It's Our Secret

by W. Winters

  She laughs into her pillow and then winces as she rolls onto her back and pulls the covers up tighter around her. “On the shot, dummy,” she says and it’s only then I let out a breath.

  “Well shit, you could have led with that.”

  The sweet cadence of her joyful laugh fills the night air.

  “You think you’re funny,” I tell her and she’s quick to respond with, “You’re the one who jokes so much.”

  “Yeah well, sad people like to rely on humor,” I say without thinking. A chill flows over my skin, hating that I just said that. I don’t know what Allie does to me, but goddamn does she bring out a side of me no one else gets to see.

  “That’s funny, because I never joke,” she says without missing a beat, parting her legs for me when I slip the shirt between her thighs.

  “You sad, Allie Cat?” I ask, wiping her up and then tossing the shirt into the hamper in the bathroom. She doesn’t answer me. Maybe she says shit to me she shouldn’t too. That’d only be fair.

  “You know I’m going to break down your walls,” I whisper against her lips and then slide beneath the covers with her on this tiny bed. I can feel the weight of exhaustion already pulling me under.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” she says but presses her body against mine, nuzzling next to me and wrapping her arm around my abs.

  “Maybe that’s why I want to so bad.”

  19

  Allison

  I feel so deliciously used.

  My nipples harden every time I feel that deep ache between my thighs, which is practically every time I move.

  Even now, as I slide into my chair on the right side of the classroom. I’m early for once in my life. And I’m grateful the only other person here to see me and my sit of shame is Angie.

  “Ooh,” she says, making a perfect O with her mouth and then snickers as she slips the bookbag off her shoulders. “Looks like you’re having a good time, huh?”

  I haven’t spoken to her since that first time, even though she’s been friendly.

  I just don’t make friends. Or have them. I don’t want them, and I wouldn’t make a good friend in return either. So, there’s no point.

  But I’ve never been too good to brag.

  “You could say that,” I respond with an expression of pure content and a Cheshire cat smile.

  “So …” she says, “who is he?” She talks while opening her textbook followed by her notebook, filled with what looks like an actual outline and highlighted words.

  It’s obvious she actually gives a fuck about chemistry or at least about passing the class. Good for her.

  Before I can even open my mouth, I catch a glimpse of Dean from the corner of my eye. With his height and broad shoulders, he takes up the whole doorframe before walking in. I can feel my body react to his. The way my heart skips, my thighs tighten. I’m more than acutely aware of his presence.

  I bite down on my lip, raise a brow and nod my head in his direction although I keep my eyes on Angie’s.

  I can hear him stride across the room and take the seat next to mine, but all the while Angie’s expression drops. Her back stiffens and she forces a smile that’s not genuine.

  “Just be careful,” she mutters without looking me in the eye and then goes back to her notes.

  That’s not the reaction I was expecting, and my gaze lingers on her longer than it should.

  I don’t like it. Not in the least.

  During the entire class, I can’t help but to glance at her. I’m still trying to make sense of her reaction but she ignores me entirely.

  Even when Dean puts his hand on my thigh. Even when he leans over and covertly whispers dirty little promises in my ear. My focus is on Angie, who looks more and more uncomfortable even though she’s not looking at us.

  Before we’re even halfway through class I pass him a note and feel like I’m back in fucking high school. This … whatever this is between us, is stupid. All of it. But I guess I’m the stupid one really because I keep falling for this shit with Dean.

  The question is simple; did you fuck her?

  I get a what-the-fuck expression in return from him, paired with a furious headshake and then a cocky smirk. The note he sends back pisses me off. He likes that I’m jealous.

  I’m not fucking jealous.

  This right here, this is why I don’t have friends. Or boyfriends or fuck buddies or anyone in my life. I don’t need the spiked lump in my throat that makes me wish I had more water in the bottle in my bag so I could take a large gulp. Or maybe vodka in the bottle. I could use a shot to get rid of this tension.

