Entice

by S. E. Hall

  I’m frozen; in shock, in anger, in awe…I’m fucking frozen.

  “I dug around for my shoes and snuck out, walking as fast as I could to the bus stop. I’d ridden with a girl I knew from school, but I didn’t want to look for her or talk to her ever again, so I just walked and walked until I saw a sign.”

  Make it stop, I can’t hear anymore.

  “When I got to the hub, I finally took a breath and went to put on my shoes. When I—” Her body racks under the violent sobs and I can’t not hold her another minute, sliding across the bench and wrapping her in my arms. “When I lifted my foot, to put…to put on my shoe, I felt it.”

  I can’t ask; I don’t want to know. Instead, I hold her tighter, manically kissing her hair as I smooth it down. Rub, kiss, rub, kiss…it’s all I can do efficiently right now.

  “It hurt, like a pull inside me, and a spurt of something came out.” She wipes her nose and looks up at me apologetically. “Sorry, that might be too much. I meant, I knew, I just knew, I’d been with someone.”

  “You were raped.” The words burn my mouth, the sting of venom fresh on my tongue.

  “No!” She’s quick to answer, but then frowns as her reaction sinks in. “I don’t know, maybe. I remember dancing with a guy, so maybe I flirted too much. I was out of it enough to not remember, so maybe I was out of it enough to say yes. I’ll never know for sure.”

  Another moment I’ll always remember—I’ve never been so angry and consumed with absolute hatred in my life. The person I now hate most in the entire world is a stranger; a man with no name or face known to me, who will die the moment, if ever, we meet.

  “Don’t you ever say that again!” I hope my grip on her chin is gentle as I grasp it to make her meet my eyes. “This was not your fault. You can’t say yes and mean it when you’re drugged, which it sounds like you may have been, or even passed out. And anyone with it enough to do what he did would’ve been able to see you weren’t in your right mind.”

  “I know,” she pulls her face from my grasp and buries it in my chest, “but my version makes it bearable. Maybe I just drank too much. Sometimes, not very often, I have dreams and see flashes of a scene I don’t understand. I’m not sure if it’s something I was there for or a nightmare I made up after…it.”

  “Did you go to the ER when it happened, Emmett?”

  “No,” she looks up, “and please don’t yell at me about it. I thought if I couldn’t remember actually saying no, then I couldn’t accuse someone, let alone a faceless stranger, of being a rapist.”

  “Are you worried he knows you?” I ask, because whoever he is, he better hope like fucking hell I never find out. I will kill him, no questions, no chance for explanation. I know myself, what I can and cannot handle reasonably—it would be both his and my “game over”—him underground, me to jail.

  “No,” she mumbles. “I moved, sold my car, changed schools and jobs, everything, even though I seriously doubt he even knew my name, or cared. I’m sorry, Gramma,” she wails, the most agonizing sound I’ll ever hear, “but I’m keeping this baby. I don’t care if it’s selfish, I am! I’m not afraid of the bus or hard work!” She pauses and hiccups. “I’m…I’m afraid of one day looking into the eyes of another child I have with my husband and knowing I didn’t do everything I could to love the first one!”

  “Shh.” I gather her up in my embrace as tight as I can. “No one thinks you’re selfish, babe. Wanting to pour all your love onto someone else couldn’t ever be thought of as selfish.”

  “But I worry that I won’t be able to give them a good life. Like if I gave the baby up for adoption, maybe they’d get a family with a big house and a backyard, maybe some dogs.” She loses it again, succumbing to body shakes and gasping cries.

  Sweet girl, her thoughts scrambled but adorable. “We can get a dog, babe,” I assure her. “I love dogs.”

  “So now you know it all. That’s why we can never be more than friends. But like it or not, I feel a bond with you. I trust you and I can’t bear the thought of not having you in my life. Will you please keep being my friend?” Her bottom lip is quivering as her watery green eyes beg an answer from me.

  And I’m a goner—bag me and tag me, I’m done.

  “Yes, sweet, beautiful, selfless Emmett. I’ll be your best friend.”

  Chapter 12

  Not Cruel Intentions

  —Emmett—

  I have a whole new outlook on life. My steps have an extra spring, my shoulders a lightness I haven’t felt in months, and my journal pages have happy little doddles in the corners. Now that Sawyer knows everything and let me keep my job and his friendship, for the first time in a long time, I have hope that everything really will be all right.

  Against my better judgment, I moved into the duplex by him. Actually, I quit bitching and smiled as he moved my stuff in it, then made him a sandwich. Then when he looked around and sighed, I made him another one.

  I still want him every time I look at him, but we’ve kept things strictly platonic for the last two weeks. I’m sure it’s not a struggle for him, with the new information he’s been given, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me. My hormones kick in more and more every day and we’re together constantly and much of the time he’s shirtless, or being cocky, or sexy…or breathing.

  He’s always with me when I fall asleep, telling me about himself or his day. Constantly, after my eyes have drifted closed, he nudges me when the “good part” is coming up in the movie. And when we drag in from work together, late at night, my bath’s usually running before I even have both shoes off. And he, or a sweet note, is always there when I wake up.

