Obsessed

By R.J. Lewis

Copyright ©2015 R.J. Lewis. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place, events, and other elements portrayed herein
are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real
persons or events is coincidental.

The setting of this story is completely fake, derived purely from the imagination of the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system
without the prior consent from the publisher and author, except in the instance of quotes for reviews.
No part of this book may be uploaded without the permission of the publisher and author, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is originally
published.

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Contents
Obsessed
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Epilogue
Thank you

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1
Elise
I grew up in a modest neighbourhood. My parents were there for me no
matter what. They were part of the community and very well-respected.
Being their only child, I was spoiled and loved. We didn’t have all the
money in the world, but my father always made sure I never wanted for
anything.
I was a popular girl. I had a lot of friends, I went to dance class and,
when it started to matter, the boys liked me. My life seemed perfect. A tad
strict but perfect nonetheless. Strict because my father was a police officer
and he needed to know where I was at all times, but perfect because he
helped make the streets safe. It was a proud badge to walk around with. The
kids always widened their eyes when I told them what he did. “My daddy
fights the bad guys!” It was like having a superhero for a father.
But my father had dark days on the police force; days he’d come back
from work withdrawn and shaken. He’d seen things, abominable things:
starving, abused children found alone in run-down homes. He’d been called
to gory crime scenes of dead drug dealers and prostitutes beaten to death on
the job. He’d stood over corpses left to rot for weeks, met with murderers
with dead eyes and proud smirks.
My father had seen everything ugly in this world. His
overprotectiveness wasn’t without good reason, but I would be lying if I
said I didn’t wish he had a different profession. A profession that didn’t
involve trauma and pain, and wasn’t so damn dangerous, either.
When I was a child, I’d sit for hours by the door, waiting for him to
come home. Even at seven I knew “Daddy had a dangerous job” and so I’d
take my Barbie dolls to the locked screen door and play, glancing eagerly
out the window every time the headlights of a car went past.
I shouldn’t have had to wonder whether my father would come home
alright. Those thoughts were too heavy on the mind of a seven-year-old girl.
I think that’s why I matured faster than kids my age. Death wasn’t a topic
most gave serious thought to, and with a grandfather who died on the job
doing the very same thing he did, it was not an irrational thing to stress
about.
My early childhood was a rinse and repeat of playtime and worry and
hours spent looking out the front door. Until, one day, it wasn’t anymore.
It was the day I met Aston Turner.
*
I was nine years old when my father came home one day with a small
shadow following him. I was on the phone, talking to my best friend Cindy
about the cute boys in our class. Being shallow was an innocent pastime at
that age, and liking boys instead of thinking they had cooties was new and
exciting.
I was on the bottom step of the staircase, smiling at the sight of my
father in his police uniform walking past the gate and down the path to the
front door. It was at the porch that he stopped and turned around.
It was then I saw him.
A boy. Skinny. Tiny. Paler than a sheet of paper. He was standing
behind Daddy with a backpack on his back and his face downcast.
“I have to go,” I cut Cindy off.
“But we have to talk about kissing Jacob –”
I hung up on her and stared, wide-eyed and confused, as Daddy opened
the door and stepped in, keeping the door wide open to let the boy inside.
“Jean!” he shouted out, and my mother came bursting out of the
kitchen with a tea towel in her wet hands. She stared from Daddy and the
boy with a look that mirrored mine.
“I want you to meet Aston,” Daddy said, wrapping a kind arm around
the boy’s shoulders. He smiled hesitantly up at my mother, and sitting there,
I stared into his face and caught the way his eyes misted.
I’d never seen my daddy cry, and he was crying in that moment.
I knew straight away that my life was going to change forever.
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2
Elise
Aston was a foster child since he was five. His father murdered his
mother and two younger sisters with a kitchen knife. The crime scene was
so chilling, so unbelievably scarring, a few officers had to have therapy to
get the grizzly images out of their heads.
They’d found Aston unconscious and buried beneath the body of his
mother, soaked in her blood and his. He’d been cut up head to toe, but
somehow he pulled through, surprising the police with the sound of his
hollow breaths. The doctors at the hospital called it a miracle and they
celebrated his good fortune. Everybody in the town of Montley talked about
it for a couple weeks, about the boy that pulled through, about the boy that
God smiled upon yet simultaneously had to call home three innocent souls.
And then, like all hot topics, the topic cooled and they stopped caring, and
Aston was forgotten.
He entered the foster care system, had seriously bad behavioural issues
and bounced from foster home to foster home all throughout town. Nobody
knew how badly he was being abused, until Daddy found him neglected and
starving, eating his own fingernails in the basement of a foster house that
was the drug haven for some seriously horrible people.
That very first night I met him, Daddy welcomed him into our home
and introduced him to us. I watched the boy carefully. His baggy pants and
shirt were at least two sizes too big. He had long blond hair that ended at his
chin. His face was haunting. His green eyes, a shade so vibrant, stood out
from his pale skin, and they looked empty. He didn’t say a word to us, and
when his eyes caught mine for the split second that it did, he looked away
instantly, determined not to meet my eye.
Shortly after, Daddy settled him into the spare bedroom. I wanted to
ask Mom what was going on, but she had followed after him. They had a
quiet conversation I couldn’t hear, but I was aware of what was happening.
This boy was staying with us. A boy that appeared despondent and broken.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. On one hand, I liked my life. I didn’t want
interruptions. I didn’t want it flipped upside down. I liked the attention my
parents gave me. But on the other hand, he looked sad and alone, like he
needed a place to call home. I wondered if that was what Dad had done:
given him a new home – our home.
He joined us for dinner. We ate spaghetti, and while we talked casually,
there was that tension in the air. My eyes flew to Aston every few moments,
watching him like he was an exotic piece of artwork as he picked up the
fork and clumsily tried to eat his food. His movements were unnatural.
He was ten, a year older than me, and he didn’t know how to use a
fork.
He made a mess. Half his food fell on the table. The first time it
happened, he glanced up fearfully at Daddy. Daddy just smiled and said,
“Use your hands, Aston, and don’t worry about the mess.”
My jaw dropped. If I used my hands, hellfire would have rained upon
me and I’d have been scolded to death.
He used his hands, and his face reddened when his eyes caught mine
again. In hindsight, I’d look back and realize how humiliated he must have
felt, and I should have looked away and pretended not to care like my
parents, but my eyes were too transfixed to him. I couldn’t look away if I
tried. I didn’t want to, either. He was all bones, but his face…Man, his face
was so beautiful, he reminded me of a prince. A haunted prince.
This boy didn’t have manners. He was like Tarzan come to life; a
jungle boy thrown into a different world with no trees to swing from. He
used both hands and sloppily dug into the bowl, shovelling the spaghetti
into his mouth. I’d never seen someone so ravenous before. I felt full just
watching him. I glanced over at Mom and Dad, and they discreetly watched
him with broken expressions. His lack of propriety didn’t matter to them in
the slightest. No hellfire and brimstone, just sadness all around.
He finished the food in record time, and then he sat there, clenching his
stomach.
“Are you feeling okay?” Mom asked him concernedly.
 The first words I’d ever heard him say were, “My stomach hurts,” in
the tiniest voice.
“You’re just full,” Daddy told him with a forced smile. “You haven’t
eaten this much in a very long time. You’ll get used to the feeling, Aston.”
Aston just stared at his empty plate. I’d barely touched my food. My
entire body was turned in his direction, my eyes glued to his face. It was
rude of me to blatantly stare. I knew that. But…there was something about
this boy. Something about his despair I wasn’t used to seeing in other kids.
He was utterly tragic.
He caught my eye a few times over the remainder of dinner, and every
time they connected, he’d tear away and look back down at his plate. His
pale cheeks started to grow red, and after several exchanges, he stopped
looking away and kept staring back at me.
Haunted green eyes glued to my cheerful blues with a look of
surrender. I smiled kindly at him at some point, and his eyes flickered down
to my mouth, examining the way my lips widened. It was almost like…like
he didn’t know what I was doing.
After dinner was over, Mom led him back upstairs to show him around
and settle him in. Daddy stayed seated in his chair, focused on a spot on the
wall over my head. His breathing changed, and his eyes watered again.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” I asked him, worried.
He looked at me warmly. “I’m okay, butterfly,” he answered hesitantly.
I glowed at the nickname he used for me. Butterfly. I was his butterfly.
My chest warmed and I nodded in relief. Moments later, Mom called out to
Daddy and he got up and hurried upstairs. There was a small commotion. I
slid out of my seat and stopped by the foot of the staircase, listening in.
“He wants you, Arthur,” Mom told Daddy. “He won’t talk to me. He
said he wants you.”
“Alright,” Daddy responded. “Go down, put Elise to bed. I’ll take care
of Aston.”
I was startled for a split second. My mother never put me to bed. That
was something Daddy always did. I felt a jolt of jealousy cut through me.
When Mom came back down, I was difficult, unresponsive, and angry.
When we went upstairs, I glanced at the guest bedroom, but the door was
shut, and nothing could be heard from the other side. What were they
doing? Why couldn’t Daddy just come and see me?
I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. Mom said good night, but I
didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my back to her and stared blankly at the
wall.
“Elise,” she softly said, settling down on the bed beside me, “don’t be
upset.” My mother was always so good at reading me. Nothing escaped her.
She rested her hand on my head and stroked my blonde hair. “Your father
loves you just the same.”
“Why is that boy here?” I asked her, my voice bitter.
“That boy has been through a lot.”
“But why is he here?”
“Because he needs a place to stay. Your father has been working on his
case for a while now, and he’s taken him in.”
“Forever?”
She went silent for a few moments, and then she said, “There are
children who don’t have parents to put them to bed or even to say good
night to. They don’t have a lot of food to eat. They go to sleep hungry and
scared. They’re abandoned, Elise, and they feel pain every minute of every
day. Nobody looks at them. Nobody pays them attention. They live in our
world and they feel like nobody cares. Do you think that’s right?”
I paused, thinking her words through and feeling the way my heart
squeezed painfully. “No,” I answered quietly. “It’s not right.”
“Now you know why Aston is here.”
She left me after that, and I wondered about the boy sleeping next door
to me. I tried to imagine myself in his position, abused, without love and an
empty belly. I ended up crying into my pillow. It was the first time I had
vividly felt ashamed for being so selfish and sick to my stomach about how
unfair the world was. I got up sometime later to grab a few tissues from the
dresser when I heard my father speak from the hallway.
 “It was awful, Jean,” he whispered. “It was nothing like you have ever
seen. The house was in ruins. He…He was sleeping in a pillowcase to get
warm. They just left him there. For days. On the concrete floor with the
cockroaches. And when he saw me…” My father broke down. “He didn’t
come to me, Jean. He went on his knees and begged that I wouldn’t…that I
wouldn’t hurt him, and when I told him he was alright and safe, he clutched
me to him and cried. Every day he’s been on my mind, and I can’t ignore it
anymore.”
The tears that had dried on my face were replaced by fresh ones.
That brief moment of resentment I held for Aston being here faded
away, and I never felt it again.
*
That first night was eventful. I woke up twice to the sound of screams
and Daddy running to check on him. I could hear muffled sobbing in the
minutes that followed, and I could picture it in my mind: Daddy holding
Aston to his chest, stroking his back as he whispered, “It’s alright.”
I always thought of my father as a hero, but his growing attachment to
Aston was more heroic than anything I’d ever witnessed by him. Aston had
nightmares for months on end, but they lessened as time went on, and he
never told Daddy what the nightmares were about.
After a while, the nightmares woke him up without the shrilling
screams. We shared a wall, and I’d hear the bed creaking and his loud
agonized breaths as he awoke from them. Then he tried to calm down on his
own.
My heart hurt so much, I found myself knocking on the wall every
time, whispering, “It’s okay, Aston. I’m here. It was just a dream. I’m
here.”
Soon I wouldn’t have to say anything. I’d just knock on the wall and
wait for him to calm down, and when all was okay again, he’d knock back.
That knock seared me, and I’d smile, falling asleep with my forehead
pressed against the wall.
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3
Elise
Before he grew and gained his looks, Aston was the silent observer,
blending into the background wherever he went. He hardly smiled those
first couple years he was with us, and he hardly spoke to anyone but us. For
that reason, he was home-schooled in the beginning. Mom worked in the
police station with Dad as an administrative secretary, and she cut down her
hours and spent it teaching Aston. It was a very difficult task. Aston was
initially very slow, and he barely knew how to read even the simplest
words. But with Mom’s patience, he flourished, and she’d tell Daddy the
hunger Aston had for learning. Education was a bonding experience for
Mom and him, and it didn’t take long for her to look at him with loving
eyes.
With his light features similar to ours, he fit into the family to the point
strangers thought he was related by blood. None of us corrected them either
(though I itched to). In fact, Dad felt like he finally had a son. It was in the
way they stared at each other, silently communicating words I didn’t know;
their bond was tighter than anything I’d seen before. They fit together, like
two puzzle pieces, and from day dot it was like…Aston just belonged.
I wasn’t jealous. We did everything together, so there was nothing to
feel jealousy over. I did the same things I’d done before, only with a boy
close to my age to share it with. We grew closer during the first summer.
We camped, fished, and rode our quads in the muddy earth of the Pacific
Northwest, down mountain trails and through farmlands. I taught him how
to swim in the lake, and rescued him from drowning half a million times.
He clutched me to him in the water every time I pulled him out, an arm
around my waist, his frightened eyes on mine (and I liked these moments
because his touch felt like fire).
“Elise!” Dad had growled one time, catching us. “Don’t you take Aston
in the deep end again! You know better than that.”
 “I’m sorry,” I whispered, pretending to blink back tears as he observed
me. I was an expert at putting on a show for Dad.
His temper quickly faded. “It’s alright, butterfly. Just…be very careful.
Aston’s new to all this, alright? Give him some time.”
But I didn’t. Aston waited until Dad was gone before turning to me and
whispering, “Do it again! I need to know how to swim.”
“But Dad said not to!”
“Dad won’t know. We’ll be careful.”
“Just wait until he puts you in classes.”
“I don’t want classes. I want you to teach me, Elise.” Well, shit, I felt
special when he said that. “Swimming is freedom, and I want to feel it.”
Aston was persuasive when he wanted to be. He had these puppy eyes
that melted me into submission. So I started teaching him again. Over and
over again because Aston wouldn’t take no for an answer. His fear never
stopped him from trying, from excelling, from perfecting. We snuck our
lessons until he was better than me in the water, and his confidence
skyrocketed.
“See! You did it all on your own!” I hollered excitedly when he did his
first lap around me.
He grinned, filled with pride. “I wouldn’t have done it without you.”
*
We stayed up at night around the campfire, listening to Dad’s
fabricated stories of giants and monsters, and I clutched Aston’s hand when
it got too scary. Then we’d munch on our S’mores until it was bedtime. I’d
sneak into his tent with my flashlight after the parents fell asleep. It was a
flashlight with star and planet patterns in the light that we used to shine in
the top of our tent, getting lost in the fake constellation while we chatted in
hushed tones.
“Do you really think there are monsters?” I asked him once, my fear
evident in my voice as I reflected on the images of tonight’s hair-raising
tale.
 He turned his head and stared at me, inches away from my face,
enough for me to feel his breaths against my skin and have tingles from it.
“Not the kind you think about,” he answered quietly.
I turned my head and looked back at him. “What kind are out there?”
The features on his face hardened. “The kind you can see in plain
sight.”
I purposely didn’t answer him. That was the end of our conversation.
He fell asleep shortly after and I admired his face for some time before I
pushed closer against his body, reflecting on his words. I knew what he was
talking about. The monsters that he lived with. The monster that was his
father rotting in jail for the rest of his days.
If I thought Daddy’s profession aged me faster, I was wrong. It was
Aston that really drove the nail in the coffin. The way he looked at the
world, the words he used when he spoke; he was old in spirit and young in
age. He influenced my way of thinking, he made me see things in a
different light. I loved him for it. For being here. For filling a space I never
knew was empty.
I hated to think it, but his abhorrent upbringing had brought him to us,
and in a way I was glad for it. I don’t know what kind of girl I’d have
grown up to be without him there. It scared me often, that thought. I
thanked whatever divine being, or just pure chance – whatever it was – for
bringing him to us. And then I felt horribly guilty for it. Because he had a
family too once upon a time, and they were buried beneath the earth and
that pain must have been indescribable. He never opened up about it and he
never spoke of them. Never. And I would never ask.
But I’d study him and the hurt he carried. He’d distract himself just to
take his mind off of it, and as a result, he was unusually brilliant. Brilliant in
a way that brought attention to him when he didn’t want it.
I felt extremely protective of Aston, and it surfaced in me when he
started school along my side. His genius would come to light, and he would
be ostracised for it.
That was the day I had to choose: them, or us.
I chose us.
 *
“Aston’s really weird,” Cindy said to me during the first week of
school.
I followed her eyes to where he was sitting. On the ground, his back
against the brick wall of the school, a book in his hands, his face buried in
it. His legs were outstretched and crossed over the ankles. He was wearing
khaki pants and a long sleeved sweater. He had definitely grown taller in
the two years he’d been with us, but he wouldn’t fill out for another three.
“He’s just reading,” I replied defensively. “What’s so weird about
that?”
“He doesn’t talk. The boys invited him to play baseball after school and
he shook his head no.”
“So?”
“He’s not making friends, and he’s not even trying. That’s weird, Elise.
The boys in his class say he just sits there, doesn’t laugh to everyone’s
jokes, and doesn’t say anything unless Mrs Lloyd asks him something.
Soon, the boys are going to turn against him, and they’ll pick on him for
being weird. Maybe you should start telling him to chill out or something.
Like, tell him to join in on the games and stuff. He’s not going to be liked if
he spends all his lunch breaks reading books.” She then snickered, like it
was so unbelievable for a person to be reading during lunch break.
I frowned at her. “Not everyone has to be the same, Cindy.”
She sighed. “I’m just saying. God, Elise. He’s cute, you know? He’s
really, really cute. I’m only trying to help.”
He reads because he didn’t know how to for the longest time. I wanted
to tell her that, but Cindy had no filter. She couldn’t keep a secret because
secrets were juicy and she loved drama. I started to hate girls like that.
She drifted off to another group, and I stressed the next five minutes
wondering what to do. I stared at the group of kids, laughing and playing
and fitting in. Then my gaze wandered back to Aston, clutching his book,
reading with concentrated eyes, alone. Should I have told him to put the
book down and join the rest of us? How badly did I want him to fit in, to get
along with kids, to be social and loose? Or should I leave him be?
 Back and forth, my twelve-year-old mind raged with indecision.
Finally, it clicked in place after I stared long enough at him and felt a stir in
my chest.
I chose neither.
Instead, I left the others and approached him. He didn’t look at me once
as I rested my back against the wall and slid down it. I sat next to him,
shoulder against shoulder, gazing at his book.
“What are you reading?” I asked him. I looked back at his profile, at
his razor straight nose, his full lips, his blond-white eyelashes and furrowed
brow. My heart skipped a beat.
“Goosebumps,” Aston answered, flipping a page.
I let out an exaggerated sigh. “Another scary story, Aston?”
I saw the way his lip curved up just barely, and that heart of mine
raced. I loved when I made him smile, even if it was a ghost of a smile. It
meant I was doing something right. Aston was so intense and serious all the
time, every smile was like a present.
“Why are you sitting here, El?” he replied with instead, turning his
head in my direction and piercing me with those green eyes. When they
connected to mine every time, I felt my heart race.
“Because I want to,” I told him honestly.
“You’ve got friends.”
“You’re my friend, and you’re better than them.”
He didn’t respond to that. His eyes searched mine, their depths pulling
me under like a wave slamming me into the ocean. I didn’t like how
muddled I felt with him. It was a constant struggle fighting against my
feelings when he was around. After several moments, he looked away and
stared at a page for some while. His eyes weren’t moving, so I knew he
wasn’t reading. He fidgeted, bending the top corner of the page before
muttering, “I know what your friend wanted.”
I was surprised. “What?”
“Your friend. Cindy.” He said her name slowly and bitterly. “I know
what she wanted, Elise, and if you’re here to tell me to join the others, I’m
not going to do it. I don’t…I don’t want to do it. I like being on my own.”
“I’m not here because of Cindy.”
He looked at me again. “I saw you with her. Just now.”
“I didn’t think you were even paying attention.”
“I’m always paying attention to you.”
Warmth settled in my chest. I felt my cheeks heat. He’d said it so
matter-of-factly, I started to think there wasn’t anything more in that
statement. Or else he’d be more affected than how he looked. I took a
breath and reminded myself this was Aston, a boy I lived with, a boy
everyone would soon refer to as my brother. Still, I struggled.
“I’m not a follower,” I then told him, looking down at the pavement
because it was less challenging than his eyes. “Just because Cindy said
something, that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. I like how you are and I
don’t want you to fit in or be different. I came here because I prefer you
over them.”
He was still bending and unbending the top corner of the page when he
said, “Sorry. I just…I thought…”
“You thought wrong,” I finished, nudging him playfully on the
shoulder. “Now read to me.”
The furrowed brow returned. “I’m not that great, El.”
“You’re great at everything, it’s so annoying.”
“Reading is still my weakness.”
“I don’t care. Just read.”
More excuses. “Some of the words might be wrong.”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
He exhaled slowly. “I’m slow.”
I grinned. “I have all day.”
He licked his lips, hesitated, and then began reading. I listened to his
voice, watched his mouth move while the warmth within me grew. Then I
leaned against his side and rested my head on his shoulder. Eventually, he
brought his arm around my shoulders and held me there against him. We
looked more than sister and brother like this, and I could feel the countless
eyes pinned to us, but I didn’t care.
I cared about the warmth he gave me, the feeling of fullness that settled
in my heart just being around him. I cared about Aston so much, he was
starting to consume my every waking thought.
The struggle was real.
Ugh. It was eating me up inside.
*
I wasn’t supposed to really like him. I was supposed to love him in a
brotherly fashion. In my parents’ eyes, he’d come to me when I was nine
years old and therefore too young to understand love beyond the familial
kind. They figured we’d grow up together like siblings, and we played
together and fought like siblings did. Yet…there was not one sibling-like
bone in my body for Aston. I’m not even going to pretend I tried to grow
one either.
No, I never wanted him to be my brother. I never wanted to love him
that way. I may have been young, but I was a romantic at heart. Always a
romantic. Always seeking love and a happily ever after, and I found it in
him. He was my haunted, brilliant prince, and he was the one locked up in a
tower in need of saving, and I wanted to do that. I wanted to save him,
make him happy, so much so it became a fulltime occupation for me. I
knew later on how silly that sounded, but at the time, that want became my
dream and I yearned for it so badly.
Love just happened. You don’t feel the journey, you don’t see the
warning signs, you don’t realize you’re in the middle of it until you are and
the emotion is slapping you hard in the face. And along with the feeling of
heart-stopping love, there was fear too. Fear of the unknown. Of the
wrongness of it all. And then devastation. Devastation in the purest, rawest
form when Daddy came home and proudly proclaimed, “Aston is now
officially adopted.”
Heart failure. Oxygen ripped from my lungs. World spinning before my
eyes. Shaking in my fingers. Realization dawning…dawning until I had no
choice but to face reality and its ugly truths.
 Aston was no longer just the foster child inside our home. No longer
my best friend. No longer the boy I crushed hard on for three whole years.
He was my adopted brother.
Heart breaking…breaking…
Soul plummeting…plummeting…
I pretended to be happy. We celebrated with pizza, and I smiled while
my eyes ached to cry, while my heart tore apart from within, while I stared
with a lump in my throat at Aston’s happy, oblivious face. It was the
longest, most excruciating dinner of my life, and I would never forget the
moment we locked eyes at one another. It was fleeting. Maybe three
seconds tops, but there was something there in his expression that mirrored
my feelings. It was like…there was conflict in him too, and he wanted me
to see it.
He was hurting too, although I couldn’t know for sure, and godddd, I
needed to know for sure.
After dinner, Daddy took him out on a drive, bonding with him man-to-
man, father-to-son. Meanwhile, I locked myself away in my bedroom and
sobbed and sobbed…and sobbed.
It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was bullshit in the
purest form of bullshit. Aston was not my brother! He would never be my
brother! Goddammit it all to hell, but he was now. In everyone’s eyes – in
the eyes of the law – we were now deemed siblings.
It was wrong.
So, so wrong.
Because it meant I was officially in love with my brother.
*
Aston came to me the next morning. My eyes were swollen and sore
from the tears I’d shed last night. I was outside, sitting on the porch swing,
staring numbly at the empty, quiet street. He sat down next to me and the
swing swayed under us.
“Elise,” he whispered, staring at me.
 I blinked and turned my head to him. We looked at each other for
several long moments without speaking. He appeared so gentle, so caring.
Like he wanted to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be
alright, but…it wasn’t. It couldn’t be after last night.
“Everything is going to change, isn’t it?” I asked him quietly, my voice
hoarse.
He frowned and looked away. “I…I don’t know.”
I swallowed and glimpsed down at my clasped hands. “I don’t want
things to change, Aston. Please, don’t tell me you’ll look at me differently.”
He sighed. “I’m not going to treat you differently just because you’re
my sister now, Elise. We’re still best friends. We’ll always be.”
That wasn’t good enough.
“You’ll have other friends,” he then added, and I understood what he
was implying. Other friends meaning other boys. But I didn’t want other
boys.
“You…want me to move on to other friends?” I asked him, my
meaning obvious.
He hesitated before responding, and I already knew what the answer
was before he said it. I could see it in his face, and it killed me. “Yes, El. I
do.”
“I won’t.” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked toward the
street, my defiance loud and clear. “And you’re not my brother. You’ll
never be my brother, Aston.”
I wasn’t trying to be nasty. I was telling him how I felt loud and clear.
“I know,” he softly whispered, his voice pained. “But I have to be. For
now.”
I took deep breaths, trying so hard to keep those tears at bay. Then he
wrapped his arm around me and I sagged against his side. I shut my eyes as
he held me. I felt like I belonged there, and goddammit, it was because I
did. I did belong in his arms, but the world was messy and it didn’t want us
together.
 When I heard the sound of footsteps and the chatter of my parents
approaching the door, Aston immediately withdrew his arm and I shuffled
over, away from him. Platonic positions, nothing more, nothing less. This
was how they had to see us.
With time, we’d become experts at this.
*
Eventually, that moment on the porch was shelved and forgotten. We
were the best of friends, together every chance we had.
Grade school was easy. It was small and familiar, and I was constantly
able to rescue Aston from social humiliation when he purposely ostracized
himself from the kids. But high school was filled with obstacles. While I
flourished in social situations, Aston struggled to care. He was always
hiding out in the library with college level textbooks spread open. He filled
his head with numbers and math problems, and his intelligence was
startling.
On the outside, he didn’t show emotion. His face barely cracked when
he was around my friends. They didn’t know him the way I did, and I was
exhausted playing two people at once. I loved him, but when he was
focused on his books, he just wasn’t there mentally.
His study sessions were so intense, sometimes I wouldn’t see him for
days. Even when he was around, he wasn’t really there. I hated those times
because I needed him to feed me attention. It was the only way my
obsession tapered off and made life bearable.
“I’m talking to a wall,” I’d tell him sometimes when I ate with him in
the library. I always had my food hidden under my bag and my eyes all over
the place in case Mrs Thompson, the librarian, caught me eating where I
wasn’t allowed to. She was a fucking grizzly bear that woman, a king atop
her mole hill.
Once, Aston actually heard me and looked up. “What do you mean?
I’m right here.”
I turned to him in surprise. Then I glowered. “But you’re not really, are
you, Aston?”
He frowned. “I’m not trying to ignore you.”
 “Then talk to me. I’m bored.”
He sighed and slammed the textbook shut. “Okay, I’m talking to you.
What do you want to talk about?”
I smiled brightly. “Anything.”
“Like?”
“What’s in your head?”
“Quadratic equations.”
My smile faltered. “Oh. Nothing else?”
His green eyes studied me for a moment. He looked so good that day.
His hair was long and down for once, not in the usual man-bun he preferred
to throw it in. His features seemed to change every day. His nose was
sharper, his jaw more chiselled out than it was before. My haunted prince
was turning into a serious babe. “And how cute you look with your hair
down.”
My cheeks burned. “Really? It’s a bit wavy today.”
With a ghost of a smile, he nodded. “It suits you very much.”
“Deck said I looked like Rapunzel. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun
of me or…”
Aston’s eyes flashed with something. “Who is Deck?”
I shrugged indifferently. “Some dude in Chem. I sit in front of him, so
figures he’d comment on my hair.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he turned to his book and opened it back
up. “I gotta finish up some questions, El. You should re-join your clique and
talk about Deck of cards with them.”
“Deck of cards?”
He gave me a scathing look. “What kind of name is Deck?”
“I think it’s short for Dexter, and it’s hip.”
“But it’s…Deck.”
“Coming from a guy named Aston.”
“My name’s better than Deck.”
 I took a bite out of my cookie. “That’s a matter of perspective.”
“Is that food, Miss Wright?” shouted a voice.
I jumped in my chair and turned to Mrs Thompson. The beast was
tapping her foot behind the cart she was wheeling around the aisles.
Fucking hell, she was everywhere.
“I wasn’t eating!” I said defensively, my mouth full of cookie crumbs.
“You know the rules!” She pointed in the direction of the entrance.
“They’re on the door you open to come inside! No eating in the library!”
“I was nibbling.”
“No nibbling, no licking, no inhaling any foods of any kind in the
library.”
“Are we supposed to starve?”
“You’re supposed to keep that smart mouth closed in the library.”
Aston smirked from my peripheral and I glowered at Mrs Thompson as
I muttered under my breath, “Fucking lunatic.”
“What was that?”
“I said I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry, Mrs Thompson, for my
abominable transgressions. I’ll put it away.”
“Put it away faster!”
“I will.” Asshole.
When she turned away and shook her head, I rolled my eyes and got
out of my chair. Leaning over it, so that Aston’s face was inches from mine,
I whispered, “He means nothing to me, by the way.”
He didn’t acknowledge what I said, and I didn’t wait for him to. I
turned away and stomped out, passing Mrs Thompson’s stifling glare.
Fucking psycho. I could feel Aston’s eyes on me as I went, and I fought
with everything not to look over my shoulder and meet them. My wants
were obvious right from the get-go, and he continued pretending they didn’t
exist.
Still.
 I’d catch him staring at me some times. Like the way I knew he was
staring at me as I left that library. And every time a boy showed interest, I’d
notice his face change, just like it did when I brought up Deck. I saw the
dark flash in his eyes, the curl of his fists, the way he shut down for hours
afterwards, waiting for me to show interest back. I never did because I
didn’t care for other boys. I cared only for Aston, even if it meant the girls
had boyfriends when I didn’t. They experienced their first kiss, their first
date, their first everything, and I remained untouched over the years, my
heart collecting dust, my experience limited to non-existence.
It was hard. At times I wondered about moving on because what was
the point? I’d never have a chance with him! You’re crazy, I’d scream at
myself internally. You’re so crazy for wanting him! It was just… I couldn’t
move on. I felt nothing for any of the boys. They were shallow and
immature, while Aston challenged me.
I yearned for his complexities, for his brooding nature, for his green
eyes on mine. And, for whatever reason – hopeless as it may have seemed –
I waited.
I waited because Aston was worth waiting for.

