by Mariano, Sam
In a twisted way, that’s kind of sweet. Still, my better intentions win out and I tell him, “I don’t want this. I appreciate the gesture, I think, but I don’t want or need you to take her down to punish her for showing me the video. It was a bitchy thing to do, but—”
“It’s too late now,” he assures me. “She’s off the squad. She’s done.” His arms tighten around my waist. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore.”
“Don’t go after anyone else. Please,” I add, shooting him my best puppy dog eyes. “Stop being destructive.”
Gazing at me with a gleam of mischief in his eyes, he asks, “What’ll you give me for it?”
“Why do I have to give you anything for it? It’s not for me.”
“You want to be a defender of the people, you pay the piper.”
“Fine. I’ll go to homecoming with you,” I offer. I gave away my dress money, but I could probably find something at a thrift shop, or maybe borrow a dress from Grace. I know she doesn’t want to wear the dress she wore last year, but I kind of liked it. Maybe I could give her some money for that one, then she could use the money toward a new gown for this year.
Carter shakes his head. “A big ask demands a bigger payment than that. Homecoming, stay the night with me tonight, and promise you’ll still go to New York with me after state, no matter what happens between now and then.”
Immediately suspicious, I narrow my eyes. “You mean no matter how many other girls you sleep with. No, I won’t agree to that.”
Giving my side a light squeeze, Carter remarks, “For someone who supposedly doesn’t want to be part of it, you are very concerned with my sex life.”
“I’m prepared to do homecoming and I can probably stay the night tonight, but that’s it. New York is not on the table.”
“Then I don’t stop terrorizing your friends,” he says, simply. “New York is non-negotiable to me. It’s what I was working toward all along. If New York is a no, it’s open season. I can do whatever, because I’m not going to get what I want at the end of the day anyway.”
“Why are you so set on me going to New York with you?” I ask, shaking my head.
“I told you I’d take you there. I know you want to go. When will you go, if not with me?”
I have no answer to that. “I can’t afford to go on an impromptu trip to New York, and it’s not right to expect you to pay my way when I’m not even your girlfriend.”
“Money is not your issue,” Carter states, dismissing my smoke screen. “Sex is your issue. You immediately dumped me when you thought I might’ve been with someone else, and now you’ve decided your feelings for me dissolve if I sleep with anyone else, even though we’re not together. You don’t want me if my dick gets hard for anyone but you. This is your possessive side coming out, doesn’t have a damn thing to do with money.”
“Fine, maybe it is,” I admit. “You don’t want anyone else touching me either, do you? I’m not alone in feeling that way.”
“The difference is, I’m not asking you to be celibate; I am happy to fuck you any time you want it. The road doesn’t go both ways. You make me bargain for sex. I have to wreak havoc in order to get you into bed, and then I have to budget our encounters so I don’t use them all up at once. All you have to do is shoot me a text. That doesn’t work for me. You are the only one I want to fuck, but if you’re not on the table, you can’t expect me to turn into a monk. That’s not going to happen.”
An ugly kind of fury burns through me at the thought of another girl in my place, of him kissing, touching, burying himself inside anyone but me. I don’t know what to do about it, but I don’t want that to happen. I especially don’t want it to happen unexpectedly and then be something I find out about later.
An idea bursts open inside of me, unsettling my tummy, but I open my mouth and let the words tumble out before I can stop myself. “Since when has me not wanting it ever stopped you? If you need to fuck someone and you’re not willing to wait any longer…” I trail off, swallowing, unsure what exactly I’m suggesting or how he’ll receive it. Part of me thinks he might tire of working so hard for me, but hell, it’s not like he’s a piece of cake, either.
His predatory instincts surface and he rolls me onto my back, moving on top of me. “Go ahead and finish that thought, princess. If I’m at a party with some girl who’s ready to go, I should, what? Leave her there and come see you? What if once I’m there, you tell me no?”
“Take it anyway.”