  So it more than hurts a little and feels like that balloon of hope I’d been carrying around just popped when I round the corner at work Friday night and see Mariah practically lying across the bar in front of him. I stop short and observe from afar, the dagger cutting deeper as he looks down at her and shoots her that sexy grin of his that I so love. She runs one hand up his arm and he dips his head to let her whisper in his ear, then laughs and nods when he pulls back.

  I know I’ll never be his, or him mine; I’m pregnant and a constant charity case for him to rescue, but he deserves better than Mariah. She’s not smart enough to pick up on his quick wit or keep up her end of a late night, snacks in bed conversation. She couldn’t possible appreciate his kindness, once you get past the growling and under the breath bossiness, and if she doesn’t say “thank you,” then he won’t get to ask her stuff and they’ll never build a real relationship. And his races, which he’s almost completely stopped for some reason…but should he ever start up again and take her, there’s no way she’ll focus and cheer for him rather than skank along the sidelines for her next slut fix. And oh my God, he’ll flunk Calc II! He thinks he’s good, but he’s horrid, so you have to go back and erase his answers and forge in the right ones in sloppy handwriting. She probably can’t even add!

  I should stomp over there right now and rip her off that bar by her badly bleached hair, for Sawyer’s sake and all, but I can’t. That’d be more of my selfishness keeping him from being single, young, and carefree, to keep him strangled with my polar opposite drama.

  I rub my belly and whisper, “I didn’t mean you were drama. I love you and I’m happy you’re coming.”

  As though he can feel my gaze, he averts his attention from Piranha, which sounds an awful lot like Mariah and can’t possibly be a coincidence, and stares back at me. Like a pathetic sap, I lift my hand and give him a small wave and a contrived smile.

  “You okay?” he mouths to me.

  I nod abruptly and turn, not wanting him to see my agony. I’ve got to stop this, stop begrudging him a life that doesn’t include me. I need to stop picturing how perfect we could be in my head. I need to stop thinking about a little boy atop his shoulders laughing and clapping.

  I seek Kasey out amongst the mass of bodies, the heat and stench of sweat almost more than I can take. I always try to skirt aro
und the edges, never one to bear the brunt of the epicenter of the club, but I have to talk to him, so I barrel through.

  “Hey!” I yell, tapping him on the back.

  “What’s up?” he screams, cupping around his ear.

  I bend my finger and he leans down to me. “I have to get out of here; I really don’t feel well. Can you let Sawyer know? Give Darby my tables or let them order from the bar. I gotta go.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He ushers me carefully through the crowd. “Go grab your stuff and I’ll walk you out.”

  I have to admire his tenacity. When I shut off my phone after about forty calls and texts, he took to beating on the door. And after I ignored that and heard Tucker, the tenant in the other half of this duplex, come out and ask him politely to stop banging, I can now hear him trying to take the screen off my bedroom window.

  Creepy? Yes, but I know it’s him and not a deranged burglar, just a deranged Sawyer. Even when he gets the screen off, I don’t think he’ll break the window, so I’m gonna lie here and try my best to block him out.

  “Emmett Louise Young, I’m gonna spank your fucking ass when I get in there!” I hear him hiss outside the window.

  “Go away, Sawyer!”

  “Do you want me to break the glass? I don’t want it to fly across the room and cut you, so just come open the damn thing! Or here’s a thought, go open the goddamn door!”

  “Go home, Sawyer!”

  “Not happening, woman,” he mocks me in a singsong tone. “I’m counting to three, so if you’re not gonna open it, at least get back. I don’t want you hurt.”

  He wouldn’t.

  “One!”

  I don’t think he would.

  “Two!”

  Shit, okay! “I’m coming! Simmer down, you crazy man!” I brush aside the curtains and look out at the man I can’t seem to shake, the moonlight a melodic backdrop to his angry, muscular, adorable glory.

  The second I have the window latch flipped, he’s pushed it open and already hoisted himself through. “You are in some serious trouble, Shorty.”

  “And you are scarily close to needing medication. What the hell are you doing crawling through my window in the middle of the night? Did you leave all your brain cells inside Mariah?”

  It’s the meanest thing I’ve ever said to someone in my life and I already regret it.

  “Is that what this is about? You think I fucked Mariah?”

  “You sure as hell looked close to it at the bar!”

  He stalks toward me until I’m backed against the wall, the lazy moon our own only light. “I was trying to be distant but polite. I didn’t want to cause a damn scene. What do you care anyway?”

  “I don’t care! You came to me!”

  He grabs the finger I’m poking into his chest and pulls me forward with it, coming nose to nose with me. “You leave work without telling me. You don’t answer your phone, texts or your door. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

  I like it better when he screams; this low, gritty voice is steering me a bit off course.

  “Nothing! You’ve done enough! My car, my house, my job, everything is because of you! I can’t use you anymore. I’m such a goddamn leech I can’t even look myself in the mirror! Quit worrying about me, Sawyer, go be happy. Fuck Mariah sideways if that’s what it’ll take, but leave me be!”

  “Fine!”

