by D. N. Hoxa
She looked up at me for a second. “I think it’s time to start counting,” she whispered, and I knew exactly what she meant. I didn’t need to even think about it. One second I was looking at her endless blue eyes, and the next, my eyes were closed and I was tasting her.
“One,” she said, then kissed me. “For one.”
She was so close, her breath mine, that I kissed her again. And she kissed me back.
Three times…four.
She moved so fast, the next thing I knew, she was on my lap, and I was kissing her like my life depended on it. Her tongue did wonders to every cell in my body, and somewhere in the next ten seconds, she was on her back on the couch, and I was on top of her, between her legs.
The noises she made would haunt me for the rest of my days. I devoured her mouth like it was the only thing I cared for in life. She whispered my name as I kissed her face, her cheek, her delicious neck. She smelled of roses, only a lot better. When her lip trapped itself between my teeth, I was ready to give my whole life just to taste every inch of her like that. Her hands found their way under my shirt, and the touch of her hand burned me—there was no other way to explain it. It spread like fire through every part of me, as strong as it was wrong.
It took all I had to break away from her, and when I did, and she looked at me like I’d cut her lifeline, I almost sent everything to hell again. But I couldn’t. Because it was her. She was everything, and I couldn’t let myself lose my head like that.
“Willow,” I said, breathing heavily, like I expected her name to save me from myself.
“Adrian.” It was a question. Why, she said. Why did you stop?
“I need to go,” I said, because I couldn’t give her any other explanation.
“What?” she said, but I was already on my feet, aching all over because my body wanted to stay pressed against her still.
“I really need to go, Willow.”
Without a look back, I walked out of her house. I ran down the stairs of her porch before I stopped in my tracks, breathless. Just a few cars away was Doc’s Audi. I would’ve recognized the blue color of it anywhere.
What the hell?
The closer I got, the clearer my brothers’ faces became. They were really there, watching me.
I opened the passenger door, and neither of them looked at me. They continued to look ahead like they hadn’t even noticed me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I hissed.
“Get in the car,” Alan said.
“I’m not going to get anywhere until you tell me what the hell you’re doing here!”
“Don’t raise your voice at us, boy,” Doc said. “Get in the fucking car!”
I grabbed Alan by his shirt and almost fell on their laps. “This wasn’t the fucking deal. You’re not supposed to be anywhere near her.”
Alan grabbed my wrist and tried to pull my hand away, but didn’t succeed.
“You thought we were going to leave you unsupervised?” he said. “We can cause a scene right here, right now. Or you can get in your damn car, and we can talk at home.”
I never drove faster in my life. Half of me wanted me to crash into a tree. A wall. Anywhere, just not make it alive. Half of me wanted to live more than ever before, just to make sure my brothers never got to touch Willow. Not even see her face, ever.
I waited for them in the backyard, because they took their sweet time in getting there.
Doc opened the door to his car and said: “This is your own fault, pretty boy.”
“What the hell is the matter with you? You’re going behind my back now?”
“We had no other choice when we saw you with her,” Alan said.
“You’ve followed me before?”
I laughed like this was the funniest thing I’d heard all my life.
“We saw you by accident,” Doc said.
“And you decided to fucking follow me?!”
I thought back to every time I’d been with Willow. I’d walked the streets with her. I had lunch with her. Got drunk with her. Kissed her in front of a restaurant because I didn’t think anybody would see. And the thought that they’d been there all along made me sick.
“Of course we did. You get this look when you’re with her. And I’ve heard you laugh. You never laugh, Adrian. You’re laughing with her, and it’s dangerous,” Alan said.
“Laughing is dangerous?!”
“Damn right, it is. We’re going to kill her.”
It was the first time in my life that I hit my brother. I hit him with all my strength, right in his jaw, and it cracked like it broke, before his mouth and nose filled with blood. Doc grabbed my arms and pulled me back. I couldn’t move a single muscle.
Alan wiped his face with his shirt, and laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day my baby brother would hit me over a girl,” he said. “But then again, I never thought my baby brother would be so stupid as to fall in love with a girl he knows he’s going to have to kill. I actually thought you were pretty smart.”
Doc wouldn’t let me move, no matter how hard I tried to get away.
“Calm down, Adrian,” he kept saying in my ear.
“Get the fuck off me!”
“You’re not going to go see her again,” Alan said.
I laughed so hard my throat hurt. “Try and stop me.”
“This is for your own good, Adrian. You know we have no choice!”
“We do! We can…we can…” We can say no. It felt like a bomb went off in my stomach, but I still couldn’t say it.
“We can’t,” Alan said, shaking his head, looking at me like I was a fucking retard and couldn’t figure it out myself.
“I’ll fucking kill you if you touch her, I swear,” I hissed.
Doc pushed me forward so hard, I lost balance and fell.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. “Goddamn it, look at us! We’re threatening to kill each other now? We’re brothers, for God’s sake! What would Pops say if he saw this? What would Mom say?”
Strength left me just as I sat up. I didn’t have it in me to stand, so I stayed like that.
