“Shower,” I gasp, pulling back. I feel dirty and broken, weak and scared. I need to wash it away, wash it all away.
Taylor doesn’t question me. He seems to know exactly what I meant, and why. In one movement he pulls me up into his arms as he stands, and leads me to the bathroom. Without releasing me, he turns on the shower and steps under the stream of water with me, clothes and all.
“Hotter,” I mutter, wanting it to burn the way the coffee had. It’s the only way I’ll get this feeling off of me.
Taylor obliges, turning the dials up until steam fills the little shower and the water pours down, hot and angry on our skin.
Without speaking, he pulls my tank top over my head, and throws it on the floor. My jeans follow and my bra and panties. He guides me under the spray and then pulls off his own clothes, pulling a condom from his pocket before tossing the jeans to the pile with mine.
In spite of all the horror of the night before, and the pain of reliving it this morning, I’m overwhelmed with pure desire by the sight of him as he slides the condom onto his length. I had thought I’d seen the sexiest versions of Taylor already, but I had been wrong; Taylor naked and standing under a stream of hot water was a different matter entirely.
I wrap my arms around his neck, and his hands go to my thighs, pulling at them so my feet come off the ground. I wrap my legs around him, and plunge my tongue in his mouth. He groans, and his fingers tighten on my thighs. My entire body is pressed against his, the water and the heat from the shower intensifying the experience. I’m wet and aching for him so fast that it makes me dizzy.
“Want you,” I say against his mouth, my hands running along his water-slicked skin. “Need you. Please.”
He enters me without a word, without a pause, and I gasp. He feels amazing. Like, brain-numbing, forget-your-damn-name amazing. I dig my fingers into his shoulders, my head arched back. Taylor groans and presses me against the wall. I gasp at the feel of the cool tiles on my overheated skin.
He doesn’t give me the chance to get used to the tiles. He’s moving in me so fast, so overwhelmingly fast, that all I can do is hang on. He buries his head in my shoulder. “So good, Zoe,” he says.
“Taylor, please.” I don’t even know what I’m asking him for, but he doesn’t question me. He merely moves his mouth to mine, taking my lips against his, and kisses me until I can’t breathe, until my entire body is thrumming with the pure passion and pleasure of it.
Neither of us lasts very long. We come together in an explosion of heat and gasps and whispered promises that everything, finally, is going to be all right.
***
As we get ready to get breakfast, I check my phone and am surprised to find Ellie has left me ten messages.
“Hunter probably called her,” Taylor says.
I groan and call her back. It takes me a while to talk her down; she’s been making plans all day to go beat the crap out of Preston. And maybe Everett, Hunter, and Taylor as well.
Once I convince her I’m fine, Taylor takes me to the Burrito Barn for my favorite hangover remedy. The waiter brings us Cokes, and the sugar is exactly what I need.
“That’s perfect,” I say after taking a long gulp. “Nothing like sugar and fat for a hangover.”
Taylor watches me from across the table and doesn’t respond.
“What?” I ask, reaching up to fiddle with my hair. “Why are you staring at me?”
“Zoe, last night really scared me.”
I give a shaky laugh. “It scared me too.”
He leans across the table and takes my hand. “I know. But Zoe…the worst part was how I felt. How hard it was to get to you when I could barely walk.”
I scrunch up my face, unsure of what he means.
“I was trashed, Zoe. Completely-off-my-face hammered. I could barely get up the stairs to find you, and that was after I knew you’d gone up with Preston. What if I had passed out or something?”
I shudder at the thought of what might have happened had Taylor not made it up those stairs.
“I was scared, too.” I swallow. “I’m not the damsel-in-distress type, Taylor. I’ve kicked the asses of plenty of handsy guys over the years. But last night, when it really counted…I couldn’t even try to fight him. He was taking off my hoodie and covering my mouth and all I could think was how close I was to passing out.” A shiver runs through me. What would it have been like to wake up in a strange bed, naked, not even remembering what had happened? “So stupid,” I murmur.