  “Fine!”

  I’m not sure which my neighbor, Tucker, will appreciate more, our volume or our extensive vocabularies.

  Surprisingly, I don’t cry this time. No, I’m too wound up from being screamed at and pseudo-burglarized to cry. I know the nausea, which you’d expect from pregnancy, is from picturing him and Mariah together, not the hormones. I climb back into bed and curl in a ball, turned toward the wall.

  It’s not the lack of loud foot stomps or the absence of an opening or slamming door that clue me in…no, it’s the charge in the air, the tingling that starts at the base of my spine and slinks its way up until the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I know he’s still here, looking over me.

  “I didn’t touch Mariah tonight, nor will I ever touch her again.” His voice, now calm and low, cuts through the darkness.

  “It’s none of my business,” I say to the wall. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

  The mattress squeaks and sags under his weight, but I hold my ground and don’t turn over to see what he’s doing. “It scares me when I hear you’re sick and then I can’t find you.”

  “I just couldn’t watch her hands on you, Sawyer. She’s not good enough for you.”

  “Do you really think that?” He lies down behind me, scooting up against my back and curling an arm around my waist.

  “Yes. You’re the lottery and she’s a penny slot machine—everyone can get a pull. Find someone who appreciates all the extraordinary things you have to offer, Sawyer.”

  “Like what?” His stubble scratches my shoulder as he snuggles in further.

  “You don’t really need me to boost your ego, do you?”

  “Yes,” he tickles my side, “I do. I want to know…what someone as mind-blowing as you would possibly find special about me. Humor me, please.”

  “Hhh,” I sigh, unable to resist entwining my fingers through his resting on my stomach. “Let’s see. First of all, you’re hot as hell, and you know it, but the sexiness comes from your mannerisms—the cocky smile, the dark blue, all-seeing eyes, the sarcastic smirk—they’re all sexy and all you. It’s so much more, though, your aura or something. I don’t know. I’d bet good money you could even lure in a blind, deaf girl from fifty yards.”

  Abruptly, he flips me over, no longer satisfied having a conversation with my back. “My turn?”

  “No.” I silence him with a finger to his lips. “I didn’t ask, you did. Want me to stop?”

  I hope he says no. He needs to know how incredible he is, and I’m happy to be the one to tell him.

  “I guess not.” He plays aloof and I snort, not fooled—he’s dying to hear the rest.

  “You’re kind, maybe the kindest person I’ve ever met. You’re generous to a fault and a fiercely loyal friend. You’re protective, but in a non-suffocating way, and you respect women wholly. You’re hilarious and clever and pretty easygoing most of the time. And you care and love with all you are.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the ER and report it?”

  “Who has ADD now? Where’d that come from?”

  “I can’t quit thinking about it. The thought of you dealing with it all by yourself makes me crazy angry that I wasn’t there for you.” He kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  “You didn’t even know me then, so there’s certainly nothing for you to be sorry about.”

  “Why didn’t you go?” he asks again, holding my eyes with his own, a deadly serious conversation brewing.

  “And say what? I got smashed and irresponsible at a party and may or may not have rejected sex with one of fifty guys at said party?”

  “Or, I went to a party, which everyone should be able to safely do, and someone drugged and then attacked me? Please make sure I’m okay and run the DNA so I can press charges.”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know. I feel foolish and ashamed that I even put myself in that position.”

  “If a girl wears a really short skirt and dances on a table at a bar, is she ‘asking for it’?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Exactly! It didn’t happen because you went to a party or because of what you wore or even that you drank. It happened because one douche thought it was okay to attack a comatose girl. It will only ever be his fault, not yours.”

  “See, that’s why you deserve better than Mariah,” I say, running my hand down his chest. “You’re a one of a kind man. Hard body, soft heart.”

  “Can I hold you tonight? I was so worried. I just want to be able to sleep, knowing you’re right beside me, safe.”

  “I should say no because the line is so b
lurry, but I sleep better with you too,” I admit. “So yes, please stay.”

  “Come ‘ere.” He pulls me closer, offering his arm as my pillow. “Goodnight, Shorty. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  “Night, Sawyer, sweet dreams.”

  “They will be now.”

  Chapter 13

  Perfect Picture

  —Sawyer—

  Tuesday night we all get a group text, which I’m shocked but pleased immensely to see Emmett is now a part of the list.

  The pleased part dies a quick death when I actually read it.

  Laney: Laney’s 20th birthday party this Sat night at The K, 8 pm. Costume ball— come as Disney Princes and Princesses!!

  Whitley: OMG yay! So fun!

  Tate: FML. Aren’t we too old for this?

  Dane: Surely you’re not ragging on my beautiful girl’s party idea which she is very excited about. I’m imagining that, right?

  Whitley: I call Tinkerbell!

  Bennett: Taterbear, be nice. I call Ariel!

  Evan: Again, HOW do you u remove yourself from a group message?

  Emmett: Thank you so much for thinking of me. I’d love to come but I work that night.

  Sawyer: No u don’t, Shorty. We’ll close down for the bday girl. Will you please come as my princess?