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4

Aston
I spent the first couple years being studied like a mouse in a lab
experiment with experts surrounding me. Aptitude test. Analytical test.
Problem solving. Brain scan.
Rinse and repeat.
They studied the way I reconstructed every problem they threw at me,
every question I posed to myself, every possible route I took to reach my
conclusion. They picked apart my brain, wondering where the creativity
lurked and why. They collected their piles of data. Data that meant nothing
because you couldn’t entirely understand genius. You could only study its
characteristics and throw more questions at it.
They couldn’t make sense of me. I beat the odds. I came from nothing.
I was abused and isolated; you couldn’t find a child more fucked-up than I
had been. They’d questioned my earlier years. They asked me what I used
to do when I was alone. I never answered them fully. There was no point
telling them I passed my time counting the holes in the window screen, or
the blades of grass in the tiny backyard they’d leave me in for hours, or the
grains of sand in the run-down park I’d meandered to seven blocks from the
house at the age of six.
Numbers distracted me from the screaming, from the images of blood
and tears and the monstrous face of my father who had startling green eyes
like mine. Numbers left me floating outside my body when my stomach
growled from hunger and my foster fuck of a parent decided to snort
cocaine than feed me.
I learned to be detached, idly chewing my nails to fill the hole in my
belly, as I marked the painted basement walls with one tick after the other.
You couldn’t explain that kind of hollow, cruel existence to anybody.
They’d just pity you, and I didn’t want pity.
 My story ended better than others in my position, anyway. I was saved.
Arthur Wright saved me from destruction, from death. He took me to a
home that was warm and showered me with food and love. It was like
starting all over again. I had to teach myself to feel instead of not feel, to be
openly vulnerable when I’d spent my earlier years locked up inside my
head, determinedly impenetrable to those that could do me harm.
So when these “experts” spoke in hushed conversations to my adopted
mother and father, they said I was wasting my potential. I needed to be
higher. I needed to move forward faster. My brain was a gift and I needed to
nurture it. Because it was boring sitting in a classroom enduring subjects I’d
excelled at week one. I needed more. I needed to advance so they could
throw more questions at me and pick apart my brain.
But I didn’t want any of that, and neither did my parents. Mom and
Dad wanted me to have a normal life. To experience it than bury myself in
academia where I might never come back to earth. They were scared I’d
lock myself down again and throw the walls up, afraid of letting people in
too close when loneliness reminded me of my past. They were right, but
that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want it too. If I advanced, left high
school and started college early, then I’d be away from Elise. And Elise had
eyes I got lost staring into. She had a smile that played with my heart, a
heart that hadn’t thumped this hard in all the years in foster care combined.
I was bewitched the second I laid eyes on her. She was so beautiful, I
almost felt unworthy of her presence. I couldn’t even eat properly, and she
sat there, in all her tender gracefulness, watching me tentatively. I’d never
felt more like a barn animal, but still, she wanted to know me. She taught
me how to swim and knocked on the wall every night just to make sure I
was alright. That kind of affection was foreign to me. I didn’t understand
emotion until I was forced to feel the emotions she gave me head-on.
I was only a boy, and she did things to me I didn’t understand. I grew
up, fascinated by everything – by anything – that was Elise Wright.
Elise and her pink lips. Those lips glossy, juicy, tempting enough to
bite.
Elise and her laughter. That laughter, soft and breathless, music to my
ears.
 Elise.
Elise.
Elise.
I was addicted to Elise enough that I could endure the torturous hours
in school if it meant she was there readily for me to see after class. I needed
her within arm’s reach. I’d needed her since I’d walked through the door
and my eyes drank in that sweet face. I needed her so much, it terrified me.
It gave me nightmares. Me, walking through an endless black maze,
searching for my Elise, never finding her, never having her, never getting
within arm’s reach to catch her.
She was always so close yet so far away.
Every time I awoke from these nightmares, I tethered myself to her. I
lingered around her for the sole purpose of breathing the same goddamn air
as her. It was an unhealthy, needy obsession. My brain constructed her,
pulled her apart, reconstructed her, and pulled her apart again. I spent
countless hours studying the shape of her body, studying every inch so I
could mentally undress her and see what lurked beneath.
My heart needed her, but my genius needed stimulation. And imagining
her – my adopted sister – naked, dressed, and naked again was not the right
distraction for the brain that I was gifted with. I felt dirty for not using it.
Felt dirty for not feeding my mind numbers. That was another kind of
obsession, and I couldn’t find the fucking balance to feed both.
Staying in this town meant going nowhere. The only college here was a
college for agriculture, and I’d prefer needles in my fucking eyes. How
could I go to a college – a proper real college in a city – and have Elise near
me?
I couldn’t.
Ultimately, I was hungry for a girl just as much as I was hungry for
learning. The smart decision was to move ahead, even if it meant leaving
her behind. I just didn’t know if I could do it.
Reality plagued me every moment I wanted her. Elise was off-limits, a
temptation that cursed my existence with this visceral hunger to have her,
possess her, and taste her like she was made for me. I was tormented and on
the brink of falling. If I stepped over that boundary, if I gave into my want, I
wasn’t sure I could survive the disappointment of my adopted parents. We
would all be affected. Our lives wouldn’t be the way it was. That change
was irreversible, and the damage would be permanent. It was a scary
thought, destroying a foundation and rebuilding it without knowing what it
might end up looking like.
But my want for her…it sat in the core of me, growing and growing.
And want is a dangerous fucking thing. It clouds your judgment, it makes
you weak, and I knew…I knew without a doubt, it was only a matter of
time before I cracked.
Obsession was devotion. Obsession was mania and need. It was a
compulsive urge to self-gratify by wanting, and wanting, and wanting ‘til it
hurt, ‘til you could feel it there in your bones, gnawing its way deeper
within you.
Obsession was my craze for Elise. She was my impulse. My…pulse
itself.
It wasn’t healthy. I knew that.
I just didn’t seem to care.

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5
Aston
The memory of Elise curled up and crying always haunted me.
She was sixteen, sweet and beautiful. Her body had started to develop
rapidly over the course of one year. Her legs were long, her hips wide and
soft. Her breasts had come out of nowhere, small but perky. It gave me
headaches at the dinner table. She’d wear these tiny little tank tops without
a bra on, and that brain of mine hammered away, constructing,
deconstructing, reconstructing.
It was misery. I had cold showers every goddamn day.
I felt sick with guilt. Was I so seedy, I couldn’t look at this damn girl
unaffected? Did I have to want her every second of every minute of every
hour of every fucking day? Was there never a break to this madness?
To make matters more complicated, her blossomed looks attracted the
attention of that many dicks. She went from being the pretty girl next door
to a girl they all wanted to fuck. It didn’t help she was a police officer’s
daughter, and that this temptation was too enticing for the dicks to pass up.
So when I heard her crying that night, I knew something terrible had
happened. She wasn’t one to cry. When it happened, it was far and few.
Elise always smiled, always made jokes and lit a room up with laughter.
It was two in the morning when I first heard it. She was meant to be at
Cindy’s place on a sleepover. I knew it wasn’t going to be as innocent as
Dad thought it was. They wouldn’t have a movie marathon and eat pizza
like she’d told him they’d be doing.
Elise was innocent, but she wasn’t the kind of girl that passed up fun.
And that girl loved to dance. She loved to socialize and laugh. She was the
life of a party. I would know, she’d dragged me to that many of them over
the years. Maybe if she didn’t think I was so fucking miserable, she’d have
invited me to the one she’d been at tonight.
 I left my bedroom and quietly opened her door. The lamp on her night
table was on, and her bed was untouched. I scanned the room but I couldn’t
find her. I moved to the bathroom in the corner of her room and slowly
approached. I could hear the shower on, and I stood outside the door,
wondering if I should open it or wait.
I heard her muffled cries, and they cut me to the bone. I couldn’t just
stand there. I had to know what was wrong. My need for her did not sit
dormant; it raged like an inferno, deciding my next actions before my brain
could compute.
On a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped in. I immediately
found her in the shower stall, sitting under the spray in a white dress with
her knees pulled to her chest. Her blonde hair was pressed against the side
of her face, and she was shaking.
A bolt of panic shot through me. I grabbed a towel off the hook and
quickly opened the stall door. Cold water hit me when I stepped in. It was
fucking freezing. I sucked in a breath and quickly turned it off before I knelt
down in front of her and wrapped her lithe body with the towel. Her
shaking hands gripped it as she sobbed, sucking in breaths every few
moments.
What the fuck happened?
I grabbed the corner of the towel and pressed it against her make-up
smeared face, drying it as best I could. She wasn’t startled by my touch.
Instead, she sank into it and lifted her face to me. When her red eyes caught
mine, I felt a chill run through me.
“What happened?” I asked her tightly.
“He…he touched me,” she whimpered out.
I knew damn well what anger was. I’d felt it throughout my life, locked
away in a room while every foster parent I’d ever had decided to neglect me
or beat me. I’d clawed at my face numerous times in my loneliness, trying
to feel pain instead of anger. It was anger over not understanding what I did
to deserve the life I had. I’d been surrounded by so much violence before
the Wright family took me in; it was inevitable that a part of it had found its
way inside of me.
 For the first time since being here that was what I felt in that shower
stall, looking at a girl I was obsessed with crying. I felt violent. As violent
as every monster in my past. I wanted to punch the wall with my fist just to
feel my knuckles break. This anger was alive, a separate entity consuming
me; it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
I kept my face passive so she wouldn’t see it. I’d scare her otherwise.
Fucking hell, I was scaring myself just feeling it.
“Who touched you?” I demanded softly.
She looked away from me. “D…Deck.”
My blood turned to lava. “What did he do?”
More tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know if I deserved it.
Maybe I sent him the wrong signals –”
“What did he do?” I repeated, calmly.
“We were dancing, and not in any seductive way or anything, but…it
was fun, you know?”
I nodded. “I know.”
“He…he said he wanted to grab another CD from his room because I’d
complained about the songs replaying.”
Rage. Rage. “You were at his house?”
“He was throwing a party.”
“What happened next?”
She tightened the towel around her, looking ashamed as she said, “I
followed him there because I felt a little responsible for making him change
the music. He told me he’d show me a few CDs and I’d get to choose. He
took me there and…I feel so fucking stupid, Aston. I’m so stupid.”
“Tell me, El.”
“He handed me a whole bunch of CDs, and as I started going through
them, he started to rub my back. I moved away from him, but he kept
coming closer. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, he was that close.
Just to get rid of him, I picked a random CD and gave it to him. He took it
and threw it on the dresser, and then he…he tried to kiss me, but I didn’t
want it. He got a little angry and pushy. He…he shoved me on the bed and
climbed over me, and then he pinned me under him and tried to kiss me
again, promising I’d enjoy it. I stopped fighting so he’d stop being so
pushy, and his…hands went everywhere. They went everywhere! Between
my legs – everywhere! I felt so sick, like I wanted to throw up, and…I
knew I couldn’t just go along with it. So…as he started to kiss my neck, I
ran my hand down his head and when I got to his face I clawed at it and
kicked him in the balls. He was so shocked. He got off me, screaming about
what a tease I was, and everyone heard him, Aston. The guys laughed at me
when I ran out of there, and Cindy swore at them, and the girls…the girls
were the worst, pointing at me and calling me a tease.”
I didn’t speak for a few moments. My entire fucking body was
trembling, though. My vision even spotted at the rage building inside of me.
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she asked me, sniffing as she looked at me.
“You’re not saying anything because it’s my fault. I was probably asking for
it.”
My hands gripped her face, and I leaned closer, until I was inches
away. Looking at her in the eyes, I gritted out, “Don’t. Don’t you fucking
dare blame yourself. None of this was your fault.”
“But I followed him to his room –”
“That doesn’t mean shit, El. You didn’t want it. The second you pushed
him away, he should have stopped. He would have done a hell of a lot more
to you if you didn’t get him off you.”
She eyed me closely. “Do…Do you hate me?”
I let out a shocked breath. “Hate you? How the fuck could I ever hate
you, Elise? I hate myself for not being there.”
“You didn’t know. I…I didn’t want to drag you there –”
“You take me to every party from now on. I want to be there. Do you
hear?”
She nodded.
“Did he hurt you?”
She didn’t respond, and that only made the rage inside tick.
 “Did he hurt you, Elise?” I demanded a little harsher than I intended.
She reluctantly opened the towel and showed me her wrists. “He
gripped my wrists really hard.”
I took them into my hands and studied them. Sure enough, there were
red marks along her left wrist, like he’d squeezed it. Again, I fought the
anger from showing on my face. I swallowed it all down, but I couldn’t stop
the quakes running through my body.
Elise was a temple. Her body was so beautiful, she deserved worship. I
felt like someone had come close to ruining that sacredness.
I thirsted for violence. Holy fuck, I wanted Deck’s head rolling off his
shoulders, preferably after I’d made him suffer.
I rubbed her wrists softly. “Come on, let’s get you dressed.”
I helped stand her up, and the towel fell from her body. I glimpsed at
her small white dress, plastered to her skin and practically see through when
wet. It ended at her upper thighs, showing off her legs. There was a lot of
cleavage, and had I known she’d dress like this to a party with a bunch of
obnoxious teenage fucks, I’d have been there in a heartbeat.
My fingers shot out to the collar of her dress. She froze, staring at me
with wide eyes as I ran my finger down the front with a frown. “It’s torn
here,” I remarked.
She looked down at the rip from the collar to her breasts. Her pink bra
was visible, and she reddened as she hid the tear with her hand.
“I didn’t know he did that too,” she muttered, not meeting my eye.
What could be said without cursing? I exhaled slowly and took her by
the hand. Her cold fingers entwined tightly around mine. I led her to her
bed and left her standing there as I rummaged through her dresser drawers.
I pulled out a shirt of mine (not surprised because she always stole my
clothes). It was a big black band shirt, and I tossed it her way, knowing
she’d want to be in something baggy. Then I grabbed some shorts and threw
them on her bed too.
She turned her back to me. “Can you unzip me?” she asked, her voice
small. “I can’t reach it.”
 I moved to her slowly, my eyes already drinking in her figure, and the
wet drops falling from the ends of her hair, leaving wet lines down her legs.
I fucking hated this. Hated checking her out when she was so distressed.
Seedy fuck, Aston.
I took her long blonde hair in my hands and shuffled it gently over one
shoulder. She grabbed it, her fingers brushing against mine. I lingered at the
touch and hesitated, not realizing how much I was holding my breath until
my chest ached.
Then my fingers grabbed the zipper at the top of her dress and slowly
pulled it down. It ended just below her bra strap. There were more droplets
down her back, and I wondered what she’d taste like if I swiped at it with
my tongue.
On a short breath, I stepped back and turned away, hearing her shuffle
out of her dress and the material hitting the floor. I breathed in and out,
trying to ignore the strange feelings battling inside of me. Anger and…
desire. I shut my eyes and saw fat droplets on skin. Saw them falling down
her legs, between her breasts, down her spine…
Stripped from control, I looked over my shoulder. She had just
unclasped her bra and thrown it down. Her slender arms reached out to the
shirt. I saw the curve of her small breast as she hastily put it over her head.
My eyes drank in her soft back and the damp pink underwear that made her
ass look…fucking incredible. The second she began pulling those down, I
looked away and shook my head.
Off-limits. She’s off-limits.
“I’m done,” she whispered to me.
I turned to her, clenching my jaw as I nodded. “Good. Get in bed.”
She wavered, staring at me. “Can…Can you stay for a little while
longer? I don’t want to be alone right now.”
It was a bad idea. I needed a cage surrounded by four feet concrete all
around, but…I nodded anyway. I couldn’t say no. Not to Elise.
She slipped into her bed and under the light covers. I sat down on the
edge of her bed and kept my eyes on the window. The images of her ass and
smooth back plagued me. I gripped the back of my neck and squeezed at the
taut muscles. I couldn’t stop the images, and it was starting to fuck with me
physically.
“Please don’t tell Dad,” she told me sometime later. “Please, Aston.
It’ll just make everything worse.”
“I didn’t plan on it,” I told her, unable to keep the edge hidden from my
voice.
“You’re not…you’re not going to do anything, are you?”
I slowly turned my face to her. She was watching me intently, biting
her lips like she did when she was worried. If she only knew what that did
to me. I resisted with everything inside of me not to lean over the bed right
that second and take that lip into my mouth and suck…Fuck, I’d suck that
lip so hard.
Breathe in, breathe out.
“Get some sleep,” I told her, intentionally avoiding her question.
She closed her eyes and I waited for her to sleep. It didn’t come easy.
She still shook from disgust at the way that fucking dickhead touched her.
God, I was going to tear him a new one.
“Can you lay down next to me?” she asked me in a whisper, keeping
her eyes closed.
I stared at her for some time, breathing in and out as I debated her
question. Then I dropped down on the bed and rested my head on the same
pillow as hers. Her hand sought me out a second later. They wrapped
around my palm, fingers linked, her cool skin against my warmth. I felt the
tremors in her as she clutched it tightly. I clutched back because it was Elise
and I couldn’t fight this if I tried.
“Thank you for being understanding,” she told me, sniffing again. “I
was so scared you’d be disappointed in me.”
I looked at her and it burned me to see more tears falling down her
cheeks. I moved closer and with my other hand I swiped my thumb across
her wet skin. That made her eyes open, and she stared at me, her eyes
cloudy and tired.
“You’re not a disappointment,” I told her. “You’re a good person, El.”
 “You’re the best person,” she replied. “You’re the best thing that ever
happened to me. I don’t know how clueless I’d have been without you. You
make things so much better, Aston. The world turns when you’re around.”
I smiled softly. “I stole your thunder six years ago.”
She smiled back. “You didn’t. You brought lightning.”
“You’re thunder and I’m lightning?”
That smiled broadened and my chest stretched at the sight of it. “We
make the perfect storm, don’t you think?”
I nodded once. I was still touching her face. My hand cupped her cheek
and my thumb rubbed beneath her eye at the tears that had fallen. My
breathing went shallow as I wondered what I’d have done in this situation if
we weren’t Aston and Elise.
I’d have kissed her. Ravaged her. I’d have touched her if she allowed it
and undressed her with my teeth.
I removed my hand on a defeated sigh and looked away from her. I was
twisted inside, afraid of the way my skin ignited with the need to touch her.
It took an awful long time for the moment to pass, for her breaths to even
out. When sleep came and she was out, it was a victory for me. I survived
and kept our family intact.
I returned to my room, and then I sat at my desk, turned the lamp on
and opened a textbook. Elise’s body had turned me on, and I didn’t want to
give in. I needed a distraction – I needed numbers.
“What is the wave speed for the transverse traveling wave on this
string?” I mumbled aloud, reading the question over and over again before I
started a diagram.
Pink, wet underwear.
Her teeth biting into her lip.
That fucking back.
Drops between her breasts.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, my pencil snapped in two and I
threw it across the room, panting out loud. I ran my hand through my hair
and then pressed my fingers into my eyes, rubbing at them.
“He touched her,” I whispered, my body trembling. “He fucking
touched her.”
She said no, and he touched her.
He touched what was mine.
That dirty little fuck with his dirty fucking hands.
I growled deep in my throat as another wave of rage ran through me.
I was going to fuck him up.

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6
Aston
Revenge required patience.
Impulsive actions led to discovery and consequences. If I’d followed
through with my rage, Deck would have eaten the pavement Monday
morning when I saw him step out of his Volvo. I’d have made him swallow
his teeth as I smashed his face into the sidewalk.
But I didn’t.
Revenge required careful planning.
I learned how easy it was to study a person, and what surprised me the
most was how much you could learn from them when you watched them
live their lives. All their habits, routines, and behaviour among all their
friends were brought to light, and it was very informative.
Deck was a fucking pansy. A wanna-be jock who’d tried for two years
to land a spot on the basketball team and didn’t make the cut time and time
again. He was a sore loser that hid behind his expensive car and big house,
all owned by fake-titty soccer mommy and bling-bling entrepreneur daddy.
Deck was probably born with a silver spoon halfway up his ass.
I hated spoiled little shits like him, because they took what they wanted
with this fucked up self-entitlement. I deserve this car I didn’t buy. I deserve
that bitch’s mouth around my millionaire dick. I’m a fucking king in my
daddy’s mansion, so give it to me because I’m owed it. I deserve it, so
gimme, gimme, fucking gimme.
I watched Deck-chair during school. Watched the way his eyes
followed asses and breasts and blonde girls, all with a sick smirk on his
pasty white face. That attitude of self-entitlement was so thick, I was
surprised nobody around him choked on it. But those raping little eyes
always ended back on Elise, the hunger evident behind his eyes, along with
a bitterness that had him clenching his man-girl hands into fists. He was
obsessed with her in his own sick way.
Rejection to a spoiled little bitch like him was a tough pill to swallow.
It was foreign, and I was sure that rejection made him question everything
around him. He needed validation, to feel superior because superiority gave
him purpose. It channelled that god-complex in him. I deserve that little
bitch. Who does she think she is to reject me? I’m the best thing to ever
happen to her.
Revenge required perfect opportunity.
I’d been searching for an opportunity to get him alone for two whole
weeks after the incident. And then it happened. On a warm night, I followed
Deck-the-halls out of a movie theatre. He said goodbye to his friends before
making his way through the parking lot and to his car. It was parked near
the fence that backed on to an empty lot of an industrial building. No
witnesses. No cameras. Out of plain sight. It was fucking glorious.
His car was under the shade of a pine tree, the perfect place for me to
hide. I knew the heavens, if they existed, had shined their light on me and
said, “Aston, this is your fucking opportunity for revenge. God is looking
the other way. You fuck this fucking fuck up and no consequences will
follow.”
I slid the balaclava over my head as he neared, tightly gripped the steel
bat in my hand and came at him from behind. He was unlocking the driver’s
door when I grabbed the collar of his shirt and threw him down to the
ground. He yelped in surprise and looked up at me. It was dark. I was the
big bad wolf, six feet tall and grizzly with my steel bat banging against the
ground. Cling-cling.
His eyes widened in fear, and he put his hand out as if to stop me.
“Hey, don’t hurt me, man! I’ll give you my wallet,” he begged. “Or my car.
Anything!”
Fucking pussy.
“What-what do you want?”
“I want to watch you bleed,” I growled, swinging the bat ‘til it hit flesh
and bone.
 I wanted the blood. I wanted the pain. I wanted him to cry. This was
my revenge; I waited for it, I was patient for it, I took the opportunity
presented and gave it my all. I didn’t care about right or wrong. Standing
there, masked and anonymous, it wasn’t Aston beating Deck-chair. It was
Deck-of-cards getting what he deserved for taking advantage of girls who
said no.
Call it wrong. Call me bad. I didn’t give a fuck. Strip the law away,
strip morals and etiquette, and you had animals. Animals fighting for what
was theirs; it was a justice system that was encoded in our DNA, and I
wasn’t going to fight against what was natural to me.
My genius sat mute while my brain chanted the numbers of cracks I
felt beneath my bat.
One concussion, one broken leg, and ten stitches on the head later, I
called it even.
*
Deck didn’t know it was me, and I found it fucking comical he said
he’d tried stopping a mugging before he was violently beaten by a group of
enormous men. Wrestlers he’d called them at some point.
The pussy had driven himself to the hospital (admirable for a man with
one working leg) and filed a false police report because he was that
obsessed with keeping his image. Dad responded to that call and he came
home with his partner Adrian for dinner the next night, talking about how
crazy some people were, shaking his head at the “poor guy” who had tried
to do the right thing.
I wondered what he’d think of the “poor guy” if he knew he tried to
rape his own daughter.
“I don’t know what this town is becoming,” Dad grumbled, “but I’m
not liking it.”
I didn’t say a word in response, but Elise stared at me from the across
the table. Her blue eyes misted, and I wanted to hold her to me and wipe
away the tears threatening to spill. I did it for you, I wanted to say. I did it
because you said no and he didn’t listen. And that’s what bitch boys get
when they don’t listen.
 “He goes to your school,” he continued, looking directly at Elise. “Your
grade.”
She looked away from me and shrugged. “He’s in one of my classes.”
“You should make sure he gets some help making his way around.”
“He has a lot of friends,” she replied in a hard voice. “I’m sure he’ll be
fine, Dad. He’s a rich boy and he acts like it.”
“Rich doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Mom cut in, frowning at
Elise.
Adrian, who was the same age as Dad but meatier, nodded in
agreement. “Your mom is right, El. If anything, money makes you more of
a target.”
“I think she means Deck’s always seemed entitled,” I quickly
explained.
Dad looked at me disapprovingly. “I don’t care how entitled a person
is, they don’t deserve to be beaten to a pulp, Aston. He tried to do the right
thing.”
“I disagree,” I replied calmly. “I think if a person has a shit attitude and
selfishly try and take what they don’t deserve, they need to be taught a
lesson. He’s a bad person, and I wouldn’t take what he says seriously.
Personally, I don’t feel one bit upset that he’s in the hospital.”
Dad just shook his head. “You don’t mean that, Aston.”
“I do.” With everything inside of me, I meant it.
He sighed and swallowed down his urge to argue. Dad always tried to
make his point across, but with me…he always let me have the final say. I
was sure I knew what went on inside his head every time he felt frustrated
by me. He thought of that dark room, of me on my knees, pleading for him
not to hurt me. I saw that flash of pain in his eyes from time to time. I’d
scarred him, while he had healed me and given me a chance at life.
We let the matter drop and ate in silence. After dinner, Elise pulled me
into the hallway and looked at me gravely. “Thank you,” she whispered,
taking my hand softly.
“For what?” I whispered back.
 She smiled. “Deck.”
My face remained neutral. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her other hand shot up, and she stroked my cheek. There was nothing
sibling-like about her touch, and I knew what she was seeking, but there
was no way in hell I could give in to that want and risk losing everything.
Still. I let her touch me. I didn’t let her know it affected me, but…I let
her touch me.
“I know why you did it,” she continued, “and I will never speak a word
of it to anyone.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated slowly.
Her eyes travelled to my lips, and her face warmed. “I think you know
exactly what I’m talking about, and I’ll never forget what you did for me.”
Leaning into her, I firmly said, “If anyone ever touches you like that
again without your permission, I’ll kill them next time.”
She smiled again. “You don’t need to worry.”
“You think I’m joking, don’t you?”
Her lips wavered. “I hope you are.”
I laughed dryly. “I wish I was, but no. I’ll beat him until he’s not
moving anymore, and that’s the fucking truth.”
Just as I said that, Dad’s footsteps sounded out from behind us. She
dropped her hand from mine and stepped back, regaining that safe distance
between us as Dad squeezed his way past us, Adrian following closely
behind. “Get out of the goddamn halls,” he barked, tugging on her ponytail.
“There’s an entire house you can take up the next time you decide to block
it.”
She nodded at him, but her eyes remained on mine. “There won’t be a
next time, Dad.”
I knew who she was really talking to.

