The Truth About Us

by Megan D. Martin

  “You’re so dramatic!” I threw my hands in the air. “What kind of grown man can’t even be happy for their friend when they fall in love?”

  “It wasn’t about him falling in love – it was about him falling in love with you.” He practically spit the words at me. “I knew you were trash from the moment I set eyes on you!”

  “Whatever, go fuck yourself, Vic!” A bubble of laughter escaped my lips, even though I didn’t feel like anything was actually funny. “And stay the fuck out of my business and my life. I never asked for your fucking opinion – and I never will! Go back to kissing Tyler’s ass like the little bitch that you are.” My whole body shook with rage.

  “If you weren’t a girl I would punch the shit out of you right now!”

  People had started to notice our altercation, our scene. I could feel their eyes, but for once I didn’t care.

  “I fucking dare you!” And I meant those words. I wanted nothing more, right then and there than to feel it, the physical pain. I wondered how it would feel compared to the numbness in my body. Would I be able to feel it at all?

  “You stay the hell away from her, asshole!” Stacie stepped in front of me, her hand snaking behind her and grabbing mine before jerking me back toward the exit. Victor didn’t try to stop us, and I almost felt disappointed. For the first time in my life I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought, especially not Victor. I didn’t care about his words. He couldn’t hurt me. No one could hurt me now. I was numb, emotionless. The world could have scorned me in that moment and I wouldn’t have given a single fuck. I had none left to give. Tyler had sucked me dry.

  As we drove home, I considered that I was probably a bitch for leaving Owen behind, while he defended my honor to Tyler, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything about my actions.

  For once, I chose myself.

  I pushed open the front door of mine and Rowan’s apartment. The digital clock on the microwave revealed that it was only five-thirty – the earliest I’d been home in months.

  She wasn’t in the living room as I pulled my wallet out and set it in its usual place on our Formica countertop. Usually, when I arrived, she was on the couch watching a reality TV show. Not today. The TV was off and the apartment was silent, or it seemed that way at first. When I moved toward the bedroom I heard her. She was in the bathroom with the door closed, but there was no mistaking the sound of her crying.

  I stood there for a moment transfixed, surprised. What happened?

  “Rowan, baby?” I knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”

  I heard her heard suck in a surprised breath. “Uh,” she cleared her throat, “Yeah, I’m fine.” But her words were filled that watery sadness that could only come from crying.

  “Babe, why are you crying?” I leaned my hand against the door. “Did something happen at school?”

  The distinct sound of blowing her nose came through the door. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” There was some shuffling around inside before the door swung open.

  Rowan’s eyes were red and puffy, the sadness in them seemed to be endless, a bottomless pit, different than I’d ever seen them.

  “Aw, baby. Talk to me.” I pressed my hand against her cheek. For the first time in weeks she leaned into my touch. Things had been strained ever since that day I came home with her ring. I hadn’t proposed yet. I hadn’t found the right time. Rowan had been different since then, she’d been distant, unhappy. Sex had become a rare occasion, and I didn’t understand it. We had been so happy, so in love. The last few months had changed that somehow. I had been trying to fix things. I wanted her to be happy – that was all I wanted, was to come home and have her smile at me like she used to, with love in her sad eyes. I missed it more than anything.

  I wasn’t about to give up though. I wasn’t that man. I wanted to marry Rowan, and I knew that meant for better or for worse. This was just a phase, it had to be. She couldn’t have stopped loving me. It wasn’t possible. We were meant to be together. I had known it from the moment I laid eyes on her at Steel Mechanics, Inc. She was my person, my future, my everything. I could make her happy, of that I was certain.

  “Nothing.” She sniffed. “I’m fine.” She leaned in and wrapped her arms around my waist, an embrace she hadn’t given me since I didn’t know when. I hugged her back, loving the feeling of her body against mine. We fit together like missing pieces of a puzzle – perfect.

  “I missed you today.” And all the other days you’ve been distant, I thought.

  She didn’t respond, but her arms still hugged against my waist. Her hair smelled like summer, like warmth, like wildflowers on the breeze. I sucked in the scent, reveling in it. In her.

