“Always,” I mumbled, passing her at the kitchen counter and heading up the stairs.
I’d decided to take matters into my own hands, instead of hiring someone, and chop off the smaller branches jutting into the house myself. The ax would do the job.
“Just don’t hurt yourself!” she shouted after me. “You were hard to make!” And I rolled my eyes at no one as I disappeared up the ladder leading into the attic.
She’d been halfway decent since getting sober. Once in a while she tried making jokes. Sometimes I laughed but not in front of her. There was still a lot of discomfort between us, a crack I had lost interest in repairing.
But we’d gotten into a routine. She kept herself level, and I did the same.
Crawling through the small window on our dark third floor, I maneuvered myself onto the tree and inched towards the trunk where the branches were thick enough to support my weight. I figured I’d sit on the inside and chop the extra growth off and then climb down to the ground when I was done. I needed to work top to bottom and eventually get to the branches at my window—the whole reason I’d started this job.
But as I raised the ax to start, I nearly dropped it.
“You think his treatment of me is foreplay?” I heard Tate’s aggravated shouting, and I halted.
What? Foreplay?
“Yes,” she continued, and I stopped what I was doing to listen, “it was foreplay when he told the whole school I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and everyone made farting noises as I walked down the hall freshman year.”
My eyes widened, and my pulse pounded in my neck. Was she talking about me?
“And yes.” She kept going, talking to someone I couldn’t see. “It was completely erotic the way he had the grocery store deliver a case of yeast infection cream to Math class sophomore year. But what really got me hot and ready to bend over for him was when he plastered brochures for genital wart treatments on my locker, which is completely outrageous for someone to have an STD without hav**g s*x!”
Oh, shit.
She was definitely talking about me.
Grabbing a branch above me, I pushed myself up onto my feet and climbed over to the other side, careful to stay out of the view of Tate’s open doors.
Another girl was talking, probably her friend K.C., and I caught something about fighting back.
I slid down another branch, starting to feel like a perv for snooping on their conversation. But hey, they were talking about me, and that made it my business.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, we were friends for years,” Tate spoke. “He went away for a few weeks the summer before freshman year, and when he came back, he was different. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
And my fists clenched.
K.C. didn’t need to know my shit. Tate had no right airing our business like that.
The familiar swirl of piss and vinegar churned in my gut, and I felt my body warm.
“We’re going to have an amazing year.” Tate’s voice was lower now and stronger than before. “I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me. If he has, then we can both peacefully ignore each other until graduation. If he hasn’t, then I’ll do what I think is best. I’ve got bigger things on my mind anyway. He and that asshat Madoc can poke and prod all they want. I’m done giving them my attention. They are not taking my senior year.”
I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me.
And I’d almost thrown my future away in my need for her?
I’m done giving them my attention.
She hated me. She’d hate me forever, and I was a stupid f**king prick for wanting her when we were fourteen.
No one wants us. I knew I didn’t want you. My father’s voice crept into my head.
I climbed back over to my window and crawled through, not caring if they saw me. Tossing the ax onto the floor, I walked over and switched on my iPod dock to Five Finger Death Punch’s Coming Down and grabbed my phone to text Madoc.
Party tonight? Mom’s leaving around 4. My mother escaped every Friday night to her boyfriend’s in Chicago. I still hadn’t met the guy, but she almost always stayed the entire weekend.
Hell, yeah, he texted not a minute later.
Drinks? I asked. Madoc’s dad had a liquor store—or close to—in his basement along with a wine cellar. The guy was hardly ever home, so we took what we wanted, and I supplied the food.
Got it. See you at 7.
I threw my phone on the bed, but it buzzed again.
Grabbing it again, I opened up a text from Jax.
Dad called again.
Son of a bitch.
My father was finding ways to get Jax’s number, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to be calling him. Abusing him was one of the reasons my father was in jail, after all.
I’ll handle it, I texted.
Looking at the clock, I saw it was only ten in the morning.
Just go today, I told myself. Get it over with for the week, and you won’t have to go tomorrow.
These trips to my father’s ate at my insides, and I dreaded them. There was no telling what he’d say to me from one week to the next. Last time, he’d told me, in graphic detail, about how he’d dropped my mother off at the abortion clinic one day to get rid of me. And then, how he’d let loose on her when she hadn’t gone through with it. I didn’t know if the story was true, but I tried to just let the insults, stories, and taunts fly past me. Most of the time they did. Sometimes they didn’t.
Screw it.
Throwing off a sweaty, black T-shirt in exchange for a clean, black v-neck, I snatched my keys off the bedside table and bounded down the stairs.
“I’m heading out for a while,” I said as I passed my mother in the kitchen. “See you Monday.”