My heart gallops, giving him permission like that. We don’t have any kind of system set up where I can interrupt if no really does mean no that time, no safe escape if I want out of the moment. There is none of that with him, so it’s more dangerous to set him loose. He could potentially end up forcing me to do something I really don’t want to do, and even if I want it now, there’s no way of stopping him later if I change my mind. I have a feeling he only needs one yes, and telling him “no” ten thousand times after that would fall on deaf ears.
His voice is low, but so intimate, my bones turn to jelly as he murmurs, “Yeah? Even if I think you mean it?”
It was a terrifying ledge to tiptoe up to, a deeply buried truth I didn’t want to confess, but now that we’re here and I’ve already taken the leap, I feel bolder, freer in telling him the twisted truth. “Even if I mean it. I would rather you force me than sleep with someone else. I know you’d take care of me after, if something went wrong. Whatever happens between you and me, I can handle. I just don’t want you with anyone else.”
His fingers burrow into my hair as he cradles my head, pulling me in for a soft, tender kiss. I’m vulnerable in the wake of such an admission, so I drink in the affection like it’s the drug I need to live. When he ends the kiss, he stays close and murmurs huskily against my lips. “Do you know what you’ve done, princess? You just gave me the keys to the kingdom. There’s no stopping me now.”
I swallow, so aware of the truth of that statement. I knew that when I said it, though. I may not be ready to trust him with my heart again, but I do trust him with my body. I’m not afraid he’ll break that.
“I know,” I answer, softly, meeting his gaze. “I don’t want you to stop.”
For a moment, he just looks at me. As he does, he soaks up every last doubt I might have about the choice I just made, the big and the small. He might like to call me his plaything, but he doesn’t look at me like a toy. He looks at me like a treasure. Like the heavens opened up and dropped me into his lap, and he’s forever grateful for the gift, even if he doesn’t express it with words. Even if his way of loving is sometimes brutal and scarring, even if he is more predator than prince, somehow he is the perfect fit for me.
I don’t know what that says about me, but I don’t really care, either.
“I love you, Zoey.”
My heart gives, then flies high in my chest. I’ve never really expected to hear those words from his lips, and certainly not on this fucked up time table where we’re not even together. It doesn’t matter, though. We don’t have to be together to love each other. I have a feeling none of the rules of ordinary relationships will ever apply to us, unless we want them to. Whatever cloth he’s cut from, it’s not a normal one, and that’s fine with me. I love his abnormality. I love him just the way he is.
Smiling softly, I reach out and push a hand through his hair, guiding his face close to mine again. I kiss his lips tenderly a few times, then I tell him, “I love you, too.”
Chapter 49
Everything calms down after I give Carter the keys to the kingdom. He no longer has a reason to storm the castle gates, so he lets my life return to normal. No more terrorizing the people in my life to force me to come to him and bargain, no more insane rumors to try to force me into isolation. He treats my admission like a victory, and maybe it is, but it’s one I can live with.
No longer fearing the possibility of him with anyone else makes it all worth it, to be honest. I tried to ignore how stressful that was when i
t was happening, but now that it’s over, it’s as if a fifty pound weight has been pushed right off my shoulders.
I couldn’t save Erika. Not that I would have expended much effort trying, but by the time Monday rolls around, the hottest gossip around school is that she failed her drug test and is no longer a cheerleader. I don’t know how Carter managed that and I decided not to ask. I decided not to let her into our relationship any longer, because she has no place there. Sure, I feel bad about what happened, but Carter did warn her, and she did choose to treat him like he wasn’t a threat. I don’t think all is fair in love and war, but Carter clearly does, and she has known him longer than I have. Shouldn’t she have known that?
In any case, she does now. After hearing the rumors, I expected her to be out for blood, but to my surprise, she seems to finally accept defeat. She doesn’t show up to lunch Monday or Tuesday, but Wednesday she does. She doesn’t even look at her old table. She walks across the cafeteria and finds an empty spot somewhere else.
