Chapter Ten
Then
“SO, KEITH, WHAT do you think of our little town?” I ask, leaning in and running my hand up his arm for a second. I’m an impostor, but I’ve made my decision, and I need to stick with it. I’m nothing if not determined.
“Uh, it’s nice. You have a real nice place here. How long have y’all been ranching?” he asks, nerves reigning supreme in his voice. Maybe I’m laying it on a little thick. OK … so don’t act like a slut. Guys came after you the way you were. Remember that. I lean back against the doorjamb and clasp my hands in front of myself, hoping to strike a more demure pose. Keith seems to relax a bit.
“Oh, I’ll be the fifth generation to run this ranch,” I tell him. I wonder now if he’s a good choice. Keith starts rambling about farm life and how wonderful it can be, so I survey the guests here for my mom and Blake’s little anniversary party. I guess he’ll have to do since I don’t see any other options that don’t repulse me. A bored sigh escapes my lips.
Just as I’m about to direct my attention back to Keith, I see him enter. Oh, and he looks so good. He’s sporting his black Stetson, the one with the band of silver adorning it. A couple of the pearl snaps are undone on his black western shirt, which goes nicely with his black dress boots. His jeans are faded and frayed in all the right spots. He’s a delightful combination of perfect gentlemen and rugged cowboy.
Showtime. I turn my attention back to … Keith. Right, Keith. “So Keith,” I begin, cutting him off, “what do you say we get out of here? I can take you for a walk along the property,” I suggest in what I hope is a sexy voice.
“Umm … I, uh, I don’t know. We just got here and …” Great! I’ve picked a pansy-ass.
I run my finger down the front of his shirt and try again. “I’m looking to have a good time tonight.” I bite my lip since that seems to turn guys on. “Don’t you wanna show—”
I can’t finish my suggestion because I get the breath knocked out of me when I’m pulled into the angry wall that is Greer. This time when I bite my lip, it’s to keep from full-on smiling. I sense victory.
“Excuse us,” he mutters to Keith.
Keeping hold of my elbow, he pushes me through the crowd, and I can still feel the rage radiating from him. Angry sex. I don’t think that will be good for my first time. I snicker at that thought.
“There’s not a damn thing funny here, Denver,” he seethes.
I purse my lips but end up laughing loudly, turning a few heads as he leads me out of the house and around to the space above the garage that doubles as game room and my ex-step-sister’s bedroom.
“Greer,” I toss over my shoulder, “I really like this caveman thing you’ve got going on, but if your intention is a friendly game of pool, I need you to let me go. I’ve got an agenda tonight.”
“Shut up, Denver.” I shut up.
Once we get upstairs, he propels me into the room and throws the lock behind us. He tosses his hat on the pool table while turning to me. The look on his face is pure torture. And I feel so badly for goading him that I yearn to take him in my arms and say, “Forget it. I’m sorry,” but I can’t afford feelings right now—his or mine.
He finally speaks, and each word punches itself out of him. “Denver, I’d give anything to be with you but not because you feel threatened or like it’s a last resort. I. Just. Can’t. But don’t you see I want to? Can’t we just pretend we do and go on like we were?”
“Do you think this is how I want it to be, Greer?” I throw my arms out like my joke of a life is splayed before me. “Do you think I enjoy being hunted like an endangered species? Because that’s what it feels like. Like there’s a fucking prize on my head, and my days are numbered! Did you know that the night Blake came home I lay on the bathroom floor sobbing for hours in between my bouts of throwing up? That when I was finally able to pick myself up and go to bed, I propped a chair under my door, and I went to bed fully clothed? That I lie there most nights wide-awake and cursing my existence? When I’m finally able to sleep, that it’s been with a gun?” My voice hitches, and I curse myself. “That I considered turning that very gun on myself?”
