her eyes wide and filled with terror and bruises on her skin, it feels like she’s just a victim, not the enemy. Every time I look at her, it feels that way.
What I wrote about her is the truth. She looks as if she’s withering away and needs help. I used to feel the same way. All the damn time. Still do.
“I’ve never told you how I lost my voice.” I wait until she fixes her attention on me before I continue. “I grew up in a lot of foster homes when I was younger and I spent a lot of my life feeling unwanted, betrayed… alone. When I was about sixteen, I ended up with this one guy… Ben. He was a fucking douche bag from hell. He had a few other foster children and was solely in it for the money.” I ball my hands into fists as anger, resentment, and pain blaze like fire under my skin. I’ve never told anyone about this except for Stale and his partner, and the only reason that happened was because they dug up my file.
“There was this girl living there… Aura. She made me feel not so alone. At the time, I thought I loved her.” I suck in an unsteady breath. “But now I realize it was more of an infatuation. That I was infatuated with the fact that she seemed to be able to see me.” I give a sidelong glance in Emery’s direction and discover she’s watching me intently, soaking in every single word I sign.
I shift my weight, face her, and look her directly in the eyes. “One day, Ben beat the shit out of her. I stepped in and beat the shit out him back, enough that he ended up in the hospital. I thought I was doing the right thing. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. I’m still not sure. But it doesn’t matter. Right or wrong, Ben lied and said I’d started it, said that the reason why he stabbed me in the throat with a fire poker was to protect himself. He said I was the one who beat Aura, said I was violent and had a temper.”
Emery glances at the scar on my throat, and her fingers start drifting toward my neck. Then her eyes widen, and she quickly draws back. “Sorry.”
“You’re fine.” I continue on, hoping my story will allow her to see the damage secrets can do instead of her ending up more scared of me. “I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t a saint. I had a lot of marks against me. Fights at school. Fights with some of my foster parents. Fights with a few police officers. I had a lot of anger in me for my parents giving me up, and I took it out on a lot of people. Ben was probably the first justifiable fight I’d been in, but the damage had already been done. People only saw me as the fucked up, angry guy I’d been in the past. That’s the thing—once you choose to be someone, it’s really hard to erase that choice. Is it possible? Sure. But it takes a lot of time.” Time that I need. That’s all that I want—time to be free and turn into the good person I’ve wanted to be.
“What about Aura?” Emery finally speaks, her voice as smooth as honey and her brows are furrowed in confusion. “Didn’t she tell the police what really happened?”
I shake my head. “She wouldn’t speak up. I’m not sure if it was because she was afraid or what, but it doesn’t really matter. She didn’t speak up, and I was sent to juvie for two years for assault.”
“That’s not fair,” she says furiously, sitting up straight on the bed. “She should have spoken up. The only reason you got into the fight in the first place was to protect her.”
“Not everything in life is fair.” I give a half-shrug. “When I think back, I remember how afraid she always was of Ben. I’m guessing that’s why she didn’t speak up—that he sort of silenced her with fear.”
I’m hoping two things will come out of my story. Learning a little bit more about me will hopefully get Emery to trust me more. And maybe she’ll realize that doing what’s right isn’t always the easiest thing. That she may be afraid of her father, but she still needs to speak up about the stuff he does. I want Stale to be wrong about her. Want Emery to be good.
“Fear is pretty toxic, isn’t it?” she mutters. “It’s hard to see past it.”
I nod, my gaze smoldering. “Yes, it is.”
She stares at me for a beat longer, and then her gaze zeroes in on my lips. “I’m so sorry that happened to you… Even if you do work for my father,” she whispers more to herself. “Adults can be so cruel to the people they take care of, can’t they?”
I nod, and then suddenly, her lips crash into mine. The kiss is as rough as the first one we shared, forceful, bruising. My muscles instantly tense from the connection.
Wrong. This has to be wrong. The last thing I should be doing is kissing Doc’s daughter, especially when I don’t even know the reason why I’m kissing her. Want. Need. Wrong. Right. Where’s the line?
Stop it. I need to stop it.