  After a few moments she seemed to realize herself and jerked back from me, as if I was made of fire. She cleared her throat again and turned away.

  “Babe? Wait. Where are you going?” I followed her into the living room. When she didn’t respond, I sucked in a breath feeling hopeless. “What is it?” I came around the couch and knelt in front of where she sat. “Tell me.” I peered into her eyes. She was so far away, lost in that sadness I had been desperate to take from her. “Tell me what I can do to make this better, to make you happy again.” The words were a panicked plea on my lips. “I don’t know where I went wrong – what I did.”

  “I don’t want to talk, Tyler.” She wouldn’t meet my gaze, the blank mask she had donned in the recent months settling back in place.

  “Please, let’s just go to dinner. Let’s talk. I love you and I know you love me. That doesn’t just go away.”

  I saw it then, a flicker of emotion, it fluttered across her features. It was the look of utter devastation, like my words were breaking her down. She still loved me, it was in there, she was just hiding it for some reason. I knew her, I fucking knew her better than anyone.

  Why is she hiding?

  Despite knowing her, I couldn’t explain this. I had no answers, no reasons to give.

  “Please, Rowan? Dinner? We haven’t had a date night in a while, and I know that’s my fault for working so late all the time. But I’m here, and I love you.” I knew I sounded like a broken record, but I couldn’t seem to help it.

  After what seemed like an eternity, her watery gaze met mine. “I’m not hungry.” The words were impenetrable, like a solid wall of freshly laid bricks. A stranger looked back at me in those sad eyes, hardened with resolve.

  My heart cracked a little more as she withdrew from me even further, this woman I loved so dearly. She was leaving me, slowly, but surely, she was pulling away…but why?

  I held the damp washcloth to my eyebrow, wiping away the sticky blood, the aftermath of my fight with Owen. I’d been home almost fifteen minutes now, and the more I looked in the mirror the more gruesome my features seemed to become. A purple bruise bloomed under my right eye and a grisly trail of dried blood from my eyebrow had stained my cheek and neck. My appearance wasn’t really my concern right now, however. It was the fact that Rowan was on her way here. She’d texted me sometime ago on the drive home.

  Evie had driven us back to my apartment from the concert, while my face bled down onto my shirt. She had spent the entire drive chattering animatedly, a flurry of clucking I hadn’t completely been able to catch. I hadn’t wanted to catch it. This whole night had been an utter fuck up – an absolute disappointment. The point of tonight was to have a good time, to solidify my friendship with Rowan, but somehow it had turned into a clusterfuck of emotions, from nostalgia to complete remembrance of just how shitty of a person Rowan was. She was just going to poach Owen for her uses – that had been her plan all along. I just fucking knew it. She was a deceptive nightmare cloaked in beauty. Tonight had been a good reminder of that.

  When my phone vibrated in the car, a text message from Rowan: “What’s your address?” I hadn’t even batted an eye at responding. Thinking about it now, I should have told her to fuck off, but there was a large part of me that wanted to do so in person.

  “You
don’t want me to come to your house?” Evie had asked, when I told her to head to her apartment.

  “I want to be alone,” was my only response. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t listen to her “I told you so” speech in her sing-song voice anymore. Her claiming over and over that she had been right all along about Rowan didn’t make me feel any better. It made me feel worse.

  I didn’t care that she pouted when she climbed out of the car at her apartment. I didn’t kiss her goodbye as I got into the driver’s seat. There was something bitter that had wedged itself inside my chest. It wanted to blame Evie for tonight. It wanted to make all of this bullshit her fault.

  And now I stood at my mirror, staring at my battered face, waiting for Rowan’s knock at the door. What would I say to her? I had a million words for her. They all swarmed around in my head like a hive ready to attack.

  I had just emerged from cleaning up my face when the knock finally came and when I swung open the door, Rowan stood there. She hadn’t changed, still sporting the tiny shorts and shirt from the concert, her long hair wild.

  “I didn’t come here to talk,” she said, her face blank of emotions outside of that perpetual sadness in her eyes.