“Jesus, stop doing this to yourself, Adrian. We don’t have a fucking choice!” Alan kicked the dirt in front of my feet. It fell on my face but I didn’t even bother to blink it away from my eyes.
“We got Dad back, and now we have to pay the price,” Doc said. “Just be a man about it.”
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t speak.
“Look, you don’t even have to come,” Alan said reluctantly. “We’ll…we’ll handle it. Just promise me that you won’t go see her again.”
See her again.
Never see her again?
No, I couldn’t promise that. I’d rather die.
I ran to the woods when I could stand up on my own again. Night had fallen, and I saw next to nothing, but for the first time in my life, I had the feeling that someone was there. Someone other than me. My feet caught on something, and I tripped, flew forward, and landed on a tree. My foot hurt so I hit it. I hit the tree. It felt good, so I hit it again. And again. My arms and hands followed. I didn’t stop until my knuckles were covered in blood, skin completely torn.
“I quit!”
I shouted at the night because if someone was there in the woods, it would be him. The Devil. Who else? He would hear me. I knew he’d hear me. The wind blew, and when it did, it brought whispers to my ear.
You can’t quit.
“I fucking quit! I’m not going to hurt her!”
But I didn’t have to. I had two brothers who would.
I wondered, if I hadn’t known her, if I’d never gone after her in the first place, would it still hurt as much? So much that it made me want to cry out loud? Would it have been easier to become a murderer if I hadn’t seen her face under sunlight, kissed her lips, pushed her to do things she would’ve never done by herself? Would I have thought myself less guilty if I hadn’t urged her to live?
Maybe. Maybe not. I would never know.
When I went back to the house, I found Dad sitting on the porch. It must have been midnight. He never stayed up that late, but there he was.
I fell on the chair next to his, completely spent. Exhausted, though all I’d done is sit on the ground for the past few hours.
“How much bad does a person have to do, to do good?” I asked, hoping that, by some miracle, he would answer. “Huh, Dad? How much do you have to pay?”
But he said nothing. Instead, he went inside and came back a minute later with a first aid kit in his hands. He took my hands in his lap and cleaned them with alcohol before he wrapped bandages around my knuckles. I didn’t even feel the pain. But I felt his silence, loud and clear.
And when he was done, he put both his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. Looked at me like he was begging me. Like he was telling me to help him.
I would die, but I would never forget that look.
Eae
Love. I never really understood how powerful it was until I felt it myself. Until it consumed me so completely, I depended on a smile to want to live. It was amazing. It was dangerous. It was everything anyone really needed.
He was nothing but a boy. A boy with tattoos, beating on a tree, shouting at the sky that he quit.
I smiled at myself. “You can’t quit,” I said, but I didn’t know if he heard me until he shouted that he could.
It filled me, his voice. It came straight from the very bottom of him. From his very soul. He was in love with the girl he was ordered to kill. And he swore that he wouldn’t do it.
Seeing him suffer, cry and shout and kick trees, wasn’t a pretty sight, but I smiled nonetheless. I smiled, because the feeling in my gut that had brought me there all the way from New York had been right.
It was him. The one I’d been waiting for. The one who was going to keep me there on Earth and help me. The one who’d bring me back.
And I couldn’t wait to meet him.
Adrian Ward
I slept well into the afternoon, and even when I woke up, I didn’t leave my room. My stomach growled, but I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t even imagine putting food in my mouth without throwing up.
Instead, I lay in bed and thought of Willow, as I gradually felt my mind slipping away from me. I’d allowed myself to fall in love with a girl I knew I was going to have to kill. I hadn’t been prepared for it. I thought I’d never love. I was sure of it. She was so unexpected. She hit me hard and fast, before I even knew what the hell was happening.
And now I had to pay for every second I was with her, for every lie, every truth I told her, for every time I pushed her. I had to pay for it all every single day for the rest of my life.
Wouldn’t it be nice to lose my mind?
It would. But I didn’t know how.
Night had fallen by the time I made it downstairs. The walls of my room were closing in on me, and I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of there.
Dad was in the living room watching TV, and the boys were in the kitchen, on the other side of the house. They never stayed there unless they wanted to talk about something that Dad couldn’t know. I slowly approached the half open door until I heard them.
“We have to do it now, Doc. While they’re not here. It’ll be easier,” Alan said.
“It will,” Doc said. “But she never leaves the house after work. Unless she’s hanging out with Adrian.”
“Then that’s where we’ll take her. At the house. Nobody will be there,” Alan said. The blood in my veins froze. “We’ll go in through the back door.”
“What if she calls the police?” Doc said.
“She won’t. We’ll be careful. Quiet.” Alan sighed loudly. “I’ll go in alone, and you’ll watch for the neighbors.”
“And Adrian?”
“Leave him out of this. All that matters is getting the job done. He never said we all had to be there, did he? Let’s just give him a break with this one. He’s just a kid.”
“When?” Doc asked.
“Monday.” The day after tomorrow.