My brain must disconnect from my limbs because, instead of pulling away, I dive dangerously into the kiss. Emery gasps against my mouth and starts to move away, as if sharing the same protesting thoughts. Then she slips her fingers through the hair on the back of my head and kisses me with so much desperation my lip ring sears her lips.
“Oh, God… I’ve forgotten… how good… this feels,” she moans, her voice filled with fear and ecstasy.
The sound of her voice turns me on, hardening my cock in my jeans. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be inside her. I can’t cross that line, though, not when she doesn’t know who I truly am.
Every coherent, rational thought drifts from my mind, though when Emery spreads her legs and grinds against me. A throaty groan escapes my lips as she does the movement again.
Scorching with need, I slide my hand up her side and graze my thumb across the outside of her breast. Her nipple hardens from underneath the fabric, and I damn near lose control. I bite her bottom lip and thrust my hips against hers, eliciting another moan from her. The sound is mind blowing, and the feel of her body heat is like fucking nirvana. I want more. Need more. Need to keep going, need to forget for just two damn seconds all the shit going on.
So, I keep
going, falling blindingly into an abyss I’m not sure I can get out of.
Emery and I move rhythmically together, our bodies aligning perfectly.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Perfect.
That’s what this moment feels like, even though perfection isn’t supposed to exist.
Gasping, our tongues and legs tangle together. My fingers circle one of her wrists and I start to move her arm above her head, but I pause when she winces.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, her fingers traveling down my stomach toward the button of my jeans. “Please, Ryler, don’t stop.”
The ache in her voice makes me go against the rational part of my mind. I start kissing her again with every single ounce of emotion I’ve kept trapped inside me since I first met her. As the lust, need, longing, aching pours out, I realize just how much I feel for Emery. So much so that I’m drowning in it.
Drowning.
Drowning.
Drowning.
So far down in the water I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to breathe again.
And I’m not sure I want to.
Chapter 11
Lost My Damn Mind
Emery
I’ve lost my damn mind, more than I already had. I don’t even know why I opened up to Ryler. He was saying all those things about Aura, and he seemed so human, so real. As someone who understands what it is like to have the people you care about hurt you, I momentarily forgot who he works for, saw a different side of him, one I almost feel like I can trust. Like me, Ryler has hurt someone unintentionally.
Like me.
Like me.
Like me.
It feels like Ryler and I are so similar.
God, how I want that to be true.
I’ve never had sex because I wanted to. God, do I want to have sex with Ryler. So much that I forget about everything and bask in the freedom of knowing nothing.
I only remove my lips to peel Ryler’s shirt off, then toss the fabric aside and trace my fingers across his pale flesh inked with poems, lyrics, patterns, and swirls of colors.
“You’re so beautiful,” I mutter, blushing a little when he chuckles.
So are you, he mouths, gazing down at me, his fingers lingering near the hem of my shirt. You’re so pretty.
My blush deepens as I remember the night of the concert and how I called him pretty. My embarrassment is short lived as he grabs the bottom of my shirt, and I sit up so he can take it off. Then our chests and lips collide, and our tongues tangle as our hands wander all over each other’s flesh, feeling and tasting each other completely.
The feel of his metal lip ring grazing my tongue is mind blowing, but then his finger brushes my nipple, and that’s when I lose it. A whimper flees my lips, my back arching into his touch. He groans in response, pinching a little harder.
“Ryler,” I whisper breathlessly against his lip as I slip my hand downward toward the top of his jeans again. My fingers fumble to get the button undone then I draw down his zipper.
He momentarily pauses, confliction filling his eyes as he stares down at me. I get where the indecision is stemming from. So many secrets swirl in the air between us, but for once in my life, I want to have what I want at the moment I want it without anyone telling me I can’t have it. Perhaps, if I can just do it, do what I want for once without fearing the consequences, I’ll finally get the strength to run away and never look back.
“Please,” I practically beg, telling myself that the Ryler I want is the one I first met. Nothing more. Nothing less.
With a deep breath, he moves back and flicks the button of my shorts undone, silently agreeing to be with me. The fact that he gives into me makes me believe that somewhere beneath the Ryler who works for my father lays the person I first met—the one who gave me a few fleeting moments away from reality.