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7
Aston
Logic and numbers told me that if shit went down again, and there was
more than one man involved, I’d need to better my chances fighting them.
So I went to the fitness gym at school.
My real father was a piece of shit who deserved to be dead, but he was
a massive guy¸ and I ended up with the same body type. I was already big
by seventeen, had a body that was far beyond my years, but lifting weights
gave me an edge that separated me from most of the other guys.
I put my body through hell, and every time I wanted to give up halfway
through, all I had to think about was Elise being taken advantage of.
Because a girl that looked as irresistible as her was bound to attract
unwanted attention, especially from the small-town teenage hicks in
Montley.
I spent that year bulking. I wanted my final year at high school to be by
her side, warding off anyone that thought they could approach her. By
eighteen, I was huge. I had muscles on top of muscles, and nobody wanted
to be in my way. The guys at the gym always whistled in awe when I
looked at myself in the floor to ceiling mirrors. They sought my advice, and
I spent more time helping them lift than actually lifting myself.
I liked the people at the gym. They didn’t ask personal questions. They
were all about one thing when they were surrounded by weights and cardio
machines: fitness. They were like me in ways. They sought structure and
discipline, and there was something about that environment that calmed me.
I didn’t have my back up like I did in other social situations. Here, I relaxed
and made friendly acquaintances. It was my haven outside of Elise.
One day, Javier, one of the friends I’d made there, approached me.
“You’re a fucking machine, Aston.”
I smirked. “That’s the plan.”
 “Well, chicks dig machines. I’ve been asked to introduce you to
someone.”
“Who?” I asked, barely hiding my disinterest.
“Tanya over there by the cardio machines.”
I glanced over my shoulder and at a petite brunette, pressing the
buttons on a treadmill, pretending to be distracted. But she looked up at me
every few moments, her face turning pink when our eyes met.
“She’s Brazilian, and she’s hot, don’t you think?” Javier asked, nudging
my shoulder.
I nodded because it was the truth. “Yeah, she’s hot.”
“Let’s go then. You’ll thank me when she’s riding you to third base.”
“I’m busy.”
“There’s no such thing as busy when hot Brazilian chicks want to talk
to you, asshole. Come on.”
“And say what?”
“Nothing. Anything. She won’t care.”
I went because I was admittedly intrigued, and the girl was extremely
easy on the eyes. It wasn’t often I found a girl as uniquely attractive as
Elise.
“Hey Tanya,” Javier said, smiling at her.
“Oh, hey,” she replied, pretending to be surprised. She hopped off the
machine, looking right at me with chocolate brown eyes.
Javier nudged my shoulder. “Aston, this is my friend Tanya. She’s
new.”
I nodded kindly. “Hey.”
Tanya grinned. She even managed to do that sensually. “Hi, it’s nice to
meet you, Aston. We’re in the same history class.”
“Are we? I don’t pay attention in that class.”
She laughed. “Neither do I. Do you work out here all the time?”
“Every day.”
 “Are you training for sports or something?”
“I don’t do sports.”
“He doesn’t compete with anyone but himself,” Javier explained.
“Aston’s weird like that.”
Tanya bit her lip, and I closely watched the movement, sadly feeling
absolutely nothing by it. “I don’t think that’s weird at all.”
“He helps out all the other guys too,” Javier said, doing everything in
his power to score me this girl. “He’s like a trainer.”
“Can you help me out?” she asked me, her eyes moving to my arms. “I
don’t know how to do weights.”
That was bullshit. She knew it. We knew it. I was supposed to go along
with it, though. I was supposed to lead her to a weight rack and tell her how
to squat with my hands on her waist, hips, ass, wherever. It was meant to be
some kind of erotic moment that led to her getting fucked in the nearest
bathroom stall. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this kind of action.
The offer was there, and it shone from her eyes, begging me to take it.
For a few brief moments, I wondered what that would be like.
Touching her, running my hand through her thick dark hair, squeezing her
hips as I lifted her tiny body against me. It was an exciting thought. It made
my blood run faster as I thought of how easy it would be to finally feel how
warm the body of a woman was.
But…then again, I’d rather fuck my math textbook. I’d get more
connection out of it than a throwaway fuck, and besides…the only girl that
ran through my head when I had sexual fantasies had blonde hair and blue
eyes.
It was very disappointing. I didn’t want to focus all my sexual energy
on a girl I couldn’t have. If it were up to me, I wanted to imagine myself
with other girls and move on from my obsession. But it just wasn’t
happening.
That was the curse of addiction: it had your focus narrowed on one
particular thing, and nothing else came close to it.
 I tore my eyes away from Tanya and glanced down at my watch. “Can’t
stick around. I have to pick up Elise from dance class.”
Javier’s eyes widened and he gave me a scolding look. “Well…how
about I pick her up and you can get to know Tanya a bit? Help her lift some
things and make sure her form is nice and…tight.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t seen Elise in three hours and forty-two
minutes. I can’t wait another hour.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” Tanya asked, masking her disappointment.
“His sister,” Javier answered for me, frowning at my lack of interest.
“Oh…is she young? Is that why you have to pick her up from dance
class?”
“She’s seventeen,” I responded. “Her feet get sore after class, and I
don’t want her to walk home in pain.”
“Oh…”
Javier appeared annoyed. “I just told you I’d pick her up. I wouldn’t
make her walk home, man.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “She doesn’t like you.”
“What? Why the hell not?”
“Because you flirt with her.” He did it all the time. He was so horribly
obvious, I wanted to rip his lungs from his throat any time he was around
her.
Javier rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man.”
I looked at them both and backed away. “Sorry guys. I’ll see you
around. It was nice to meet you, Tanya.” When I smiled kindly at her, she
let out an unsteady breath and her cheeks went pink.
Fuck, I wished I felt something.
I wished, most of all, that I was normal.
*
I waited out front of the dance studio with my back against the car,
arms folded. My eyes were glued to the entrance, waiting impatiently for
Elise to appear.
 I immediately straightened when she walked out of the studio alongside
Cindy. I felt instantly alive, like adrenaline had been shot up my veins. My
eyes trailed her body, like it’d been deprived of it for years. She was in
those sexy black tights and a damp white tank top. Her hair was up in a
loose bun, a couple curled strands tucked behind her ear.
“Hey Aston,” Cindy called out, grinning mischievously at me.
“Looking good!”
“Hi Cindy,” I forced out. God, I can’t stand her.
“Take care of my girl!”
As if I wouldn’t? I just nodded. It saved me from talking. The problem
with Cindy was she latched on to words and never stopped moving her lips.
If you said nothing, then she had nothing to work with.
Elise parted ways from her and hurried to me. She was flushed and
breathless, a sight that knocked me speechless every time.
I smirked at her as she approached. “How was it?”
She raised her arms out and spun backwards in a circle on one foot.
“Invigorating!” she shouted, giggling when she nearly lost balance at the
end.
“Calm your shit. You’re not a ballerina.”
“We integrated some ballerina pirouettes into the dance, so I’m part-
ballerina now, asshole.”
I chuckled and opened the passenger door for her. “Such a gentleman,”
she said sarcastically before skimming me up and down. “You just come out
of the gym, hulk?”
“As always.”
“How was it?”
“Painful. I’m starved. You want some pizza or something?”
“I was thinking a huge ass quarter pounder.”
I groaned. “Fuck yeah.”
We rode down main street, her feet up on the dashboard, the radio
cranked up all thanks to her. She danced carelessly, windows down, her
terrible voice screaming out lyrics. She butchered music. The words were
always wrong, and if you corrected her, she wouldn’t have it. She just
shook her head in denial and kept rattling the same shit. Drivers looked at
her with smiles, pedestrians laughed as they caught fragmented seconds of
her torturous performances, and she didn’t give a shit.
I loved it.
I grinned at her as we stopped at a red light. She had these aviator
glasses on, and she thought she was so fucking hip in them. And there I
was, just staring at her craziness, at her feet bobbing with the music, at her
butchering lyrics with those playboy specs on, and then flashing me a duck
face when she caught me looking. The girl was mad. Absolutely fucking
crazy mad.
A cop car pulled up beside us. I saw Adrian first on the passenger side,
and then I met Dad’s eyes. He honked once at us and angrily pointed at
Elise. “Put your seatbelt on!” he shrieked. “I swear to God, Elise! Swear.
To. God!”
I laughed as Elise immediately straightened in her seat and turned the
volume down. “Sorry!” she yelled back, throwing on her seatbelt. Her
cheeks were flaming red. She looked adorable scrambling to please him.
Her old man was the only one that could get this kind of reaction out of her.
“We’re going to have a talk later!” he promised sternly.
The light turned green and he turned the corner, disappearing out of
sight. We drove straight ahead, the music so low it was a whisper now. I
smirked at her and she slapped my arm. “Shut up,” she hissed at me, biting
at the inside of her cheek.
“Didn’t say anything,” I muttered cheekily.
She rolled her eyes. That was always a sign of protest. Rolling her eyes
at everything that didn’t please her. “You don’t have to. Your smartass face
does all the talking for you.”
“What does a smartass face look like exactly?”
“Like Aston Turner. Stop smiling.”
 That just made my smile grow. “Just keep your seatbelt on from now
on, El. If that was another cop, he might have given me a ticket.”
“Dad would never have allowed that.”
“You know as well as I do he’d never come to the rescue. If I deserved
the ticket, I’d damn well have it.”
She made a grunting sound and looked out the window. She knew I
was right, but she wouldn’t admit it. Typical of El.
We went to the nearest McDonalds and ate in a small booth by the
window. The place was packed with people our age, sitting in their booths
in packs. On our way in, she’d stopped to wave hello to a few of them, but
the guys weren’t as friendly when I was standing behind her, glaring at
them.
She got distracted for several minutes at a toddler sitting in the booth
behind her. He couldn’t have been older than two, and he stood there and
swiped at her hair. She made a show of gasping and turning, and he ducked
down and giggled like he was the biggest secret around. Sadly, the mother
was unimpressed, and a few hisses later, the boy was gone.
When El turned back to me, she pulled her pickles out of her burger
and tossed them to me. I placed the pickles in my burger and threw my
onions to her. She placed her onions in her burger and we ate. I gave her all
my soft fries and she gave me all her hard ones. This was our unspoken
McDonalds routine. The ying to the yang when it came to fast food.
“Look who’s come in,” she said quietly, halfway into her food.
I followed her line of sight to the entrance where Deck and his crew of
idiots walked through. Immediately, the asshole scanned his surroundings
like he was taking personal stock of his environment. Chick hunting in a
fast food place, fucking classy, right?
He did a double take when he caught sight of Elise. His body stiffened
for half of a second. Then he looked at me, and I stared right on back,
challenging him to dare make a move. He sniffed and looked away, moving
straight to the line-up behind the counter.
“Pussy,” I muttered under my breath, taking another bite of my burger.
 “Is he staring at me?” she asked, slight concern in her voice.
“No.”
“He does at school. A lot.”
My chewing slowed. “I know,” I replied tightly. “He’s still angry, still
wanting what he can’t have.”
“You think he’s just sore about what happened?”
“Yeah, he is.”
“But that was so long ago.”
“An unhinged asshole never forgets.”
She tilted her head to the side. “He won’t come to me because you’re
always in his way.”
I leaned back in my seat and snapped, “Damn straight. I’d squash him
like a fly if he picked on you.”
“Well, what am I going to do without you next year, Aston?”
I looked back at Deck as he ordered his food. “I’ll make sure he keeps
his distance, El. Don’t worry about it.” Maybe I’d break his leg again, or
give him brain damage – anything to make him useless for the first half of
the year. I felt a little startled how seriously I was considering it.
She nodded, her eyes glowing as she watched me. “You’re my
guardian, you know that?”
If she only knew what she was to me. I switched my gaze to her and
smiled despite my compulsive need to reach over the table and smash her
lips against mine. “And you’re an angel, El.”
She smiled back and threw another hard fry to my pile. “Are you busy
tonight?”
“If I have nothing to do, I’ll be hitting the books.”
She looked at me quizzically. “What’s it like? I don’t get the
obsession.”
I thought about it for a moment. “If I’m not doing it, I get irritable. All
I can think of are numbers. It’s an addiction, and the less of it you have, the
more you want it.”
 She poked her fries around, whispering, “I know what that’s like.”
“With your dance?”
She looked suddenly uncomfortable. She tightened the bun in her hair
and looked away from me, avoiding my question. “So, will your brain get
shitty at me if you want to go to the movies tonight?”
I chuckled. “It’s not another fucking entity.”
“Do geniuses swear as often as you?”
“Swearing is a sign of honesty.”
She snickered. “Bullshit.”
“It’s true.”
“Then I’m Einstein. Now do you want to go out tonight or what? It’s
too hot to stay at home. I’m going to melt.”
“Use a spray bottle and the fan.”
“I did, and I was naked. Didn’t do shit.”
Fucking hell, she shouldn’t be telling me that. “It’s the hair. Cut it off
so your neck can breathe.”
Her jaw dropped. “I’m not cutting off my hair! That’s like asking me to
cut my arm off.”
“I’m just saying it’d make you cooler.”
“How would you like it if someone told you to cut off your hair?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Yes, you would. The world would mourn your man-bun.”
I grinned. “It’s just hair.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Why are you avoiding my question?
Do you wanna go out or not?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll go out with you.”
“Don’t look too enthused,” she replied sarcastically, suppressing a
smile.
 I was enthused. I’d do anything to spend time with her. Even though
my mind throbbed with the need to study, I was too busy picking Elise over
it to care. I couldn’t resist her anymore. The temptation was too strong to
fight.
“I want to go,” I assured her.
Another hard fry landed on my side. “Good. I gotta go to the
bathroom.”
As she stood up and grabbed her bag, I discreetly trailed my eyes down
her body, catching every curve and rise and fall from her chest. Jesus, I
needed to see her skin. I needed something to feed the addicted monster
inside me.
She moved straight to the bathroom, passing Deck and the line-up. He
turned his head and watched her disappear around the corner. His gaze
remained there for several unnerving moments before he finally turned back
around and paid.
*
That evening, she dragged me to a romance movie. I sat in the middle
of the theatre with dozens of swooning girls.
“I think the show is you at this rate,” Elise muttered before kicking at
the chairs in front of her, startling all the girls that’d been spying on me.
“Stop staring! It’s rude!”
“She’s got Tourette’s,” I lied to them before pulling her legs back. She
fought with me for a few moments, until I started digging my fingers into
her thighs, tickling her mercilessly. “Be civil, El.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” she cackled breathlessly, pushing me away. “I’ll
stop.”
I let go and we settled back into our seats. The ads consisted of her
throwing popcorn at the girls in front of us whenever they turned around. I
tried not to smile, but fuck, her childlike behaviour was infectious, even the
people around us laughed.
When the movie started, the theatre war ended and everyone stared on
tentatively. The movie was fucking terrible; I wasn’t even going to lie.
Some dude with a chiselled six pack was running around being a
manwhore, slipping his dick into anything that moved. At the same time, he
was pushing away his ridiculously sexy best friend who was so fucking
obviously in love with him. She was there, in front of him, ready and
willing, and he turned her down every time, pretending to feel indifferent
when he was really battling his emotions.
And the chicks were lapping this shit up! Including Elise, who’d
pressed her body as close to me as possible. When shit got emotional, I
wrapped an arm around her shoulder and lightly stroked her hair. The hero
professed his love eventually, but it was too late. A bunch of melodramatic
shit followed, and tears…lots and lots of tears. The ending was fucking
vicious, and nobody walked out happy.
I left feeling a little aggravated on the drive home. In the back of my
mind I knew what was pissing me off. That fucking movie with those
chiselling abs and blaring white smiles hit a chord in me. I had Elise so
clearly revolved around me, waiting for scraps of my affection. I wasn’t
whoring around, but I wasn’t any different in how I treated her. I was
spending so much of my time pretending I was indifferent.
I was a coward, wasn’t I? I was so scared of losing one thing, I wasn’t
being man enough to take the leap. Fear was bullshit. You could be strong
as I was, it didn’t stop that fear of change.
Somewhere within me, that frightened child I used to be sat there,
darkening every corner. I wondered when that child would finally toughen
the hell up and chase what he wanted.
Because, one day, it might be too late.

OceanofPDF.com
8.
Elise
Knock. Knock.
My eyes opened just barely, and I turned my face to the wall. Why was
Aston knocking on it now?
I knocked back, confused.
“You awake?” he asked me through the wall, his voice quiet.
“Now I am,” I groggily answered, yawning. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll be right there.”
Suddenly alert, my eyes really flew open now. I sat up quickly and ran
my fingers through my hair, tidying up the blonde knots just as the door
quietly creaked open. It was dark save for the moonlight coming through
the window, and I watched in surprise as he tiptoed into my bedroom.
At eighteen, Aston went from quiet, invisible boy to
ohmygodheisSOhot. He was big. Unnaturally big for his age, and Dad
chalked it up to genetics, but I knew the real reason. He went to the gym,
lifted as much weights as possible to get bigger than all the rest of the guys.
I suspected he lifted so they’d leave him alone, and the results were
spectacular. He was confident and sure of himself, and the only guy in a
library buried in a textbook that was this ripped. If he wasn’t so goddamn
smart, he would have been the star of some modelling agency.
At the same time, he was an absolute gentleman. Just…a really nice
guy through and through. Not like the typical jocks from school who
snickered at the small kid in class and used girls for sex. This was largely
thanks to Dad, who always preached to respect the girls and look after the
weak. And like Dad, Aston became a leader, someone you’d prided to have
in your corner. It still took a lot for him to smile, but that just added to the
Aston appeal, and the girls melted in his presence.
And me?
 I was a tumbleweed, directionless and hormonal. I pined for a boy I
couldn’t have, who didn’t treat me yet with the affection I yearned for.
Despite that, he was involved, interested, and there whenever I needed him
to be. He stared at me with a depth that made me wonder what he was
thinking about inside that complex head of his.
And now he was in my bedroom. It wasn’t like he’d never stepped foot
in here or anything, but at seventeen, I enjoyed my privacy. And a girl
needed her privacy, right? This room was my angst-cave where I pitied
myself often for wanting what I couldn’t have, especially around my period.
“What’s going on?” I asked him quietly.
He moved past the bed and stopped at the window, peering out through
the blinds. “It’s hot out, El. Aren’t you dying from the heat?”
I was. The middle of June was unbearably hot, unlike previous
summers.
“That’s why we went to the movies,” I grumbled. “We watched two
shocking hours of B grade garbage with the only redeeming quality being
that guy’s body. Did you see those abs?”
“I see them every day in the mirror.”
I ignored his arrogant remark. “I can’t believe they killed her off, by
the way. What’s wrong with happy endings?”
“They don’t always exist.”
“Pessimist.”
“I’m a realist.”
“Why are you here then, Debbie Downer? To talk about the movie that
is seriously killing my heart right now?”
“I want to cool off from the heat.”
“What do you mean?”
I waited for him to answer, but as he turned with that mischievous look
in his eye, it was slowly dawning on me what he was getting at.
“You want to swim?” I then asked him, my heart racing at the thought.
“Do you?”
 “I’m down.”
“Grab a bottle of water. We’ll run it.”
“Just take the car.” Aston owned a vehicle (if you want to call it that,
though I preferred the word vehi-kill). He had saved for a year straight
working at the local paintball field for one of Daddy’s friends. He bought
the shittiest, loudest death trap of a car two months ago, and we absolutely
loved it. Unfortunately, the rest of the world didn’t. Especially in the
mornings when it sounded like it was blowing up the whole neighbourhood.
Our neighbour Becky could often be heard screaming sermons about the
end of the world when she heard it.
“It’ll wake Dad,” he explained. “And he’ll be pissed we’re sneaking
out this late.”
I rolled my eyes. “He shouldn’t be.”
“He says there’s more crime lately.”
“He’s a cop. There’s always crime and it’s always dangerous.”
His lip quirked up, and I nearly swooned at the sight. “Still can’t. Just
grab a bottle and let’s go.”
I slipped out of bed and followed after him. He weighed more than me
(by double at least), stressed the floorboards beneath us, yet he still
managed to be quieter. He made dramatic faces every time I made a sound,
and I stifled my laughter at the overly done way his nose flared and his eyes
bulged. I wanted to smack him, but that would definitely wake the parents
up, and they were feet away from us as we approached the stairwell.
The house was very modest. It had four bedrooms, and one sat between
my room and theirs. It was Mum’s little sewing office, and I was thankful
for it, otherwise they’d have heard our wall conversations in the middle of
the night, and our attempt at sneaking out would have been foiled right
from the get-go.
It wasn’t the first time we’d snuck out. I wasn’t nervous or afraid of
getting caught. We’d done this so often last summer; we didn’t even try
being quiet. But a year had passed since then, and it was our first time
sneaking out of the house since, so we were back to being overly cautious.
Because when you had a dad that was a police officer in a town filled with
strife and crime, there was no breezing in and out of the door in the middle
of the night.
We creaked down the staircase and then stopped at the kitchen. I
grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge while Aston stood by the
threshold, keeping a lookout. I felt like we were breaking out of a prison by
the time I reached him and handed him his bottle. We then moved swiftly
down the hallway, picking up pace through our impatience. He unlocked the
door, wincing at the loud click, and then opened it. It was smooth sailing
after that. He swung open the screen door and we slipped into our flip-flops
sitting out front. Then we ran down the steps and hit the sidewalk.
I always felt a bolt of adrenaline doing this. It was such a rush being
naughty.
“Race you,” he said, picking up speed.
I giggled and raced after him. It made me so happy to see bursts of fun
Aston, even if it didn’t always come with a smile.
The lake was seven blocks from the house, and it was all downhill.
Coming back was usually the biggest hurdle because we’d be drained from
swimming, and going uphill was such a drag. But tonight was different.
Tonight I felt rejuvenated. I needed my dose of Aston. He was too busy
lately working, hitting the books hard, and getting prepared for that next
giant step after high school. Summertime was our time, and I didn’t want
that to change. I liked routine. I liked familiarity in my world, and if
anything was out of it, or rearranged, it cost me my sanity.
We ducked under the boom gate and ran past the parking lot. It was so
hot and I’d worked up such a sweat, I had guzzled half my bottle already.
We raced down the dirt path that led to the lakeside beach and parks. It was
completely deserted, but across the river I could already make out lit lake
houses with people out front and along the board walks. They couldn’t see
us where we were, and I doubted they’d care much either.
Faint music could be heard as we slowed at the beach and kicked off
our flops. It was party mix music, and I couldn’t resist swaying my hips to
the beat. I loved music. Loved dancing. Loved being a complete goofball,
uncaring where I was or how ridiculous I looked. Good music owned me.
 Aston laughed faintly as he pulled his shirt off over his head. It caught
on his hair tie and pulled it free, making his long hair fall around his
shoulders. God, I loved his hair.
“You’re such a partier, El,” he commented lightly.
I shrugged and spun, using this as an excuse to discreetly glance at his
upper body. For a freshly turned eighteen-year-old, my adopted brother was
jacked. Broad chest, distinct abs, and a trail that led…woo, it led to the
Land of Oz. I’d take this boy’s yellow brick road any day.
“Stop dancing and come on,” he pressed, already moving to the water.
“The last time this happened, you couldn’t find me.”
I waited for him to wade deeper into the water, and when he faced
forward, I slipped off my shirt and jean shorts. In nothing but my pink lace
undies and matching bra, I waded in after him. The water was just what I
needed, cooling every inch of my heated body. I felt the rocks under my
feet, some jagged and painful, and plodded on after Aston.
The massive lake overlooked the mountains and was sectioned off with
vertical board walks. Every time you passed one, the water got deeper. It
was the perfect way to keep the kids zoned in one area without fear of them
drowning or wandering off. It was always a lick of nostalgia wading into
this water because it was the very same one I taught Aston how to swim in.
Aston and I passed four sections, swimming with ease before settling in
the deepest part of the lake. I stayed close to the boardwalk, wrapping my
legs around the column in the water when I got tired. Meanwhile, Aston
swam like a fish, diving into the depths and surfacing half a minute later
every time. His hair was plastered against his flesh, his lips were pink and
wet. I sighed. Just…divine.
“Are you looking forward to leaving?” I asked sometime later when
he’d stopped plunging into the water. This was a topic of conversation that
had been ongoing between him and Dad.
He ran a hand through his soaked hair before floating on his back
around me. “I’m not thinking about it much, to be honest,” he answered.
“Doesn’t feel real?”
 “No. It’ll feel real when it’s around the corner, not a couple months
away.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to feel sad, so I pushed the topic aside and
declared, “I’m looking for a job so I have something to do when school’s
out, by the way.”
“Where are you looking?”
“Maybe the grocery store like last year. I saw some for-hire signs out
front a couple days ago.”
He gripped the ledge of the boardwalk with his strong arms, settling in
front of me, and peered at me with consideration. “I can ask Fred and Cora
at the field if you can help out with anything.”
“You want me selling paintballs?” I raised a brow.
“It gets busy on the weekends, and we’re struggling with demand. Fred
also has his store, and when the boys are out playing on the weekends, he
could have you in there. I don’t know. It’s just a suggestion. Would hate to
see you miserable working at a store.”
“Why would I be miserable?”
“Because you’d hate it. You hated it last year. Said the women treated
you like a doormat.”
I tried not to show my happiness that he’d remember something that
happened so long ago. So I shrugged casually. “And I’d like the paintball
field more?”
“You’re a tomboy. You’d love it.”
I frowned. A tomboy? Is that what he thought of me? “I’m not a
tomboy.”
He chuckled dryly. “Whatever you say.”
Then he dove back into the water and disappeared from sight, leaving
me to question myself. Was I really a tomboy? I wore girly shit. Sometimes.
I mean, I liked to go out and wasn’t afraid of getting dirty. I also didn’t wear
much make-up, but…A tomboy? And the way he said it, was that a bad
thing? Did he think that was gross? Did he like the girly girls? He never
talked about girls. Ever. I’d never even seen him check out girls to know
what he was into.
His keeping to himself had created quite a frenzy at school, and like
usual, he never even noticed.
When he emerged from the water again, he climbed and settled on the
boardwalk and pulled me up to him. We sat side by side, drenched and cool,
our feet in the water. He leaned back on his thick forearms after a few
minutes and stared up at the night sky, and all I could think about were
tomboys and girly girls and the strange jealousy that ripped through me not
knowing what he was into.
“Cindy likes you.” I blurted that out without thinking. It was rash and
impulsive, but I had to know.
“Okay,” was all he said on the matter.
I turned to look down at him. “Like, if you asked her out, she wouldn’t
say no.”
“Okay,” he repeated indifferently, avoiding my eye.
“Aston –”
“Elise,” he sharply cut in. “I heard you.”
I sighed and impatiently replied, “Well, aren’t you interested?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Cindy’s a drama-queen. I don’t know why you still hang out with
her.”
“I hang out with her because she’s still better than the other bitches at
school.”
“I met a nice girl today. Her name is Tanya. She didn’t seem bitchy.
Maybe you should hang out with her too.”
My face darkened. “Where did you meet her?”
 “At the gym.”
I gritted my teeth. “You’re talking about the new girl?”
He raised his brows. “Oh, so you know her?”
“She’s not new, I don’t know why she tells people that. She arrived
during second semester, and apparently she can suck-start a lawn mower…
or so the boys tell me.”
He laughed. “Right.”
“But…I guess you might like her. She’s a girly girl.”
He raised his brows in question. “So?”
“So…you know, aren’t you into girly girls like Cindy? She doesn’t
have a suck-start reputation. You’d be the cutest couple.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
My cheeks heated and I looked away from his “what the hell” face and
kicked at the water. “I’m just asking, Aston. Jeesh.”
“Did Cindy put you up to this?”
“No, I just wondered if you’d be interested back in her. That’s it. You
don’t have to be butt-hurt about it.”
“She called me a weirdo years ago, or are we going to forget that?”
“But that was before you turned…you know.”
He looked at me. “Turned what?”
“You know…”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Well, figure it out.”
“Just tell me. Before I turned what?”
“Beautiful!” I yelled in frustration before gesturing at all of him. “That
was before you were an Adonis, Aston. Now they’re all over me asking me,
‘Oh, Elise, is Aston available? Oh, Elise, give him my number. Oh, Elise,
have him date me and I’ll be your best friend and do whatever you ask of
me.’ Like if I wanted to, I could have a slave camp with all these girls
who’ll do anything to be with you. It’s freaking annoying and I’m tired of
being the messenger. I need a life outside of your stalkers. I need you to just
date one of your girly girls so I can live in freaking peace!” And get over
you!
There was an unbearably awkward silence that followed. When I found
the courage to look at him, I froze in place at his expression. He was
smiling from ear to ear, his dimples I never really knew were there
deepening, his green eyes twinkling under the moonlight as he stared back
at me.
“Wow,” he whispered, amused, “you’re really pissed.”
“I’m pissed that you’ve done nothing about it.”
“Is that really why you’re pissed?” He prodded, but he knew.
“Yes,” I lied.
“I’m not dating airheads, and the girls at school are airheads.”
“What about Delia? She’s smart.”
“Her head’s the shape of a football.”
To my dismay, I burst out laughing. “Oh, so you’re picky about their
intelligence, but if they have it, then it’s their looks.”
“I’m a normal guy, too, you know. I like girls, but…I want someone
smart too. And pretty. Both those things aren’t too much to ask for. If
Delia’s head was more proportionate to a baseball, I’d go for it.”
I wrapped my arm around my sore ribs as I laughed, and he just smiled
at me, watching me as I struggled for air. “What about this Tanya girl
then?”
“She’s hot, don’t get me wrong. She’s…wow.” Jealousy shook me to
the core, but I swallowed it down as he continued. “I’m sure she’d give a
guy a night to remember but…that’s all she is. A night to remember.”
“You’re such a typical guy, Aston.”
“No, I’m not, El.”
No, he was not, but he was too. It was hard to define Aston. He was so
layered and filled with more questions than answers. He hid himself so
well.
 I lay back, and he dropped down too, until we were shoulder to
shoulder, our normal position under the night sky since we were kids.
As the silence consumed us, my thoughts raged on, and the questions
continued mounting. It was too hard to bottle them up. Aston was a puzzle
that just wasn’t fitting together in place. I needed to know something…
something impossible, maybe, but something that had been on my mind for
a while. And it would destroy my hopes into a million tiny pieces if it were
true.
“Aston,” I murmured quietly, my eyes transfixed on the twinkling stars.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re eighteen and…Well, you say you like girls but you’ve never
had a girlfriend. The girls talk a lot about it. They think you’re hiding
something, and… I mean, you don’t talk about girls ever, and…”
He turned his face to me. “And what?”
“It’s just odd. I want you to know I would never judge you or anything.
Nobody would, unless they’re totally conservative and live at the church
and eat pages of the bible for breakfast, and I know there’s some of those
assholes around, but seriously, nowadays it’s normal for people to be…”
Silence. I couldn’t say the word. You had to wait for someone to be
ready to open up about it, right? Was I pushing it? Was he even?
He exhaled heavily. “You think I’m gay?”
OhGodOhGodOhGod.
I turned my head and finally looked at him. He appeared shocked. Was
it shock because I’d discovered it? When the girls at school began to ask me
if he was gay, my first reaction was panic. Not because I cared about
someone’s sexuality, but because that would mean the way I felt for him
was entirely one-sided. Those looks he’d given me throughout the years, it
would have meant I’d completely fabricated them in my desperate mind.
In a way, it made sense that he was gay. My chest felt like it was being
crushed by a truck at the likelihood. What eighteen-year-old guy never had
a girlfriend? No, to better word it, what eighteen-year-old guy that looked
like him never had a girlfriend?
 He licked his bottom lip and looked away from me. I watched his nose
flare as he digested my words bitterly. “No, El,” he finally said in a
disappointed tone, “I’m not gay. I like girls. I like girls a lot. Cocks don’t do
it for me, okay?”
Relief. Relief. Relief. “Then why aren’t you interested in going out?”
He huffed, infuriated. “Fuck, seriously, El?”
“Watch your tone, jackass. I’m just curious!”
“I’m not going to waste a second of my affection on somebody I don’t
care about,” he explained sharply. “I could go out and be the biggest man-
whore that ever lived, but why demean myself? I don’t care about using
girls. I don’t care about getting laid, or going to parties. That’s never been
my scene. You know that. I’m going to be myself at my own pace, not be
somebody else to impress others. Alright?”
I blinked. “Oh.”
Yeah. Oh. Because there was no intelligent response I could come up
with against that. He was too mature, even for me, and I was playing catch
up.
“I’m sorry if I upset you, Aston,” I apologized contritely.
“Don’t be sorry.” But I could tell he was pretty shitty. He sat back up
and I stared at his smooth back, at the random long scars from another
lifetime ago in the hands of a monster, at his long blond hair plastered to his
skin, at his broad shoulders as he kicked his leg up and stared ahead, lost in
his own head.
“What about you?” he suddenly asked me, turning his head to the side,
profile in view. “Why aren’t you dating guys already? They tell me you’re
hot all the time.”
“They’re jerks,” I replied as casually as I could. “Most of them are
meatheads.”
“They’re not all jerks.”
“Yeah, well…” my voice drifted off. I was uncomfortable. Was this
how he felt when I demanded answers? I needed to consider the tables
turning the next time I blurted shit out.
 “Well what, El? Come on, spit it out.” He was doing this on purpose
now, pressing me, that bite present in his tone. “You haven’t been with a
guy. Not that I know of. What kind of crap are you into? You can tell me
now, you know. I’m going to be gone for your final year.”
“Look, I said I’m sorry, Aston,” I retorted.
“Sorry for thinking I’m gay when all these years I’ve…”
“You’ve what?”
He just shook his head. “I just can’t believe how ridiculous you are. I
bet you only started thinking it when other people brought it up, right?
Always lending an ear to rumours –”
“Don’t be rude,” I interrupted icily. “I don’t lend an ear to rumours.
You know I hate drama, and I defended you non-stop these last three years.
You’re just pissed because I pushed for an answer, and I won’t the next time
I ask you something, alright? I got the message. Now get the hell over it!”
I slipped back into the water – my way of a dramatic exit – and swam
in the direction of the lake houses. I heard him jump in after me, easily
catching up to me. He moved in front of me and I splashed him to get out of
the way. He just splashed me back and continued to block me, determined
to be as annoying as possible. “You’re such a dick,” I said.
He smiled. “Your exit would have been executed brilliantly if you
weren’t swimming the wrong way.”
“I’m not swimming the wrong way!”
“Where are you going then?”
“Closer to the music.” I splashed him again, held my breath and
disappeared in the water. I didn’t have to look to know he was following.
He was always following me.
We surfaced at the same time just under the last boardwalk. Close
enough to shore, I could hear the music blaring loudly and see a small fire
on the beach. There were people everywhere, buzzing around the fire pit,
eating and laughing, moving to and fro from one gorgeous house and back
again. I watched them as Aston settled beside me, staring in the same
direction. The music made my bones ache to move.
 “You want to go over there?” I asked him, our fight already forgotten.
“A lot of alcohol around, El,” he replied on a frown. “I don’t want to
have to fight against a crowd of guys trying to get to you.”
“There are other girls, you know.”
“You’d be the prettiest.”
I fought the smile on my lips at his casual compliment. “I just want to
dance.”
“You can dance some other time,” he replied dismissively. “I just don’t
want another situation like Deck to happen again.”
“That hasn’t happened since you decided to come with me. You’ve
been protecting me from all that. We’ll be fine.”
“We’ll do it some other time.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, Aston, you really must learn to live in the
moment.”
He exhaled. He knew there was no use arguing with me. Looking back
in the direction we came from, he said, “You want to go and grab your
clothes and we’ll walk back here then?”
“That’ll take too long. I’m fine the way I am.”
When he didn’t respond, I glanced at him and found his eyes moving
along my body. Not that he could see anything in the darkness, but he was
trying to just the same. He immediately looked up at my eyes when I caught
him, a fleeting look of guilt crossing his face. With a locked jaw, he looked
away from me and back to the crowd on the beach.
That was a monumental moment for me. Because I saw it. I saw it clear
as day. My sweet, rough adoptive brother Aston had just checked me out,
and it wasn’t done in a clinical, unfeeling manner either. I saw heat there. I
swore I did. Didn’t I? My paranoia reared its head, but I pushed it away,
determined to believe it.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. My heart accelerated as
possibilities tore through my mind. What did this mean? Stupid hope
emerged and I felt high off it.
 “Let’s go,” I then told him, excitedly, otherwise I’d have swum there
for eons, analysing this revelation. “They’re only a little older than us.
College kids by the looks of it. We’ll blend right in.”
“You’re in nothing but your underwear and bra.”
I scoffed. “Look what the other girls are wearing, Aston! They may as
well be naked.”
“But you’re wet –”
“It’ll look like a bikini –”
“You don’t know the kind of creeps out there. So, no. I’m not going to
allow that.”
“Since when do you allow me to do anything –”
“I said no.”
“Yes, brother,” I hissed, frowning at the authoritative tone in his voice.
We glared at each other for several moments. Then I splashed him hard
and swam away from him, moving toward the beach. He called out my
name but I ignored him as I went. He couldn’t order me around!
I wasn’t going to be his little sister and do as I was told.

OceanofPDF.com
9.