I don’t skip lunch in the cafeteria anymore. I don’t sit at the popular girls’ table where Carter’s girlfriend should sit, either; I sit right next to him at the guys’ table—the sole girl among them. Perhaps because of that, the message is clear that I’m with Carter, whether I say I am or not.
Now that we’ve come to our own arrangement, I’m less concerned about titles. Carter never much liked them, anyway, and all it did was make me feel pressured. Other people can be boyfriend and girlfriend; we will be Carter and Zoey.
By Wednesday night, Carter has already blown through his two remaining rounds of math test sex. Not that it matters now. He shows up at my house Thursday evening when the rest of my family is out and fucks me right in my own bed. It’s a brutal, noisy fuck, the kind of convincingly hateful fuck most people who like each other so much probably aren’t capable of. When my body is blissfully spent and drained of energy, I curl up next to him, wrap my arms around him, and nearly drift off to sleep.
His voice draws me out of it and my heavy eyelids drift open so I can look up at him.
“When I was younger, I had this babysitter. From the time I was eight until I was thirteen. Didn’t really need a babysitter by that age, but I liked hanging out with her. She was only six years older than me, so it was more like having a friend over than a babysitter, just a smart friend who could help with my homework when my parents didn’t want to.”
I push myself up in bed a little trying to shake the bleariness. “Okay,” I murmur, not quite sure where he’s going with this.
“When I was 12, she started playing this game with me. Sometimes she would bring stuff with her, sometimes we would use stuff around the house, but… she wanted me to put things inside her. She would wear a skirt with no panties, or a top with no bra. I always knew which game we would play by what she would show up in. No panties, I would put stuff inside her until she came. No bra, she’d want me to use my mouth.”
My stomach drops as I start to piece together what he’s saying.
Glancing at me a little uncertainly, he says, “It was kind of like a signal, so I guess I knew what was coming, but I couldn’t tell anyone. Wasn’t even sure what I would tell them, you know?”
I nod, my heart in my throat. I can’t get any words out past the lump, so I just nod like a broken bobble head doll.
“It went on for a while, then the game changed. Then it wasn’t enough for me to use stuff on her, she wanted me inside her. I didn’t even feel comfortable with the game, I didn’t want to do those things I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about. It all felt wrong, and not in a remotely sexy way.”
“Oh, God, Carter,” I murmur, knowing where this is going.
Clearing his throat, he says, “Anyway, so, that was Chloe’s mom. When she got pregnant, everything kind of went to shit. She freaked out because she knew what she had done was illegal, even though she told my parents I was the one to come onto her. I wasn’t,” he says, looking me straight in the eye almost defensively.
“I know,” I assure him.
“They either didn’t believe me, or didn’t want to. My father wanted to sweep it under the rug. He thought of it as something I had done wrong, something I had screwed up. He just wanted her to get an abortion and go away. My mom, though. She wouldn’t have it. According to her, it would be wrong and two wrongs didn’t make a right. My mom decided she would keep Chloe and raise her as my sister. Pay the babysitter off, make her sign an NDA.” He cracks a cynical smile. “She made me do shit I didn’t want to do, and she got paid for it twice. It was a nice fucking pay-off, let me tell you.”
“I’m so sorry, Carter,” I say, wrapping my arms around his bare torso and burying my face in his chest. This is so unexpected, I have no idea what to say to him.
“Anyway, that’s why we moved here. My father did have an affair, but that wasn’t the main reason, it was just the final straw. We moved here to start fresh, to leave behind all our skeletons. Sometimes they follow you though, even if you never see the person again. I don’t know if all this shit is why I am the way I am, but I do know how I was introduced to sex, and I still like it the same way, now I just like to be the aggressor.” He shrugs. “Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. I don’t know.”