“Hey,” he says, his voice harsh. “It was not your fault, Zoe. At all. I don’t care how drunk you were, that doesn’t give him the right to…to...” He trails off, as if he can’t even make himself voice the possibility of what might have happened. “Actually, the fact that you were that drunk makes him even more of an asshole.”
“I know that,” I say, patting his hand because it’s starting to shake again. “I know it wasn’t my fault. But it scared me to feel so out of control.”
“I don’t ever want you to be in that situation again,” he says, his voice hard. “And I don’t ever want to feel like I’m too out of it to get to you if you needed me.”
“Okay.”
“I think maybe we should take a break from the drinking.”
I look up at him, surprised. That is the last thing I thought he’d say.
Before I can respond, the waiter arrives with our burritos.
“Eat,” he urges me. “You’ll feel better.”
I take a few bites and another sip of Coke before I respond. “That seems kind of drastic.”
He gives me a rueful smile. “And shouldn’t that be a huge warning sign right there? That cutting back on booze seems, like, unheard of?”
I chuckle softly. “Yeah.”
“Look, Zoe. We both drink to have fun, and that’s fine. But you know as well as I do that most of the time we’re drinking to forget. Or to feel better. Or to feel nothing.”
I can only nod because a lump has formed in my throat. It sounds pretty pathetic put that way. I have a flash of the way Grace had looked at me last night and the lump grows. Taylor reaches across the table and takes my hand again. “Neither of us deals with our shit all that well, do we?”
I smile, shaking my head. He looks down at the table, and I see him swallow, hard. “Look,” he says, sounding embarrassed now. “The truth is, most of the time when I’m with you, I don’t feel like I need to forget anymore. I don’t feel like I need to get numb, not the way I used to.”
It’s suddenly hard to breathe. He finally looks up and gives me a half smile. “What can I say, babe. You’re like my new drug.”
I feel like I might cry, so I laugh instead. “Really?”
“Really.” His gaze is intense. The seriousness I see there makes my stomach flip. “Like I told you the other night; you take the edge off.”
I grin at him, loving so much that he remembers his exact words. They have the same effect on me now as they had then.
“So what do you think? Want to cut back on the party stuff? Take it a little easier for a while?”
For a brief moment I feel a little rush of panic. Can I really get through the days without drinking at all? Will I be able to sleep? Will I be able to deal?
But when I look up into his eyes, I realize he’s right. When I’m with him, I no longer need to turn it all off. He makes me feel calm, makes me feel whole. He’s far more effective than any bottle of liquor has ever been. And, so far, there haven’t been any nasty side effects.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I can deal with that.”
His smile fills me with a warmth that spreads right down to my toes. In that moment, I figure I can deal with just about anything if it will make him smile like that.
“So…” he says, rubbing his thumb tantalizingly over my knuckles. “How else will we fill our time?”
I grin at his flirtatiousness. “I don’t know. I’m kind of at a loss. Got any ideas?”
“Oh.” His voice drops a notch. “I can thin
k of a few things.”
“You really know how to put the moves on a girl, don’t you? I mean”—I look around the dining room and put a hand to my heart—“as if it wasn’t enough that you brought me to the Burrito Barn.”
He laughs, loud and deep. I’m grinning like a fool, but I can’t help it. It’s hard to believe the morning started the way it had. What is it about this boy that makes it so easy for me to forget the bad shit?
“Seriously, though,” I say, leaning toward him. “I know this is probably lame, but I’ve partied pretty much every weekend since I turned seventeen.” I choose not to mention that in the last few years that partying has spread out into more weeknights than not. “I’m kind of at a loss as to what else we’ll do.”
Something like sadness crosses over his face. I’m not sure why, but for some reason it makes me ashamed. But then he’s smiling again, and I try to push the feeling away.
“We can do all that normal shit that boring people do,” he says, his tone teasing. “Like…go to the movies. And out to dinner.”