Elise
I was breathing a little hard by the time I waded out of the waters, my
hair soaked and sitting just below my waist. Smoke from the fire billowed
against me, its heat already diminishing the relief the cool water had given
me. I wasn’t aware of it until I was standing by the pit, but a few nerdy
looking guys had stopped to stare at me, their mouths wide open, their eyes
bulging out of their sockets.
“Holy shit,” one wearing glasses cursed. “Where did you come from?”
“Hello, fellas,” I returned, grinning as I looked around, catching the
attention of all kinds of people. “Cool party. Where’s the beer?”
One turned to a cooler beside his camp chair. He pulled out a can of
beer and handed it to me. I cracked it open and put it to my lips when it was
suddenly torn from my grasp.
“No alcohol,” Aston growled at me. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Eh, don’t be rude to her,” another man with a popped collar said.
“She’s just having fun.”
“She’s underage,” Aston retorted, narrowing his eyes at him.
“I’m eighteen,” I lied, rolling my eyes. “Ignore my brother here. He’s
awfully protective of me. Now where’s all the dancing? This music rocks.”
“In the house is where it’s all at.”
I winked at Popped Collar. “Thanks.”
“I can show you the way if you’d like –”
“Fuck off,” Aston interrupted him as I started to stride away.
Popped Collar took one look at Aston and immediately backed down. I
felt kind of bad. “You don’t have to be a dick, Aston,” I muttered to him.
 Moving toward the lake house, I felt their eyes burning along my
figure. Aston followed after me, gritting his teeth. “We were supposed to go
for a swim, El,” he angrily said. “Not crash a party.”
I stopped in front of the house and turned to him. “Look, dearest one,
you need to relax and learn to have fun. Stop being so uptight and just…
live. I promise you won’t regret it. Dance with me and pretend no one is
watching, okay?”
He didn’t look convinced. With a sigh, I grabbed his hand and pulled
him toward the house. There were couples all over the wraparound deck,
drinking and kissing. They didn’t notice us moving past them.
I’d crashed a few high school parties with Cindy already, and Aston
had tagged along every single time, determined to keep a close eye on me
so I wasn’t being taken advantage of again. I knew he did it to protect me,
but never in those times did he loosen up and have fun.
He remained anti-social, a goddamn ornament in the background, never
participating in conversations or dances. I didn’t get him, sometimes.
Wouldn’t he want to participate in some fun every now and then? He was
going off to college in a matter of time and he needed to get used to this
kind of life, instead of dwelling in libraries and watching time pass by
without learning to embrace the cultures of the twenty first century.
Or maybe I just didn’t understand his love for isolation. I hoped I never
would, either.
Everyone was nice, not an aggressive soul in the house as we entered.
They parted to let us through. I got a few dirty looks from girls sizing me
up, though it wasn’t like they were dressed any more than I was in their
booty shorts and belly tops. Hypocrites.
The music roared loud as ever as we entered a massive open area, its
furniture shoved against the walls, allowing plenty of room for dancing.
There were already so many people in here, I could feel Aston’s grip tighten
around mine. I brought us in the middle of the room and turned to him. I
was smiling so wide, my mouth was sore.
“Dance!” I hollered at him.
He didn’t. Not at all. What was wrong with him?
 He just stood there, staring down at me with a blank expression. I
wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and sway my body against his, but
I knew he wouldn’t react to it. He’d stand still, stiff as a board, and wait for
me to finish.
“Come on, Aston,” I pleaded. “I just want to have some fun.”
“Then I’ll leave you to have your fun,” he told me.
I sulked. “No, don’t leave me here. I meant fun with you –”
“I’m not leaving you in this house, El. I meant I’ll wait until you
finish.” At the look of relief on my face, his own softened. “I’d never leave
you, you know that,” he promised.
He left a second later, resting his back against a wall in direct view of
me. He crossed his arms and stared at me, a neutral look on his face. For a
moment, I wondered if I should just leave. I hesitated, deliberating it, before
I caught him shake his head at me and mouth the word dance. When I
didn’t, he wagged his brows and mouthed another word. Now. I smiled at
him and gave him a thumbs up. Then I waded deeper into the crowd and
danced.
I was a free spirit. Not a care on my shoulders as I spun and threw my
hands in the air. Guys flocked to me, but I moved away from them and
danced on my own. Dancing wasn’t about eroticism to me, it was about
moving to the beat of a rhythm that made my heart vibrate and my body
crave the beat. It was pure fun, a way of self-expression that led to an
awesome release. I was confident dancing. I knew my body well, knew how
to move, how to sway, how to shake my ass. Thank you, Ms Potts for all
those dance lessons.
Mindful of Aston, I didn’t spend a long time dancing. Two songs later,
I turned to him, hair in my face, laughter pouring out of my mouth. He was
still standing in the same spot, his eyes on mine, like he’d never looked
away once. I liked that a lot. His arms were still crossed over his bare chest,
looking thick as ever all pressed up against him. His hair was in a sexy, wet
mess. He was taller and more solid than everyone around him, catching the
eyes of plenty of girls passing by. But he wasn’t looking at them. He was
looking at me, and that was all that mattered.
 “Happy now?” he asked me when I stopped in front of him.
“I’d have been happier if you danced,” I answered.
“Maybe some other time,” he replied dryly.
I was doubtful of that ever happening. “I’m never going to have any
decent memories to look back on when you leave, am I? You’re just a
boring ornament.”
“A boring ornament? Is that really how you’re going to remember
me?”
“Absolutely,” I teased. “I should throw a pink bow on your head so you
don’t scare people away with your brooding against the wall.”
He looked down at me for a moment, his face stricken with intense
thoughtfulness. His eyes roamed my features, and then he gritted his teeth
and said, “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
Before I could say another word, he took me by the hand and led me
back into the crowd. I was so surprised, I could hardly catch up to what was
happening until he pressed my body against his and moved.
Oh. My. God.
Aston was dancing.
I laughed and wrapped my arms around his neck like I had wanted to. I
thought he’d be awkward, but Aston surprised me more than ever that
night. His hips moved, controlling the rhythm of my own body as he took
the lead. I gasped in surprise, staring at him with a deer in the headlights
look.
“When did you learn to dance like that?” I asked him, though my voice
was swallowed up by the party house mix.
He smirked devilishly. “I’m not a priest, El.”
He continued his fluid movements, and I went along with it, still
floored by this other layer of him. His hands roamed down my back,
stopping just above my tailbone before moving back up again. They were
controlled and cautious touches, never too erotic, but still sexy enough to
get my blood pumping harder. His head dipped and his face pressed against
the side of mine. His hot breaths blew against my ear and I could feel it all
the way down my body, making my toes curl.
My hands tightened against his neck in a sort of needy way. A hand
tangled into his hair, gripping it tightly. I pulled away from him enough that
I could look into his eyes. He looked straight at me, his eyes dark and
smouldering, his lips parted enough I could see the way his tongue slid
against the inside of his bottom lip.
Don’t you feel what we have together?
“Can I cut in?” I heard a voice shout.
Aston pulled away, and we looked at a pretty blonde, staring directly
up at him with a sexy smile on her face. She was confident, not even
acknowledging me like it was a given I would be tossed to the side. I
fucking hated that. Hated girls that trivialized relationships, and, okay, we
weren’t in a relationship, but I’d been a breath away from kissing him, and
she just intruded like she had every fucking right to.
I won’t even deny the jealousy that cut me deep. In a split second, I
imagined stepping back and giving him to her. I imagined his hands along
her thin hips, his fingers moving below her tailbone without caution, and
his face pressed against the side of her orange foundation-mask of a face.
Was this girly girl enough for him?
I wanted to escape and drown in alcohol. I’d done it once when I found
Dad’s whiskey in the basement and had a few gulps with Cindy. But then
Aston found out and it was all doomsday gloom for days. I’d fought him
about it, told him I was only young once and wanted to try new things. In
the end he only allowed beer, and only when he supervised.
I started to look around in search of some messy people playing beer
pong or some shit when I heard Aston’s response. “No,” he said firmly,
causing me to switch my gaze back to his in disbelief. Had he really said no
to orange-face girly girl? Then he turned to me and pressed me back to him,
dismissing the girl entirely.
It felt fucking amazing.
 I smiled brilliantly the second he dipped his face between my shoulder
and neck, moving to the music without skipping a beat. We were flesh
against flesh, the wet drops on his bare torso brushed against the wet drops
on mine. We were the only two souls drenched in that room, and we stood
out like two white dots in a sea of black.
I was in heaven. This was the best night of my life, hands down.
After two more songs, he took me by the hand and led me away from
the room. I thought we were going back out, but he turned a corner and we
went down a crowded hallway to a gorgeous, large kitchen with skylights.
“I heard them say there was cake,” he explained as we stepped into the
thinly occupied room. “Someone’s birthday, I guess. Anyway, you love
your cake. Grab a cut before we go.”
There was a marble kitchen island, its surface covered in half-
demolished trays of cakes and pastries. It looked amazing, even though it
was technically wrong crashing a party you were not invited to, dancing
around strangers, and then eating someone else’s cake. But let’s not start
counting our sins, right?
I smiled at him. “How thoughtful.”
His lips spread just a bit, enough to be a smile in my books. I grabbed a
paper plate and cut a piece of the vanilla cake with that many inches of
frosting on it. “Happy Birthday Chri” it said as I placed the piece with the
letter “s” on my plate. Thanks, Chris. Then I turned back to Aston. “Okay,”
I said, “let’s go.”
For a brief moment, he didn’t look at me. His eyes were over my head,
narrowed and hard. When I followed, I saw a man in the corner of the
kitchen with a couple of his friends. He was staring at me, openly checking
me out from top to bottom before smiling at me.
“It’s a good cake,” he remarked, and it wasn’t lost on me how
suggestive he sounded. It came off totally creepy, and I suppressed the
shudder I felt crawling at a snail’s pace down my spine.
I nodded kindly, though I really didn’t care to answer. “Hope so.”
Then I turned back around, grabbed Aston’s hand, and walked out. He
was quiet as we left the house. He led me to the board walk all the while not
saying a word. I didn’t like the silence, and I wondered if he was upset with
me for taking him into the house.
You’re a selfish bitch, Elise.
“I’m sorry,” I said, staring down at the cake as we took a seat on the
ledge.
“For what?” he asked.
“For forcing you in there.”
“I didn’t mind. You have the right to have some fun.”
I looked up at him. “I appreciate it. You could have dragged me out of
there the second I pulled you in.”
“I wanted to, believe me.” I caught the way his shoulders tensed as he
spoke, a frown digging into his face. “When I’m gone, Elise, I need you to
be very careful going into places like that. Don’t…don’t do it alone. The
way some of the guys stared at you…it was bad, El. Please, promise me you
won’t.”
I nodded solemnly. “I promise, Aston. I know better after what
happened with Deck. I won’t go to a place like that alone.”
His face softened. “Good. Have a guy with you too. Not a girl like
Cindy. She’d encourage the attention.”
I didn’t respond to that. I looked back down at my cake, feeling like
someone was putting my heart through a shredder. I wasn’t going to have a
guy with me. I didn’t want a guy with me. I wanted…
I shut my eyes briefly and sighed. “I’ll miss you. I know you’re not
going away for another while, but…when you leave, I’m going to miss the
shit out of you, Aston.”
“I’ll still be around.”
“Promise?”
He nodded. “I promise.”
“But it won’t be like normal.” God, was this the Days of our Lives?
Why was I unloading all this shit now?
 “What do you mean, El?” He waited patiently for me to answer, and I
was so conflicted.
“I’m here, and you’ll be there,” I finally said. “It won’t be the same. I
won’t see you every day. It’ll be like losing my best friend.”
“Apply for colleges in the city. That way we’re close again.”
I scoffed. “I’m a loser, Aston. I don’t know what I want to do with my
life. I’m…lost.”
“You love dancing.”
“No one can make a living dancing. Unless it’s wrapped around a
stripper pole.”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a stripper.”
“Not if I was there to keep the creeps away.”
“I wouldn’t even have the courage to do something that wild anyway.”
Wow, I was being a Negative Nancy. I should change my name to Eeyore.
“Pursue your passion.”
“Dad says to be smart and safe.”
“So you’ve had this talk with him?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. He wants me to go into teaching, or nursing,
or…law. Yuck.”
Aston chuckled. “All I know is you’re young, El. We’re pressured to
pick something now but…fuck, I just think of how boring life would be
doing something you hated every day. It might seem like dancing is a dead-
end pursuit but…passion always finds a way to make things work. I see the
way you move. You’re…hot, El. You can make it happen. You can go to
dance school, or…open up your own studio. You can do whatever you
want.”
I blushed at the compliment. “No one believes in me as much as you
do.”
“Now you have to start believing in yourself.”
 He always had a way of turning it around for me. From being
pessimistic and what the hell is the point to life to yeessssssss, I can DO
IT!!! I felt pumped up by him. He made me feel like anything was possible.
Comfortable silence followed for a bit. I swiped the frosting on the
cake and licked it. It was a bit stale, like it’d been sitting out for a while, but
it was still good. You couldn’t knock free cake, right? I felt Aston stare at
me as I swiped and sucked on my finger again. When I turned to look at
him, he looked away.
“Want some?” I asked him, my voice light.
He shook his head.
“Are you sure? It’s really good,” I said, biting back a smile as I took
another chunk on my fingertip and ate it.
His gaze flickered back to my mouth. I felt something tugging deep in
my belly at the look on his face. He took a deep, unsteady breath and shook
his head no again. He was acting strange, and I didn’t know how to deal
with it. I needed to break the moment before the weight of his strangeness
suffocated us. I finished the piece on my plate, scooped the last bit of
frosting and smeared it on the side of his face.
“Race you back,” I giggled before throwing the paper plate at him and
diving into the water.
I heard his laughter behind me and he jumped in after me. We swam,
with him on my tail, almost all the way back. My arms were sore by the
time I reached the second boardwalk. I grabbed at the column and stopped
to catch my breath. I didn’t know how far back he was, and I turned my
head to look when I suddenly felt an arm around my stomach just as he
surfaced. I screamed and turned around to push him away.
“You scared me!” I scolded him. The water was sitting just under my
shoulders. I was panting and he was completely at ease, not one bit out of
breath.
“You alright?” he asked, grinning.
I frowned. “Shut up. I haven’t gone swimming in a long time.”
“I can tell.”
 I rolled my eyes and then laughed when I looked at him. “You still
have frosting on your face. How is that even possible?”
He put a hand to his face and rubbed at the wrong spot. I flicked his
hand away, moved a little closer, and rubbed the tiny remainder off his
stubbled cheek close to the corner of his mouth. “You need to shave,” I
muttered, playfully. “Unless you’re going for the homeless dude look.”
When I didn’t get a cheeky response, I looked back up at him and froze
at the look on his face. A shiver wracked my body as he gazed into my
eyes, and then along my neck and shoulders, burning a trail in my skin I
could feel all the way to my soul. The way he grazed his bottom lip with his
front teeth only sealed the deal for me. I zoned in on his mouth and all
thought…poof…disappeared.
The light atmosphere was gone again, and it hadn’t even stayed long
enough for my heart to calm down. I felt like he’d just wrapped his hands
around my neck and sucked every bit of air out of it. He wanted me. I didn’t
care if it was an emotional want, or a physical one. I’d take anything from
him. I let go of all the hard work of putting up that wall I’d expertly built
brick by brick. It collapsed into a heap of rubble and smoke. I exposed
myself. Vulnerability in every sense of the word. I stared back at him the
way he stared at me, but I gave him more. More need. More desire. More
desperation.
Surely he knew. He could see it in my eyes, all the things I wanted to
say, all the ways I wanted to show it. This was by far the ballsiest thing I’d
ever done. And it would either end in humiliating rejection, or with his
body wrapped around mine. Regardless, my world was about to flip upside
down.
I waited. Anticipation. Fear. Worry. It was all a swirling twister inside
of me, clogging my throat until it was too painful to swallow.
I didn’t know who moved first. Maybe him. Maybe me. Maybe both of
us at the same time. But the space between us shrank inch by inch.
My heart stomped in my chest.
My breath lost intensity.
 My eyes misted; I couldn’t blink, couldn’t think, couldn’t do a damn
thing except stare into his brilliant eyes, at his beautifully sculpted face –
too beautiful, it was a damn crime.
“Aston,” I whispered in surrender.
“Why are you looking at me like that, El?” he whispered back, his
voice hesitant.
“You know why. You’ve always known.”
He started breathing harder. His chest rose and fell rapidly. His eyes
scanned mine, that heat growing within him. I stepped closer to him and in
the water my hand found his. I laced my fingers through his and gazed up at
him, my hope climbing.
I love you. I wanted to say. I love your brooding nature. I love your
stupid long hair. I love your intelligence. I love the way you stare at me. I
love your mouth and eyes and your annoying fucking smart ass responses. I
love your soul…God, your soul is a treasure I want for myself.
The second I felt his long fingers tightening, my whole being exploded.
I sucked in a breath. “Aston, I lo–”
He broke my words with his mouth. It crashed to mine so
unexpectedly, I almost fell back. His other arm wrapped around my waist,
steadying me as he brought me closer to him, pulling me higher against
him. He dipped his face lower, kissing me harder.
Soft wet lips.
Tongue brushing against my own.
Fire in my blood, heating me, incinerating me.
He pushed me back suddenly, and my back hit the column. His hands
roamed down my body, deliberately slow. Then he grabbed at my thighs
and lifted me up. I wrapped my legs around his hips so he was flushed
against me. My hand climbed up his chest and around the back of his neck.
I opened my mouth more, accepted more of him in, the taste of his tongue
so intoxicating, so rich with the flavour of him, I was dizzy.
I’d never done this. I didn’t think he had either. But we kissed like
we’d been doing it for a lifetime. It came as naturally as breathing air.
 My body buzzed, every inch of me felt licked by his touch. I poured
myself into that kiss, every part of my soul unleashed with wild
abandonment.
Here I was, under the boardwalk, kissing the boy of my dreams, feeling
him pressed against me in ways I only imagined in my fantasies. I felt his
grip tighten as he breathed harshly into my mouth, moving his hips in
delicious motions against that spot between my legs that had me shaking.
He ate me alive with those lips. Tingles swarmed me, hot pleasure
settled at the pit of my stomach. In that moment my being bent to him, and I
moaned. Long and deep, from out of my throat and into his. A moan that
spoke of pained pleasure and desperate need for more. And it was that
sound that suddenly halted everything. One second I was wrapped around
him, his tongue tasting my own, his hips pressed against me, a long
hardness felt, and then… he let me go and he was gone.
It was abrupt; it took me several seconds for me to mentally catch up.
My back was still against the column when I opened my eyes and searched
for him. He was already wading out of the water, his back to me, his hands
on top of his head.
My ears rang, my vision spotted. Why did the world still feel like it
was a million miles away? I was trembling, both from his kiss and his
abrupt leave. I told my body to move, but every step felt like a mission. I
watched him gain speed and reach the beach, already slipping on his flops.
He wouldn’t leave me, would he? No way. That wasn’t Aston.
My lungs were working harder, tears already settling behind my eyes as
I finally made my way to him, closing the distance. He was standing beside
my clothes, his back to me, his arms by his hips now and hands closed into
fists.
I stopped several feet away, panting like a wild dog, feeling like my
world was caving in every second he didn’t acknowledge my presence.
“Aston,” I let out.
He turned around and I saw the look of torment on his face. His eyes
raked my body again and then he turned away and shook his head. “No,
Elise, no talking. Put your clothes on and let’s go.”
 “But we –”
“Elise,” he cut in sharply, his voice hoarse, “please.”
I didn’t move. I refused to. “We kissed, Aston. Was that…Was that a
mistake? I mean, I thought there was something there –”
“It shouldn’t have happened. You’re my…” his voice lowered. “You’re
my sister, Elise.”
“I’m not really your sister, Aston!”
“But you are.”
My shoulders slumped. “Then why did you let it happen?”
He didn’t respond. He just shook his head and ran his hand through his
hair again, pulling at the ends.
“Because you wanted it to happen,” I answered for him. “You know
you did. Why are we doing this to each other? It’s not wrong!”
“Elise –”
“I’ve loved you since we were kids, Aston! And I saw the way you
looked at me! You’ve never been with a girl before! And I’ve never been
with a guy before! I know it’s because we want each other. We can find a
way. Tell me you want to try. Admit how you feel. Please!”
“It can’t happen!” he shouted, the veins in his neck protruding as he
glared at me.
Hot tears flooded out of my eyes. I was so lost. I felt foolish, and I
wished we hadn’t left that house, wished that I’d slept through his knocks
and didn’t answer, that I never pushed him about girls, or let my wall drop.
Goddammit, why did I let my wall drop?!
He turned away from me, chest heaving. Shaking, I bent over and
picked up my clothes. I slid back into my shorts and threw my shirt on. He
watched me from his peripheral, his jaw clenched, and his body trembling. I
slipped into my flops and walked past him. I felt him following, felt his
presence right there behind me, and I felt suddenly so angry. I wiped the
tears from my face and picked up speed. My humiliation was thick; I was
sure he could smell it.
 He remained close behind me – right there, giving me no escape – and
I felt myself snapping from anger. I turned to him and shoved him back
with all my might. He was a hard unmoveable wall, and he barely budged
as I grunted and tried to push him away from me.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed at him.
He stepped back, letting my hands work to push him away. “El –”
“Don’t come near me! Leave me alone, Aston!”
“We’re going the same way, El.”
“Then keep your fucking distance.”
I’d never lost it at him before. I don’t think I’d ever lost it at anyone
like this before. It was the humiliation, the shame, the raw feeling of
rejection, of wanting someone so badly only for them not to want me back.
It was all those things and more. I’d loved this boy more than a friend since
I was nine years old, and he’d just called me his sister.
His fucking SISTER! I wanted to mutilate that word. I wanted it
stricken from every fucking dictionary in the world. I wanted it to
burnnnnn.
I turned my back to him and ran. I was already exhausted from our
swim, but the fire within me fuelled me. My legs ached and I loved the
feeling of it. Loved the pain in my chest and the cramps in my side. I cried
as I took off uphill, the heat so brutal I almost threw up by the third block.
I knew he was following. I turned my head at one point and saw him
running on the opposite side of the street, his head in my direction,
watching me intently, protecting me in case something happened.
Always protecting me.
I pushed on, ignoring him. It felt like an eternity before I saw our house
come into view. I didn’t bother kicking my flops off as I ran up the steps
and pushed open the door. I stormed up to my room. If I woke my parents
up, I didn’t give a flying fuck. I felt reckless, in need of destruction to
balance out the pain.
When I reached my bedroom, I shut the door behind me and locked it. I
was panting, disoriented, on the verge of passing out. I fell into my bed and
brought my knees to my chest. I still smelled like the lake, smelled of
rejection in the form of Aston. Could still feel his lips against mine. Could
still feel the heat of his body wrapped around me. I held in my breath as the
tears streamed down my cheeks.
You’re my sister, Elise.
I hated him. I hated him. I hated him.
“I hate you,” I rasped out slowly so I could taste those three acidic
words.
Minutes later the knob turned unsuccessfully. I heard his heavy sigh
from behind the door and the floorboards beneath his feet stressing. Shortly
after that his bedroom door closed. I held my breath, listening to his every
move, to him collapsing into his bed.
So close, yet so far away.
How did we get to this point so abruptly, so without expectation? I
didn’t know. The world was bright just hours ago. It was promising and
brilliant, and filled with hope. Now it was filled with regret and heartache.
Story of my fucking life.
As I silently sobbed, emotions bleeding out of me, his knocks brought
me back to the present.
Knock. Knock.
Silence. I pressed my forehead against the wall as tears fell.
Knock. Knock. He continued.
I didn’t answer.
Knock. Knock.
I stared at the wall numbly and didn’t knock back.

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10.
Aston
I placed my forehead against the wall and sighed. I’d knocked twenty
times. Twenty fucking times. That was a record. She’d never left me
hanging since I was ten. I’d truly broken her.
This was my fault. She was hurting and it was all my doing. My
obsession was to blame.
You just kissed your fucking sister.
I groaned and slid off the bed. This was fucked up. I paced the
bedroom, feeling hot and dirty. Hot because I was turned the fuck on. Dirty
because I wanted to storm back in there and kiss her again.
Fuuuuck, those lips. I groaned at the reminder of what they felt like.
Supple. Wet. Perfect. And the way she wrapped those legs around me? My
body shook and I stopped by the doorframe and pounded my head against
the wood. I was hurting too. I shouldn’t have let it go that far. I shouldn’t
have taken her out in the first place.
Selfish.
Selfish.
Selfish.
I grabbed a random textbook off the desk and threw it on the floor. Not
even numbers could help me now.
She was devastated. I saw the anguish in her eyes as I screamed at her.
In the end, I realized my fears. I truly was a coward.

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11.
Elise
When you’re a teen and your heart’s been ripped from your chest, the
natural thing to do in that situation is eat a lot of ice cream and cry your
heart out to your friends while they rubbed your back, consoled you, and
told you about a hundred other hot guys to move on to.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have ice cream in the freezer (unless you
wanted to include the nasty berry flavour sorbet, which I couldn’t because
yuck). There weren’t a hundred other hot guys I had the slightest interest in
moving on to, and¸ most importantly, I didn’t have the kind of friends who
would keep a secret this big to themselves. The entire town would know
within a day all about my kissing adventures with my adopted brother.
Could you imagine that kind of hell? I could see it now: See that girl there?
The daughter of that wonderful police officer is in love with her brother,
Debbie. How shameful! The devil is working his charms on that wee one.
May the lord have mercy on her whore soul.
Shudder.
I had nobody to confide in but Aston, and that was a cruel twist of fate.
I spent many days after that night locked up inside my bedroom when I
came back from school.
And don’t get me started on school.
With a couple weeks left, nobody (including the teachers) gave a fuck
about anything. In our misery, we were all waiting for it to be over. Except I
was dreading summer now that Aston and me were at odds.
He didn’t join Cindy and me at lunch on the days he was out of the
library. He was either keeping his distance knowing it was what I needed, or
this was another form of rejection. Either way, it stung me deeply.
He sat one table behind us with his friends, always directly in view of
me. He ate and watched me between bites, studying me so deeply, it was
like being stripped bare time and time again. I was so red and
uncomfortable by it, I’d get up and leave with minutes to spare.
I’d walk the halls alone, never realizing Aston would trail me
sometimes. I didn’t know about it until one day I opened my locker and
pulled out a chocolate bar from my stash.
“You got a couple weeks left,” I heard Deck’s voice say behind me.
“Then your bodyguard will be gone, and you’ll be Elise without the genius
prick.”
I turned around to face him, taking a huge chunk of the Mars bar into
my mouth. Chocolate was the best aid in healing a broken heart. At this
rate, I’d be fifty pounds heavier by next year, and maybe this dickhead
would leave me the hell alone.
On his own, he stood in front of me, arms crossed over his preppy little
polo shirt. Cocky little shit. He thought just because he had gotten a little
bigger and was on the basketball team that he was suddenly all that.
“Are you seriously still sore about my rejecting you?” I asked him.
His pimply face darkened. “You didn’t fucking reject me, slut. You
wanted it.”
“So why did I kick you in the balls then?”
“Because you’re a fucking tease.”
“Hmm.” I nodded casually and chewed. “You know what I think,
Deck? I think there’s an inner-rapist in you that’s still sore you didn’t get to
screw me against my will. And now your cock’s ego is still so wounded,
you’re going to threaten to rape me because the man that broke your leg
won’t be around to fuck you up again.”
Deck’s eyes widened. “What the fuck did you just say?”
I smirked. “Oh, shit, you didn’t relate the two instances? You’re
fucking thick, aren’t you –”
He shoved me harshly into the locker, and pain skyrocketed up my
spine. He leaned into me, his beady eyes digging into my own as he
growled, “A few more months, Elise, and you’re going to get it, you teasing
little – Ahh!” His head whipped back abruptly, and then a hand wrapped
around the front of his neck.
I let out a shaky breath as I watched Aston drag him a few feet away
from me, squeezing at his neck until his face went crimson. He stopped and
leaned his mouth to Deck’s ear and said something in it. Something that
made Deck’s eyes widen in fear.
“Say it,” Aston gritted, shaking him like a ragdoll.
“I’m sorry,” Deck whimpered out to me. “I won’t talk to you again. I
promise. I’ll never say a word.”
Then Aston let him go and Deck hurried away, ignoring the eyes of the
few students around who had watched the altercation. All the nosey
bastards needed was popcorn and a Michael Jackson cut-out and the scene
would have been perfect.
Aston walked over to me and lightly touched my arm. “Are you
alright?” he asked, worried.
I nodded once, looking down at my feet. “I’m alright.”
His hold on my arm tightened. “He won’t bother you again.”
“What did you tell him?”
He pressed his lips down hard and then shook his head. “It doesn’t
matter.”
I crossed my arms and searched for a response. I supposed this was the
perfect moment to thank him, but then again, his rejection came to light,
and I felt hot with anger. I had to do it, though. It wouldn’t be right not to.
Still staring at my feet, I said very quietly, “Thanks.”
“What was that?”
I cleared my throat and whispered again, “Thanks.”
“I can’t hear you.”
I rolled my eyes at the smirk I heard in his voice and looked up at him
with hard eyes. “I said thanks, Aston, don’t make me say it again.”
He nodded, suppressing a smile. “You’re welcome, Elise. Anything for
you.”
 Anything for you. Really? Because if it was anything for me, that
tongue would be back in my mouth again. But no, I was his sister.
I glowered, bitter from my thoughts, angry at him and his anything for
you bullshit. I moved away from him, forcing his hand to fall from my arm.
He studied my coldness with a frown.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked, clueless to my thoughts. “He
looked like he hurt you, El.”
I stared at him for a moment, my body zinging with rage, and bit out,
“You hurt me, Aston.”
Then I closed my locker and stormed off.
*
He kept his distance after that locker incident for a week. It wasn’t hard
when he was barely around. Aside from school, the only time we’d see each
other was at the dinner table. We’d eat across from one another, and I’d feel
his eyes on me while I kept mine pinned to the plate. My parents thought
we were just arguing like many times before, so they didn’t bring up the
tension.
After the seventh day, he followed me up the stairs and to my room,
calling out my name. I ignored him and went to shut the door when his foot
blocked it.
“Stop,” he told me, desperately, “Elise, please.”
“Go away,” I seethed.
“I just want to talk about what happened. It’s been almost two weeks. I
get you’re upset with me –”
“You don’t know what I am.”
“El –”
“If you don’t leave, I’m going to scream.”
“I just want you to be okay.”
“You don’t know what you want. You kissed me too –”
“Keep it down, Elise –”
“I’ll shout it from the rooftops if I have to!” I hollered.
 His green eyes widened, and he looked at me like I’d gone crazy.
Maybe I had. I certainly felt wild, like there was a beast within me staging a
jail break.
“You want them to know?” he asked quietly, his eyes searching mine.
“Because you’re five seconds away from catching their attention with that
voice, El.”
“Then go away,” I said harshly.
He stepped back, a contrite look on his face, and whispered, “You’re all
I got, Elise. This hurts for me too.”
I closed the door on him just as he finished saying those words. I
pressed my forehead against the door, fighting back the urge to cry. I took
deep breaths, telling myself to calm down, to clear my head of all this
anger. Daddy always said anger was soul crushing, that it was fake and not
worth your emotions. He was right, and the more I thought about it, the
more I realized I wasn’t blameless in all of this.
I was acting like Aston was the bad guy, but he wasn’t. I didn’t want to
cause him pain. He deserved nothing but the best. I stopped with my self-
obsessed pity and tried to look at it from his side for the first time since that
night.
He wanted his… sister back, didn’t he? Aston came from a fucked up
childhood, and here I was fucking it up in a different way. I didn’t want
that. I wanted to be part of his life in a way that he would accept. I was
being selfish. Rejection had wounded my pride; I thought I was so certain
he felt that electricity between us too. I had been foolish, and as a result, I’d
muddied our relationship.
You have to mend this before you continue hurting him.
I opened the door again and he was still standing there. He looked at
me, and the hope in his eyes only added to my remorse.
He took a deep breath. “Elise,” he said rapidly, breathlessly, “you’re
my best friend, alright? I’m sorry for what happened. I shouldn’t have let it
get that far. It was my fault. I led you on and I hurt you. I’m so sorry –”
“Stop,” I interrupted calmly. “Let’s never talk about it again, Aston.
Please. I care about us too and…I think it’s important we forget about it. It
never happened. It was…wrong and stupid. A complete lapse of judgment,
right?”
He nodded slowly, surprised by my sudden change. “Right.”
“Good. Let’s just go back to normal. Let’s…” – I resisted cringing –
“be a family.”
He swallowed hard. “You think that’s possible?”
“Sure,” I lied confidently, even though I wanted nothing more than to
throw up. “Definitely.”
He still looked rigid. “So what do we do now?”
Good question. I looked down at my feet. “Um…I’m tired. I need to
have an early night. We’ll hang out tomorrow or something, okay?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he replied softly, a hand
gripping the doorframe. “I spoke to Fred and Cora and they’re fine with you
working. We’ll be full-time when school’s out, but you’ll probably be
getting paid less than the rest of us initially –”
“That’s cool,” I cut in, hardly hearing his words. I just wanted him
gone because I was raw all over and I was worried I’d cry in front of him.
“Thanks. I’ll get some shut eye early. What time do you need me up?”
“Seven. We have to prep early and I can show you the ropes.”
“No problem. I’ll see you at seven then.”
I waited for him to leave, but he continued standing there. I forced my
eyes up at him for a fleeting moment and faked a smile on my face. He
studied me solemnly, and then he sighed and nodded. “See you in the
morning, El.”
After another fake smile and a muttered good bye, I closed the door.
Then I slid down that door and cradled my knees to my chest.