Ripples of pain transform the cold fury marring his features. “No, don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of feeling this way. I’m tired of watching my back. Every day, he leers at me as if he’s preparing me for the inevitable. I don’t want him or any other pervert to be my inevitable, Greer. I want it to be you. The first man who touches me like that has to love me. You love me … please, love me,” I whimper. Greer stares at me, assessing me and my pleas, and I try to remain quiet to let him decide, once and for all.
He has to see what I see because all of these fears and the subsequent paranoia have manifested themselves physically as well. I can’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep. My nightmares wake me up with paralyzing fear. I know it’s bad when I realize my favorite dream is the one where Blake puts a bullet in my stomach after he has his way with me. I’ve resorted to wearing concealer over the darkened skin under my eyes—eyes that return a dead stare when I look too closely in the mirror. My hair falls out in clumps when I wash it or brush it. I have no appetite, and when I force myself to eat, the food morphs into a brick inside my mouth, gagging me as I try to swallow it. I quit weighing myself when I lost eight pounds, but I know I’ve lost more since then.
The worst part has to be the paranoia, though. I can’t even find peace in my barn. Every shadow, every noise has me whipping out my knife and spinning to attack. Our ranch hands give me sidelong glances, and I’m not sure if those are out of concern or if they’re gauging and planning their own attack on me.
I’m tired … so utterly tired. My eyes drift closed before Greer shifts on his feet and blows out a deep breath, the movement not enough to pull me from my stupor.
“Denver,” he calls. I force my heavy eyelids open. “You think us having sex is going to fix all that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I—”
My patience snaps, and my blood heats and rushes through my veins, lighting a fire under my purpose. “Everyone is downstairs celebrating my mother’s marriage to a man who was a scrap of cloth away from raping me. I know I sound desperate. And I am. But I’m desperate for you. I need you. I want you. I want you to be my first … and wouldn’t I be yours?”
He gives me an incredulous look. “Of course you would. You know there’s no one else for me, but this isn’t about you and me. This is about you being scared and trying to control this situation in a screwed-up way.”
I lower my voice so that he can see I’m serious and I’m done. “We’ve gone round and round about this for the last two weeks. You’re out of arguments. This is what I need, and I want it to be you, but—”
“Don’t you fucking threaten me with that again.” I wince. He’s never directed that word at me before. “I’m sorry, chicken.” He reaches and grabs my hand, putting it over his heart. “I didn’t mean to say that to you.”
“It’s OK. I say it to you all the time.”
“It’s different. You’re more valuable to me than that common word. You’re also more valuable to me than a quick roll in the hay. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamt of taking you? But every single time I do, you’re surrounded by clouds of white lace and rose petals. We’re laughing, and we’re happy. I’ve always wanted to make you mine, but not until the day you become my wife.”
That’s the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me and the most beautiful, pure idea anyone’s ever had about me. What’s pathetic about it is the fact that I don’t deserve it. I’ve never deserved this person standing in front of me. And, suddenly, I can’t do it. I won’t convince him to take my virginity. It will kill him. Kill who he is at his core. And I know this now more than ever.
“Why are you crying, Denver?” he asks, his voice a jagged instrument, gouging at my heart. So full of the pain th
at I’ve put there. Why can’t I be what he needs and deserves? I reach up and wipe away tears I wasn’t even aware I was shedding. I look at them on my fingertips like they contain the answers to all my problems. “Denver?” he prompts.
“I have to go.” It sounds like I’ve taken sandpaper to my vocal chords. “I can’t do this to you.” My eyes snap to his. He looks so confused yet hopeful. “And I can’t see you anymore.”
I try to move around him, but he drops to his knees, grabbing my hand as I try to pass. “I knew it. I knew you would win. You always win,” he chokes.
“No, Greer, my acceptance is not my final act of manipulation. I truly do accept your decision. More than that, I respect you for it. I’m not going to beg or coerce or try to make any more deals with you. And I’m not going to hold it against you. I just … I just don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t trust myself to be around you right now.” I run my hands over his curls. “Everything about me is designed to hurt you. I—I’m sorry.” I want to tell him that I love him too much to do this to him, but saying those three words will make it all that more difficult for him to say goodbye to whatever is left of the girl he’s come to love.
