by Mariah Dietz
She closes her eyes, her laugher growing. “I couldn’t believe that guy fell out of his Whirlybug.” She sobers too quickly, her gaze falling from mine. “We should probably get going. You have practice in the morning, and I have class.”
“Look at you knowing my schedule,” I chide.
She shakes her head, the ghost of a smile sparking in her eyes. “This was fun. Thanks for bringing me.”
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I tell her.
“Me, too.” She cuts her gaze to the side, blinking too fast.
I should leave her alone—recognize her emotions are too raw. And I don’t want her to associate me with these feelings of deceit and betrayal when she likely has enough stacked against me. But, the same thoughts have distracted me, leading me to see her after practice with the excuse of Paxton as a convenient intro. “Has he done that before? Acted like that?”
Rae cuts her blue eyes to me, the humor replaced with a sheen of sadness that evokes a keen sense of aggression in me, wishing I could destroy anything that created this level of grief. “I keep wondering if I just never saw him for who he really was or if this has changed him? You know? Did being caught just make him flip some sort of switch? I don’t know. I mean, he’s never hit one of us, that was…” She clasps a hand to her forehead. “Maggie.” She exhales. “We never called Maggie.” She spins, looking at the walls, stopping when she spots the large clock that relays it’s nearly nine. “Shit. It’s too late. I’ll wake her up.”
My feelings for her are being held back by what feels like a simple piece of tape. It’s flimsy, and transparent, and has no chance of holding everything back. “Call her tomorrow. She’ll understand.”
“I meant to call her earlier. I was trying to call my mom, so I could check in with her before I called Maggie so I could give her a better update, but my aunt said she was napping and suggested I give her a couple of days, and I forgot to call Maggie.”
I place a hand on her shoulder, realizing these past ninety minutes are merely a piece of tape for her as well. I don’t have the right words, I’m not sure they even exist, but I pull her toward me, wrapping my arms around her back, feeling each rigid muscle. I stroke a hand over her hair, brushing it behind her ear. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got this. I’ve got you.”
The doubt remains, her muscles still bunched, but then she leans into me, setting her forehead against my shoulder. “Don’t tell Pax we hung about … whatever this is. I don’t want him worrying. He needs to focus on football, so do you. You guys have two games left before bowl games.”
She remains in place, her breaths slowing as I continue the same path over her hair. “Pax will be fine. We just need to have a come to Jesus conversation with him to kick him in the ass. He listens to you, but we can do it together. I’ll push the message, and you being there will make him listen.”
She nods. “I’ll be there.”
The lights flash, indicating the impending closure, and Rae steps back, her lips lifting with a hesitant smile. “I have to grab my things before they shut off the lights.” I follow her to the benches to grab her coat and purse before leading her back out to the darkened parking lot, the rain a fine mist. Rae doesn’t duck or try and cover her hair like many girls do as they race across campus in this weather. Instead, she closes her eyes and tips her face skyward. Slowly, she lowers her chin, her gaze meeting mine before she smiles.
“Whirlyball. Maggie would love this.”
Her refusal to be swallowed by this situation is proof that she fought just as hard as the doctors who worked to save her. Raegan Lawson is many things, but fighter is at the top of her list.
“What?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I was just thinking of when you were in the hospital… Your nurse called you Zenobia.”
“Zenobia?”
“A woman who defied all odds and became a warrior queen a very long time ago.”
Her brow creases. “I thought you weren’t at the hospital?”
“Mentally, I’m not sure that I was.”
Confusion pinches the outer corners of her eyes.
“I didn’t know what to do. Your parents were there, your brother, Maggie. I didn’t know who knew what and…” I pull in a breath of air, tracing my thoughts during those days, trying to make sense of what happened. It feels like another lifetime ago, and yet the fear feels like it was born just yesterday, still fresh in my thoughts and chest. “I came every fucking night to see you.”