OceanofPDF.com
12.
Elise
Initially, I thought the worst thing I could have done was work
alongside Aston. However, once I was part of the team, I realized I didn’t
have to interact with him often. He was working on the field and I was
working at the storefront, renting out guns, filling up people’s air tanks
(before they headed out to play), selling chocolates, sodas and boxes of
paintball. It was laid back work in the afternoon, but hectic as hell mid-
morning when players flooded in.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to know the lingo, or tend to technical
matters. Fred and Cora’s son Patrick worked there too, and he was eighteen,
a paintball fanatic, and my newest friend. He handled most interactions with
players when they had a problem, and he also swatted away the younger
guys that held up the lines trying to flirt with me.
While I was getting paid pitifully, it was a good distraction. I didn’t
want to pluck my eyeballs out of my face to stop from crying. Eeyore’s
spirit didn’t possess my body, Adele music didn’t play in the background,
and my mind wasn’t forced to recall that bitter rejection at the lake. I was
too busy chatting to Patrick to pay attention to Aston as he came and went,
his eyes glued to me whenever he was around. It seemed like since we
mended things, he’d become too attentive and mindful of my company,
meanwhile I was doing whatever I could not to stare at him. I just couldn’t
do it. Pretending to be normal was hard work.
Instead, I took refuge in my friendship with Patrick. I liked how
interested he was in me. It was nice being the one chased for once, and he
was all over me. The flirting, the light touches on my shoulder and back,
and the smiles with hidden meanings behind them. It was…new for me.
Something…different.
I needed to move on. I had to for my own sanity. Out of force, I started
to like Patrick. Not in the way I cared for Aston, but in that way that made
the heart pinch just slightly in my chest. I liked this pinching feeling better.
It made me feel like I was the one in control. He couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t
let him in far.
Patrick was easy to be around, and he was funny. Plus he was very nice
to look at. It was the perfect combination of boy that kept me from breaking
apart. So I flirted back, returned the soft touches, until one weekend
afternoon right before I got off work, he asked me out to the movies. I said
yes without even blinking.
It was a victory. I’d sit and watch a movie with Patrick. I’d…let him
hold my hand. I’d…let him kiss me. Maybe. Perhaps on the cheek at first,
and…I don’t know, maybe the mouth, but…No, it’d be the cheek at first.
Yes, not the mouth because…that would erase Aston’s touch and…No, it
would be good to erase Aston’s touch.
That evening, sitting around the table finishing up dinner, I told Dad,
“Patrick wants to take me to the movies tomorrow night.”
Dad paused from his bite and just stared at me for several long
moments. I was asking for permission like he’d asked me to do before, but I
was seventeen and hadn’t even gone on a date. I wondered if he thought I
would never ask, and he probably loved that.
He sighed slowly. “I knew this day would come,” he muttered.
Mom laughed next to me. “She took her time, hon.”
I kept my eyes pinned to Dad, never once tearing them away to glance
at Aston. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to know what his reaction was or
whether he even had one. He probably didn’t even care.
“This is Patrick Hills, right?” Dad confirmed.
I nodded. “Yeah, Fred and Cora’s son. Someone you know.” Someone
you won’t have a damn problem with, or need to do background checks of.
He nodded, considering. “Yes, I know about the boy, but…I don’t
know much about him. How come you’re talking to him to begin with?
Aren’t you working?”
I sighed. “Would I still have a job if I wasn’t?”
“Elise.”
 “Of course I’m working. He just helps me out, and we’ve been talking
a lot. I don’t see a problem. School’s out next Tuesday, so all my
responsibilities are done.”
He made a grunting sound indicating he was not all that impressed
before he turned his head to Aston. “What is he like? Good enough for our
Elise?”
I held my breath and reluctantly turned my head to Aston. My heart
squeezed when I found his eyes on mine. His entire face was blank, his lips
in a tight line, and his green eyes…cold. Very cold, it was almost like
looking into ice.
“No,” Aston responded calmly, looking back at Dad. “He’s not good
enough. He’s a player.”
My jaw dropped. “What? No, no, no, he’s not, Dad!”
Dad frowned. “Are you sure?” he asked Aston solemnly.
Aston nodded straightaway. “I don’t trust him. It’s bad enough she
works around him. He’s an asshole.”
“Language,” Mom quietly added in disapproval.
I ignored her. “This is bullshit! Patrick is like the poster child for good
guys! He’s got nice manners, and he isn’t an asshole, Dad. I swear it.”
Aston didn’t look ruffled as he said, “Dad, what would she know
except what he’s told her? I’m a guy. I know what guys are really like, not
what they’re pretending to be just to impress a girl.”
“Then why hang out with him?” I angrily retorted, glaring at him.
Aston looked at me, his face still blank. “He’s a good friend. That
doesn’t make him a good boyfriend.”
“That’s not true –”
“I’m just being honest.”
“That’s such bullshit and you know it –”
“Alright, calm down,” Dad interrupted in a loud voice, silencing me.
“Just relax, alright?”
 I didn’t relax. I glared daggers at Aston, wondering what the hell he
was playing at. There was nothing remotely wrong with Patrick. He was a
seriously decent guy, and I saw the way he was like with the other guys. He
had never pretended to be someone else with me.
“Now, I don’t know much about this boy,” Dad explained sternly, “and
I’d like to have a talk with him before you go out. Just to be sure.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re just going to intimidate him, Daddy, and he’ll
be freaked out.”
“I don’t care how freaked out he is.” Ah, yes, the officer in him had
surfaced. “What I care about is how he treats my daughter. There’s a lot of
bad guys out there, Elise, and like Aston said, he may be one way with the
girls, but he could be an entirely different way with everybody else. I need
to be sure. Do you understand?”
I didn’t reply.
“Elise.”
I sighed and snapped, “Fine.”
“And work out whatever is going on between you two,” Dad added,
staring at us grumpily. “I’m tired of you both fighting and giving each other
the silent treatment. At the end of the day, when your mother and I are
gone, all you’ll have is each other. For the love of god, grow up. You’re
practically adults now.”
“Typical sibling stuff,” Mom assured him. “They’ll get over it. They
always do.”
Sibling stuff. I didn’t hide the shudder I felt deep in my bones. Even my
eye twitched.
“I just want us to be a happy family,” he replied to her. “It’s all I’ve
ever cared about, that they’re happy. And this teenage shit is hard,
especially from you, Elise.”
“Sorry for not being perfect,” I muttered defensively, “or like Aston. I
don’t get the grades, and I can’t stay couped up in a bedroom, buried in a
boring textbook. Forgive me for wanting to go out with a guy and enjoy
myself for once –”
 “That’s not what your father meant,” Mom cut in. “You’re being
dramatic.”
“Dramatic? I’m not being dramatic. This is so unfair.”
Dad sighed. “I told you, Elise, I just need a word with this boy.”
I glared at him. “Do you want a tracker on me too, Dad? I’m seventeen
years old.”
“Yes, seventeen years old,” he growled back, exasperated by my
attitude. “If you’re so certain you can take care of yourself, the world is
outside that door. Get a job, pay the bills, feed yourself and still find the
time to go out on your date.”
Silence.
Well, shit, I just got owned. I had no decent rebuttal either.
I got up moments later and dumped my dishes in the sink. Then I
huffed and puffed out of there, typical teenage girl style. Before I left, I
glanced over my shoulder and at Aston. My eyes narrowed at the subtle
smirk on his face. He stared back at me, and I could see the message loud
and clear in his icy expression. He said two words, unspoken:
I won.
*
I sat in the dark on Aston’s bed, waiting for him to come up. My arms
were crossed, and I was leaning back against the headboard, listening to
him laugh downstairs with Mom and Dad. For a short moment, I smiled
along at the sound, thinking how lucky we were to have him.
Then I remembered he had just tried sabotaging my date tomorrow –
might have even succeeded – and my smile was replaced with a scowl. I
had done nothing wrong! How could he? I was doing the right thing trying
to find another guy to obsess over.
When I heard his footsteps approach the door, my adrenaline spiked. I
was ready to tear his asshole a new one. The light flooded in as he opened
the door and came in, and when I saw that soft smile planted on his lips and
his blond hair ruffled in a million different directions, I froze. I swallowed
the venom on my tongue, already softened by the sight of him. How unfair
was it that he could control me even when he didn’t know it?
When he looked up and saw me, there wasn’t surprise on his face. In
fact, his smile only broadened. He already knew I was in here. He shut the
door behind him, and we were swallowed in darkness. I could feel his eyes
on me, though I couldn’t see them.
“You think you’re so sneaky, don’t you?” he whispered to me, his voice
low.
My heart skipped a beat. “How did you know I’m in here?”
“My door creaks when it closes. I heard it creak after you went up.”
“And still you kept me waiting.”
“I like when you’re fired up.”
I fumed, crossing my arms even tighter. “You want me angry?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, his large silhouette turned to me.
“For thinking you could go out with the likes of Patrick? Yeah, I want you
angry. I want you as angry as I feel.”
“You don’t have any right to be angry. That was wrong what you did.
He’s not a bad guy.”
“But he’s not for you.”
“How would you know?”
“Because he’s not me.”
My whole being tensed. I swallowed hard, a wave of emotions flooding
through me. My heart felt clamped. I liked to visualize it in a spiky bear
trap because it was the only thing that came close to explaining how it felt.
Far from a pathetic pinch in the chest that only Patrick could ever achieve.
“Isn’t that right, El?”
“Don’t you dare say things like that,” I angrily said, my voice quiet and
fierce. “Don’t you dare dangle yourself in front of me just out of reach and
laugh at my feelings.”
“I’m not laughing,” he replied, solemnly.
 “You should have just left it alone. It won’t change anything, you
know. I’m still going out with him tomorrow.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Like fuck I’m not!”
“Shh.”
He wanted me to be quiet? No! He couldn’t push me this far and then
expect me to remain a silent little mouse as he butchered my heart like it
was nothing. I was panting, anger swirling through my depths, itching to
come out. I wanted to provoke him, drive a reaction out of him, make him
hurt just like I hurt!
“I’m going,” I went on, pushing my back off the headboard, leaning
forward so he could make out my face. “I’m going because he’ll pass
Daddy’s stupid little test, and then when we’re out, I’m going to kiss him
and fuck him and do all the things the girls at school have done because I’m
one of them too and I’m tired of wasting my time waiting on a guy like
you!”
I waited for him to lash out – hungered for it even – but he didn’t
move. As the seconds passed and my anger tapered off, I slowly realized
what I said, and embarrassment followed. Fuck, I should have stayed quiet.
I made a promise to myself to treat him well, but I couldn’t hold myself
back. I didn’t understand what came over me time and time again. Aston
was designed to make me tick, and then drive me insane with remorse.
Panicked, I licked my lips and whispered contritely, “Aston –”
“Shut up,” he interrupted harshly.
I did. I searched for words to apologize when I felt a hand wrap around
my ankle. With a gasp, I was yanked down the mattress. In under a second,
he was over me, trapping my body beneath him. I felt his large hands on my
legs, felt him spreading them wide apart. He settled himself between them,
and dipped his head to me, nose touching nose.
“You want me like this?” he asked, an edge in his voice.
Like what? I wanted to ask. Until he gently rocked against that part
between my legs that sent jolts of untapped pleasure throughout my body. I
gasped in shock-+++
.
“Yes,” I answered thoughtlessly, my voice tinged with desire.
He kissed my mouth and slid his tongue along the crease of my
trembling lips. “And like this?”
I sucked in a mouthful of air. “Yes.”
Settling his forearms on either side of my head, he kissed me again,
deeper this time, and pressed between my legs once more. I shook under
him, flushed and panting. Fearing he might disappear any second, my hands
balled into his shirt. He didn’t move away. He pressed his lips to mine,
tasting them, exploring them. I was breathless and hot, kissing him back
without restraint. It felt so good. His mouth was heaven, and I was floating.
“Like this?” he continued to ask.
“Yes,” I continued to pant. “Oh, God, yes.”
He continued rocking into me, fully clothed, that barrier slowly driving
me mad. I wanted us flesh on flesh, wanted his hands to roam my body.
Instead, he stayed that way, hips between my legs, mouth on mouth. He
moved slowly, grinding into me with the perfect rhythm, triggering that
special spot each time.
He licked my lips. “You think about doing this with me, Elise?”
“Yes,” I quivered.
“How long have you been thinking it?”
“Forever.”
He let out a breath as I felt him harden between my legs. “Good.”
He rocked into me over and over again, until my mind fled into the
darkness. I wasn’t anyone in that moment. I was a vessel of feeling,
focusing solely on his powerful movements. I took what he gave me, until
the jolts of pleasure stretched longer, grew fiercer. I cried out his name in
his mouth as it exploded inside of me, a current so strong, I shook beneath
him, gripping his shirt so tight it hurt.
 He stopped moving after that. He listened to my quiet moans, his body
rigid. My hands loosened and he was quick to pull away. He sat down on
the edge of the bed where he’d been before and neither of us spoke. I
watched him run his hand through his hair and sigh. I wanted to know what
he was thinking, but I didn’t want to risk hearing his guilt.
I was still catching my breath. My limbs were loose, my body…tender.
He had selflessly grinded me into orgasm. It was incredible. More than
incredible, it was everything and more.
“What are you thinking?” I finally whispered in the tiniest voice.
He turned his head to me. “Giving you that means you’re not going on
your date, right?”
My jaw dropped. “You…did that so I wouldn’t see Patrick?”
“I did that because I wanted to, but I want to hear it from your mouth
you’re not picking him over me. So say it.”
I felt unnerved by the demand in his voice. Another layer of Aston had
just been peeled for me to see.
“I’m not picking him over you,” I told him.
“And?”
“And…I’m not going on that date.”
“Good. Don’t make me jealous again.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“No? You think I didn’t see you pressing up against him the second I
went inside that store? Every fucking time I was around, you did it, waiting
for me to react. I didn’t think you were like that, El.”
I pursed my lips. Yeah, he was right. Whatever. Call me desperate, but
when you’re living with a wall you’re in love with, sometimes you just
want to watch it crack.
Before I could say anything else, a knock sounded out.
“Aston, honey,” I heard Mom call.
My heart jumped to my throat. Did she hear us? Would she see me? A
bolt of excuses tore through me, but Aston got up swiftly, grabbed the
covers and threw them over me. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t see
anything. My heart went off like a jackhammer as I panicked under two
inch layers of fabric. What if she caught me hiding? Then it would be
obvious, and hell would break loose. Or would it?
With bated breath, I heard him go to the door and open it. “Yeah,” he
said.
“Your father’s waiting in the shed, says he wanted to show you that
mine storm thing.”
“Mindstorm,” he corrected her.
“I don’t know what it is. Some nerdy thing he says he’s finally finished
building.”
“It’s a robot.”
“Sure, just go to him. He’s excited to try it out.”
“Alright, let me just throw my shoes on.”
He shut the door again and tugged the covers off of me. I sat up, red
faced and nervous. He didn’t look at me once as he grabbed his shoes and
put them on. When he got up, he said quietly, “Wait five minutes. I’ll make
sure she’s downstairs by then.”
Then he turned away and walked out.
Just like that.
No other words, glances…nothing. Like, shit, really?!
I was alone and still shaking. I waited the torturous five minutes in his
bedroom, and then I slipped out and disappeared in mine. I collapsed in my
bed, feeling very strange, almost foreign in my own skin. In the silence, I
questioned what just happened, and why I felt guilty about it.
Was it wrong what he did? Kissing me? Rubbing me? Making me feel
that good? I’d always wanted it, always dreamed of it, so why did I feel like
this?
Deep inside, I knew what was going on. We had just crossed a line.
We’d done something that would horrify our parents. My father was so
close to Aston, how would he feel about him if he knew what we’d done?
 We weren’t related by blood. We weren’t siblings from birth. We had
always been best friends more than anything.
Were we really to blame?
I sighed and cuddled my pillow to my chest. I stared at the wall he
knocked on when he needed me, and I felt panic at the thought of that
knock never sounding out. I needed Aston, and he was going to move out in
a matter of weeks. And after tonight…I couldn’t bear being away from him.
My future was uncertain. My wants unknown. My path uncarved.
Without him in it, I would drown in his absence.

OceanofPDF.com
13.
Elise
The next day was filled with unspoken words and glances. Eyes on
eyes. Eyes on lips. Lips not yet on lips. I couldn’t concentrate at work, and
Patrick wouldn’t stop talking to me. I shied away from his touches, didn’t
return his smiles. I was sure I came off like a complete bitch, and I didn’t
mean to, but I was no longer interested in distractions. All I kept imagining
was last night and what Aston did to me. Oh, my God, it was amazing. Oh,
my God, I wanted it again. I felt like a hussy in heat. I was strangely turned
on, so much so, I ached.
We hadn’t even had sex. What would the real thing do to me?
By lunch time, Aston came around with his paintball attire on. He
wasn’t part of the games and was only acting as referee, so he didn’t stink
of sweat (not that I minded anyway). In fact, his man-scent was all the more
pronounced as he leaned over the counter where I stood. Looking over my
shoulder at Patrick (feet away with his back to us), he whispered, “Did you
tell him?”
Oh, shit. “No,” I replied.
“Why not?”
“I forgot.”
His face darkened. “You want to come in my room again?”
Come in what way? “Yes.”
“Then un-forget and tell him.” He left right after that.
I stared ahead for some time, trying to formulate the right excuse.
Should I tell Patrick I was busy? But then he might want to reschedule, and
I didn’t want to reschedule. I wanted Aston to hump me to orgasm again
and kiss me with his tongue.
 Sighing, I turned around and stared at Patrick stacking the boxes of
paintballs on the shelves.
“Hey, Patrick?” I said, nervously.
He stopped and turned around, flashing me a sweet, guilt-inducing
smile. “Yeah?”
“About tonight…”
His body bobbed from foot to foot, like he needed to go to the
bathroom, but really it was excitement. “I’m really looking forward to it. I
have a nice place all planned out.”
Shit. “Well, see, I uh…I can’t make it after all.”
That smile slowly faded. “Serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I know why?”
“It’s just…not a good time for…dating.” Weak excuse, El. So weak.
He frowned. “I thought we liked each other. I mean, you’ve kind of
been all over me. I thought it was in my head but Dad and the other guys…
they said they saw the way you were around me and…” he trailed off,
rubbing the back of his head with this confused look on his face.
“Well,” I paused, searching for a way to fix this, “you know Cindy
thinks you’re cute.”
Fucking Cindy. Always my fall-back. She’d come around to laugh at
me while I worked, so he knew her, and it wasn’t entirely a lie telling him
she liked him. She thought every guy was cute. She’d be ecstatic if a guy
like Patrick came around.
“Cindy,” Patrick said, like he was trying out her name. “She’s a bit of a
drama queen, isn’t she?”
“She’s…different.”
“But she’s not like you.” His puppy eyes were killing me. I felt so bad,
it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized.
 He shrugged casually, but I saw straight through him. “It’s fine, I guess.
I had other things to do, so…”
We stood around, looking at each other and then away. It was so
awkward, like a nightmare that wouldn’t end.
“Does this have something to do with Aston?” he blurted out
questionably.
I froze. Did he know? Was it obvious? Denial time. “What do you
mean?”
“I mean, he’s your brother and he sees you around me, and he never
looks happy. The dude hates my guts.”
I let out a relieved breath. He didn’t know. “He doesn’t hate you,
Patrick.”
“He does. When I came to him and asked if I could take you out, he
said no, and when he found out I didn’t listen, he put his finger across his
throat.”
What the hell? I shot him a perplexed look. “Um, what?”
“Yeah. A finger across his throat.” He then proceeded to show me. He
slid his index across his throat while giving me crazy eyes. “And that’s how
he looked, El.” The crazy eyes grew fiercer. “Like this. He slid it across his
throat like he was planning on cutting me open, and then he mouthed ‘you
wait’. I felt like a pig brought to the slaughterhouse. The dude was serious. I
didn’t doubt it for a second.”
So Aston knew about the date. It explained how calm he was at the
dinner table. With the images of how he must have looked making that
threat – all Thor-like with that long hair and built body and scary – it took
everything inside of me not to cackle. I bit the inside of my mouth so hard, I
tasted blood. I cleared my throat every time a giggle began to surface, and
then I coughed profusely.
“Aston is protective of me,” I tried to explain, though my voice was
high as a kite.
“Maybe I dodged a bullet then,” Patrick whispered under his breath. “I
like my throat in one piece.”
 He spent the rest of the day away from me, and Aston smirked at the
distance between us when he came through the door an hour later.
Another win for him.
*
I lay in bed that night, waiting for a sign of…something. Mom had
gone to sleep a half hour ago and Dad was on night shift and wouldn’t be
back until morning. I couldn’t hear Aston like I usually did. There was no
bed squeaking, no audible sigh to be heard. It made me wonder if he was
even there. Until…
Knock. Knock.
Yes! I slipped out of bed and tip-toed to the door. If I was sneaking out
of my room for any other reason, I wouldn’t have been so cautious, but
this…this required caution to the umpteenth degree.
I opened my bedroom door and looked down the dark hallway at the
last bedroom where Mom was sleeping. It might as well have been on the
moon, and with her door shut, I was a little more at ease. I felt like James
Bond – or Bondette for more of a feminine touch – as I moved to Aston’s
door, peering over my shoulder, at the hallway, at the staircase, at the walls
even. When the coast was totally undeniably clear, I opened it, wincing
every time it creaked in the silence. Were these doors always so loud? Were
they designed so that parents could catch their teenage kids doing
questionably wrong things? I stepped into the darkness of his room and shut
it behind me. Yes, yes, yes, I did it! James Bondette for the win.
I didn’t make it all the way around before hands wrapped around me,
slamming me into Aston’s hard body. His mouth was on mine before I had a
chance to think. God, yes!
“Aston,” I moaned.
He breathed raggedly, tightening his hold around my body. “No,” he bit
back. “No talking.”
Okay, I could handle that.
He took me to the bed without a word and pushed me back on the
mattress. Then he stood there, looming over me from the edge of the bed
for a few seconds, looking me over, a concentrated expression on his face.
I breathed heavily, anticipation building within me. He slowly moved
on to the bed and over me, his eyes fluttering across my body before his
mouth touched mine. His hair draped us, obscuring me from the walls of
whom were bearing witness to our crimes. He savoured our kisses,
languidly drawing his tongue over mine, tasting me, until my blood burned
with need and my body writhed beneath him. I spread my legs readily for
him this time, part of me hoping he’d slip my shorts off and take me that
way. But he didn’t. His hands slid down my body, gripping my hips and
then my thighs as he settled between them, never leaving my mouth, never
stopping to breathe.
Then he moved. Oh, my God, did he move.
He made me feel good, made me see stars explode before my eyes. He
let me grip him as he moved against me like soft waves. He gave me room
to move my own hips as I needily searched for pleasure, gasping and
clawing. And when I got there, he paused as I savoured the feeling,
swallowing my moans with a rough kiss. Then he did what he had done
before. He slid off me, sat on the edge of the bed, and waited for me to go.
I caught my breath, hoping he’d say something to me before I left. But
he didn’t. I sat up and slid off the bed. I looked at him once over my
shoulder, but by then his elbows were on his knees, and that damn hair was
covering his face. This was full dismissal. I mean, sure I’d wanted to feel
what I did, but I kind of wanted to talk about it afterwards too.
On wobbly Aston-humped-me-to-orgasm legs, I walked past him, and
returned quietly to my bedroom. As I lay there, my body cloudy and limp, I
turned to the wall and knocked twice on it. I needed reassurance. I needed
inside that complex head of his, and I nearly panicked when he didn’t knock
back. Nearly felt tears prick my eyes –
Knock. Knock.
I smiled in relief and went to sleep.
*
School finished and the summer wasn’t looking so grim anymore. Not
when I was getting my dose of Aston.
 We saw each other every night, and he evolved as he touched me,
trailing his hand down my body and between my legs. It was a natural
evolution. Funny how the body knows what it wants and takes it willingly.
No voice murmured inside my head that he was moving too fast. I think it
was because of how much I trusted this guy. And anyway, he never
removed one article of clothing. It was kind of infuriating. He studied the
noises I made, watched me intently as I buckled beneath him and gasped.
And always he gave me my own pleasure while reserving his own.
I didn’t understand it, but I saw how tense his body was every time he
moved to the edge of that wicked bed. I caught his hands balling into fists,
and how rough he raked his hands through his hair. He was suffering. I
knew it because I felt how ready he was, and how much it took for him to
hold back. The way I felt when I was only halfway to that orgasm, you
couldn’t tell me to stop if you put a gun to my head.
“What are we doing?” he whispered once, his voice almost sad.
It was the first time he’d spoken after our…session (God, only I could
make it sound so seedy). I was in bed, twirling my hair around my finger
when he’d said it. I looked at him in the dark, this large solid being, coiled
and tense and filled with frustration.
“Do you want to stop?” I asked him quietly. If he said yes, I’d suffer.
But I knew at that point he wouldn’t. He was lost in me. I felt it in the way
he kissed me, the way his hands gripped my body with desperate need. I
asked mostly because I just needed to hear it. Tickle my ear and squeeze my
heart, Aston.
He turned his head to me. “I couldn’t be without you before, and now
it’ll kill me. But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted to break me.”
He made it sound like an accusation. I should have been insulted, but I
was still depleted after my pleasure. I was mellow and completely okay
with criticism. It was a rare moment for me; like watching an animal
outside of its habitat. No anger or defensiveness surfaced. I was totally
chill. Were koalas like this? I compared myself to a koala anyway.
Delighted in my newfound serenity, I looked at him calmly and replied,
“I didn’t know there was anything to break, Aston. You’ve always been so
reserved until now. And even now you won’t speak to me about it.”
“Let’s talk about it then,” he said, turning his body to me. “What
happens next? I’m moving to the city when summer is over. What happens
when I’m there and you’re here? How does it work?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “You’re part of the family,
Aston, it’s not like I won’t see you again. You promised you’d visit.”
“And between visits, what do we do?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
He leaned forward, staring at me solemnly as he gritted out, “How the
fuck do I get you out of my head, Elise?”
I froze. His eyes were glassy and wide. He looked wretched. It was the
first time I’d seen him hurt so much for me, and I didn’t feel any pleasure in
it like I thought I would.
“You don’t,” I whispered slowly. “You don’t get me out of your head.
That’s the point. We…stick together and we find a way to work it out.”
He searched my eyes. “So, we’re together now.”
“If that’s what you want.” When he didn’t respond, I shifted closer to
him and touched his hand. “Is that what you want?”
He squeezed my hand back and nodded. “Yeah, El, it is.”
“Then stop holding back with me. Give me all of you. I can’t wait any
more, Aston. I want more with you. This kissing and touching me, it’s
great, don’t get me wrong, and I’m like totally down with it anytime of day,
but…I want to feel you lose yourself in me too. I feel like you’re my
hooker.”
A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. “I’m not your hooker, Elise.”
“Then be with me.”
“You have to be sure about something like that.”
I laughed dryly. “Unlike you, I’ve been waiting eight long years for this
shit, Aston, and the last two have been spent in bed, on the other side of this
wall, daydreaming about this very thing. I’m cross-eyed with readiness
already.”
 He sighed, conflicted. “El…I’m different, you know that. I’m…not
normal half the time. I don’t know if I can be good at that with you. It’s
why I’ve taken it so slow already. I’m…fucking terrified. I don’t want to
do it wrong. There’s no…math to it, you know?”
I smiled, stroking his hand lightly. “There’s no numbers to making
love, Aston. It comes naturally. If you want, we can watch a couple pornos.
I can scream for you and moan obnoxiously loud when you touch me on the
arm.”
“El –”
“That was a joke. Let’s just…try. Besides, you’ve learned a lot about
me by now, and I have absolutely no complaints.”
“God, you’re weird.”
“We’re both weird.”
He smiled softly, licking his lip as he leaned over to his night table and
opened the drawer. He pulled something out and laid it between us. I stared
down at it as he looked at me, waiting for my reaction. It took me a moment
to understand what I was staring at.
A condom.
I looked straight up at Aston, my eyes wide, my heart picking up. This
wasn’t funny anymore.
“When did you buy those?” I asked.
He bit his lip, thoughtfully. “I’ve had them for a while. Since we…
started our thing. Just in case.”
I nodded, and nerves ran through me at lightning speed. I hadn’t even
thought of protection. What the hell was wrong with me?
“Are you okay? You look like you’re panicking.”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m not.”
“We don’t have to do anything, Elise –”
“Aston,” I interrupted sharply.
“What?”
“Just kiss me.”
 He moved closer to me, leaned down and brushed his lips to mine.
“Elise,” he whispered, desperately, “I love you. I just want you to know that
before we keep going.”
The words scorched me. I took an unsteady breath and ran my hands up
his hard chest. He didn’t know how long I’d been waiting for that. He didn’t
know how…oh, how unbelievably happy those words made me. I would
have said it back, but…I was too choked up. He didn’t wait for me either,
he dipped his head lower and kissed me again.
It started slow but heated up very quickly. This kiss was different than
before. Aston wasn’t holding back as he climbed back on the bed and over
me. He ran his hands down the side of my body, slipping them under my
shirt. There was urgency in him. His hands were unsteady, his chest pressed
against mine. I could feel his heart beating, hard and fast as he brought my
shirt over my head and threw it on the floor.
He devoured my mouth, tasting me. I melted against him, meeting his
tongue with mine stroke for stroke. He growled at the feeling, tightening his
hand in my hair while his other trailed down my body. His palm stopped at
my breast, and he stroked it through my tank top and squeezed. I writhed
against him, encouraging him to continue, when he broke away from my
mouth, panting.
He didn’t stop like I thought he might. He resumed his kisses, pressing
his wet lips down my throat. I ran a hand through his hair as he continued
moving down my body. I felt him everywhere. I hadn’t worn a bra under
my shirt. My breasts were only small, but the way Aston paused and stared
at them, lust in his eyes, I felt like the sexiest woman alive.
Charged and hungry, he grabbed my pj bottoms and underwear at the
same time and pulled them down hastily. He didn’t spare a moment
discarding them, and then he pushed up on his knees and looked down at
me. At every freaking inch of me, exposed.
“Do you know how many hours I’ve spent imagining you naked?” he
asked, softly. “I used to just stare at you, at the clothes you wore, and in my
head I’d undress you. Then I’d put your clothes back on and start all over
again.”
 My cheeks heated and I smiled timidly at him. “You are so strange,
Aston.”
He smiled back at me, dimples and all. “But you like that.”
“I love it.”
He moved back over me and brushed my hair away from my face.
“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Since I came through
this house eight years ago, I have been obsessed with you.”
He could never know how much those words meant to me. He could
never know the torture I had gone through all these years, wondering and
wishing. This was a dream for me. I must be in a coma. I’d wake up soon,
right?
But then he kissed me again, and it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real
and intimate. Nothing this good could be dreamt about. He kissed every
inch of me. He savoured me, and when I was squirming for more, he threw
his shirt and pants off. I saw him naked for the first time, beautiful and
large, I had to suppress the tears from falling out of my eyes. Was it weird I
was crying? It totally was, wasn’t it? But I was so freaking happy! This
happiness made me want to weep.
He moved back over me, his naked flesh pressed against mine. Yes,
this was real, I told myself, savouring the rush that blazed through my body.
We were a fireball; two uncertain, nervous bodies coming together for the
very first time. Sloppy, new, without practice or rhythm. Vulnerable,
excited, mouths stretched with smiles, eyes filled with need.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered against my lips. “Tell me what
I can do to keep from hurting you.”
Never leave me.
“Nothing,” I whispered back. “Just do it.”
He took me, slowly and cautiously, his eyes searching my face with a
look of worry. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him close to me as
he rocked into me. I told him not to stop, and he listened, shutting his
eyelids at the intense feeling. I waited to be swept up by the same intensity.
I shut my eyes and…
 Then I felt it.
Pain! Horrible. Agonizing. Pain!
My eyes shot open. What the fuck was this? This wasn’t what I was
promised! There was no pleasure. What the fuck?! It felt like a hot poker
was ripping me wide open. I tensed, and hissed between my teeth and he
paused instantly.
“Are you okay?” he asked, worried. “Fuck, do you want me to pull
out?”
Yes, god, yes! “No,” I forced out. “Keep going.”
“I’m doing it wrong, aren’t I?”
“Oh, my God, Aston, just keep going. You’re making this awkward.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize during my first time. You’re ruining it.”
“Fuck.”
This wasn’t how I envisioned this. I groaned and gripped his hair,
pulling him down to me. “Just kiss me. Kiss me slowly, Aston.”
He smashed his lips to mine. It helped. I didn’t think of the pain so
much with his tongue tangling with mine. In fact, I felt turned on again.
Aston had the ability to kiss erotically. It sounded weird saying that, but it
was the only way to describe it. He kissed like it mattered, like he had to
savour my taste. I felt him growing harder inside of me. How was that
possible? None of the girls talked about this part. Why hadn’t I probed them
more with their loss of virginity tales?
There was nothing beautiful about the first time. It was all a lie. A
terrible fucking myth designed to make girls fear it less. Fuck you, authors;
those heroines couldn’t have writhed in pleasure. Fuck you, movies; those
actresses shouldn’t have gasped and moaned the way they did. They were
all liars.
They were all…
I gasped when he thrust further inside of me. A spark shot through me.
I tore away from his mouth and gazed into his eyes. “That felt good,” I
whispered.
His eyes widened, a look of triumph present. “Really?”
“Do it again. Move in and out again.”
He did, and whatever pain I’d originally felt ebbed away to a dull ache
I could easily ignore. He pushed in, and we both gasped at the same time.
Wow, wow, I felt that everywhere. He watched me intently, his lips quirking
up at the way I rolled my eyes to the back of my head. He took his time,
moving in and out of me deliberately slow to catch my expressions.
And then he moved. Like, really moved. I touched him everywhere I
could, and he kissed me, doting on my lips as I moaned inside his mouth.
I felt an intense connection I couldn’t describe. I held him to me hard
as we made love, as he moved back and forth, warming me. He made
surprising noises, light moans that ran away from his lips. His sounds; they
did wild things to me.
He opened his eyes again and moved quicker, his strokes longer and
harder, filled with confident need. I writhed beneath him, encouraging him
with my kisses not to stop. Oh, god, it really was as good as they said it
would be. He was inside of me, outside of me, everywhere around me. It
was an overdose of Aston and it quenched my obsession, filling it to the
brim. In a single night, he’d consumed my addiction than all the years we’d
shared combined.
When we came, we came together, and it was staring into each other’s
eyes. In that moment, I signed away my soul and handed it to him. He
understood and did the same.
As we lay together afterwards, soaked in our sweat and breathing each
other’s air, I remember thinking, I’ve never been so happy.
It would be the last time in a very long time I’d ever be that happy
again.