My body shivers as he drags the zipper down, his knuckles grazing against my flesh. My breathing quickens into short, erratic breaths, and my nipples harden as my chest heaves.
After he pauses, he gazes down at me. Are you sure? he mouths.
When I nod, something snaps inside both of us. The calculated movements turn helpless and panicky, as if we’re both afraid the moment is going to vanish before our eyes. The rest of our clothes get shed, and then his body covers mine.
We nip at each other’s flesh, nails scratching to hold on as our hips grind together. I grip on to his shoulder blades, kissing him deeply, waiting for him to slip inside me. Instead, he continues to kiss me, his fingers traveling across the curve of my breast, along my ribcage, to my hip. He strokes my skin, tracing small circles, before his hand drifts between my legs. With his knees, he urges my legs open, and I easily give in.
When his finger slips inside me, I gasp, biting down on his bottom lip hard. He groans and then kisses me deeply, sucking on my tongue while his fingers move between my legs, driving me toward the edge.
Right as I’m about to fall, though, he removes his fingers and pushes away from me.
Horror seeps into my bones that he doesn’t want this as much as me.
Pushing up on my elbows, I reach for my blanket to cover up, but stop when I realize he has only climbed off me to grab a condom from his wallet.
I lie back down and count my breaths, telling myself that what I’m about to do is okay. That I want it and that’s enough. That it’s okay to want sex.
My thoughts calm as Ryler situates above me. He brushes my hair out of my face and stares deeply into my eyes as he rocks forward, slowly easing into me. I shut my eyes and start to move with him, our hips moving so rhythmically it’s like we were made for each other.
As long as I keep my eyes shut, I can almost pretend that’s true. That we’re two people who care about each other, who found each other in the darkness. Who are connected.
What I wouldn’t give to keep my eyes shut and hold on to that version of the truth forever. Hold on to this version of Ryler forever and never, ever let go.
Chapter 12
Buried Alive
Ryler
As I lie awake, staring up at the ceiling of Emery’s bedroom, I try to put together what happened over the course of the last two hours. I told Emery about Aura and my past, and then Emery and I had sex. Fuck, it was unbelievable, like our bodies created poetry.
“What are you thinking about?” Emery wonders, propping up on her arm and staring down at me. Her hair is a tangled mess around her face, her eyeliner is smeared, and her skin is sheen with sweat.
“About you and me.” I reach for her face and stroke her cheek, wondering what to do next. Where do I go from here? Where do we go from here? “How about you?”
She gives a half shrug, her lips quirking to a small smile. “How good that felt.”
I can’t help chuckling and reach to lace our fingers together, but she winces from my touch. I glance down at her arm and realize that she never did tell me who hurt her.
I brush my thumb across one of the bruises on the inside of her wrists. Who did this to you? I mouth.
She shakes her head again, her expression turning stone cold as she sits up, pressing the sheet to her chest. “Please don’t bring that up again. I can’t tell you. If I do, I’ll be in danger.”
I think about the conversation I had with Doc. He said Emery only puts herself in danger. Did she… Did she hurt herself?
“Tell me who did that to you,” I sign with a firm expression as I sit up in the bed. “I need to know.”
“I already told you, Ryler, I can’t tell you.” Her eyes silently plead for me to understand as she hugs the sheet to her chest.
Her lips are swollen from my kisses, and her skin is flushed. All I want to do is kiss her again, drown in her instead of my worry. Go back to an hour ago and be inside her again.
But I need to know who hurt her, more than I did before.
My hands speak for me as I kneel down on the bed in front of her. “Please, just tell me. I care about you and need to know who hurt you,
otherwise, it’s going to drive me crazy.”
She nervously chews on her fingernails. “It doesn’t matter. None of this does. You can’t change what happened to me no matter how much I want you to be able to.”
“How do you know that for sure? Maybe I’m not the person you think…” I trail off, wincing at my words.
She carries my gaze, meticulously studying my expression. “You work for my father,” she says more to herself.
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