  “Oh no?” I raised my eyebrows and flinched at the stabbing pain from the cut.

  “No.” She moved past me inside my sparsely decorated apartment, seemingly unaffected by my bruised face. “I didn’t.” She turned around once I closed the door, facing me. “We’ve said enough, don’t you think?”

  “Convenient for you to say when you’re the one who comes in like a whirlwind and fucks things up, then just leaves.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter does it? No matter what I say, you will always think the worst of me. So talking doesn’t really do us much good anymore.”

  “Well, at least you’re right about something.”

  “We clearly can’t be friends. It just doesn’t work, it’s too complicated.”

  I snorted, staring down at her. “Yeah, because of you. Because of all your bullshit scheming and lies.”

  She shrugged again, as if my words didn’t affect her. “Maybe.” She moved toward me. “There’s only one thing you and I were ever good at.” She splayed her hands across my chest. “One thing that was never too complicated.” Her fingers made a lazy trail down my chest, while her gaze stayed fixated on mine.

  My body automatically came to life, my cock springing instantly hard in my jeans. Her gaze bore into mine, almost daring me to tell her different – that she was wrong, that the sex we’d had hadn’t been explosive, addicting.

  “Do you remember, Tyler? Remember all the ways you had me?” She leaned in closer, her warm, minty breath fanning against my jaw. “I do.”

  A very small part of me said to push her away.

  Don’t look back, never look back.

  But I didn’t listen my to subconscious. Instead I pulled her into me, trapped her hands between us while my lips crashed into hers. We became a tangle of teeth and limbs, burying my hands in her hair like I’d wanted to do all night – like I’d wanted to do since our last sexual interlude in her apartment months ago. I had pushed that memory out of my head, or at least that’s what I told myself, but it was never fully gone. It was there for me to dwell on in the darkness when the outside world slept and I was free to want what I wanted no matter how forbidden or wrong it was.

  Rowan’s fingernails dug into my chest through my shirt. I welcomed the pain, digging my fingers into her scalp, until she moaned into my mouth. I wanted to hurt her, to rip her apart for all of the bullshit she’d put me through, for all the heartache that I still couldn’t seem to shake. She didn’t oppose my rough embrace, instead continued to claw back at me with her own ferocity. Jerking at my shirt, our vicious lips parting only long enough to pull it over my head so she could tear at my skin without a barrier.

  I jerked down on her hair, forcing our lips back apart to expose her neck, the soft, supple flesh I used to worship lovingly with my mouth. This time I scraped my teeth along the sensitive skin, leaving red marks in my wake. The deep moan in her throat reverberated against my teeth, sending a shiver down my spine.

  “I remember,” I whispered against the curve of where her neck met her shoulder, before sinking my teeth in her softness. Her tanned skin was so giving against my mouth, part of me was tempted to bite until my teeth met back together – maybe then she would understand my pain, the pain she caused me for so long. The pain she still caused me.

  “Fuck,” she moaned, her nails still slicing into my back. “I want you inside me.”

  I wanted that too. I released her neck and hair almost unwillingly. We were a flurry of hands then, removing our clothes until we were both stark naked in my living room. I didn’t mean to take a moment to drink her in, Rowan Steel, in all her manipulative glory, my teeth marks marring the flesh of her neck, the nipples peaked on her full breasts, begging to plucked, bitten. The curve of her hips flaring out from her waist like an alluring siren. She was like some sort of addiction, the one that fucked up your life and ruined all future hopes and dreams. That’s what stood before me right now. She was a threat, a dangerous, sexy, conniving threat to my sanity, to the life I had built without her.

  I should’ve run, right then and there. It wasn’t too late. I could’ve made her leave, pushed her out of my apartment and finished myself off. I didn’t though. I didn’t even consider it. Instead I prowled forward and took Rowan down onto the carpet in my living room. I didn’t hesitate when I spread her legs wide and pushed myself inside her wet pussy. She was ready for me, her little sleeve accommodating my length like we were those puzzle pieces from long ago. Except we weren’t those puzzle pieces that were meant to be together, we were just two people, fucking.