OceanofPDF.com
14.
Elise
It’d been a few days since that night, and we’d had sex again before I
felt too sore. It was hard getting used to Aston’s…size. He was…well-
endowed, to put it mildly. It was like pushing a piano through a golf hole
those first couple times. Well, that was a shit example, but it was the only
thing that came to mind in my koala head (and yeah, I was still ridiculously
chill about everything). He didn’t push for it after I told him, and recent
nights were spent talking and then exploring different ways to making each
other feel good. I healed, and by day five, I was up and at it again,
determined to get more of him.
On a particularly beautiful day, we took our bikes out of the garage and
rode down the streets, taking trails through the parks and up winding
mountain roads. We got beeped at a thousand times by drivers. Montley was
infamous for its road rage and intolerance for bicyclists. For a place that
was founded on so much religious drivel, there were an awful lot of mean
people.
We parked our bikes along the fence of some dude’s massive house.
Aston knocked on his door and asked if we could chain our bikes to it while
we walked a popular trail that overlooked the town.
“You gotta pay for that privilege,” the old dude said.
Ugh, he couldn’t be serious. He lived in a gargantuan house, had four
cars out front, and he was asking for money?
“Money for what, though?” Aston asked, his voice firm and
challenging. “We just want to lock them against your chain link fence.”
“And what if a bear mauled them and took down my fence?”
“A bear won’t maul them, sir.”
“You can’t promise me that.”
 “Aston,” I called out, “it’s fine. We can find somewhere else to hook
them up.”
But Aston wasn’t listening to me. Not surprising. This was what men
did, right? They got all personal about something small and easily fixable.
Then it was all about who had bigger balls, and ew, I didn’t want to be
thinking of the old dude’s balls, but a wrinkly looking sack of meat
assaulted my mind and I dry heaved. Gross, Elise, what is wrong with you?
Aston had a full blown argument with the old dude. Then money was
brought up and I cringed when Aston began pulling out his wallet from his
pocket. Oh, God, he was seriously going to pay the man? It was like auction
wars after that. They haggled over two bicycles attached to a fence that,
now that I looked at it, wasn’t even all the way upright and stable.
Aston returned minutes later, and the old dude looked triumphant and
smug as he slid his ten dollars in his pocket and disappeared inside his
massive house.
I decided not to give Aston a hard time about it, but my stink eye
couldn’t be tamed. He ignored the look and locked our bikes up. Then he
took my hand in his and squeezed. It was a shocking moment for me, being
held like this outside for the world to see. Well, not the world really, we
were very isolated, but it was better than being isolated inside a dark
bedroom.
We walked up the road until we saw the sign.
Mount Fern Trail
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time: 2.5 hours
Distance: 11.3 km
Elevation gain: 380metres
I hesitated. I wasn’t an intermediate climber. I wasn’t intermediate at
anything, except kissing. Yeah, I’d grown really good at that as of late.
“You ready?” Aston asked me.
“No,” I answered, my eyes wide with fear. “What if we get mauled by
bears? That old guy seemed totally convinced.”
 “Then all you have to think about is outrunning me.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to die.”
*
To make a long story short, I didn’t die, but fuck, the trail had an
incline of doom. My legs burned everywhere. I was short of breath, thirsty,
and tired beyond belief.
“I thought dancers had good cardiovascular systems,” Aston remarked
on a smile, handing me a bottle of water from his bag.
“They don’t eat quarter pounders after every session,” I replied,
gulping it down.
We approached the lookout and rested our elbows on the crappy
wooden fence. It was a gorgeous site of the valley. Montley didn’t look so
depressing from this far. In all seriousness, I felt at peace, like being here
wasn’t so bad.
“You gonna follow me after you’re finished?” Aston asked me
sometime later, his voice quiet and solemn.
I turned my head to him. He was wearing board shorts and a blue tank
top. His shoulders were burnt red and covered in new freckles. It suited
him, those freckles. I wanted to own every single one of them. His eyes
were squinted as he gazed out and still they sparkled in the sunlight. His
blond man-bun sat messy at the top of his head. He looked like he was
made to be a surfer on an island beach, not a nature outdoorsman in the
pacific northwest.
“I want to,” I finally answered.
“I’ll take care of you, you know.”
“I kind of don’t want to be taken care of.”
“I didn’t mean it like you’d be dependent on me or anything, but that
you can think of what you want to do at your own pace without feeling
pressured.”
I grabbed at the end of my ponytail and nervously ran my fingers
through the strands, contemplating his words. “I want to be a dancer.”
 He turned his head to me and smiled brilliantly. “Yeah?”
I blushed at his intensity. “It sounds silly, though, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“How would I even do it?”
“You want to perform or choreograph?”
“I don’t know, both? There are theatre programs in the city. I’ve looked
some up, but they’re a bit intimidating. One of them expects you to have
yoga classes under your belt, and all these weird criteria crap.”
“So? You got a year. You can do all that.”
“You think?”
He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him. My body
pressed against his front. He looked down at me, the greens of his eyes
mesmerizing. He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine. “You can
do it,” he murmured, licking along the crease of my parted mouth. “I’ll be
there with you.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
I smiled back at him and wrapped my arms around his neck. He lifted
me up and rested my bum on the fence and crushed his mouth to mine. It
was hot already, but I felt even hotter as he spread my legs wide and settled
his hips against me. I felt drunk on love already, but lust was even more
glorious. Lust sent ripples of need throughout my body.
“Aston,” I panted, kissing him feverishly.
He broke away and looked over his shoulder. His chest was heaving up
and down, his need apparent and against me. “I want you,” he told me.
“Nobody’s here.”
He continued to look around, weighing our options. “I can’t risk it.”
Before my hopes could be dashed, he picked me up and led me off the
trail and into the dense bush. All the while his lips remained moulded to
mine. Metres from the trail, he dropped me slowly to the ground and kissed
my neck, chest, and stomach. I was shaking when he started pulling my
shorts down but not my underwear. He removed a condom from his wallet
and covered his body over mine, passionately prolonging our touches until I
was moaning out loud for him to hurry.
He had the corner of the condom packet in between his teeth when I
heard heavy footsteps approaching. It’d come out of nowhere. My ears had
been pumping so much blood, I didn’t know until whoever was there had
reached us.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” barked a voice. “This is a
public area! Kids walk this damn path all the time. Get up!”
Aston’s eyes spoke of horror and they mirrored my own. We
recognized the voice. We knew who it was, and all my fears came to light.
We’d just been discovered by Dad’s partner, Adrian. What were the
fucking chances?
Aston pulled away from me, but he kept his body in front of mine as he
slowly turned around and looked up at Adrian. I caught a quick glimpse of
the middle-aged man. He was so like my dad in so many ways, but he was
softer and funny too. He wasn’t in his police uniform, so at least I knew
Dad wasn’t anywhere around. He was in casual hiking clothes, and with his
age pushing fifty, it was surprising how in shape he was.
“Aston?” The surprise was evident in his voice as he looked at him.
“The hell, boy? What are you doing?”
Aston kept my upper body hidden as he replied, “I’m sorry, Adrian.
Got a bit carried away.”
“Who are you with? Does the family know you’re in a relationship?”
“Not all of them.”
“Move aside. You’re both in for a lesson.”
I blinked hard, keeping the tears at bay. God, this was a nightmare.
This was not how I wanted our relationship to be found out. Aston
hesitated, not wanting to move, but then he finally did. He pushed down my
body so that my bottom half was covered up and rested my shorts over my
underwear.
 What followed had to be the most awkward and uncomfortable
moment of my life. My eyes connected to Adrian, and a myriad of
expressions followed. Confusion. Surprise. Shock. And then…realization.
He stared between the two of us, unsure of what to say. He was utterly
speechless. Then he took a step back and left us there, hurrying like his ass
was on fire.
I sat up and with trembling fingers I slipped into my shorts, staring at
Aston’s grim face.
“Where did he go?” I whispered to him, worried.
“To the lookout,” he whispered back.
My heart battered inside my chest as I looked toward that direction.
“Do you think he’s calling Dad?”
“Probably. I don’t know.”
“We-we can’t let that happen.”
Aston’s lips tightened. “We can’t stop him, either, El. This is bad.”
I stood up on wobbly legs and used the tree next to us for balance. I felt
sick with worry. What would we go home to? Oh, God, how were they
going to react to this?
“I can’t let that happen,” I said hastily. “I can’t.”
“El –”
I was already gone, marching in the direction of the lookout. When I
emerged, I found Adrian standing where we had been minutes ago. He was
staring out, rubbing at his face like he was stressed. I stopped beside him,
my body turned to him. He didn’t acknowledge me, but he let out a long
sigh, aware of my presence.
“Adrian,” I choked out, “please, don’t say a word.”
“About what?” he gruffly asked.
“About what you saw.”
“You mean you having a relationship with your adopted brother?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds worse than it really is. It’s kind of
mean, Adrian.”
 He looked at me briefly. “All I know, Elise, is you both have been thick
as thieves since he was taken in. I never saw any looks exchanged in…that
way. Both of you were so young, you grew up together as siblings. I
thought it was completely innocent.”
“It was never innocent,” I argued, breathing erratically now. “I always
loved him and I never looked at him as a brother.”
He raised a brow, studying me. “How long has this been going on?”
“Not long.”
“What do you think your parents are going to say when they find out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know anything?”
I cringed. “I don’t know. Everything is a clusterfuck.”
“You can’t keep hiding this.”
“Then give us the chance to tell them.”
He laughed shortly; it wasn’t real, and I didn’t like hearing it. He
turned to me, his brown eyes warming as they traced my face. “El, I’m your
godfather. I knew you before you walked, before you talked, before you
were even born. Do you really think I’m going to tell your parents?”
A tear fell from my eyes. I sniffed. “Not when you say it like that.”
He let out a long exhale. “Let this be a wake-up call then. Be careful of
your actions. It might have been your father walking in on you both, and
that would have been a terrible way for him to find out.”
I nodded urgently. “Okay, I agree.”
He touched my arm and squeezed it gently. Then he dropped it and
walked back down the trail, disappearing from sight a minute later. I
returned to Aston and found him in the exact same spot I left him. I sat
down next to him and pressed my body against his side. He wrapped an arm
around me and kissed the top of my head.
“He won’t say anything,” I told him.
 He looked relieved for a moment, but then his face went hard again.
“I have to let them know,” he replied grimly. “We can’t hide this from
them any longer, El. It could have been worse. What if it was Deck-chair or
someone else you know? They’d have used this like arsenal and the town
would have blown up with rumours within a week. They have to know.”
I swallowed hard, concerned. “But…you don’t think we should wait a
little while longer, until I’m done school first? I don’t want to have to deal
with them if it goes down badly.”
“Elise, it’s hard enough hiding it now and we’ve been at it a few weeks.
Another year would be impossible.”
“I know, but then I think of Dad’s reaction, and… I’m just…scared.”
He sighed. “I know you are. I’m scared too. But it’s the right thing.”
“But…is it the right time?”
“There will never be a right time.”
I nodded stiffly. I was agreeing to something I was terrified of. “When
are you going to do it then?”
“He’s been talking about going fishing for a while now. I’ll put a day
aside and we’ll spend time together. I’ll have to open up to him then.”
“I should come with you.”
He shook his head. “No, El. Let me do that. We’ll break the news
together to Mom, but…Dad is going to be a different matter. If it goes to
shit, at least he won’t take it out on you.”
I nodded again, trying to suppress the dread that followed. I was
petrified. My heart stretched and tightened over and over again, nerves
conquering every inch of my being, as I wondered how our lives were
going to change.
At the end of the day, I loved Aston. I had to have courage to face the
unexpected. No matter what, we would be together.
That was all that mattered.

OceanofPDF.com
15.
Aston
No more being a coward. I had to do the right thing by Elise, even if it
cost me the respect of the only real father I knew.
Dad came down that morning excited as hell. He had grabbed all our
fishing gear and set it up beside the front door. Then he waltzed into the
kitchen, squeezed my shoulders and ruffled Elise’s hair.
“This is going to be a damn good day,” he noted, smiling. “I just have a
feeling.”
I felt flat but I managed a nod. “I hope so.”
After he had a quick breakfast, I helped load everything up into the
back our truck. All the while, Elise stood by the front door, staring at me
and biting that sexy bottom lip. As Dad loaded the cooler into the backseat,
I ducked into the house and grabbed her by the arm. I dragged her into the
garage, pushed her against the wall, and smashed my lips against hers. My
hands were everywhere. I couldn’t get enough of this tight little body.
“Stop worrying,” I told her, biting that sexy lip of hers.
She ran her hand down the back of my head, gripping a chunk of my
hair tightly. “I’m just so nervous. Maybe we should wait.”
“No more waiting. I want you. Fuck, El, I want the world to know
you’re mine.”
She pulled me back to her mouth and our tongues tangled for one last
moment. I grunted, squeezing her to me, my hands sliding down her back to
grab at her meaty little ass. Then Dad called out my name, and I broke free,
panting, dick throbbing against my cargo shorts.
“Go,” she told me.
I ran my finger over her bottom lip once and smiled. “Don’t worry,
angel. Everything is going to be okay.”
 She was red and breathless. “Really?”
I didn’t know. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you.”
I returned outside and climbed into the front seat of the truck. Dad was
already behind the wheel, looking me over with a furrowed brow.
“You alright?” he asked me.
“Overheating,” I answered, trying to keep my breaths under control.
He turned the air conditioner on and we peeled out of the driveway. I
looked at our house as we drove away, thinking of Elise.
Always thinking of Elise.
*
The day was calm and peaceful. We set our camp chairs out beside a
creek. The water wasn’t high, so I wasn’t liking our chances, but Dad
wasn’t in it to actually catch fish. He just needed to get away from his job
and unwind.
Some days were dark for him. Just last week there was a hit and run
and he had to tend to an eight-year-old on the road. She was still in the
hospital, and the doctors said she’d never walk again. They say you get
desensitized about shit like that over a period of time, but Dad always felt
the pain. It was always fresh for him. He just found ways to block it out;
kind of like what I did with numbers.
“You’re nervous about something,” he said as we packed up our things
and got ready to leave. “What’s going on, Aston?”
I exhaled, not meeting his eye. “How about we grab something to eat at
the fish and chip place and talk there?”
He chuckled. “I would have preferred we eat our own fish, but alright,
son.”
Son.
That word on this particular day put me in knots.
 He patted my back as I climbed back into the car. He drove us to the
restaurant, keeping silent the whole way, as if letting me soak in my
thoughts. It was mid-afternoon when we pulled up and found a table in the
far back of the crowded room. We ordered our food, and all the while Dad
studied me carefully, trying to figure out what the problem was.
How does one go right out and say to a man that he’s screwing their
daughter? And how does one do that when that man brought him into the
family as one of their own?
This was harder than I thought.
Our food arrived, and I picked at it with a fork, my mind spewing
numbers that would do absolutely nothing for me right now.
“Is this about school?” he asked me, breaking the heavy silence.
“No,” I answered. “It’ll be hard leaving, don’t get me wrong.”
“We’ll be terribly lonely without you. I don’t know what Elise will do
with the house to herself.”
Just do it. Fucking do it, you pussy. “I love her,” I blurted out, staring at
him evenly.
He nodded and chuckled. “I know. You both grew up together,
inseparable. She’ll have no one to torment.”
I exhaled and shook my head slowly. “No, Dad,” I replied quietly, “I’m
in love with Elise.”
He stopped moving, and his smile dropped just like that. It was like
watching a bomb go ka-boom. “What?”
“I tried not to,” I explained hastily. “But the heart wants what it wants,
right? It happened and…I can’t fight it anymore.”
His fork dropped from his hand, clattering on the plate. He stared at me
in disbelief. “You’re in love with Elise,” he repeated. “Is that what I just
heard?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know this, Aston?”
I chuckled dryly. “We love each other, Dad. We’re…together.”
 He looked away from me for several moments, thoughtfully scanning
the restaurant with an indiscernible expression. I was still nervous, but I felt
like a weight had fallen from my shoulders. The worst was over. It was out
there. He knew, and that meant no more hiding.
“How long?” he asked me solemnly, blue eyes back on mine. “How
long has this been going on, Aston?”
“Several weeks,” I responded.
“So not long at all.”
“Long enough that we’re attached.”
Minutes passed. His mortification petered off, replaced with a morose
look that was worse than disappointment.
He hated me. I felt it. I knew it. I was almost close to apologizing, but I
couldn’t do that. I didn’t feel sorry for loving his daughter. Not at all.
“You can yell at me,” I told him sternly. “You can disown me. You can
tell me you hate me. I’ll understand.”
He looked at me, startled. “Hate you? I could never hate you, Aston. I
love you, always.”
“Then what is it?”
“I…I’m trying to figure out if I’m to blame for this. I guess…I always
thought you both were too young, that you’d grow up together like…like
siblings. I didn’t see this coming, and maybe I should have.”
“It’s no one’s fault.”
He took a steady breath, trying to maintain control of his emotions as
he asked, “Have you…touched her?”
I kept my eyes on him as my insides raged with guilt. “Yeah,” I
admitted. “I have.”
“In the house?”
I wanted to bite my tongue off. “Yeah.”
“Have you both taken it slow?”
“We…tried.”
 Tried but failed, and he knew it.
He forced a nod, but his horror was apparent. More silent minutes
passed, and while it was uncomfortable as fuck, I kept my eyes levelled to
his, never breaking away.
After a century of this torture, he leaned over the table and said, “How
is this going to work, Aston? This is a new relationship. What’s going to
happen next? She’s staying here, and you’re leaving. Did you think about
that?”
“Of course.”
“What are you going to do? There are a lot of problems already.”
“If this is about keeping an image and letting everyone know –”
“I couldn’t give a shit if the world knew you and her were together,
Aston,” he cut in sharply, looking insulted. “Goddammit, I’m not like that,
do you understand? Images are made to change. If the town hates us
tomorrow, then we’ll give ‘em some pitchforks and let them have their say.
I don’t care. What I care about is how this is going to work. So answer me.
What are you going to do when you’re gone and she’s here?”
“I don’t have to go,” I told him confidently. “I’ll stay right here with
her.”
His eyes hardened. “You’re going to stay? Here?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re going to throw it all away, you mean?”
“There’s a college here –”
“Don’t insult my intelligence, Aston. I’m not as bright as you, but I’m
certainly not as clueless either. The college here is shit. You have a
scholarship because you are destined for greater things. You could be the
next goddamn Einstein, and you want to throw it all away to be here? I
won’t allow it.”
“Then I’ll take her with me,” I retorted.
“You’d take high school off her?”
“She’ll go to one in the city.”
 Dad exhaled, shaking his head. “Think about what you’re saying,
Aston. What is she going to do over there with you? You know how busy
you’re going to be. How are you going to find the time to be with her? You
have to sacrifice one thing for another. Your brain dominates you. If you
stayed here, you’d go stale. If you left with her, you’d neglect her.”
“I love her, Dad,” I told him adamantly. “With or without your
approval, we’re going to be together. Even if we have to run away, we’ll be
together.”
“And you’re not understanding me, son. This is hard for me to hear.
I’m goddamn shocked by it, but I don’t disapprove. I just know what I’m
talking about. Your lives are completely different. Elise is…not as mature
as you. She’s young in the head still and…oh, god, she is dramatic. You
know what I’m talking about too. She’s all about fun in the moment. All
about dancing and socializing. If you do something she disagrees with,
she’s all drama and angst. She’s not ready to be on her own. She’s not even
ready to know what she wants. She has no career in mind. She has no goals.
She reacts emotionally over everything. Throwing a serious relationship
into the mix? That’s like playing with fire.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you imagine the devastation that would happen to our family if
you and Elise broke up?”
“We won’t.”
“You don’t know that. She is not at your level. She’s too young.”
“We’re a year apart, Dad.”
“You are years ahead, Aston.”
I leaned back and crossed my arms. I was angry. “So what would you
have me do?” I asked him angrily, jaw clenched.
“Wait for her to grow. Give her time.”
I didn’t respond. I wanted her. I wanted her so fucking badly, I ached to
the bone. But at the same time, I hated how much sense he made. These
next five years were going to be brutal. I had so much to learn, so many
goals to reach. And the way I was when I poured myself in my work, the
world faded into the background.
Elise would fade along with it.
Would she hate me if I neglected her? Should we wait until I was done
and was able to give her my love and attention? Would she even wait that
long?
“Your words are killing me, Dad,” I whispered to him. “This is misery
for me.”
He went still, looking down at the table for a few moments. When he
looked back at me, his eyes were rimmed red. “Aston, you’re a son to me. I
brought you into our lives because I couldn’t live a day not knowing if you
were going to be thrown into another hell. I had to have you. I had to
protect you, and you blossomed with us. The happiest day of my life was
when you turned to me and said, ‘can I call you my dad?’ Do you
remember that? I was so proud. I would never want to deprive you of
happiness. Can’t you see that’s what I’m trying to do?”
“By keeping me away from her, you think I’ll be happy?”
“By having her, do you think she’ll stay?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? You wouldn’t rather wait until she has her own life
sorted and then give it a real go?”
I ran a hand through my hair. My mind raced with solutions.
Numbers…numbers couldn’t help me out, and logic…logic was working
against me right now.
I shoved the plate forward. “This is bullshit,” I hissed, standing up.
I stormed out of the restaurant. This wasn’t how the day was supposed
to go! He was meant to accept us and that was it. We were supposed to go
home, break it to Mom, and get her acceptance, and then…
Then what?
I slammed open the entrance door and rested my head against the brick
wall. I shut my eyes and tried to reason. She loved me. We wanted to be
together. Why did it have to get complicated?
 I heard the door open again and footsteps approached me.
“Aston,” he said. “Let’s go back in there and sort this out.”
“I don’t want to sort it out.”
“Aston, stop –”
“You don’t want us together. I wish you’d just say it!” I shouted.
“I don’t want you together.” His words were firm and resolute. They
shocked me to the core.
I pushed off the wall and turned to him. “You want us unhappy.”
“I want you both to avoid pain. To wait, goddammit. Just…wait until
your life is less hectic, until she’s less dramatic. Right now, all I see is
obsession and no logic.”
“You’re wrong!”
“Maybe I am. Let’s keep talking it through first.”
“You don’t think I’m good enough for her. Is that it?” I was losing my
shit, going hysterical now as all my insecurities raced to the surface. “You
think I’m like my father. You think I’ll hurt her because there’s some
monster inside of me too!”
“No!” he retorted fiercely. “You are nothing like him!”
“You’re a liar.”
“I would never lie about that.”
“You pity me every fucking day! I see it in your eyes. It’s
condescending. You make me feel inferior when you look at me that way.
You won’t move on from that part of my life.”
“Because it reminds me to be human,” he argued, his voice cracking.
“To cherish you and your sister –”
“Don’t call her that anymore! She’s not my sister.”
“I’m not trying to upset you, Aston.”
“Then let me have her!” Angry tears fell from my eyes. “I want her. We
want each other! We waited years for this moment. I tried so hard to push
her away, but I couldn’t. Either she leaves with me, or I stay with her.”
 He didn’t respond. He just looked at me, his eyes red and pained. He
honestly didn’t want me with her. I couldn’t believe it. I felt unworthy,
rejected, pushed aside. I knew those things weren’t entirely true, but in that
moment, I was raw with pain and determined to see things in a way that
mirrored my insecurities.
I shook my head and slid down the wall. Who was he to tell me no? He
didn’t understand us. No, a voice whispered in my head, he understands you
perfectly, and he’s right.
I was too angry to speak to him, and he continued to linger next to me,
determined not to leave me alone. It felt like an hour had passed in that
position. I watched people come and go, wishing I’d still been part of that
foster system. I could have met Elise on a different path in life. Imagine
how simple things would have been then?
I was drowning in my fucking misery when I heard a commotion. I
raised my head and stared on as a man slammed the door shut to a car in the
parking lot and began screaming at his wife. He pointed to the backseat,
mouthing off at a little boy who was crying.
I stood up, and Dad was watching the scene unfold too.
“He spills fucking ketchup in my car, the little thieving shit!” the man
screeched.
The woman was terrified of him, but she continued holding her ground,
protecting her boy from this man. This man who was shaking the same way
my real father did before he cut us all up.
“Get out of the way!” he told her.
When she wouldn’t, he grabbed something from under his shirt and I
tensed when I saw the gun. I took a step forward when Dad grabbed me by
the arm. “Don’t,” he told me sternly. “I don’t have my protective gear here,
Aston. I’m off-duty. We cannot intervene when he is armed like that. Let
me call the department.”
“He’s going to hurt the kid,” I hissed.
“He won’t, I promise.” Dad pulled out the phone from his pocket and
made the call. I stood by and stared on as the man shoved the woman
behind and reached for the door.
 Images flashed before my eyes.
My real father chasing my mother around the house.
Her screams.
Her pleas.
The way my sisters sobbed for mercy. How quiet I was as I stood back
and watched helplessly. Why had I been so quiet? Why didn’t I move? Why
didn’t I do something?
You’ve always been weak. Always been a coward.
I snapped and, without knowing it, I rushed to the man with the gun. I
heard Dad yell at me to stop, but I didn’t listen. Adrenaline and anger
fuelled me, as well as images of green eyes and rage and blood.
I lost it.

OceanofPDF.com
16.
Elise
The day he went fishing with Dad was a beautiful one. The sun was
bright, the heat not as heavy as it had been in recent weeks. Mom was
tackling on overtime at the police station, and I was pacing the floors of our
house, hands clasped, and my stomach swirling with knots. This was it. We
were doing it. We were going to come out on the other side together, no
matter what.
I went to the bathroom that many times. The anxiety was unbearable.
I tried to read a book. Then I flicked through the channels on the
television. Then I tried to busy myself by cooking.
Nothing worked. I couldn’t focus when all I could think about was
Aston and Dad and whether he had told him by now. I knew it was unlikely,
though. Aston said he’d let him know after they’d fished. He wanted it face
to face at a table. He already had a restaurant in mind.
I clock-watched and paced. Clock-watched and paced. When I heard
the front door open, I nearly threw up as I hesitantly moved to the hallway.
My nerves died down when I saw Mom coming through the door,
exhausted eyes twinkling when they met mine. “Hey, darling,” she said,
setting her purse down on the entrance table. “How are we today?”
I just nodded. “Good.”
She must have sensed my mood was off. She paused and looked me
over. I was still in my pj shorts and tank top. My hair hadn’t been combed. I
hadn’t a lick of make-up on my face, and I was pretty sure I was paler than
usual.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, concerned.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“You look awful.”
 “Thanks.”
She ignored my sarcasm. “The boys are still out?”
“Yeah.”
“It’ll just be you and me for dinner, then.”
“I’m not hungry.”
She frowned. “What have you eaten?”
“I’m just not hungry, Mom.”
She watched me carefully as I raced past her and up the stairs, out of
view. She was too intuitive, that woman. I’d purposely dodged spending
time with her, fearing she would find us out. I wouldn’t need to dodge her
any longer, I reminded myself.
The hours passed slowly. The day turned to night. I stared out the
window, waiting for the headlights of our truck to come into view. Then I
glanced at the time. 8pm.
What the hell was taking them so long? This was a bad sign, wasn’t it?
I tried to picture Dad hollering at Aston in the middle of the restaurant over
what we’d done, but that wasn’t him. Dad didn’t have it in him to upset
Aston. He’d never been given a reason to. Until perhaps now…
I lay in bed, exhausted from all this worrying. I shut my eyes, opting
for sleep just to pass the time. I dozed until the house phone rang. Then I
opened my eyes and listened to Mom picking up the call. Her voice started
off quiet, and then she was screaming.
“Elise!”
My heart lurched in my chest. I jumped out of bed and ran out of the
bedroom. She was hollering my name over and over again, and when I got
to the bottom of the staircase, she had her keys in her hand. She looked at
me, and I felt startled by the panic on her face.
“We have to go,” she anxiously said. “Your father and Aston are in the
hospital.”
*
 I demanded answers during the car ride, but she didn’t speak a word.
She’d already started shutting down, her face blank, her hand tight on the
steering wheel as she sped across town to the hospital. It was a ten-minute
drive because of all the goddamn red lights. It was the longest ten-minute
drive of my life.
My mind raced with questions. Was it a car accident? Was Aston in one
piece? It couldn’t be bad. Everything was going to be okay, right? It had to
be. Life had only just started coming together for us. It couldn’t throw a
dent in it now.
I prayed. I prayed so hard, looking out that window and up at the night
sky. Please, let everything be okay. Please.
By the time we turned into the parking lot, my heart was in my throat.
Mom jumped out and pulled out change from her pocket. We strode quickly
to the entrance of the hospital. I felt so fucking annoyed when she stopped
to pay for parking. I didn’t care if our car was towed, goddammit! We
needed to go in now! I openly fumed at her as she took her time, her face
still void of emotion. She was scared, I realized. She didn’t want to face
reality, but we had to.
“Mom,” I said urgently, “we have to go.”
When she wouldn’t move, I took her by the arm and told her we were
doing this together. Then I forced her through the ER doors and to the
waiting room.
I didn’t realize the level of concern I should have been having until I
saw Aston seated there, in the front row, with Adrian by his side in his
police uniform.
He had a hand on Aston’s back, patting him. Why was he reassuring
him? What was so bad to warrant pats on the back?
As we neared, I felt everything inside of me crumble. Tears sprang to
my eyes, a gasp left my throat, and I nearly fell to the ground right there
and then.
Aston was covered in blood, and it wasn’t his own.
I felt like the world was spinning. Adrian saw us. He got up and slowly
approached us, looking directly at my mother with sympathetic eyes. My
gaze locked on Aston. I walked past them, inching nearer, hearing the
words, “he tried to stop a fight” and “he got shot” in the same sentence.
I fell on the chair next to Aston, my body turned to him. I grabbed his
hand. He was oddly cold. He was never cold. He turned his head to me just
barely, and the pain I saw in them pierced me to the bone.
My lips quivered as I whispered, “Aston.”
He just shook his head, unable to tear his gaze away from me.
“Everyone I love always leaves me,” he said raggedly, choking back on a
sob.
Tears fell from my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. “It’ll be alright.”
He didn’t believe me.
He was right to.
*
Dad was pronounced dead one hour later at 9:17pm. The second the
doctor broke it to us was the second my whole world ripped apart before
my eyes. It was hot all of a sudden. My heart fluttered and raced, and my
brain was working hard to catch up.
Dead.
My father was dead.
How did this happen? Why did this happen? Who let this happen?
He’d been perfectly fine this morning. He’d been smiling, squeezing
Aston’s shoulders while he talked about their boring fishing adventures.
Then he invited me along, a gesture he knew I wouldn’t take, and he was
right. I didn’t take it. Why didn’t I take it? I wished I had.
He’d said good night to me last night, and he’d called me his butterfly.
I’d rolled my eyes at the name because I was too old for that shit. Call me a
butterfly again, Dad. I’ll do anything to hear it.
Now he was dead.
I’d taken every moment for granted, believing there would always be a
never ending supply of “good night, butterfly”.
 Aston collapsed to the floor. It was that sudden movement that pulled
me out of my stupor. I leaned over him, hugging his back as he broke down.
Tears fell from my eyes, but only lightly. I was in shock, and Mom had
distanced herself from us, falling into the chair in a dazed heap, staring at
nothing.
It was a messy scene. I was holding on to a broken man as he lay in
ruins, trying to keep him together, and my mother was nowhere near us for
emotional support. I reached my hand out to her, but she didn’t take it. I felt
like Sticky Tack, trying to keep things together but failing miserably as the
weight of our loss broke through the links that bound us.
“Mom,” I choked out. “Please.”
She wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t fucking move and I just wanted to
mourn! I needed her strength. I needed her arms around mine as I held
Aston to me, and she wouldn’t give it to me.
When I saw Adrian wrap his arm around her, I focused back on Aston.
I hugged him tight, and leaned my face between his shoulder and neck,
whispering in his ear, “I know. I know. It’s okay. I’m here, Aston. I’m
here.”
He shook so violently. He’d come apart at the seams, and I was
helpless. I couldn’t make him feel better, so I let him weep there, and I
bottled my grief to be the strength he needed.

