by Hart, Rebel
My mind races as he moves, grunting with deep thrusts. I tense up, still not feeling any of the pleasure I am used to feeling at his hands.
“Stop,” I whisper, pushing his hips back with my hands. “It hurts.”
As if he’s in another world, he doesn’t seem to hear my words. He keeps moving, ignoring me completely.
“Emmett!” I shout louder. “Did you hear me!? Stop it! You’re hurting me!”
He freezes and looks down at me with a mortified expression, but it melts away into something else. Something I haven’t seen since long before I started to think I understood who he really was. Suddenly I am face to face with the Emmett I first knew at WJ Prep. The Emmett who bullied, humiliated, and threatened me.
“Oh, what?” he smirks with a cruel spark. “First you think I’d murder someone…and now you think I’d…what? Rape you?”
I shake my head, but I’m not sure if I’m telling him no or just asking for the world to go away. That’s not what was happening, was it? I look into his darkened eyes and search for what I came here for. Safety. Assurance. Why can’t he give me any of that? But once again, only the old Emmett stares back. I remember the times he used to grope me, force his lips on mine with the other Elites standing there to watch. The time in the car with Trey and Vincent when he blindfolded me and teased me. Only no matter how fucked-up it was, I wanted him. I wasn’t just freezing and going along with it. My entire body shook with desire for him.
“Do you want this or not?” he demands, stroking himself again.
I should be furious with how cold and bossy he’s being. That moments ago, he didn’t stop when I asked. That he had to say that terrible word in the middle of all this. But the traumas that used to make me cringe are melting me from the inside out. I feel the pulsing sensation between my legs that longs to feel him inside, but I can’t bring myself to tell him just how badly I do want it suddenly.
Unable to speak, I run my fingers between my legs. I tease the tingling folds and coax him inside. His eyes spark again as he thrusts forward with an animalistic grunt. Our nerves are shot and everything is tense, causing us both to sweat. But somehow it just makes it feel better. My brain wants me to yell at him, to push him away. But everything else just wants to get off on him. I need to.
I writhe underneath him as he pounds into me, and all the sharpness from before is gone. I dig my nails into his skin so hard, I’m certain I’m drawing blood. He deserves it, I think, for hurting me a moment ago. And again, the thought turns me on more. He hisses from the scratches but doesn’t stop or ask me to stop.
The more I replay in my head, the more turned on but angrier I get. I grab his shoulders and pull myself up, forcing my lips against his. We bite at each other’s lips and tongues as the sweat pools around my clit. His thrusting body rubs against the slickness in all the most perfect ways, swelling with pleasure. I pull on him so hard, he finally flips over, rolling me on top of him as he sits back against the couch.
With our mouths and teeth still nipping at each other’s skin, I start to ride him harder than I ever have before. It’s more than enough, but we’re both feeling insatiable and greedy, so he thrusts up into me in return, our rhythms so rushed and frantic that we barely sync up. Our rush makes it sloppy, but we slip into some trance where all that matters is how it feels. We stop caring about what we look like or what kinds of sounds we make and lose ourselves completely in the feeling. Immense pleasure with a tinge of exquisite pain.
I don’t realize we’re on the floor until the orgasm is rippling through my body, with Emmett climaxing right behind me. I don’t even know how we got down there. I feel like I’ve been floating up out of my body for the past half hour.
“What the fuck,” I grumble under my breath as I lift my head to confirm I am in fact laid out on the carpet.
Emmett blows out a big gushing breath, then looks troubled. His eyes glint with worry as he rolls over and scoops me up into his arms. He carries me into the bedroom and lays me tenderly down onto the bed before kneeling at my side.
“I’m sorry,” he says urgently. “I can’t believe I…I should have never…”
“It’s okay,” I shake my head and run my fingers through his dampened curls. I don’t know how it’s okay. It should never be okay for him to keep doing anything when I ask him to stop. Not anymore, even if it did used to be a normal occurrence before he started trying to be his real self.
My heart twists in my chest as I finally begin to think maybe I have been trying to draw too many lines in the sand. There was the Emmett from before and the one from now, the good, the bad, the one who would do this thing or would never do that thing. The one who lies, the one who owns my heart, the one who loves me more than anything. It all starts to shatter as I think…It’s all him.
I don’t think people change. They’re multifaceted. Emmett has all of these different sides, but just because I can only see the good now doesn’t mean the bad couldn’t resurface at any time. The same goes for Theo, even if I have been purposefully blinding myself to any good he has shown lately.
But as we accept all of the different sides to a person, can it all start to blend and bleed together? Maybe the good will somehow neutralize the bad. I don’t know, but somehow, I mean it as I tell Emmett over and over that it’s okay. Because it is. I don’t know how or why, but it is.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks suddenly, desperate to redeem himself.
I shake my head no, and he finally peels himself up to get a towel and a glass of water. I wrap myself up in his sheets and realize I don’t even remember what day it is. Wednesday, I think. We had the day off for Malcolm’s funeral service and prom will be this weekend. I’ve still lost my excitement for prom, but now for completely different reasons.