  And that’s exactly what I did – I fucked her. I moved relentlessly, one hand pinning her shoulders to the floor, the other gripping the thick globe of one breast while the other bounced with my piston-like movement. I watched her face while I moved inside her. She accepted each thrust, meeting my hips with her own. Her gaze held determination.

  “Tell me, Tyler.” Her voice was breathless, she was close to coming. I knew her tell-tale signs, the way her head moved, the way her voice shook. It wouldn’t be long until she orgasmed around my cock. “Tell me how much you hate me.”

  Her demand surprised me, but I didn’t slow my movements. I realized I needed this more than I had needed anything in a long time. Her nails dug craters into my hips as I continued to pump into her pliant body. I watched her, as she went over edge, our bodies a desperate sweaty mess moving together in the punishment for what was and what would never be. Her torso twitched and her fingers flexed, digging deeper into my hips. It was her face that I watched, though, that moment when the sadness in her gaze fled and was replaced with complete and utter gratification.

  I could have given her this feeling ever day for the rest of her life. I had been willing to once, long ago. Now that would never be, and it was her own fault. Her own stupid fucking fault.

  “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my entire life!” I roared the words at her as the tingling sensation nailed me in the back, that reverberation of pleasure that hit me in the seconds just before I came. I jerked out of her just in time, fisting my cock as jets of white cum covered her belly. My legs shook, my chest heaved as I looked down at her, covered in the remnants of our interlude, her olive skin slippery with sweat, her make-up smeared around her eyes.

  My fantasy and nightmare all at once.

  She stared up at me, the orgasm still evident in her eyes and I drank it up, every single drop, storing every piece of this moment in my memory. I shouldn’t have – I should have taken this for what it was: sex, fucking, between two people. Instead I gobbled up every sliver of her and stored it away for later.

  “Tyler,” she peered up at me, her lips puckered to say more, but after a moment she shook her head, as if she thought better of it.

  I didn�
��t want to know what she had to say next. I agreed with her, we had said enough, and I didn’t think I could stand to listen to another lie on her lips. A strained smile pressed at her mouth as she glanced away from me. “I better get going.”

  A few minutes later she was gone.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Stacie commented. She sat across from me in Starbucks, where we both waited for our coffees.

  I raised my eyebrows. “You think so?”

  She smirked. “Literally three weeks ago you were sitting in the back seat of my car wearing the saddest expression ever on the way home from that concert, and now, since then, you’ve been practically bouncing off the walls with energy. I haven’t seen you like this in…well ever. What happened?” She leaned forward. “Are you on something? Cause, seriously, I want some.” She winked at me.

  “No.” I chuckled. “I’ve just chosen to look at the bright side of things.” So I wasn’t totally telling Stacie the truth – but only because I knew she would disapprove of what I had done with Tyler that night after the concert…and what I had continued to do with him four to five times a week since then.

  I had never been the kind of girl to approach a guy about having a straight up sexual relationship. Hell, the only person I’d ever had sex with was Tyler. Even if he hadn’t been my one and only, I still wouldn’t have had the balls to put myself out there like I had with Tyler. But something had happened that night at the concert, the hate in his eyes, the hurt, the anger, the fight with him and Owen, it had made me realize that all along all I had wanted was to try and please the people around me in some way or another and now I was done with that way of life. I had never put myself first and thought about what I wanted – ever. That had changed.

  While the tall skyscrapers passed overhead on the ride home from Dallas I had asked myself – what do I want?

  The answer had been simple. I wanted a physical connection. I wanted to fuck and release all the frustration that had built up inside me for over a year. I didn’t want to fuck just anyone either – no, that wouldn’t do. I wanted to fuck Tyler. I wanted to use him and his body the way he used mine that night in my apartment. I wanted to make him an object that I could abuse and use at my own whim. I didn’t want to be his friend. I didn’t want to talk any more, not about the past, the future or anything else. I just wanted to feel him, to suck the energy out of his body and into my own like a succubus, until I wanted something else.