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Aston
He shouldn’t have died.
It should have been me.
It was my fault. It was my fault. It was my…

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17.
Elise
Life has a funny way of changing in the blink of an eye. It’s so
unsteady. One minute love is the answer to everything, and the next you’re
hopelessly trying to use it to fix the unfixable.
I felt like I was holding on to something that was already slipping away
from my grasp. Aston was distant. We went home that night and he
wouldn’t let me near him. Neither would Mom. I went back and forth, from
him to her, and they shunned me in their grief.
I swallowed the pain, knowing if I fell apart too we would never go
through with the process. I was seventeen and forced to fill out paperwork
and arrange a burial service. Adrian helped out a lot, along with the police
department who paid us a visit in the following two days. Without them, I
don’t think I’d have been able to cope. Their gentleness nearly killed me,
but it was also just what I needed to push through.
The death had travelled across town like a shockwave. People I didn’t
know came around, paid their respects, and all the while it was me at the
door, answering it time and time again, It was the last thing I wanted to do.
Visitors fed me stories of the father I loved and what a great man he was.
Food flooded in. Casseroles and desserts, cards and flowers, and letters – so
many letters of sorrow. It hit me hard. People had loved my father. I had
never known just how many lives he had touched selflessly working a job
that put him at risk every single day.
My hero.
My role model.
The man that loved so hard, he brought another child into our lives just
to see that child smile again.
And he died trying to do a noble thing. Adrian had explained what had
happened the very next day. “He saw a couple outside arguing. The husband
shoved her against the car and was beating on her while their kid cried in
the backseat. Instead of driving away, your father cut in, tried to break the
fight apart without realizing the man was armed. He shot him in the chest
point blank and then he ran from the scene of the crime. We’ve caught him
since. He won’t see the light of day. There will be justice, Elise. I promise.”
Could there ever be enough justice done for a senseless death like that?
Would life imprisonment truly be enough? It wasn’t fair that man was
breathing and my father wasn’t. It was the first time I ever thought along
those lines, and it frightened me the route my brain took at the thought of
justice. But my justice sounded more like revenge the longer I tortured that
man inside my mind. I had to switch off so I didn’t lose myself to anger.
The night before the funeral, I picked out a black dress for Mom to
wear and hanged it up on the hook behind her door. I tried to comfort her as
she lay in bed, the covers over her small body. Her short blonde hair
covered parts of her blank face, and every time I brushed them away, they
fell back again. She was doing it. She was trying to hide. She didn’t respond
to my touch, so I left her after a while. Then I knocked on Aston’s door and
waited for him to open.
He didn’t.
I turned back around and paced the house.
*
I didn’t know what was happening to my life, and I felt like I was just
there going through the motions. I didn’t cry again since the hospital. I
swallowed it all down, unsure of where it’d been bottled up exactly.
Somewhere dark, maybe. Somewhere I couldn’t find, hopefully.
On the day of the funeral, Adrian showed up at our house in the
morning, wearing a black suit, looking surprisingly sharp. His dark eyes
met mine and he smiled sympathetically as I waited for Mom and Aston to
come down. I was wearing a black plain dress. My hair was down in loose
waves, hardly presentable. I couldn’t help but feel like Mom should have
been there. She should have pushed me to comb through the strands of my
hair, to put make-up on and look more decent. To carry on even though I
ached.
 But she didn’t care.
“You’ve been so strong, Elise,” Adrian told me quietly, admiration in
his voice.
“No,” I replied numbly, “I think I’m just too broken to feel anything.”
Mom came down first, still plagued by grief to notice me. Then Aston
followed. My body stilled, and my eyes locked on him as he made his way
down the staircase in a black suit and crisp white shirt. It was the first time
I’d seen him properly since the hospital, and god, I really needed to see
him. He’d already lost a family as a child, and now he was losing another
person he loved all over again.
It was without explanation that I was capable to shove aside my pain
and want to heal him. I just had to. I needed him not to hurt. It scared me
how much that meant to me.
As we walked outside to Adrian’s car, I grabbed at Aston’s arm and
stared up at him, waiting for him to acknowledge me. He glimpsed at me
briefly, but there was nothing there in his eyes. I let go of his arm and let
him walk ahead of me. I felt lost. Everywhere I turned there was no way
out.
Give him time. I told myself. He just needs a bit more time.
The viewing was the single hardest thing I had ever had to do. I
purposely kept my eyes drawn away from the man that raised me from
birth. It wasn’t real. He wasn’t my father. No, he was just an empty capsule.
The father I loved was lost, gone, and I never got to say good bye. Every
time he wanted to spend time with me, I was too embroiled in my teen
angst to give him the attention I used to give him as a little girl.
As his butterfly.
I sucked in deep breaths as we stood by the casket. People flooded in,
and it was all a daze to me. I nodded, I whispered thanks, but that was it.
Lamely, I tried to grip Aston’s arm again, but he stiffened and didn’t look at
me. I turned to Mom and held her arm. She was soft, but she didn’t look
like she cared that I was touching her. I retreated from both, like an outsider,
and glimpsed at Dad’s empty body.
 He looked strange. Familiarities mixed with powdered make-up and
whatever the fuck else they did to him. Why did I let them do this to him?
He wasn’t my daddy. I whipped my face away, and suddenly it was all too
much. I had this urge to just run. To get away from reality. To be clear of
everyone and everything. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. I tore myself
apart. I could taste shards of anger in my mouth, and felt the venom all the
way to my toes. I needed out. I screamed internally, hoping for a break, for
tears to finally come, for my being to rupture so I could collapse and
mourn.
I needed that relief.
On the outside, I continued to whisper thanks, my legs remained in
place, and my dead eyes watched on, patient, kind, and grateful.
Just like Daddy taught me.
*
The funeral came and went. It was a nice day too. I would have liked
some clouds in the sky at least. Or a fucking drizzle of rain. Something that
wasn’t blue skies and sunshine. You’re not meant to hurt on a beautiful day.
That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.
People scattered back to their lives, leaving the three of us empty souls
standing at the gravesite. Adrian waited by the entrance of the cemetery,
giving us our space. I never stood so close to my family and felt so far away
from them.
Mom kissed the arch of the gravestone and walked away first. Her
steps were slow, and she looked so fragile. I stepped forward to offer her
my arm, but she shook her head at me and I wavered back, turning to
Aston.
He stood tall, hands in his pockets, head down. His gelled-back blond
hair had come apart and strands framed his face. His eyes closed briefly,
and when he opened them again I was by his side. My arm brushed against
his, and I yearned for the warmth of his body. I edged nearer, until I was
flushed against his side. We didn’t speak, but I looked at him, waiting.
Was it wrong I needed love right now? I ached for human touch. If he
could just wrap his arm around me, I was certain I’d feel better.
 “Aston,” I whispered in agony.
No response.
“Why won’t you talk to me? It hurts so much.”
He shook his head, finally acknowledging me. “I don’t mean anything
by it. I just…I need to be alone, El.”
“Being alone is the worst thing you need to be, Aston. Let me be there
for you.”
His green eyes shot to mine, the raw pain lingering there as he replied,
“You don’t understand, do you? This was my fault. He…He would still be
here if I didn’t…if I didn’t take him to that restaurant. I could have had a
day out with him any other time, but I was too fucking impatient, and now
look what I’ve done.”
He was blaming himself? No, no, no. He couldn’t do that.
“That’s not fair, Aston. None of this was your fault. None of it.” I took
his hand with both of mine and squeezed. “Believe me. We need to stick
together. That’s what Dad would have wanted.”
He gently withdrew his hand from me. “No, El,” he replied softly,
“that’s not what he would have wanted. He didn’t want us together.”
My eyes widened. I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. I stared at
him for a few moments, searching for signs he was lying. “No,” I denied,
“that’s not true.”
He looked at me hollowly. “It is, Elise. He didn’t approve.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “Why wouldn’t he approve?”
“There would have been no future for us.”
“Why?”
“He said we were too young. We…we might hurt each other and the
family would break apart.”
I swallowed, ignoring the weight I felt from his words. “But we won’t
hurt each other–”
“El, the point is he didn’t want us together,” he repeated again, harder
this time. “He said it. Out of his own mouth. Those exact words. ‘I don’t
want you together.’ I’m not lying. I’m telling you what he said, and you
need to listen.”
I continued shaking my head. “That doesn’t change things.”
“It changes everything,” he retorted, pointing at the headstone. “And
that’s the fucking proof, El.”
“That’s not true. He didn’t mean it that way –”
“He did, and he was right.”
My lips trembled. “You didn’t fight for us?”
His eyes narrowed, and he glared at me. “You have no idea how hard I
fought.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –”
“Don’t make me talk about this right now, El. It’s not important, not
after everything that’s happened.”
“But it is important. I need you right now –”
“Would you just stop it already? Just…give me space. Leave me alone.
I” – he closed his eyes briefly – “need to be alone.”
He turned and walked away. I stared after him, panic rising. “You’re
just angry,” I said, my voice small. “You don’t…you don’t mean it.”
Either he heard me, or he ignored me. Either way, he left me, and
standing there, feet away from my dead father, a gaping hole in my chest,
no arms to wrap around me to make it better, I finally felt it.
I felt the rupture.
I felt the stab of pain rising.
I felt the raw ache behind my eyes.
And, on a breath, I felt the tears fall. They fell heavily – and
mercilessly – down my face. And to my horror, no relief followed.
*
Interesting what death can do to a family. Bring you closer together, or
break you apart. I was in a family that didn’t want to mourn together.
 Every day for two weeks straight I waited for someone to pick up the
pieces. I’d pretend everything was normal when I woke up in the mornings.
I got the coffee ready for Mom, removed the box of pop tarts from the
pantry for Aston, and then I made myself a bowl of cereal and sat at the
table, waiting.
I didn’t eat. I kicked the Fruit Loops around in my bowl with the
spoon, waiting for normalcy to return. It just never happened. They resisted,
and my fight for togetherness went ignored.
Still. I busied myself. I cleaned the house and brought trays of food to
Mom and Aston. They were always left untouched outside their door, so I’d
take them back down, wash them and put them away before starting all over
again the next day.
Doing the laundry was the hardest. I had a basket of Dad’s clothes I
couldn’t bring myself to wash. I’d meander to that room and pick up his
uniform shirt. I’d bring it to my nose and inhale his cologne, and I swear to
fucking God, it was like he was in that room with me. With his scent
everywhere, I pretended he was standing next to me.
“I love you, Daddy,” I’d say to the silence. “I miss you.”
I crumbled in that laundry room every single day.
When was it going to get better? Why was the pain fiercer than it was
yesterday?
Mourning didn’t make sense when you weren’t getting anywhere.

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Aston
It felt like I was back there again; a kid left to his own devices,
shunning the world around him. My wall came up, and it felt better this
way. I felt numbed out. Nobody could hurt me like this.
I was in agony, so I opened my books and drowned in numbers and
problems and anything that consumed my brain. My emotions were mute
this way, and it was the kind of thing I needed to endure the guilt of what
I’d done.
He died and it was my fault. He clutched me to him as he bled out, his
eyes focused on mine, until they weren’t anymore.
“Come back, come back,” I’d sobbed. “Come back.”
He didn’t come back, and now I was reminded of him everywhere I
turned in this house. I felt imprisoned. I couldn’t handle the walls that were
closing in on me. I needed out and away.
Knock. Knock.
Fuck.
Knock. Knock.
She knocked every fucking day. She never stopped. Every night, every
morning, every time she left a tray of food there to rot, she knocked on that
fucking wall, waiting for me to return. But I didn’t want to return. I couldn’t
handle this pain anymore.
*
The end came when I woke up in the middle of the night, my chest
pressed tight. I could hardly get a breath in. I rolled off the bed and
collapsed to the floor, trying to inhale and exhale. My vision blurred, and I
ended up balled in the corner, knees to my chest. Me, a hulking man of 200
pounds, cradling myself like a small child and sobbing.
His lips had moved. I swore they had. He’d tried to tell me something
just before he went. I wanted to know what it was.
“What were you trying to say?” I whispered.
 I’d never know, and there was a horrible finality in that. I’d never get
closure. When you were responsible for taking the life of someone you
loved, how selfish did you have to be to seek closure in the first place?
I’d always been selfish, though. I should have died when I was five.
That was the first strike against me. I’d felt my soul slipping away, but I
fought it because I was in my real mother’s arms and she was warm and
comforting.
Then I was selfish with my adopted father, begging him not to hurt me,
to never leave me, to stay. I guilt-tripped him and he took me in. Look how
that ended, with me over top of him, watching the life bleed out of his eyes.
And then there was Elise... If I’d ignored her affection, none of this
would have happened. If I hadn’t obsessed, none of this would have
happened. None of it.
The worst thing that ever happened to the Wright family was me. It was
a painful realization, but it was true, and the truth was a hard pill to
swallow.
Knock. Knock.
My head shot up. My hands shook as I glared at that fucking wall. Why
didn’t she stop? Would she never go away?
Knock. Knock.
Knock. Knock.
Knock. Knock.
I ignored her. She needed her mother to feel better, not me. I couldn’t
give her the support she sought. Dad had been right. We would never have
worked.
I was an idiot for ever believing it.

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18.
Elise
I woke up one early morning to the sound of movements next door. It
was the most noise I’d heard from Aston’s room in forever. The last time
had been when he’d crashed to the ground in the middle of the night, but
he’d ignored my knocks, so I didn’t know what had happened and any
attempt at seeing him would have been unsuccessful. He kept his door
locked, and the wall felt like it was now a hundred feet thick and a mile tall.
More movements. I pressed my ear against the wall and listened in. He
was rummaging around non-stop. I heard the sound of drawers close and
the closet swung open and shut, followed by a zipper and something
wheeling across the floor.
My heart lurched when it hit me. He was leaving early. He wasn’t
meant to go for another two days. He was running, leaving me behind. Was
he even going to say good bye?
His bedroom door opened, and I waited for him to come to me. Instead,
he kept walking. I slipped out of bed and left the room. His bedroom door
was wide open. His bed was done, and as I peeked inside, I saw how bare it
was.
This was really happening. He was leaving.
I frowned, confused and upset. I glanced at his desk and then on the
floor outside my room. He didn’t leave a note behind, nothing to justify his
abrupt departure. I turned around and raced down the stairs just as I heard
the front door shut. I didn’t run out after him. I swung by the kitchen and
glanced at the counters, hoping for a note to prove me wrong. There was
nothing. Absolutely nothing. In that split second, with me standing at the
threshold of the kitchen, my gaze on the front door, burning anger ripped
through me.
He was just going to leave? After everything? Just like that? Was I
NOTHING to him?
 I ran out the door and down the porch steps. He was on the driveway,
loading his suitcase in the trunk of his car. He looked dressed and ready for
the road. His hair was wet from the shower, and as I neared him, I smelled a
waft of his cologne. Yet another man’s fucking cologne I would pine for.
“What are you doing?” I demanded harshly.
He glanced at me without stopping. “I’m going, El.”
“Oh, you’re going,” I repeated, casually, because this was completely
fine, right?
I didn’t think so.
I rounded the car to where he was and grabbed at the suitcase he’d just
loaded. I pulled it out and threw it on the driveway. “No,” I seethed, locking
eyes with him, “you’re not going. You’re not meant to leave for another two
days.”
Aston’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to grab the suitcase off the
ground. Just as he picked it up, I grabbed the same handle he was holding,
gritting out the same words, “No, you’re not going!”
He stopped pulling back and leaned forward so that his face was inches
from mine. “It’s done, Elise. I’m leaving and you’re not going to stop me.”
He ripped the suitcase out of my hands and threw it back in the trunk. I
felt panicked. Didn’t he realize what he was doing? We hadn’t fixed us yet.
He couldn’t leave without repairing what was wrong between us.
“Then talk to me first,” I pleaded, tears already spilling out of my eyes.
“Please, Aston, just stay for another hour. I’m not asking for the day. Just an
hour to talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Aston retorted.
“I need you, Aston.”
“That’s the fucking problem, Elise.”
I stood still as his words sank in. That was the problem?
“You made me need you!” I suddenly shouted, trembling now as the
panic choked me. “You did this to me! You can’t leave me after everything,
Aston! You said you wouldn’t do this! You promised! We made plans
together! We made promises together! You can’t break those now!”
He just ignored me. He grabbed a duffel bag by the wheel of the car
and opened the front passenger door. He threw it in and turned to another
bag.
“Don’t ignore me,” I said. “Aston, you’re not thinking straight –”
“I’ve thought long and hard about this,” he cut in sharply, throwing a
glance my way. “I’m going to school and you’re staying here, and that’s
how it’s supposed to be.”
“What about us?”
He stilled for a moment, breathing rapidly with his head craned up and
his eyes on the sky. Then he took a deep, unsteady breath and carried on,
loading the car with his stupid fucking crap. I brought my hands to my head
and pulled at the strands of my hair. He couldn’t leave me like this. Fucking
hell, I’d been so alone since Dad died, but I knew Aston was a door away
from me and that made things bearable. I’d always held hope we’d fix this
because he was right there, and now he was going.
I wouldn’t reach him if he left. He would have control and he’d shun
me. I was drowning. The water was in my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. I
felt hot everywhere and my heart was racing. He didn’t love me, did he?
Not as much as I did or else he wouldn’t go so easily.
“Was it Dad?” I asked him, desperately, trying to make sense of this.
“Aston, was it Dad?”
No answer.
“Just fucking ANSWER me! What did he say?” I bent over, panting
now. I couldn’t breathe through the panic. The walls were closing in on me.
“You’re hurting me, Aston. You’re hurting me.”
He stopped moving and turned to me. His eyes glistened. “I can’t be
here, El,” he told me, his voice broken. “I just… can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
“We belong together.”
 “We can’t be together.”
No, no, no!
I gulped a breath of air and raced back to the trunk. I pulled out the
suitcase again and threw it on the ground. He moved to it and I stood in his
way.
“No,” I growled out. “NO! NO! NO!”
“Elise,” he replied in warning.
But I ignored his tone and pressed my front against his. “Stay. Please,
Aston. Stay. I love you. I love you! That’s all that matters. We can make
this work. Stay. Please, Aston. I love you.”
I repeated myself. I pleaded for him to stay. I tried to kiss him but his
lips wouldn’t move. So I pled and gripped his shirt, desperately trying to
break through his wall. He abruptly grabbed me by the shoulders and
forcefully moved me to the side. Then he grabbed the suitcase, and I
grabbed it too. We tugged on it, until my hands were raw.
“Elise,” he breathed out, looking at me, “you’re acting wild. You need
to calm down. It’s not the end of the world.”
“It is for me.”
“You’re going to be fine –”
“Just another hour and we’ll talk –”
“No!” He pulled it toward him sharply and I fell forward, slamming
into the ground. My elbows and knees took the force. I cried out from the
pain and looked up at him. With wide eyes, he let go of the suitcase and
dropped down to me. His hand touched my arm. “I’m sorry, El,” he
apologized. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
I moved away from him like a feral animal. Anger replaced panic for a
fleeting moment, and I stood up and violently kicked at the back of his
stupid fucking VEHI-KILL car with my bare foot, sending more pain
through me. Then I grabbed his suitcase and threw it harshly into the trunk
before closing it hard.
“You want to go?!” I screamed, kicking at the car again. “Then fucking
go, Aston! I will never love you again once you do. You will never get me
back! You will never, ever have me again, do you hear? You go and we’re
fucking finished? Are you listening to me?”
He stood up and slowly backed away from me. He looked wretched,
like my words cut him to the bone.
“I fucking hate you,” I spat out. “We’re fucking done! Get in your
fucking car and go! Go, you fucking prick, just GO!”
He turned to the car and a bolt of terror shot through me. I ran to him,
gripping him by the arm. “No, no! Don’t go! I didn’t mean that! Just stay! I
promise, I won’t say that again. I swear, Aston. Let’s talk. Another hour,
okay?”
He didn’t look at me once as he pushed my hands away.
“I’m sorry, Elise,” he whispered. “But it’s done.”
Then he climbed into the car and shut it. I stopped fighting and stood
there, watching him turn his car on, that loud horrible noise of his engine
filling my ears. He peeled out of the driveway and took off, blowing up the
neighbourhood, not another glance behind him.
Not one glance.
I watched him until he was out of sight, and then I waited. He’d come
back because he’d come to his senses. Even if it wasn’t to talk about us,
he’d do it to make sure I was alright. It was a nasty fight. It was important
for him that I was okay.
I waited.
I waited.
I cried as I waited.
I cried harder when I knew he wasn’t coming back.
I covered my face and bawled. Struggling for air, I could feel the eyes
of the neighbourhood watching me. Their faces in the windows. Their front
doors creaking open. Fucking Becky on her phone, all, “Debbie, Debbie,
Debbie, you would not believe what I just saw!” The whispers would start.
The rumours would spread. Everyone was going to know about us.
Everyone.
 The tears dried in my eyes and I felt something within me…snap.
Crack! It went. Like a lightning bolt inside my chest.
“You want to talk,” I whispered to them bitterly. “I’ll give you fuckers
something to talk about.”
I turned back to the house and ran inside. I opened the garage door and
went through Daddy’s toolboxes before I found what I was looking for. I
went back inside, gripping the handle of the axe in my hand and ran up the
stairs. It was like being removed from my body. I could feel the buzz under
my skin, this hum that grew louder as I stormed in Aston’s room and raised
the axe. I took one look around…
Then I let it drop.
I smashed everything in sight, clumsily and without good aim. I
screamed as I went, cursing at the world, at God, at everything that had just
been ripped from my hands. I smashed his window and threw his remaining
textbooks out. I could already see the crowds forming outside their homes,
and I laughed hysterically at the fuckers. “TAKE A PICTURE, WHY
DON’T YOU! GO ON, YOUTUBE THIS SHIT, YOU FUCKERS!”
Then I smashed at his dresser. I swung the axe a thousand times. Over
and over and over and over and over again.
I hated him! I hated him! I hated him!
“I hate you!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
He just left me. He didn’t even turn back! Not one glance! Now I was
stuck with a mother who didn’t give a fuck about anything but her own
misery, and my father was buried in the ground, rotting away, no longer
existing. He didn’t exist anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I was alone.
Completely and utterly alone!
I screamed until my throat was raw and my eyes ached from the tears.
I’d gone feral, and I was enjoying the high watching the destruction before
my eyes. It was soothing, the perfect remedy for heartbreak. I’d recommend
it to Cindy the next time she bitched about a boy. We could go on a
smashing spree: two axes, four hands, furniture as far as the eye could see.
 “Elise.”
Panting, I abruptly stopped and spun around.
Adrian stood outside the door with his arms out to me. He stared at the
axe and then at my face. “Hey,” he said softly. “Hey, Elise.”
Where had he even come from? He was in his uniform, so…what, had
he been called? Had I created that much of a frenzy? Was he going to arrest
me? For what? He had nothing on me. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Down the hallway behind him stood Mom. She was in her robe, her
arms crossed, looking at me with startled eyes; it was the most emotion I’d
seen in her since Dad died.
I blinked rapidly, feeling the fog surrounding me slowly drift. What
happened exactly? How long had I been at it?
“Hey,” Adrian said again, forcing me to look back at him. He inched
nearer. “How about we put down that axe?”
I shook. “I…It was Dad’s axe. It’s mine now.”
“Yeah, okay, well, how about we put it down?”
“I don’t want to put it down.”
“You’re causing a lot of havoc, Elise.”
“I’m remodelling my brother’s room.”
He looked at me like I’d lost it. I had. “Okay, El, you’re remodelling
your brother’s room, but you’re…being very loud. We’ve had a number of
calls.”
“Am I disturbing the peace?”
“More like concerning the residents.”
I rolled my eyes. “Believe me, nobody is concerned. I’m sure they’re
eating their popcorn right now.”
He inched nearer again. “Okay, how about you hand me that axe?”
“I’m not going to swing it at you, Adrian.”
He sighed. “I’m more worried about you.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
 “You’re bleeding.”
“My heart is bleeding, yes.”
“No, El, you’re bleeding.”
I followed his eyes to my hands and gasped, dropping the axe instantly
at the sight of blood dripping down my arm. I opened my hand and stared at
a thick, long gash in the middle of my palm. I didn’t even feel it. How the
fuck was that possible? I didn’t –
“FUCK!” I shrieked, the pain suddenly setting in. I looked at my
bloody hand and then at Adrian, and then back at my hand again. “I’m
bleeding, Adrian!”
“I know.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
“I drove him away! I drove him away and I don’t know what I did. I
tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t stop.”
“Hey.” He was already in front of me, kicking away the axe.
“I drove him away, Adrian. He left me. I wasn’t worth it. He didn’t
care. He never even glanced back. Not one glance.”
His arms wrapped around me and he pulled me to him, forcing my
head against his chest. “It’s okay,” he told me. “Everything will be alright.”
His warmth invaded my senses, and it calmed me instantly. I gripped
his shirt with my good hand. A thousand emotions flooded me, but pain
surfaced stronger than all the others. Pain in losing two of the men in my
life I loved. I broke down again. Tears had become the norm. This sadness
was a cloud that followed me wherever I went. The only difference was
Adrian was there to tell me it was going to be okay.
It was the perfect lie.