She stares at me, her thoughts once again racing like they so often do. I want to ask her for some insight—a glimpse at her opinions of me with the truth now laid between us. “It’s late,” she says.
It’s not. But before I can object her phone rings, and I already know by the song that it’s Poppy. Raegan doesn’t hesitate, reaching for it as she walks toward my truck.
I trail her, catching her assurances to Poppy before her eyes cut to me. “Yeah, I’m actually with Lincoln.” I can’t hear Poppy’s response, but Rae’s gaze shifts and she turns so her back is to me, and her voice drops with her next reply.
I get into the driver’s side, allowing her the privacy she’s seeking and turning the truck on so it can warm up.
Only a few seconds pass before she opens the passenger door and hops in.
“Everything okay?”
She nods. “Yeah. Everything’s good.”
The drive back to Beam Me Up to get Rae’s car goes too fast, the roads nearly empty, my admission seeming like a greater regret with each second of silence stretching.
I pull into the parking lot and drive to the back where Rae’s white Honda is parked. My headlights cast a beam across the hood of the car, where my full attention is pulled and then stops at the sight of a paper crane under her windshield wiper, and then her flat tires. I scan over the bare parking lot, the darkened coffee shop, the empty streets.
“What’s wrong?” Raegan asks.
My knuckles are white from gripping the wheel as I pull into the spot next to her car. “Stay here.”
“What?” She turns, her hand already on the seat belt retractor.
“Stay here,” I repeat, cranking my door open and slamming it shut behind me before taking a few steps to her car and retrieving the note that is too dry for the current weather conditions. I walk around the car, checking out the tires that are all flat.
With another sweep over the parking lot, I climb back into my truck, pinching the offending paper between my fingers. “You’re still getting these?”
Her eyes shift between mine, likely reading my anger and annoyance and trying to interpret if it’s at her or the letter.
“How many?” I demand.
“They had stopped,” she says. “For weeks.”
“When did they start again?”
“A few weeks ago.”
Her answer sends the palm of my hand colliding with my steering wheel. “Weeks?”
Her eyes narrow with defiance. “Prior to a week ago, we weren’t talking. I wasn’t going to come to you about this.”
“Did you tell anyone? The cops? Paxton? Your parents?” I know she didn’t because Pax sure as shit would have told me.
Her jaw is tense as she stares at me. “I know you’re probably coming at this from a place that isn’t straight out of the depths of asshole, but right now, it feels like that. So rather than me getting offended and us yelling at each other, I’m going to ask you to drive me to Poppy’s.”
“No. You’re going to the house with me.”
Her brow flattens. “Like hell I am.”
“Someone slashed your fucking tires. You’re not going to be by yourself.”
“Did you miss me mentioning going to Poppy’s?”
I put the truck into reverse and then hit drive. My foot falls heavier on the gas pedal when we hit the road.
“Is this seriously how you’re going to react?”
I keep my gaze on the road, wishing I could go faster, my shoulders tense as I lose my
head to the one thing that has always been my greatest vice: fearing she’ll leave—whether she chooses to or otherwise.
“You can’t just ignore me,” she says. “We need to talk. You need to use words, Lincoln.”
“You already know what I’m thinking.”
“That you’ve lost your mind?”
A sardonic laugh cuts through my lips and the silence.
“The last notes weren’t creepy. They seemed almost … sad.”
“Let’s go back to your idea of not talking about this right now.”
She growls with irritation. “You’re infuriating. This is absolutely unnecessary and ridiculous. Poppy is expecting me, and I have no desire to sleep on your guys’ couch.”
My tires eat the miles until we pull into my neighborhood, where I finally slow down.
“Will you respond?” she cries.
I slide into my parking spot and turn my truck off. I track over her menacing stare, the annoyance and impatience sitting heavily on her drawn shoulders, the twist of her lips that I want to go to war with.
I shove my door open and head toward the front door, hearing her slam the passenger door before I reach the first step.
“What are you doing?” she yells.