Squeezing his hand one last time, I try to release it, but he grabs both of my hands and holds harder, pulling me around in front of him. Without a word, he drags me down to my knees so that we’re face to face. He grasps my face with our entwined hands, and his eyes roam over me. When he brings them back up to mine, I whimper at the raw pain I see in them.
“Do you remember me telling you once that you’re the only one I see? If I let you go, I’ll go blind. I’ll see nothing, want nothing, be nothing.”
He moves his lips over mine in a tranquil way, like he’s trying to hypnotize both himself and me. I’m subdued. He doesn’t rush, but it doesn’t feel like one of his savoring kisses either. It feels like a final kiss. Is he kissing me, or our innocence, goodbye? I clear my mind and take myself back to the stream for our first kiss. So beautiful, and so perfect.
His fingertips move to my waistband, so I move mine toward his, and we slowly undress each other. When we’re both free of clothing, he tells me how beautiful I am. He gets a nervous look in his eyes, and I think he’s going to back out. “I don’t have any protection.”
I laugh bitterly. “My mother’s had me on birth control since I got my first period. We’re safe.”
“Oh, OK, want to get on the bed?”
I shake my head. “Right here is good.”
He eases me to the carpet and settles over me, covering my face with kisses as his finger slides inside of me. His tongue explores the inside of my mouth. It’s not bad.
I moan because that’s what I think I should do, but I really don’t feel the need to. I just want him to do it and get it over with, but I’m afraid to push. So my mind goes somewhere else until he’s prodding at my entrance.
He takes it slow, probably afraid that he’s going to hurt me. It’s uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt. It just feels awkward, and even though he fills me, I am …
nothing…
empty…
numb.
I wrap my arms around him tighter, pulling him closer until he’s pumping in and out of me at a steady pace.
The emotions I’m supposed to be feeling taunt me. Am I supposed to be overcome with even more love? Turned on? Because I’m neither. And the more I try to force myself to feel those things, the further I am distanced from them. Like a dinghy that’s gone adrift, I watch helplessly, as the lighthouse beacon gets further and further away. A seeping numbness overcomes me.
He buries his face in my neck, and his hot, rushed breaths coat me. It doesn’t last long. Greer groans and stills over me while I turn my head to the side and focus on a print of dogs playing poker.
He rains little kisses on my neck and moves up to my jaw, my cheek, and my mouth. He professes his love for me while pecking away at my lips. And I just want him to be done so that I can get dressed and go back to the fraudulent party. I belong with all the other counterfeits. I kiss him back with a tenderness I don’t feel, and tears spring to my eyes because he deserves someone so much better. Not someone who is numb to everything.
I don’t feel like me anymore. So what does that mean? If I’m not me, who am I?
The answer hits me with such force I throw myself into the kiss I don’t really feel, to mask the terror that has jolted me….
I’m transforming into my mother.
OVER THE NEXT two weeks, we have sex twice more. Once in the barn, and once more in the room above the garage. Never once in a bed. I don’t know why that is exactly, but I’m sure it’s symbolic in some way because it’s not that we can’t get enough of each other or are out of control.
I thought I’d feel a sense of relief with the unshackling of my innocence. I thought my steps would be lighter. I even went into Blake and my mother’s room late one night when I heard them up talking and told them that I was having sex with Greer. Blake huffed a surprised breath, and my mother shook her head. “I always thought you’d go for Lawson. He has such aspirations,” was her only real comment other than reminding me to take my pill regularly. And that was that.
I question why I had sex with him twice more when it was no good the first time. All I know is that it’s the only time I don’t feel, I don’t think, and I don’t hate myself. But, after I take him, it all rushes at me with a vengeance.
A few days before school starts back, and we begin our junior year, Greer broaches the subject of what we will tell people. “Nothing,” I say, because we are nothing. I don’t say that last part aloud though. I tell him I don’t want to be his girlfriend. I want to be his friend and have sex, and that’s all. I don’t want to change anything.