  I have to force myself to relax and the moment I do, finally listening to the professor, Angie gives me a friendly smile. Genuine. Maybe I’m just crazy.

  I’m irritated, all because of one look from a girl I don’t even know. That’s not me. Just as I’m shaking it off, Dean’s heavy hand lands on my desk holding a scrap of paper meant only for my eyes.

  You want a list of the girls I’ve fucked?

  “Oh my God, shut up.” I don’t hide my irritation as I mumble the response.

  Professor Grant glances our way as Dean chuckles. At least he’s having a good time with it all.

  He lowers his hand to my thigh again, scooting his desk closer to mine as quietly as he can. He’s a big brute in that tiny desk and can’t do a damn thing quietly. I don’t know why it makes me smile like it does. He plays it off, mouthing he’s sorry to the professor and I find myself trying to bite back the humor.

  But I instantly realize why he moved closer when he slips his hand onto my thigh.

  I should look to see if the professor sees, or maybe even Angie. My dirty mind looks to see what time it is and quickly calculates how many minutes are left before class will be over.

  When I peek at him, knowing there are only ten minutes or so remaining, he’s sinking his teeth into his lower lip, giving me a sexy grin as he squeezes my upper thigh and then lets his fingers drift closer and closer to where they want to be.

  I’m in jeans so there’s no way he’s going to be doing anything too scandalous. I like his ownership of me. I like that he likes me and doesn’t mind showing people.

  I like that I like him too.

  Even if Angie has a stick up her ass about it. Or not … what do I know?

  And so I part my thighs just a bit, enough for him to slip his fingertips all the way up, pressing the seam of the jeans against my clit.

  My breath hitches and I look straight ahead as if my body isn’t igniting under his touch.

  He doesn’t try to get me off, and he’s gentle more than anything else. Petting me and pausing when my eyes close.

  It’s over before it really gets started, though.

  The sound of everyone packing up is the cue he needs to pull back his hand. I’m riding a high from the forbidden foreplay and I don’t acknowledge her when Angie says goodbye. I hear her, but I pretend I don’t. Maybe that makes me callous or catty or something else. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come here to make friends.

  Although I didn’t come here for Dean either.

  We’re the last two remaining. It’s becoming a habit. One I’m starting to grow fond of.

  “What’s going on tonight?” he asks me, and I don’t answer.

  He’s a tornado. Destructive and all-consuming. And just like a natural disaster, I’m not quite sure how to handle Dean or if I can use this situation to my advantage.

  One thing is certain, there’s going to be a path of wreckage left in his wake.

  “I’m staying home this weekend I think,” I answer him honestly. I’ll be alone in the house, planning and considering all my options.

  “Like at your parents’ place?” he asks me.

  “No, just here.” The thought of going home to my mother’s is one I don’t give the time of day.

  “Got it,” he says, moving his bookbag he didn’t even touch to the top of his desk.

  “Well, I’m heading out early tomorrow
morning. You want to hang out tonight?” he asks me and then winks. He’s not going to be here this weekend. My heart slams hard against my rib cage, although on the surface I keep my body relaxed. I had plans. Plans that were easy because he’d be at the frat party. But maybe this means I can save him from all this. Maybe it’s meant to be this way.

  “Come on, don’t make me go to bed all alone,” Dean says and pouts when I don’t answer fast enough for him.

  I can’t help but laugh.

  “You want to fuck me but not bring me home to your mother, that it?” I tease him back.

  “You want to come? I’ll bring you.”

  “You’re fucking crazy.” My laugh is joined by the zip of my bag as I close it.

  “I’m not staying there long; you want to come with?”

  “I don’t think I’m the type of girl you bring home to your parents.” And I have things planned. I don’t tell him that part. He can’t know.

  “First, you’re blind and delusional. Second, I hate my mother.”