I ran to the front door and flew out of it. They heard me. I knew they did, but I didn’t care that they came after me.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Doc called.
“For a drive,” I said.
Maybe they knew I was lying. Maybe they didn’t. But they didn’t follow me. Just to make sure, I left my car a block away from Willow’s house, and walked from there.
The day after tomorrow. They were going to do it the day after tomorrow. Kidnap her. Kill her. And I would have no choice but to stand aside and let it happen. I had to stop, sit on her doorstep to catch my breath, because tears were flowing down my cheeks. My face was wet. My mind tormented with images of her lifeless body. My body on fire.
I had two choices, the way I figured. I could spend every second she had left with her.
I could run away, disappear, and never let her see me again.
The second choice would have been easier. Better for her.
But if there was a time in my life when I was selfless, I would’ve never made that deal. I was selfish. I wanted her for as long as I could have her, the Devil be damned.
So I knocked on her door and I waited.
“What do you want, Adrian?” she said when she saw my face. She was mad. It was a great look on her.
“Hi.” My eyes searched every inch of her face, memorizing it for when I wouldn’t see it anymore.
“You know, I’m sick of your changing moods, Adrian. You can’t just come knocking on my door whenever you want to. Not after yesterday.”
Oh, she was trying to sound angry. Angrier than she was. But her eyes still lit up when she met mine. Her lips still stretched into a smile that she hid by raising her voice.
“I love you, Willow.”
I’d never said this to anyone, ever before in my life. I’d never spoken those three words in that order out loud. Ever. But she needed to hear it. She needed to know how amazing she was. She had me fall in love with her within a week.
“What?”
“I’ve fallen in love with—”
“No, no, I heard you. I just…”
She shrugged and continued to look at me like she would’ve given the world to see what was inside my head. But she was a fool if she couldn’t already tell that everything in there was about her.
“I’m sorry about yesterday. And about everything.” I said, sorry for more than she would ever know. “And I know I can’t come here whenever I want to, but I—”
“No, no. You can come here whenever you want when you have stuff like that to say,” she whispered. Then she grabbed me by my shirt, pulled me inside the house, shut the door, and pushed me against it. “Who the hell are you, Adrian Ward?” she said, and I almost didn’t hear her because she pressed her whole body against mine. Her mouth was but a small inch away from mine.
“I’m just a boy,” I said and kissed her lips. “One…”
She kissed me the next heartbeat. “For one.” She put her arms around my neck and kissed me again. “Two…”
“For two.” I inhaled the scent of her until it touched the very bottom of me, before I kissed her again. “Three…”
“Forever.”
I’d take forever for as long as it lasted.
We didn’t count the next kiss, because we didn’t know how. She overran my senses with her taste, her smell, her touch. She held me as tightly as I held her, as if she knew she’d soon have to let go. But for that night, we just held on.
I pulled her up and she wrapped her legs around my hips, but I never let her break that kiss. It had replaced air for me, and I didn’t think I could survive the moment without it.
She somehow managed to pull my shirt off, and we had to break apart until she took it all off. “Upstairs,” she said breathlessly before she sealed her lips with mine again.
Stairs, kisses, the most powerful desire I’d ever felt, and then a room. A bed. We fell on it, still wrapped
in each other like that. It wasn’t all lost on me how wrong this was. I was taking advantage of her, and she didn’t even know it. But then, as if she’d read my thoughts, she grabbed my face in her hands and pushed me back, just a little, so she could look at me. Her blue eyes locked mine in place, full of determination.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered. It was a plea. It was an order. Whatever it was, it rooted itself deep into my mind, and took control of my body. Stopping was no longer an option.
I took her shirt off and touched the skin under it for the first time. I prayed for my hands to remember that feeling forever.
Her hands shook as she touched my chest, then unzipped my jeans.
“Willow, are you sure?” I said, and my eyes begged her to say yes. She did. Three times. She was sure.
I found the buttons of her shorts and somehow managed to pull them off all the way without breaking our kiss. She pushed my jeans off with her feet as well as she could while my fingers tasted her naked stomach, her chest, her back. The black bra she had on melted on her pure, white skin, but it looked even better off her, on the floor. The need to look at her, just look at her like that, pulled me up to my knees.
She breathed heavily as she looked up at me, and I didn’t think I could ever get enough of that sight. Beautiful didn’t do her justice. No other words did, so I didn’t speak. I let my body speak for me.
She felt so soft and fragile against me. I wanted to hide her from the whole world. Keep her to myself forever.
Her hands touched me like she was afraid she’d break me, while I grabbed her with everything I had because I couldn’t help myself. She pushed my underwear off impatiently, and I almost tore hers off completely.
I was sure she could hear the beating of my heart over our heavy breathing. It was torture to find my jeans with one hand while touching her everywhere I could with the other. It was worse finding my wallet, and the condom in it.
She urged me to move faster, and I would have laughed if I was capable. I loved her impatience. I loved how she pulled me to her, wrapped her arms around my neck, a silent promise that she wouldn’t let go.