I unlock the door and shove it open. Inside, the house is dark. Caleb is likely gaming in his room or has already gone to bed, and Arlo and Pax’s cars were absent from their spots. I close the door after she stalks inside, locking it before I turn toward the stairs and take them two and three at a time, wishing I could outrun these feelings that are crashing down on me, one blow after the other, each with more impact.
“You don’t get to just walk away whenever things get messy,” she says, following me, albeit, at a slower, more measured pace. Maybe this is where the advantage of having siblings plays a role. Or perhaps it was having parents who previously worked through their shit rather than threw it in each other’s faces and then ignored the other one like they didn’t exist. “Lincoln.”
I turn, facing her as she strides toward me. She stops abruptly, nearly running into me. The annoyance is still visible in her eyes, but along with it is confusion and vulnerability and something that looks way too damn similar to disappointment. It’s a look that undoes me, strips me of my anger and sense. “I can’t do it again.”
Her blue eyes shift between mine for several seconds, attempting to read through my words. “Do what again?”
“I nearly lost you to a fucking ocean, I’m not about to let you go test the threat level of some psycho. It’s not happening. You can be mad at me, you can stomp your foot, you can call me an asshole, but you’re not leaving.”
Raegan parts her lips, and I know before hearing her words, they’re going to be of doubt. “This is insane. I don’t even understand why you think you get a say in—”
I tag her around the waist, hauling her flush against me, my lips bracing her fall. Her muscles are rigid, her mouth closed. She pulls back, her eyes flashing to mine.
“I need you. I need you to stay here and have some fucking self-preservation. I need you in ways I’ve never needed anyone—in ways that scare the shit out of me. I need you because I don’t feel like myself without you.” I can’t even manage to regret my admission because it’s a thin shave off the surface of my feelings and thoughts.
Rae closes her eyes, her lips falling to mine, meeting in a dance that reminds me of middle school with darkened gymnasiums and our teachers filing around with rulers in their hands, everyone unsure about where to place their hands and what something so simple might mean. But those trepidations have never existed, not with her.
With our lips still clumsily trying to sort through the mess we’ve created, I back up into my room, closing the door with the toe of my shoe before locking the door and pressing her against it. It’s nearly black in the space, a thin filter of light creeping in through the window shade because a street light is directly below. She wraps her hands around my shoulders, and I slant my head, gaining a better angle of her mouth. I slide my tongue along hers, demanding everything she has to offer while giving what’s left of me that she hasn’t already taken. I press against her, so close that doubt can’t reach either of us as we lose ourselves in this kiss that I know will define the rest of my days.
I slide my hands to her waist, her sweatshirt and shirt bunching as I reach for her skin, needing to feel her flesh against mine. The heat of her hits my palms, and her hips tip closer, a soft moan touching her lips that I lick the traces clean from. She grabs the bottom of my sweatshirt, tugging it upward, her fingers cold as they graze my skin. I press a searing kiss to her mouth, taking her bottom lip between my teeth before I pull away to rid my sweatshirt and tee, dropping them to the floor. Her fingers brush over my chest, my stomach, my shoulders. Her eyes are hooded, heavy with lust and something I want to capture and memorize while also running away and forgetting it.
“We’re complicating things,” she says, her voice as soft as her touch.
“Words complicate things. Rationalizing complicates things. Expectations complicate things. This—us, this is the only thing that doesn’t feel complicated.”
Raegan kisses me again, the gentleness gone, replaced with the same desire that’s been burning inside of me for months. We’re a set of fumbling hands and limbs and jumbled kisses as we strive to free the layers separating us, neither willing to stop kissing for more than a fraction of a second as we tug on zippers and buttons and fabrics until we’re both in our underwear. Her chest is rising and falling with heavy, needy breaths that make her breasts swell beneath the blue-green fabric of her bra that I’d left on in an attempt to slow things down. I trace the line where her skin meets the silky fabric with my fingers and eyes, my breaths growing short and ragged.