Our sex trance seems to have woken up so many old feelings. I don’t feel indifferent at all. The opposite. I feel too much. Maybe I have just been suppressing my feelings this entire time to be able to get through the days. I had to learn to control the all-consuming, obsessive love I feel for him. But now it rushes back over me and something like prom seems silly. Like we’re above it. Our love is too big for stupid little high school dances.
The thought makes me laugh as I watch Emmett through the doorway, slipping into his boxers. But then there’s a sudden, booming, violent banging on the door that scares us both. He looks to me with wide, questioning eyes, but I don’t have any clue who it could be either.
“Emmett Jameson!” a man’s voice yells out. “Open up. It’s the police.”
I shoot up in bed, clutching the covers around me. My clothes are still in the living room, but I don’t know if I have time to get to them. Emmett tries to ask them to wait a minute, but they only bang on the door harder, demanding for him to open up right away. Instead he bolts over and shuts the bedroom door to give me some privacy.
My heart pounds as I hear him open the door followed by muffled voices. What are they doing here? Jameson police are corrupt and not to be trusted. But if they’re trying to pull something over on us right now, I don’t know who I could turn to for help. Detective Williams thinks we’re crazy and asked us not to contact him anymore.
“Ophelia!” Emmett screams for me.
Practically forgetting that I’m naked, I fling a sheet around my body and race out to him. As I run into the room, I see they have him pinned up against the wall and are about to handcuff him.
“What’s going on here!?” I shriek. “Emmett!”
“Miss, step back,” commands one of the officers.
“Emmett Jameson, you’re under arrest as a suspect in the murder of Malcolm Henderson,” the officer handcuffing him announces before reading him the rest of his rights.
“What!?” I cry. “You’re wrong! He didn’t kill Malcolm!”
They ignore me and carry on. Emmett says nothing as they cart him away and leave me alone in the empty apartment. I don’t even know how I was able to defend him so vehemently when hours ago I was part
ly convinced that he did it. I just never expected the police to think the same thing enough to arrest him. What do they know that I don’t? Or is this the Elites’ doing?
Feeling completely lost and heartbroken, I fall to the floor and pull the sheet to my face as I sob. I’m frozen like that for what seems like hours, just crying by myself. Every time I try to stop and stand up, I collapse in tears again, harder than before. By the time I finally manage to stop, it’s dark outside. I have no choice but to get dressed, gather my things, and go.
24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dear Diary,
Prom is over, and everything went as planned. Well, almost everything. I am no longer a virgin. Thomas took me to the most exquisite hotel room after the dance. He sweet-talked my parents into lifting my curfew. I guess they figure we’ll be married soon enough after graduation, so there’s no point in trying to keep us apart.
But sex was…rougher than I expected. I did not get the sweet, charming side of Thomas I thought I would be going to bed with. He was cold and direct. I am so attracted to him and care for him so much that I enjoyed it, but it didn’t match the romantic fantasies I had in my head.
Today at school, Thomas and his friends were picking on this poor girl who made the mistake of talking badly about them to some of the other students. It’s the kind of thing I had always heard about Thomas doing. He and his friends are sort of like a little gang. They call themselves the Elites. The existence of this clique has been around as long as WJ Prep has. But it reaches far beyond the walls of our school. It’s ingrained into the town of Jameson.
Thomas and any of the other kids whose families work with Jameson Automobiles basically run the school, while their families run the town. Only now that I am with Thomas, I am considered to be one of them even more so than before. I am one of the Elites.
Because I am one of them, they expected me to join in on their torment of this girl. They pinned her to the wall and threatened her and asked me to take a turn in making her regret what she had said. I looked in her frightened eyes and wanted to run away. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I didn’t want to disappoint Thomas or embarrass him in front of his friends.
So I spit in her face. I felt awful for doing it. When I tried to talk to Thomas about it, he said anyone who questions our position in that school, or this town deserves whatever happens to them. He told me I’ll have to get used to defending our respected titles.
So it begins, I think as I slam the diary shut and turn back to the news streaming on my laptop. The reports of Emmett’s arrest have been blaring across every channel all day. When I got sick of hearing it all, I tried to turn it off only to find headline after headline repeating the same information. Then there’s the endless gossip flurrying across every social media platform, coming from people in Jameson and all over the country. Everyone’s eager to talk about the drama of the high society Elite millionaire world.
The police have reason to believe someone tampered with Malcolm’s brakes, just as we suspected. Which is what caused him to crash to his death. They collected DNA evidence from Malcolm’s car along with a few misplaced personal items, and it all points to Emmett.
Even though I had been questioning his innocence myself, the moment he was arrested I went into defense mode. I keep running through the reasons over and over again for how he could have never done this. He was right about one thing. I can’t bring myself to be too upset that Malcolm is gone. He was a horrible person and has done so much harm to so many people.
But whoever killed Malcolm, likely tried to kill me too. That’s why I can’t bring myself to believe he did it. For all the time I have spent unable to erase awful memories of Emmett from my brain, now I can’t seem to remember any of it. Everything has reversed. I can only remember the good, the sweet, the loveable side.