My hands shook, even though I’d been coming here nearly a year already. I hated looking the f**ker in the face, especially when he made these visits as awful as possible. I knew he got special privileges for cooperating, but I had no doubt that he enjoyed every sick word that came out of his mouth, too.
“It’s Friday. I’m not supposed to have to see you until tomorrow,” he grumbled, sitting down at the table in the visiting room.
I forced myself to look him in the eye and even out my tone. “You’re calling Jax again. It stops now.”
He laughed me off. “That’s what you said last time, but you’re not in control, Jared.”
Yes. I. Am.
“You’re not even allowed to make calls.” After I reported it to the warden last time, he’d lost the privilege of making unsupervised trips to the phone.
Shrugging his shoulders with palms up, he answered, “And yet, I find a way.”
It was only a moment. But in the time it took for my chest to sink and for me to break eye contact, he knew. He knew he was right, and that I was powerless. Maybe it was the guards letting him make calls for favors, or maybe he had a fellow prisoner helping him out, but we both knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop him.
I could never stop him.
“Leave him alone.” My lips moved, but I barely heard my own voice.
“What bugs you more?” He leaned in and narrowed his blue eyes. “That I call him and not you, or that you can’t stop me? I keep telling you, Jared, you have no power. Not really. It may seem like you’re the one in control, because you’re out there and I’m in here, but I’m the one that haunts you. Not the other way around.”
I stood up and stuck my hand in my pocket, gripping the fossil necklace so hard that I thought it would break.
“Fuck you,” I growled and walked out.
Chapter 9
“Oh, Jared,” Piper gasped my name as I devoured her neck. Gripping her hair and pulling her head back, I tried to get lost in her perfume and her body.
“I told you not to talk,” I whispered softly against her skin. “Do as you’re told.”
Hats off to the Bull pounded downstairs, and I could hear voices coming from all sides, both inside and outside the house.
Piper had come over to my party, uninvited, and I took what was offered. Noise, activity, distraction.
Distraction from the pull next door.
Distraction from my father.
That son of a bitch was right after all. The nightmares that kept me awake? The ones I had to drown out with sleeping pills just so I could get through the night? All of it was me being weak.
“I’m sorry,” she giggled. “That just feels so good.”
I had one hand buried in her thick, dark hair, and my other hand inside of her panties, my fingers pushing inside of her as she squirmed against the wall of my bedroom.
I grappled at Piper, looking for the magical body part that would get me zoned in. I peeled down the top of her dress, cupping her br**sts, kissing her lips, but none of it brought me the peace I wanted.
I’m hoping Jared has forgotten all about me.
I grabbed Piper and hauled her up into my arms, carrying her to the bed. The peace would come when I was inside of her. Then I would be happily lost.
“Jared!” I jerked my head towards the pounding on the door.
“Go away!” I shouted as Piper unfastened my belt.
“That girl? Tate?” my friend, Sam, asked. “She’s downstairs, man. You better get down there.”
And I halted what I was doing and sat up.
“What the hell?” I mumbled.
Why was she at my house? I looked at the alarm clock that read after midnight.
“Tate?” Piper said, still laying back on the pillows. “I thought you said she was still gone.”
I climbed off the bed. “Just get dressed, Piper,” I bit out.
“What?” she screamed, and I looked over at her. Her lips and nose were scrunched up, and her chest rose and fell with her hard breathing.
Piper was no attachment and no complications. I appreciated that about her.
But she was pissed, and I didn’t stop to explain. I never did. She knew better.
I never let on that I wanted more than a casual thing, and she’d either roll with it, or she could leave.
Yanking the door open, my friend Sam waited in the hallway, hands in pockets and looking uncertain.
“Sorry, man.” He held up his hands. “Madoc’s got his hands all over her. Thought I should get you.”
Fucking little shit. I barreled past Sam and down the hallway, ready to stick my best friend’s head into the toilet to wake him the f**k up. I was pretty sure he had a thing for Tate, but he was told, years ago, that she was off limits.
And what the f**k was she doing here anyway?
Coming down the stairs, I rounded the corner and immediately stopped, my stomach caving in from the loss of breath.
Jesus Christ.
She was so beautiful it hurt.
She was lost in thought, otherwise she would’ve seen me, too.
I pressed my hands above my head to both sides of the doorframe. It was my way of trying to look casual, like I didn’t care. But honestly, I just needed the support to keep my legs from caving beneath me.
My heart thundered through my chest, and I wished like hell that I could pause this moment, just look at her until the Earth fell apart.
Her hair was lighter, and her skin was darker, probably from being in the sun this summer, and her body had gotten more toned. More grown up. The shape to the back of her thighs had my mouth going dry. Her nose was still little, her skin still flawless, and her full lips all made her look like the perfect doll. And I never played with dolls, but I damn sure wanted to play with this one.