This moment deserves a conversation, an understanding, and a full-fledged agreement that won’t be rewritten by regrets later. I kiss her, searching for that familiar hit of dopamine she offers. The moment her lips meet mine, pressing her chest against mine, our skin basking in a moment of celebration has me losing myself in our shared kiss, my tongue stroking hers, her breaths fast, hungry. She moves her hands from my shoulders, and then the nearly silent clip of metal is followed by her bra falling against my chest before she unthreads her arms and lets it fall to the floor. Her breasts are perfect and distracting as I consider all the ways I’d like to please her.
“Do you have protection?” she asks.
“Rae…” my voice expresses my internal war, knowing this probably shouldn’t happen tonight and my growing desire that makes it feel inevitable.
“I want you to consume me,” she says, licking her lips where my eyes are trained, hearing her words repeat in my thoughts, shredding what was left of my conscious thoughts.
I bend at the waist, swiping my tongue over her nipple, her quiet hiss of shock, feeding the inferno in my gut. I run my hand down her back, stopping where her hips swell. I lean into her, my lips tracing her ear. “Lie on my bed.”
With my hand still at her waist, I lead her to my bed, pulling the comforter back as an invitation. She slips into my bed, the lacy strips of her underwear still in place. I trace over her, feasting on each perfect curve and line, stopping on her arm where the scar from that night is still a prominent reminder. I lean forward, pressing a kiss to the skin, feeling the deep groove where the cut was the worst, and follow it with my tongue. When I sit up, she’s watching me, her hair fanned across my pillow in a scene I’d pay my life to repeat every day. I keep my weight on one fist, dipping my face to meet hers, caressing her tongue with mine with languid strokes, my free hand exploring her body. I memorize each line, each plane, each crevice of her blindly, learning each sensitive place by her reactions, the way her muscles constrict and her breaths pause, the way her teeth reach for my lips and the times her breaths turn into moans.
“Do we have to worry about Pax or anyone hearing us?”
I shake my head. “Pax and Arlo haven’t been staying here. Caleb
is at the end of the hall, and he’s either asleep or has his headphones on.”
She nods, reaching for the back of my neck and tugging my mouth against hers again, kissing me firmly before I reposition myself, peppering kisses across her nose, her cheeks, her neck, her chest, until I reach her breasts, where I swirl my tongue over each taut peak before taking each into my mouth, tracing the orb of her breasts with one hand while rubbing her free nipple with the other. Her short nails rake against my skin with pleasure as I trail a path of kisses down to her pubic bone. She shifts, sucking in a breath as I lace my fingers into the waist of her underwear and shimmy the fabric down her legs.
I kiss her stomach, and then the invisible line where her underwear had been. She bites her lip, squeezing her eyes shut with anticipation. I feel like I’m a fucking king as I explore her, tracing over the sensitive skin of her folds, and then sliding my finger along her clit, her breath hitching as her hips rock. I trace the line of her clit to her entrance several times, changing the pressure with each pass until her breaths are pants, and then I dip a finger inside of her, making her breath leave in a loud sigh. “You’re so fucking wet,” I whisper, shifting so I can trace the same line with my tongue as I continue to finger bang her. I insert a second finger and am met with approval as her hips lift from the bed. The taste of her stains my lips as I sit up, running a hand over her thighs as my fingers continue to rub inside of her, drunk on each gasp and moan that I elicit. Her hands fall from my shoulders, and she clenches the sheet in her fists, each of her breaths coming faster and harder. With her legs spread, I dip my face, tracing her again with my tongue, each swipe ending at her clit as her hips tremble until I know her most reactive and sensitive spot where I focus my attention until she cries out with pleasure, her hands tangled and her lips parted.
I breathe her in like a drug before reaching for my nightstand and grabbing a condom. She watches me silently. I fist the condom, leaning down and kissing her again. It’s needy and demanding, an attempt to verify if this is what she wants. I wait for hesitance, but she greets me with a brazenness that makes me forget I’m about to take her virginity.