I keep reading Marissa’s diary, thinking I will feel the same as before. That I’ll see the glaring similarities between Emmett and his father and remember the potential for how messed up he might be. But it all feels distant and impossible. Like a dream. Like I never knew Marissa or Thomas at all. And what has happened between Emmett and me has been nothing short of a perfectly ordinary high school romance.
Then comes the dreaded knock on my door. My mom checking on me for the twentieth time today. I’ve been turning her away, begging to be alone. But I’m tired of fighting her. Maybe if I let her say what she has to say, she’ll finally leave me alone. I march over and open the door before promptly returning to my bed without saying anything.
“I know you want to be alone,” she says, making me roll my eyes.
“If you know…then why do you keep bothering me?” I whine.
“Because I’m worried about you!” The urgency builds in her voice. “This is such a huge, scary thing to be dealing with, and I don’t want you to go through it alone.”
“It’s not scary,” I state plainly. “He didn’t do it. They’ll figure that out and let him go. End of story.”
She sits on the edge of my bed looking even more worried than before. Wringing her hands in her lap, I see new lines forming in her face. She suddenly looks older than I ever remember and it makes me feel guilty. It’s my fault. I’m causing her to age so rapidly.
“You think he’s guilty,” I blurt.
She hesitates, but I know what she’s thinking. “There has always been something off about him,” she suggests. “That car crash when you were with him…and then the way you disappeared for those few days not long after that. I wanted to give him a second chance, but Ophelia…if…if anything ever happened with him…If he ever hurt you or scared you in any way…I want you to know, you can tell me.”
I burst into uncontrollable tears, breaking down the way I did on the floor of Emmett’s apartment. I want more than anything to tell her everything that’s happened. Maybe what I really need is for someone else to tell me Emmett is bad. That I was wrong for thinking I could see good in him or trust him at all. The only other person who knows the whole story besides Emmett and me is Bridgett, and she also thinks he could be the one who killed Malcolm. The one who’s been trying to kill me.
My mom takes me into her arms and cradles me as I sob. But I can’t bring myself to tell her anything. I just can’t. If I could have, I would’ve done it by now. And what if it turns out Emmett didn’t do this? What if I’m right and they let him go, declaring him innocent? Then I would still be held accountable for everything he did before this. Even if he isn’t a murderer, he did enough to have never deserved a chance with me in the first place. But I’m not ready to accept that.
She holds me and lets me cry for a long time before telling me that Theo and Brendan are downstairs. “You can come down to eat if you’d like,” she offers sweetly. “Or just come down to sit and talk. Sit and not talk. Whatever you need.”
For the first time, hearing Theo’s name or that he’s in our house doesn’t fill me with rage. I feel nothing. Just cold, numb emptiness. I follow her down with a blank, dejected look. But as we approach the table, I suddenly feel like running away. I can’t sit with them right now and pretend that my entire world isn’t falling apart. And the only thing I can’t stand to do more than that is actually talk about Emmett.
Without saying a word, I pivot and bolt for the back door. I feel instantly better the moment the spring night air crashes over me. My heart is still aching with an impossible hurt, but at least I feel less trapped. Less cornered.
There’s a swing set in our backyard that was left by the previous owners. Sometimes the neighborhood kids come by and play on it. I stare at it under the glow of the distant streetlights and realize I have never once sat on this thing in the nine months that we’ve lived here. I slide onto one of the swings and rock gently, leaning my head against one of the chains in exhaustion.
I don’t even look up at the sound of the screen door slamming. At first, I’m frustrated that no one can give me a moment’s peace, but then I realize how dark it has gotten
and think I must have been sitting out here longer than I realized.
I avoid looking at the manly figure approaching, taking the swing next to mine. I know it’s not Brendan. I’m not so lucky. Instead I’m just a magnet for fucked-up men, romantic or otherwise.
“I’m sorry, Ophelia,” Theo says softly. “I’m shocked and hurt too.”
“Hurt?” I scoff. “Why the hell are you hurt?”
“I lost my partner in this,” he explains. “I never would have thought Emmett could kill anyone…or try to hurt you at all.”
I cut my eyes over to him. “What makes you think he tried to hurt me?”
“Your mom may not want to admit some things to herself, but I’m good at piecing things together,” he tells me. “I know your car crashed off the cliff in the same place Malcolm’s did. And I know how far that spot is from the school. I feel awful. Here I was trying to give the kid a job, thinking he might be my future son-in-law…”
His words are frighteningly sincere. Maybe it’s because I’m shocked or tired, but my stubbornness breaks down and I start to think he actually cares for me.
“I know I’m not your favorite person,” he adds. “And I deserve that after being absent from your life and everything with how we finally met again. But Ophelia, you’re my daughter. I may not always get it right, but I love you. I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you.”
“Ha!” I belt out sarcastically. “Except the time you were planning to kidnap me so the Elites couldn’t use me against you in your little quest for vengeance.”