Greer barely looks at me, and I swear I hear him mumble, “Everything’s changed.”
Our junior year proceeds like that—our “friendship with benefits.” But he’s right, it’s all changed. Neither our friendship nor our benefits are any good, and I often find myself wondering why we’re torturing ourselves. Why are we trying to maintain our damaged friendship? And, even though we don’t do it often, why do we think continuing to have sex is a good idea?
I finally convince him to start dating other girls. He protests at first because he’s still Greer, even though he’s a miserable Greer. I tell him if he doesn’t, then what we do have will cease to be. It’s an empty threat because I can’t let him go, but thankfully, he doesn’t know that. Why do I do this? I hope that Greer will meet someone amazing and break things off with me permanently since I’m not strong enough to do it myself. I hope that Greer will compare me to someone normal and finally see me for what I am—toxic—and flush me from his system.
That’s what he should do, but he doesn’t. He dates other girls, hangs out with me, and screws me when he’s in-between. Except it’s not screwing for Greer. He never fails to try to make it beautiful and romantic, but the harder he pushes, the more I retreat. And, even though our friendship is an atrophied limb, neither of us is strong enough to amputate it.
Chapter Eleven
Then
ALL THAT AWKWARDNESS changes our senior year.
“I want you to go on a double date with me and Alyssa.”
My eyes give an exaggerated eye roll even though Greer can’t see me through the phone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Greer. And I don’t date.”
“I think it would be good for you. You need to get out and hang out with other people. This guy goes to another school, so he doesn’t know …”
Doesn’t know that I’m known as the school slut even though nothing could be further from the truth, is what he doesn’t say. My golden boy is too polite to bring up my sordid reputation. It’s ridiculous though. I’ve had sex with Greer and Greer only. And I could count the number of times we’ve done it on both hands.
Of course, the rumor is that I have sex with my friends—many friends—and I require nothing from them in return. They use me, I use
them. I was sure that rumor had been spread by the one girlfriend I had. I had a moment of weakness and confided in her about my twisted relationship with Greer. Next thing I know, everyone’s whispering about me being a slut, she’s no longer friends with me, other girls are openly hostile, and other guys, the guys that are worth a damn, think I’m repulsive. The clichéd double standard is alive and well in Anaconda, Montana. The guys I’m “screwing” certainly fair no worse. If anything, they’re fucking legends, and they don’t even exist.
Greer falls for the rumors and confronts me, asking if I’m screwing somebody else. I assure him that I’m not. Everyone speculates over exactly who I’m sleeping with. I spent the second half of my junior year defending myself and attempting to curtail rumors before trying to just ignore it and pretend like I wasn’t bothered. I was done with all that.
For a girl who claimed not to care what others thought about her, all this actually hurt. How could it not? I’ve never had many friends, but to go from someone who was simply considered different, to being the school pariah, it fucking sucked. And that’s the key. Being different, I could handle. Being hated, though, I hadn’t handled that well.
Defending with words quickly morphed into defending with my fists, and I found myself suspended from school more often than not in the course of a few short months. But what’s a girl to do when she opens her locker and condoms come spilling out? Or when she goes to get in her truck and it’s papered with STD pamphlets and filled with genital wart cream? Something had to give.
Many tears, a lot of alcohol, and a shit-ton of assurances from Greer, helped me gain a new outlook—The Fuck ‘Em All Perspective.
Now this helped tremendously with my implementation of a new approach this school year. I accepted the role everyone had put me in and was relishing in it. Someone calls me a slut, I agree and move on. I am a real bitch about it too, but that’s the least I can do. It gets rid of them faster, and pretty soon there isn’t anything to taunt me with. When someone openly admits to and owns up to rumors, it just slap takes the fun out of everything. Oh, except the sly looks and the social pariah aspect of it—that still exists, but it’s much more tolerable. I was given a wide-berth rather than openly sneered at and attacked.
Used (Unlovable, #1) (Unlovable Series) Page 9