  “So, bringing me home would be to spite her?” Suddenly feeling lightened by the situation, a smirk graces my face. “Like to piss her off?” It’s another game.

  “You’re something else, you know that?” he says, not answering my question.

  If only he knew.

  “What about rugby? Don’t you guys have a game or something?” I ask him, feeling a stir of anxiety deep in my stomach. It radiates outward as he answers.

  “It’s not important, and the guys know I’m leaving. I’m not an official member anyway. It was just Kevin’s idea that I join.”

  “You close to Kevin?” I ask him.

  “His uncle really. He’s paying my ride here.”

  “Why?” Shifting my backpack to rebalance the weight of the heavy books, I wait for an answer. I didn’t know that. It’s not something I would have been able to look up online, but damn I don’t like it.

  “I got into some stuff, beat a guy pretty fucking bad and Jack’s friends with both my uncle and the judge. He said he’d watch me and offered to ‘set me straight.’” He huffs a laugh but it’s obvious that Dean’s grateful for it.

  “He sounds like a good guy.” I breathe out the words although I feel empty saying them.

  “It’s a favor to my uncle. Not that I don’t appreciate it.”

  He runs his fingers along his stubble as he looks up at the clock. He’s got another class to attend and we’re already taking too long in this empty room, but I have to ask. “Why’d you get into a fight with that other guy?”

  “He was just getting a little too handsy.”

  “With you?” I joke, but he doesn’t even smile.

  There’s a hardness about Dean, just beneath his cocky and facetious exterior. “With this chick. I was drunk and so were they. Turns out she was his wife.”

  “He was just flirting with his wife and you beat the shit out of him?” I say but again he doesn’t laugh.

  “If flirting means grabbing her by the hair to pull her out of the bar, then yeah. Sure.”

  “Why the hell did you get locked up then?” I ask him, feeling my heart drop at the image of what he’s describing playing in my head.

  “She lied. She didn’t want her husband to go to jail.”

  Sickness coils in my stomach. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yo,” I hear someone call out and turn to see Daniel in the doorway.

  He nods at Dean, his face cleanly shaven and his hair pushed back. “You got a minute?” he asks Dean and my heart hammers hard and fast, like I’ve just been caught in a lie.

  Daniel doesn’t even look at me. It makes me wonder if he knows something he shouldn’t. Or if I’m maybe missing a piece to the puzzle.

  “One sec,” Dean says quietly and then plants a kiss on my jaw before leaving me behind. It’s odd what one little kiss will do.

  Knowing before he left, he had to leave me with one little kiss.

  I just hope it’s not my last.

  20

  Dean

  Pissed off is something I’m used to.

  Enraged, irate, resentful.

  But none of them compare to how I feel right now.

  “You can’t even really tell it’s her,” Daniel says and I don’t trust myself to answer just yet. I can’t even take my eyes away from the picture on the phone.

  “You think she’ll be upset?” he asks me.

  Do I think Allison is going to be upset that a picture of her riding my dick by the dumpsters at the diner is on the university’s social media accounts and it’s circulating like wildfire? Yes. Yes, I fucking do. You can’t identify me in the picture, but her? Clear as day. At least to me.

  I grit my teeth and flex my jaw, looking over my shoulder and back at Allie.

  “Yeah,” I answer him with one word as my heated blood pumps harder. “I fucked up,” I tell him, wiping a hand down my face. The anger is nothing compared to the feeling of knowing something I did is going to hurt her.

  I fucking loved what I did to her in that moment.

  And I know she loved it too.

  “Don’t read the comments. It’s just going to set you off.” I glance up at him before scrolling and reading through the messages. “I know how you are,” Daniel adds. “Just ignore them,” he tells me and reaches for the phone, but I push him back. Just one shove, just enough to tell him to back off.

  What a slut.

  She’s getting fucked by the dumpsters like the trash she is.

  That bitch is dirty.

  I wonder if there’s a line for that whore out there now.