I fake a huge yawn, and he laughs again.
“We can go to the beach.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s summer, Zoe. Normal people would totally go to the beach in the summer.”
“That actually sounds really good.”
“I have an idea. How ‘bout every week one of has to come up with some normal shit to do. Like go to the beach or…I don’t know, a fucking museum or something.”
I burst out giggling. “We are so not museum people.”
“Hey,” he says in mock outrage. “I am totally a museum person.”
“Sure you are.”
We look at each other for a moment, just smiling. I know Ellie would kick my ass for being such a girl if she were here.
“Maybe this will be fun,” he says softly. “Getting out there and exploring what else the world has to offer.”
His words hit me like a punch to the gut. It’s been years since I’ve thought of the world that way—as something to be explored and discovered instead of just something to get through. A wave of disappointment and regret rushes through me, making it hard to breathe. It’s as if the weight of how much I’ve changed over the last few years, of how much I’ve given up, how much I’ve lost, is crushing me.
“You okay?” Taylor asks, gripping my hand more firmly.
I look up into his gorgeous eyes, so intent on mine. I’m shaky and scared, as if I’ve suddenly caught sight of my reflection and can no longer recognize myself. Every decision I’ve made in the past four years has been designed to help me forget my real life. I’ve been on a constant quest to get numb, to stay asleep. With Taylor, I feel like I’m waking up for the first time in years. Am I ready for that? Will I be able to deal with what I find when I’m no longer sleeping?
I have no idea. So I do the only thing that I can think of. I squeeze Taylor’s hand and hold on for dear life.
Chapter Seventeen
Zoe
Taylor drops me off at home so I can check on my mom and informs me he’ll be back in forty-five minutes.
“Wear your swimsuit,” he tells me, his eyes shining.
Unfortunately, Mom is sleeping when I come into the house. I sit with her for a while, watching her chest rise and fall. She’s been showering and eating regularly, so she’s looking relatively clean and healthy. Her face is pale though, and when I try to wake her up to eat she rolls away, refusing to open her eyes. My stomach churning with worry, I take the sandwich to the kitchen.
Jerry ambles in as I open the fridge to store the sandwich for later. “I’ll take that,” he says.
I glare at him. “It’s for Mom. Have you even tried to get her to eat anything today?”
He laughs nastily. “What’s the fucking point? It’s like having a damn baby in the house, I swear. Wake her up to eat, to shower, to piss.” He gets right up in my face, and the stench of smoke and beer on his breath overwhelms me. “You’re wasting your damn time.”
I push into his chest, hard. “You’re a joke,” I say, and turn to head back to my bedroom.
“You don’t talk to me that way in my house,” he bellows. “Do you hear me, Zoe? This is my house!”
I make it to my bedroom, my heart pounding hard. I hate him. He’s vile and drunk and completely worthless. Why did she marry him? Why on earth did she bring such a waste of space into our lives?
“I’m not done talking to you!” he yells from just outside my closed door. Usually he just retreats to his basement, to drink some more and curse the ungratefulness of the Janes women.
He pounds on the door, and I jump up to lock it before he tries the handle.
“Open this door, damn it. I paid for it! I pay for all of it! You’re worthless, you hear me? You bring nothing to this household!”
I crawl onto my bed, pull my knees up to my chest, and cover my ears. It’s too much, on top of everything that happened this morning and last night.
I need a drink, and groan when I remember my agreement with Taylor.
Outside my door, Jerry is still going at it. “You eat my food, you use my shower, you sleep in my house. And what do I get in return? Smart-ass comments, that’s what.”
He’s going to wake up my mom. Not that I’m crazy about her sleeping so much, but the thought of her lying in that bed and listening to his tirade hurts my chest. I hate him.
“I have half a mind to kick you out, you lazy bitch!”
He goes on like that for a good ten minutes, pounding on the door and screaming all his vile hatred through the thin wood.