My introduction to intimacy was a bit violent, too, and now I crave all the things he does to me. At this point, I have no better idea than him where these cravings originate, but I nod my head in understanding anyway. I don’t need for there to be a reason for the way Carter is anymore, but I can tell he’s trying to explain himself to me. He’s opening up and sharing with me the one thing he wouldn’t share before.
He’s letting me in, deep into depths maybe he doesn’t even entirely understand. Places maybe he hasn’t even fully explored. I squeeze him tighter, wanting to express my appreciation, but unsure how. Normally I would kiss him or do something physical, but that feels wrong in the wake of what he just revealed.
Judging by his tone, he’s ready to wrap it up, but he says, “Anyway, you wanted to know about Chloe’s mom. Now you know.”
Socked by a sudden memory of me asking him if he raped some girl and got her pregnant, I want the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I want to apologize for even asking that, but I also don’t want to bring it up again.
“Thank you for telling me,” I offer softly, meeting his gaze. “I’m so sorry that happened. I honestly… I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t need you to say anything.” He flashes me a half-hearted smile to let me know it’s okay. “You asked, I answered. That’s all.”
Cringing, I remember, “I asked you if you loved Chloe’s mom.”
“It was a reasonable question. You didn’t know. Anyway, I don’t like talking about it, so I’d rather if we didn’t. I just figured since you’re stuck with me, I should give you some of that openness you’re so fond of.”
It feels wrong to crack a smile, but I don’t want to make him even more uncomfortable than he already is, either. “I appreciate that, thank you. And if you ever do need to talk about it, you know I’m here.”
“I know,” he assures me, tightening his arm around me and leaning forward to kiss my forehead.
I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but I tip my head back so my lips meet his. His response is immediate; he pushes his fingers through my hair and cradles my head, closing his eyes and kissing me back. I want to offer comfort and support he swears he doesn’t need, but I have a feeling he will be more receptive to it coming physically than with discomfiting words. Usually there’s nothing tentative or uncomfortable about it when our bodies communicate, and while at first I wonder if this time will be an exception after what he just told me, he quickly disabuses me of that notion.
* * *
I go to his game Friday night, but I bring a spiral notebook from history class so I can study between plays. I also bring a hard copy of my book review, that way I can read through it again and make any necessary changes before I turn it in
on Monday.
“Workin’ through the game. I see your team spirit’s in full swing.”
I look up at Jake, standing there towering over me with a little smirk on his face. I wouldn’t look so smug if I were him, but I don’t want to get into it with him again, either. “Can I help you with something?”
He gestures to the bench beside me, occupied by the school stuff I’ve spread out there. “Mind if I sit?”
“I think Carter might,” I offer, since Carter’s word holds more weight with Jake than mine.
A cynical smile tugs at his lips. “I think Carter knows he’s the only asshole you’re interested in.” Gesturing to the full stadium, he says, “Place is full. I just wanna watch the game.”
Sighing heavily, I begin gathering my things to make room. “Fine.”
Once I’ve gathered my things in my lap, Jake scoots down the aisle in front of me and takes a seat beside me. It’s more awkward now, but I situate my stuff in my lap and look down at the field. I don’t know what’s going on, but I spot Carter in his blue and white jersey. Even from the distance, I can’t help noticing how much more imposing he looks with all his gear on. Mm, he’s so sexy. He glances my way, and on impulse, I wave at him.
I can’t tell from here if he cracks a smile, but he lifts his hand in a brief wave back.
“Don’t fuckin’ distract the guy,” Jake snaps. “We’ve got a lot ridin’ on this game.”
“I wasn’t distracting him,” I say, scowling at Jake. “They’re just standin’ on the field. Obviously I wouldn’t wave in the middle of a play.”
Shaking his head, Jake takes a swig from his Longhorn water bottle. Judging from the strong smell that wafts my way, it’s not water inside this week, either. “Just let him focus, fuck.”
I huff, returning to my notes. “You’re the distraction,” I inform him as I turn the page. “Now he looked up here and saw you sittin’ next to me. If he gets distracted, that will be why, not because I waved.”