  Every comment makes my anger feel closer to spiraling out of control.

  “Seriously, people talk shit. It’s what they do. It’s not like they can even tell it’s her.” Daniel keeps rambling, trying to calm me down but all I can see is red.

  “They’re not going to know it’s her. She’s fine.”

  “I don’t want to show her this,” I admit to Daniel, my throat tight and my muscles even tighter.

  “I mean … you might want to give her a heads-up. Just in case?” he suggests and I know he’s right, but fuck that.

  “A heads-up about what?” Allison’s voice is happy but reserved as she walks up to the two of us right outside the classroom door.

  My back stiffens.

  She shifts the strap of her backpack as a few people walk past us, heading out of their classes and toward the stairs. “Everything okay?” she asks, looking up at me.

  Fuck. “You know you’re late now, right?” she questions but the wary look on her beautiful face tells me she knows being late doesn’t mean shit right now.

  When I don’t answer, Daniel chimes in. “What’s going on?” he asks her.

  She shrugs. “Not much. What’s going on with you?”

  “Same,” he says and then it’s awkward. “Not much.” Real fucking awkward as she looks between the two of us.

  “Some shit happened,” I tell her, forcing out the words. I try to keep my words even, although my chest feels tight and I don’t know if I’m breathing. I only just got her ass to settle down. And now this?

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her and Allie’s smooth forehead pinches with a deep crease. Again she shifts the strap, holding on to it with both her hands.

  “What is it?” she asks me in a hollow voice.

  Daniel and I exchange a look before I hand Allie his phone.

  It takes her a moment to register what she’s looking at, a long moment but then her eyes go wide, and she covers her mouth with her hand.

  “Oh my God!” she breathes through her hand and then uncovers it to reveal a bit of a smile. “I look so fat,” she says comically as if it’s a holiday portrait of her.

  “You can always go back and I’ll take a different one,” Daniel jokes and I want to smack the fucker upside his head.

  “These people are assholes,” Allie says as she scrolls through the comments like it’s no big deal.

  I’m surprised she isn�
��t shaken in the least. Not pissed off at all like I am. She’s a strong girl, I know that, but still. The comments are brutal. She hasn’t even read them all. Her smile dims but she isn’t pissed, she isn’t angry, she isn’t hurt. If she is, she’s good at hiding it.

  Daniel’s smiling like a fool. “Well if it makes you feel any better, the picture doesn’t make me think about you any differently than I did before.” His comment makes Allie laugh but not me.

  “Fuck off,” I tell him.

  Daniel puts both hands up. “Just trying to lighten the mood,” he says although his eyes darken slightly. He’s good at joking, but it’s only a facade. I know one when I see one.

  “It’s fine,” Allie says easily, handing Daniel his phone back. “Seriously, I don’t care. You can’t even tell it’s me, can you?”

  “Nope. That’s what I told the Hulk over here,” Daniel says, and I glare at him.

  “The Hulk?” Allie smiles. “Is that what they call you?” she asks me.

  “It’s a stupid fucking nickname.”

  “It’s because he gets pissed so often,” Daniel says to Allie, sliding his phone into his back pocket and then looking up at me, but someone else catches his eye.

  “Anyway, I’m going to head out,” he says to both of us although he’s watching some chick. I get a quick look at her walking down the stairs and when I look back at him, his gaze is fixated on her. I don’t think I’ve seen her before.

  “Hey, thanks,” I tell him before he heads off chasing whomever she is.

  “Yeah, no problem,” he says and then finally looks back at me. “Seriously, it’s not a big deal. Just thought you’d want a heads-up.”

  “Thanks, Daniel,” Allie calls after him as he stalks away in the opposite direction of that chick. “Delete that from your spank bank, please.” I love her smile and humor, but not right now. Not when I know a piece of her has to be hurting.

  If only she’d admit it.

  “You sure you’re all right?” I ask her.

  “Yeah, I don’t care.”