I change into my swimsuit quickly so I’m ready when Taylor arrives and try to block Jerry’s words out. It’s next to impossible when he’s screaming every bad thought I’ve ever had about myself right back at me. Dressed now, I cower on my bed, my hands over my ears. I don’t want to believe him, don’t want to let him infect me with his hatred. But I’ve spent the last four years telling myself all these same things—that I’m lazy, that I don’t do enough to help, that I’m helpless and hopeless and worthless. I can’t help my mother, not when it counts. I can’t help anyone. And I certainly can’t help myself.
My phone buzzes with a text message, and I’m so engrossed in my own horrible internal monologue that I jump in surprise.
I’m out front.
Taylor. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Taylor is here, and he’ll take me away to somewhere I won’t have to hear all about how horrible and selfish and useless I am.
I scramble from the bed and grab my bag, slipping my feet into my flip-flops before throwing the door open. Jerry stands there gaping at me, his face red, his chest heaving. He didn’t expect me to do anything but cower in my room.
“Get out of my way,” I say, my voice low.
“You don’t listen, girl! You don’t tell me what to do, this is my house and you’re—”
Before he can tell me what I am, I duck around him and rush down the hall. If I can just get outside I know he won’t follow me. I’ll be with Taylor and everything will be—
“Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” he yells, and grabs my arm, spinning me around to face him. Everything Ellie has ever told me about beating the crap out of men echoes in my ears. This isn’t like last night. I can defend myself against this scum.
“Get your hands off of me.”
“What are you going to do?” His face twists up in hatred and bitter amusement. I want nothing more than to punch him right between the eyes, to use my nails to claw at his horrible face until he bleeds. The only thing that stops me is the thought of my mother in the next room. She doesn’t need this.
“Let me go or I swear to God I’ll scream,” I say, fighting to keep my voice even. “There’s a guy outside waiting for me. You do not want to see what happens if he hears me scream.”
He narrows his eyes and tightens his grip. “You’re in my house.”
“And he’ll have no qualms about coming in to get me. And beating the e
ver-loving shit out of you if he sees your hands on me.”
I yank my arm back, and he lets go. Breathing hard, I turn and hurtle down the hall.
“I always knew you were no better than some little whore,” he yells, but I’m beyond caring. As soon as I can get the door open, I’ll be free.
I run down the lawn to Taylor’s car, pull open the door, and practically dive inside.
“Hey,” he says, surprise and concern clear on his face. “What’s—”
“Just drive,” I say, my voice shaking. I bury my face in my hands, trying hard to regain control of my breathing. “Please, just drive.”
For a second I’m afraid he’s going to demand an explanation. I should have known better. Taylor always seems to know just how much to press, what to demand, what I need. Without a word he puts the car into reverse and backs down the drive.
Still not speaking, he reaches over and takes my hand in his. And he doesn’t let go the entire drive.
Taylor
I want, more than anything, to know what upset her so badly. I want to know who it was that made her breathe like that, all shaky and panicked, so I can go into that house and kick the living shit out of them. But I can’t deny her when she begs me to just drive away. If that is what she needs, then that is what I want to give to her.
We drive in silence, her breathing slowly coming back to normal. I had done that for her, had given her the calm and escape that she needed. The knowledge that I’m capable of that, that I can be a source of comfort for her, takes away a bit of the guilt and self-hatred I’ve been feeling since the night before.
I’m falling head over heels for her. I realized it this morning when I saw her in my kitchen. Her hair was rumpled, her face creased from sleep. When she looked up at me, I actually saw her remember what had happened. She was reliving the entire goddamn thing, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. As I watched realization and pain crash over her, I knew, in that moment, that I would do anything to protect her. I’d give anything I had to keep her from hurting. I was pretty sure I’d die for her.
It scares the hell out of me, feeling like this. It was never supposed to get this far, not between us. We’re both too fucked up, too broken. What kind of life can we ever have together? I know she isn’t ready to hear that I might just love her. I doubt whether she’ll ever be ready.
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