OceanofPDF.com
19.
Elise
Adrian took me to the hospital and didn’t leave my side until I was
called in. They sat me down on a hospital bed and closed the curtain so I
was left alone. The nurse came around minutes later and wrapped my hand
up and then asked me if I needed anything for the pain.
“Alcohol,” I told her, deadpan.
She just stood here, smiling and then not smiling when she didn’t know
if I was joking or not. “Um, what?”
“For the pain,” I explained.
“Well, alcohol isn’t on the hospital menu, Elise,” she explained, like I
was a fucking moron. Clearly she thought I was unhinged, probably had
heard all about my meltdown from a friend of a nosey friend. News
travelled fast around these shitty parts.
“I was joking,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
She nodded. “Of course you were.”
“I don’t want anything.”
I liked the pain and didn’t want to numb it just yet.
She smiled nicely and left me alone. It felt like eons sitting there,
listening to the hustle and bustle outside the curtain. I heard a man – clearly
intoxicated out of his fucking mind – lose his shit before he started singing
Christmas tunes. I heard Jingle Bells about four hundred goddamn times
until a nurse came around.
“Sir, did you pee yourself?”
“I facken did what da want,” he cursed.
“Can you please get up?”
“Fack off.”
 Fucking hell, nurses were saints. I’d have blown it by now. She tried
again, but he shot her down. She left him alone after that and he proceeded
to sing Jingle Bells for the four hundred and sixty seventh time.
Fuck my life. I shouldn’t have wrecked Aston’s room. I wouldn’t have
been here otherwise, listening to this fucking tool curse and sing. This was
worse than watching Aston drive off.
He didn’t even glance back.
“Good afternoon, I’m Doctor Crowe. How are we doing?” asked a
voice.
I looked up just as a man stepped into my partition. Even in my
distress, my eyes briefly widened at him and my brain’s circuit blew,
leaving behind smoke and debris.
Just look at him.
Was this dude seriously tending to me? Were doctors really this hot?
He looked like a musclier version of Matt Bomer, but with dark eyes and
messier hair.
I looked away from him. “I’m fine.”
He grabbed the over-bed clipboard. “Are you in any pain? Would you
like some painkillers?”
“No.”
He read whatever was there with a furrowed brow before he glanced at
me. He studied me for several moments, and then he set the clipboard back
down and took a seat on the bed. “Can I have a look at your hand?”
I reached my hand out and he took it into his own. I frowned. Why
were his hands warm? From my experience, doctors always had really cold
hands, like they’d been juggling ice in the breakroom.
He carefully unwrapped the gauze, and when it was totally free, he
studied the inside of my palm, at the deep gash that was aching more than
ever now.
“I’m just going to touch around the gash, Miss Wright,” he told me.
 He prodded around the edges, closing the cut so it formed a perfect
line. I flinched in pain and he glanced at me apologetically. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
God, it felt raw, and it was thumping like it had its own pulse.
“So what happened exactly?” he then asked me.
Oh, you know, I was swinging an axe around my brother’s room,
destroying everything in my path because he kinda broke up with me.
“I was chopping wood,” I answered gravely.
I felt his eyes on me. He took a few breaths and then, “You were
chopping wood.”
“Mhm.”
“For your wood fire oven in the summer?”
“Yep.”
“And then what happened?”
I licked my dried lips. “I can’t remember. I think it was in the heat of
the moment. I must have grabbed some wood with one hand and swung
with the other. I didn’t even know until Adrian said something.”
“Adrian Guildford the police officer in the waiting room?”
I looked away. Great, he so knew. “Yep.”
Another few moments ticked by. “Are you on something, Miss
Wright?”
“Like what?”
“Can you look at me?”
I looked everywhere else but him at first, and then slowly my eyes
levelled out to his. He moved closer and stared into my eyes. Fucking hell,
he was a Matt Bomer doppelganger, I swear to god.
It felt like he was unusually close. Should you be feeling your doctor’s
breaths on your face when they inspected you? Was my Matt Bomer
unaware of personal space? He looked from eye to eye, and I sighed after a
while because he kept looking. The hospital staff had a lot of patience, and I
currently had none.
“Are you checking if my pupils are dilated?” I asked, smirking bitterly.
“I can assure you they’re not. I’m not high, Doctor…what’s your name
again?”
“Crowe.”
“Doctor Crowe.”
“I’m just making sure, Miss Wright.”
“I was angry, not high,” I told him firmly.
“Like I just said, I’m only checking.”
I made an irritated noise. “Well, what’s it to you anyway? Are you even
allowed to ask me these questions? It’s none of your fucking business.
You’re here to patch me up, not interrogate me. I have a police officer for a
father, so I’m well acquainted with these rounds of twenty questions. Not in
the mood, Doctor Crowe.”
He backed away from me, a deep frown on his face. “I need to know
the condition you’re in, Miss Wright.”
“My condition is in my hand and nowhere else.”
We looked hard at one another for several moments, and it was like a
game of who could look away first.
“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…”
I groaned at the song and face-palmed myself with my other hand.
Great, the doctor won. I shut my eyes shut tightly as the words I’d just said
echoed through my head. I have a police officer for a father. “No, you
idiot,” I whispered aloud, “I had a police officer for a father. Had. He’s
dead. He’s not a fucking cop anymore. Do you have a salve for that, Doctor
Crowe?”
My body broke out in trembles, and I sniffed quietly. I kept those eyes
shut so the tears wouldn’t escape, but I felt them at the corners. God, how
embarrassing was this? Not only did he win our staring competition, but he
had to watch me break down like a crazy person afterwards.
 A hand settled on my back. “It’s alright,” Doctor Crowe said quietly.
“You’re alright.”
I collapsed against him, my head hitting his chest. I sobbed, clutching
the shirt of a stranger as I broke down. His arm wrapped around me now in
a warm embrace. It felt perfect. Like Aston kind of perfect. In this bubble, I
was clutching on to Aston and he was holding me, telling me it was alright,
giving me the love I’d begged for since Dad’s death. For a split second, I
couldn’t remember what was wrong.
I needed this. I needed it so badly.
My trembles eventually died down, and my tears stopped. A euphoric
wave passed over me, and then…realization. I was holding on to my ER
doctor, not Aston. He smelled like antiseptic wash, not spices. He also had
dark eyes, not green, and I kept waiting for him to break out with lines from
White Collar, but he did not. It was a day of disappointments.
I pulled away abruptly, like I’d been jolted. His arm dropped
straightaway as I backed into the bed, staring at him with wide eyes.
“Aren’t you supposed to be tending to everyone else?” I asked him,
forcing a fake smile. This was unbearably awkward, especially when I
glimpsed at the wet patch on his chest. His hard chest.
He smiled back warmly. “No, I’m all yours for the time being. I’m
going to be back to administer a local anaesthetic and clean that wound up.
It should be a relatively painless procedure.”
“What procedure?”
“You need stitches.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It could have been worse.” He got back up. “Give me a few minutes.”
When I nodded, he left and I sat there, listening to more jingle fucking
bells.
*
Doctor Crowe was very gentle. He put me back together again.
Physically, that is. If only it worked that way with feelings.
 There was a nurse in the room with us, and I kind of wished she was
gone. I liked when he had held me and told me it was okay. He’d been
human to me, whereas now he was painfully professional. I kept waiting for
him to act awkward about the whole hugging him thing, but he didn’t look
flustered in the slightest. I realized very quickly this was a man that
controlled every inch of his emotions. Like Aston. I should have been tired
from guys like that.
“It’s going to heal very slowly,” he informed me after he’d finished and
bandaged it. “It’ll be red, then pink for a long time. You can use topical
creams to help it fade. Take it easy with your hand, don’t prod at the
stitches. If anything happens, you come right back. Aside from that, you’re
all set to go.”
When I nodded, he stood up. “Have a good afternoon, Miss Wright.
And… take care of yourself.”
He left a beat later, not a glance over his shoulder. Why was I expecting
anything different?
The nurse led me out. Adrian was still in the waiting room, and he
smiled kindly at me as I joined him. We didn’t speak, but he wrapped an
arm around me and took me back to the car.
He took me home, but he purposely took a long, scenic route there. We
drove through farmland, lakes and areas with stunning mountain views. The
sky was so clear, I could see the mountain peaks, and the trees on them
looked like giant green cauliflowers swaying in the light breeze. I felt
soothed by the sight and the headache that had been pounding inside my
skull dulled.
“I know everything is hard,” Adrian told me. “You’ve been through a
lot, Elise, but…”
I glanced at him and shrugged half-heartily. “But it wasn’t right what I
did. I know that.”
“I’m concerned for you.”
“You don’t need to be. What happened was…Shit, I don’t know what
that was.”
“A breakdown.”
 “Yeah.”
He nodded, sighing. “I’m going to talk to your mother when we get
back. She seems absent.”
“You have no idea.”
“She needs to be there for you. You’ve been alone. I saw that at the
funeral. Aston…I can understand his grief. That boy’s been through hell
and back as a child, but your mother needed to be there for you.”
I didn’t respond. I just swallowed and numbly looked out the window
again.
“We all mourn differently,” he told me. “We shut down, we get angry,
we run away. But eventually we have to find ways to move forward. You
have to tell your mother that.”
I just nodded because it seemed easier than to argue. He didn’t seem to
understand Mom was gone. She couldn’t be brought back, not with my help
anyway.
“You’ll make it,” he said, confidently. “You will, El. With or without
them.”
*
After my breakdown, I stayed in the house for the rest of the summer. I
didn’t break windows or smash anything else to pieces. On the contrary, I
barely moved at all. I felt beaten. The tears slowed, but sometimes I’d be
struck with random sob fits that lasted a few minutes and stopped in the
blink of an eye. Then I was normal again. Well, normal enough not to break
shit.
But I knew I’d changed. Inside of me, this anger sat, eating away at all
my other emotions. I felt aggressive, like the sweet girl that loved to dance
just a few weeks ago was gone. I was grieving her loss on top of everything
because no amount of good music made me want to move. I was a shell.
Adrian fixed Aston’s bedroom and put up a new window. He then went
to Mom and tried to speak to her, but he always left the bedroom more
frustrated than he was when he went in. I didn’t think he could help her
either. He probably understood me now because he never brought her up
again to me. He came and went, dropped off groceries, helped me around
the house. He was a godsend.
I spent my time thinking of Aston. I don’t know why, but I continued to
hope. I tried to look at the bright side. He couldn’t mean what he said. He
would come to his senses, pick up the phone and call me. But then days
turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and I realized his silence
spoke a thousand words. He had left me to manage our broken mother, and
she didn’t want a bar to do with me.
Hope was intangible and meaningless.
Our home was an emptiness that couldn’t be filled.
We were all drifting further and further away, and I had no choice but
to accept it.
*
My first semester of high school was a fucking bitch on a stick riding a
two legged horse in the pits of hell – on a good day. I was talked about. My
infamy had reached all corners of the student body. My episode at the
house, the confrontation with Aston – all of it had spread like a virus,
mutating into ridiculous versions that made the real story unrecognizable to
theirs. My life was out there and in the hands of gossipers and preachy old
ladies who scowled at me with judging eyes. Misinformed fucks who
believed Aston was my blood brother and I was an incestuous harlot who
needed God. No big deal.
It was hard. I won’t even sugar coat it. Imagine constantly putting up a
front so they didn’t know they were getting to you. Because if they knew
they were getting to you, they swarmed around you longer, poking and
prodding for more of a reaction, until you erupted and they had a new wave
of gossip to spread around.
Mom remained introverted. When she eventually went to work, she
spent most of her time there. Sometimes I wouldn’t see her for days at a
time, and if we crossed paths in the house, it was mute and cold. It didn’t
stop me from trying, though. I tried to ask her how she was, tried to be in
the same room as her just so we could warm up to each other’s presence,
but I got nothing back. She shut me out without reason, and I struggled to
understand what happened to the warm mother I once knew.
To top it all off, Aston didn’t return home for the holidays. He sent a
Christmas card, and a small present for Mom, but that was it.
I had gone from having a full life to a completely empty one. Worst of
all, I was alone.
And loneliness was a madness you couldn’t escape from.

OceanofPDF.com
20.
Elise
You know how spinsters become cat ladies when they lose all hope in
life after being burned time and time again by horrible, stupid men that
squeezed their hearts ‘til it popped in their fists? Don’t linger on the
gruesome images. Point was, I had become one.
But first I became friends with a homeless druggie. I know, I know. I
had lost my mind.
On the weekends just before I went to work at the paintball field, I
started taking walks in the mornings along the lake. The water reminded me
of a good place in my life. It brought me closer to Dad and the memories of
teaching Aston to swim in the water.
Before I found Tuck hidden in a bush, I talked to this homeless dude
named Ray. He’d sit on the boardwalk and throw bread at the birds, and I
stopped once and said, “You know there’s a sign that says you can’t do that,
right?”
“Where?” he asked, all stoned-out from the blunt in his hand.
“Right next to you.” I pointed to the sign two feet from him that had
acted as a wind shield for him and read:
DO NOT FEED BIRDS OR PIGEONS. Because pigeons didn’t fall
under the bird category, I guess? The sign must have been made on a
Friday.
Feeding of pigeons or birds creates artificially high populations that
cannot be supported by the natural habitat. DO NOT FEED BIRDS OR
PIGEONS!
Ray looked at the sign and then back at me. He didn’t read it. “You
going to do something about it?”
“No.”
 He turned back, offended by my presence, and resumed feeding the
pigeons and birds stale bread. I left him alone after that first day, but every
weekend I’d return and he was there, throwing bread either at the water for
the ducks, or at the beach for the pigeons/birds. I showed up after the fourth
time with a bag of bread from my house. I gave it to him and went to leave
when he said, “You can feed them that, if you want.”
I glanced around at the few elderly people walking by, staring at us
with strange expressions. For the first time ever, it didn’t bother me in the
slightest. I sat down next to Ray and I threw the ducks bread, totally in
denial about how bad it probably was for their health. Was duck killer
worse than brother-fucker? I hesitated on that thought and decided to put
the bread aside. When I left him that day, I googled it and replaced bread
with oats from my cupboard. Oats always died in my pantry, like bananas.
I learned a bit about Ray. We weren’t talkers though, so my info was
limited. He was only twenty-three and had black curly hair and scruffy
cheeks. He was a drug head. I wasn’t stereotyping that shit; he’d told me
himself once: “I gotta go buy some coke. Feed the birds my bread for me,
will you?”
I’d nodded and he’d left. When he came back, he was high off his ass
and smoking a cigarette. He had the nerve to ask me if I could spare him
some coin.
“No, Ray,” I hissed, “I will not spare you some coin. Get clean.”
“Fuck you, Eldorado.”
“It’s Elise.”
“Whatever.”
I rolled my eyes. “That shit is going to kill you.”
“Good.”
I was a little startled by his tone. He honestly didn’t seem to care.
“What do you mean good? Do you want to die?”
“Nobody would care.”
“Don’t you have family?”
“My crew are my family.”
 “Are the people in your crew homeless too?”
“Yep.”
I pursed my lips. “What about your real family? What happened to
them?”
“I got abused, so I ran away from him.” Him. My heart hurt for my
druggie homeless friend who liked to feed pigeons stale bread. He’d
answered it so matter-of-fact. Nothing more, nothing else. It was kind of the
perfect answer.
“Sorry to hear that,” I muttered.
He shrugged. “What’s your story?”
“I fucked my brother.”
“Nice.”
“He wasn’t my real brother.”
“I’m not judging.”
I cracked a smile as he pulled a funny face. “Everyone talks about me.
My father died and I kind of lost my shit. Aston – my adopted brother –
took off on me.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry about your old man.”
“Thanks.”
That was the end of that conversation. It was the most we’d ever
talked. I left him sometime later when I discovered I was late for work. I
was walking down the beach when I saw something black scurry into a
bush. I thought it was a rabbit at first. For some reason, I walked to the
small bush and stood there for several moments.
“Hello?” I asked, which was stupid. Was I expecting this bunny to say
hello back?
To my surprise, the black furry animal emerged from the bush and
rubbed against my leg. Its furry ball of a head looked up at me and went,
“meow.” It was love at first meow. I knelt down and patted the furry head.
The cat was tiny, a kitten judging by its size, and all bones. I could feel the
spine as I slid my hand from head to bum.
“You’re a stray,” I muttered, looking at its collarless neck.
I looked around, wondering what I should do in this situation. This
wasn’t the first stray I’d seen. I’d always just walked right past them, these
tiny little creatures that were all fending for themselves. When she nudged
against my leg again and purred under my palm, I knew what she was
asking for. Scraps of food. I wanted to give her more than scraps of food,
though.
I gathered her in my arms and walked back home with her. Then I
called in sick to work, hopped a bus to the nearest vet, and sank a healthy
chunk of my savings into her.
Her was actually him, and he was nine weeks old and severely
underweight. He got his shots done and we scheduled a date to get him
neutered (God, that word sounded offensive).
After that, I bought a crate, a litter box, litter, food, and a scratching
post. Another hit to my unhealthy savings account. When I got home, I
gave him a soft blanket and he crashed after a giant bowl of food.
*
I decided on the name the next day. I skipped school to spend time with
my new furry friend. I’d just given him a bath, and it was surprisingly easy.
He ducked his head under the running water with his mouth wide open. It
was the strangest thing. I thought cats hated water. After he stopped
smelling like a trashcan, I wrapped him up in a towel and was carrying him
downstairs when the doorbell rang.
I opened the door, half of me soaking wet, and stared at two old people
holding a bible to their chest. They smiled widely at me, but they had
knowing eyes. They knew who I was, and I wondered if they were sent by
Becky who, incidentally, was watering her garden next door within view
and peering at us.
“Hello!” the woman with the bible and crazy hair cheered. “Awww,
look at your wittle furry friend all tucked under your arm! Awww, isn’t that
sweet, Howard?”
 Howard was staring at my chest, but he made a grunting sound.
Meanwhile, I twisted my body to the side, shielding my poor little dude
from the word “wittle”.
“You guys want anything?” I asked, warily.
“We wanted to give you this booklet,” the woman returned, handing me
it. Jesus was on the front, all blue-eyes and blond hair (riiight), and on the
top read, “DO YOU NEED TO BE SAVED?”
I stared at the booklet for a moment. “Uh, wow, thanks. I’ll check it out
later.”
“Please do,” the woman went on. “It’s never too late to be saved until
it’s too late.”
I blinked. “Mmkay.”
“Do you want us to go over some verses with you while your little
angel is tucked under your arm? She looks sleepy.”
I frowned, insulted even. “He.” Jeesh, I was already overprotective of
him. How sad.
“And no,” I added. “I’m kind of really busy right now. I’ll be saved
later.”
Before they could respond, I slammed the door shut and threw the
booklet on the entrance stand. Then I went into the living room, my little
dude still tucked under my arm, and knelt down beside the scratching post. I
let him roam. He walked straight past the scratching post and dug his claws
into the black leather couch. “No!” I yelped. “Not there!” I picked him up
and settled him on the top of the post. He jumped back down and ate the
leaves on the fake plant a few feet away. Fucking hell, I got up again and
turned him away. This shit was hard. He was so dumb.
I rested back on the rug and watched him destroy the room. He clawed
at the leather couch again, but I just went “meh” and let him. Eventually, he
moved over to me and stepped on me, like I was some freaking doormat.
Was this normal? He balanced himself on my breasts and nudged his wet
nose against mine. I heard him purr and laughed as he then proceeded to
knead my neck.
 “Ouch!” I hissed, jumping beneath him. He lost balance and crashed to
the floor. I apologized profusely, and he stood back up, shook his head clear
again, and wandered around once more. He was surprisingly chill. A cat
that liked water, liked to be tucked under my arm, quick to bounce back
from landing on his head. Most of all, he came back to me and tucked
himself under my armpit and fell asleep.
“You’re like me,” I told him.
I called him Tuck because…well, he loved to be tucked into my side
every night.
But fuck he was expensive. 400 dollars went poof in a day.
*
Tuck got my mind off things. He was the perfect man. He gave me love
when I was alone and drinking wine straight from the bottle. He watched
Sherlock with me and listened to my tales of how fucking sexy Benedict
Cumberbatch was. “Do you want me to have his babies?” I asked Tuck. He
purred and head butted me. “Thanks. I think you’re freaking awesome too.”
I let him out on walks with me, and he never went far. I could have put
him on a lead if I wanted to, but I didn’t like the idea I’d be tugging his
neck around. He woke me up in the mornings when it was time to go to
school and the alarm was pissing him off. He protected me from branches
that hit my window in the middle of the night by growling and smacking at
the window.
He also caught birds and dumped their carcasses at my feet. It was the
sweetest thing. I’d never go hungry again if carcasses were appetising. I
doted on him. I got him toys and those ridiculously overpriced premium
foods with the words “organic” and “sea breeze” on the front. I considered
getting him a friend to play with, but he was extremely territorial and the
sight of another cat had him clawing at the screen windows. I had to get
Adrian to replace three in one month.
“Does your mother know about Tuck?” he asked me as he fitted the
screens in.
“Maybe,” I answered without care. “She hasn’t said anything.” She
never said anything at all.
 He didn’t seem happy about that, but he kept his mouth shut and bent
down to stroke Tuck. Tuck hissed and hit at his hand.
Oh, he also didn’t like strangers.
I’d gone from being that social butterfly to loving my solitude. Before I
couldn’t go days without talking to someone. Now, I would happily go
weeks so long as I was buried in a book or watching Star Wars.
Who was I?
I didn’t know, but I was beginning to like her a bit.
It was a shame she came and went.

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21.
Elise
I woke up to nothing. No smell of pancakes wafting into the room. No
footsteps outside my bedroom door, or hushed conversations about the kind
of day I would be having.
I just turned eighteen and nobody noticed. I didn’t dwell. I was used to
being invisible, and I wasn’t going to even begin to hope that something
like my birthday would miraculously have Mom and Aston caring for me
all of a sudden.
I got out of bed, had a shower, let my hair air dry as I changed into
warm snowflake leggings, a black sweater and a plaid winter coat. I fed
Tuck and he meowed me out the room. I didn’t give him the normal pats,
mostly because I was gloomy and he sensed it. “Sorry, little guy,” I
apologized. “Just not feeling too good today.”
I grabbed my brown messenger bag, went downstairs and ate my
cereal. Then I got up, set the bowl in the dishwasher and left the house. I
looked over my shoulder when I did and found Tuck’s face in the window,
watching me leave. He pawed at the screen, and I winced as it tore beneath
his claws. Yet another one to replace.
I walked to the bus stop in the freezing winter cold, sat down on the
cold bench and waited. The light drizzle slowly picked up, and the wind
whipped past my face, stinging my cheeks until they were numb. That
improved Elise washed away into the drain. Today was going to be tough,
and I felt myself cracking. Those negative emotions from before wrapped
its poisonous fingers around my throat, trying to pull me under.
I watched cars pass by, and all I could think about was my father and
what he would have done for me this morning. What kind of surprises
would he have had in store? I saw his face, his blue eyes, his wide smile
and crooked canine teeth.
In under a second, I fell apart.
 I looked down on the ground and sobbed on the fucking bench in the
rain. I hadn’t sobbed like this in a long time, but I’d seen this one coming,
and there was no use fighting it. It was that kind of ugly cry that smears
your mascara and has your nose running like a tap. My shoulders shook as I
let it out, closing my eyes as the rain continued to pelt, drops growing
bigger, soaking me to the bone. It was very fitting, very needed for my body
to feel as miserable as I was on the inside.
And then the rain suddenly stopped, and I thought that was strange
because I could still hear it all around me. My eyes opened to a pair of
black boots. I blinked rapidly, and my eyes slowly trailed up the body of a
tall man in denim jeans. A brown leather coat greeted me next, followed by
a broad body and a face that smiled sympathetically down at me.
I blinked. He had a beautiful face, and very deep brown eyes.
Doctor Crowe.
He stood with an umbrella over us, and then he offered me the handle.
“Here,” he said. “You can have my umbrella.”
I just stared at him for a moment. Did he recognize me? Surely not. It’d
been months since he’d stitched up my hand, and he would have had a
thousand more patients since then.
I shook my head. “No point, I’m already soaked, but thanks for the
offer.”
I looked back down at the concrete sidewalk, waiting for him to go. To
my surprise, he sat down on the bench next to me, keeping my head
shielded from the rain. I stiffened as he got comfortable, sitting close
enough that his side pressed against mine. I knew he was doing it so we
were both out of the rain but still…What the fuck?
I felt a little annoyed. I wanted to cry alone in peace, and now that plan
was botched to shit because this man was too much of a fucking gentleman.
I should have just taken the ugly umbrella.
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I kept my eyes averted to the
sidewalk, though I was itching for a reason to look at him. I settled for the
free hand that rested casually on his thigh. He had long fingers and dark
tiny hairs on his knuckles; those fingers had worked like a magician when
he’d patched me up. He was twirling a set of keys, and I frowned when I
spotted a car key.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, and I hated that my voice came out
rude. I didn’t mean it. I just really needed to ugly cry and he was stopping
me.
“Am I offending you by keeping you dry?” he replied, smirking at my
confused face.
“You don’t have to keep me dry. I see your car key. You can go
wherever it is you’re going. The bus is coming in a few minutes and I’ll be
fine.”
His eyes searched my face, and then he said, “I have a long list of shit
that will ensure I have a first class ticket to hell. I don’t want one of those
things to include walking past a pretty girl crying at a bus stop in the
pouring rain.”
I just stared at him. Was this guy for real? And why did I feel good that
he called me pretty? I hadn’t been called pretty in a very long time. I hadn’t
been the centre of anyone’s attention (in a good way) in a very long time
either. Not since… Aston, and I hated him at the moment.
“Okay,” I finally whispered, awkwardly. “Well… thank you, I guess.”
He smiled slowly, and god, it was unusually sexy. He hadn’t smiled
like this at the hospital. I knew he wasn’t trying to be sexy either. This guy
was naturally smooth. I’m sure his ugly cry could turn on any girl with a
pulse.
“My pleasure,” he replied.
My pleasure. I scoffed. Too smooth. Shame on him.
“You can carry on crying, if you’d like,” he added. “I know how
important it is to get it out, so don’t mind me.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m afraid you’ve ruined the mood.”
“I was hoping you’d say I’d improved it.”
The way he said that made me break into a smile. Goddammit.
 “Ah, that’s better,” he continued in that smooth way, his gaze on my
mouth. “Smiling suits you better than crying, Miss Wright.”
My eyes widened and my chest did things I hadn’t felt in a while. “You
remember me.”
He nodded. “Of course I remember you. Hard to forget the axe-
wielding wood-chopper with a fiery temper.”
My cheeks heated. “Yeah, I…Sorry about that.”
He chuckled. “You don’t need to be. You were going through a difficult
time, and I can tell you haven’t gotten through the worst of it.”
“I don’t normally cry like this anymore. Today is different.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
I looked at him, feeling more warmth at the concern in him. I wasn’t
used to anyone caring for me anymore. Naturally my heart sought it out
immediately.
I swallowed and shrugged at his solemn face. “Nothing.”
“You’re the furthest thing from nothing, Elise. Let it out so your day
gets better from here.”
God, he’d even remembered my first name.
I licked my lips, contemplating his words. This was the strangest
encounter I’d ever had, but I was so desperate for attention, I couldn’t help
the words that poured out of my mouth.
“It’s my birthday,” I said quietly. “My father died last summer, and I
can’t stop thinking of what he would have done for me today.”
He nodded. It was strange. There wasn’t sadness in his eyes, but…
curiosity. It felt good not to be pitied, or judged badly. He studied me as the
silence took over, and I looked back at him, wondering why he was so
interested.
“I know all about loss,” he quietly said. “The pain doesn’t go away, but
it gets easier.”
“Not for everyone,” I replied. “My mother…she’s still devastated. She
works, and she’s kind of around, but…she’s not really there.”
 “Did they have a good relationship?”
I swallowed hard. “The best.”
His gaze softened. “She lost half her life in a blink of an eye. She’ll
need more time to heal.”
“I guess.” I glanced at the time, frowning when I realized how late the
bus was. I looked at him again. “You really don’t have to be here. I’m sure
you have somewhere to be, like the hospital.”
His lips quirked up. “Not the hospital today. I’ll be at a book store half
a block from here. My mother owns it, and I help her out when I can. I’ll be
a little late, but life goes on. It’s not every day I talk to a beautiful girl at a
bus stop.”
Shit. Fuck. Really? Was he trying to pick me up? It didn’t look like it.
He said it so casually, after all. And I was blushing. Can you believe it?
Blushing!
“I’m not saying that to be suave,” he then explained on a short laugh.
“And I’m not desperate either.”
“Don’t worry, I believe you,” I replied. A man that looked like him was
far from desperate.
“I say it completely platonically. You’re young, and I have no
intentions of taking advantage of you.”
“I’m not that young,” I replied.
“You were seventeen when I saw you last.”
I looked at him wryly. “Do you remember the ages of every woman
you tend to?”
“No, but I remember certain things about the really gorgeous ones. I’m
only human.”
“Well, like I said, it’s my birthday, Doctor Crowe.”
“Call me Hayden.”
“I’m eighteen, Hayden.”
He smiled warmly. “And I’m much too old for you.”
“Not to talk to.”
 “You’re a kid.”
“You say that like you’re forty. It’s kind of creepy.”
He chuckled. “No, but I’m almost a decade older than you.”
“So what?” I challenged on a shrug. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I’ve got a career and you’ve got, what? College?”
I bit my lower lip. “High school.”
His body stilled, but he remained cool about it. “High school. Wow.
There you go. People would be quick to assume we’ve got nothing in
common.”
I scoffed. “People put too much emphasis on age. They also judge like
motherfuckers. Screw the system. I’m over it.”
“Over it enough to pick up the axe again?”
I looked away. “That was different. On that note, I haven’t picked up an
axe since. I deserve some kudos for that.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“A reformed axe-wielder.”
“There’s a whole group. Axe-anonymous. We hide out in dark
alleyways and talk about the good old days we’d butcher shit.”
“Not people, I hope.”
I looked at him straight-faced. “Maybe.”
He stared hard at me for a moment, and then he burst out laughing. His
smile was so infectious, I found my lips moving on their own. This Bomer
doppelganger was great value.
“You’re trouble,” he muttered light-heartedly.
“I’m really not,” I replied seriously, still smiling. “By talking to me,
you have no risk of being converted to axe-wielding-ness.”
“Is that even a word?”
“Who cares?”
 He tapped his key on his hand now as he studied me. Moments passed,
but it was surprisingly not awkward. This guy was fun to talk to. “You look
older than you are.”
I raised a brow and teasingly replied, “Are you saying I’m aging
badly?”
“No, but…it’s there in your eyes. You’re drowning.”
I shrugged and swallowed the lump in my throat. “It hasn’t been easy,
but I’ll be alright.”
He waited a moment. “You were a dancer.”
This time I froze. I stared at him in shock. “Are you stalking me, doctor
creep?”
He smiled again and shook his head softly. “No, but I saw you at the
studio when I used to pick up my sister.”
“Who is your sister?”
“Stephanie. She wasn’t in the same class as you, but you guys were let
out at the same time. You used to walk right past me and got picked up by
your boyfriend.”
I sighed glumly and bitterly said, “He wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“His loss.” He paused then and his eyes softened as he stared at me.
“Do you still dance?”
“No.” My answer was quick and emotionless.
“Why not?”
“I danced when I was happy.”
“Maybe it’ll make you happy again.”
“No.” My word was final. Dancing was another lifetime ago. It was a
stupid hobby anyway. I was good at it, but I’d never get far with it. There
were no promising job opportunities knowing how to shake your ass and
hips. Dancing instructors in this town didn’t even get paid most of the time.
It was volunteer work, so that dream of mine went straight out the window,
landed in a fire pit and burned away. I was living in the house of reality, and
god, it was a constant dose of shit and vomit.
 “That’s a shame,” he said. “You should fight for the things you love.”
“What if they walk away?” The question slipped out without thought,
and I cringed a little afterwards.
“Well, what’s that re-used quote again? You let something you love go,
and if it comes back, it was meant to be.”
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip, thoughtfully going over his
words. “What if something I loved the most felt like an obsession more than
anything?”
His gaze went distant. “Sometimes I don’t know the difference.”
“You obsessed with someone, Doctor?”
He chuckled and looked at me with crestfallen eyes. “I think we all
have someone that got away.”
Holy shit, he was sad. In a blink of an eye, I saw a wave of deep,
broken emotion flood him. Then it vanished and he gestured down the road.
“I think your bus is here.”
I followed his gaze to the bus turning a corner and coming our way.
Disappointment tugged inside of me. I would have liked a few more
minutes with him.
Sometimes you just know in the first meeting with someone that you’re
going to hit it off with them. They just mesh with you like they’ve known
you all their lives. This guy was like that. He was comforting and friendly.
He was someone you’d shoot the piss with after a hard day. I really liked
that feeling.
Plus, he was flipping gorgeous to look at. Every girl needed to have a
hot friend. That one that just hanged around, that you banged with after
every breakup, or cried in their giant warm arms as they stroked your back
and made horrible jokes.
Yeah, I needed one of those.
I gathered my bag and he stood with me, still shielding me from the
rain because he was a fucking gentleman and all. I glanced back at him and
smiled, preparing for the good bye that was about to leave my mouth when
he suddenly took my hand. His skin was warm and soft. I tensed in surprise
as he gently wrapped my fingers around the handle of his umbrella.
“Take it with you,” he told me, stepping back into the rain. “You’ll
need it more than me I think.”
“Thank you,” I said, lingering there for a moment longer.
He dragged his teeth along his bottom lip, his eyes dancing along my
face with thoughtfulness. “You intrigue me, Elise, and that’s not the norm
for me. You’re also really goddamn beautiful, you know that?”
Even if I did know that, I didn’t think I’d feel any less pleasure than I
did hearing him compliment me.
My mouth fell open. “Thanks –”
“Happy Birthday,” he cut in.
The bus doors opened, and the driver yelled out for me to hurry along. I
stepped on, scanned my bus card at the front and looked back out the
window as the bus took off. He was already walking, hands in the pockets
of his brown leather jacket, his head held high. He was watching the bus
until we were out of view.

OceanofPDF.com
22.
Elise
“Hey hooker,” I heard from behind me. “Happy birthday.”
With a textbook in my hand, I slammed my locker shut and turned around. I
gasped at the chocolate cupcake inches away from my face, and then at
Cindy, wearing a shit-eating grin.
“You made me a cupcake?” I breathed out, surprised…in a good way.
She nodded. “Of course I did. You’re eighteen. What kind of friend
would I be if I didn’t know your birthday? I put it in my phone and
everything so I wouldn’t forget. I also got up extra early to bake these
babies. I wanted them fresh for you. There’s eleven more in Tupperware
containers in my locker. You can have them at lunch. You need the pounds,
and I hate that you need the pounds because I don’t and I’m jealous of your
toned ass.”
I took the cupcake from her. “I just…I can’t believe you remembered.”
“I know I’m a bitch, but you can’t question my loyalty.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Cindy. You don’t know what this means to me.”
First, a beautiful doctor gave me his umbrella and told me I was
beautiful, and now the friend I used to take for granted woke up early and
baked me cupcakes. Things were actually looking up for the first time in…
ever.
And Cindy…she was the only person that had really been there for me.
The only one that stuck by me through thick and thin. I found support in the
friend I had confided least in at the time, and she distracted me and made
high school better. You couldn’t put a price on a friend like that.
“Did your mom do something?” she asked me as we walked down the
hallway.
“She was gone by the time I got up,” I answered.
 “You have to give her time. She’s still hurting.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not the only one still hurting.”
“True. If she’s not going to do something nice for you, did you want to
do something instead?”
“Like what?”
“There’s a party. Jed’s parents are out of town, so he’s going to nuke
his house. I got a ride all sorted out.”
I shook my head. “Not tonight. I’m just going to drink a bottle of wine
and Netflix it with Tuck.”
“Seriously, Elise, you need to stop. Spending your birthday alone is just
pathetic, and Tuck is a fucking crazy ass cat.”
“Thanks, friend.”
“Come out and have fun with me. You need to be intoxicated, and you
also need a dude’s tongue down your throat.”
“I like my throat tongue-less.”
“Lame! How are you meant to meet a hot guy by hiding out all the
time?”
My steps slowed down and I looked at her with a shy smile. “I don’t
know why I’m telling you this but…I had a conversation with a really hot
guy this morning.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God, who? Was it Jimmy? I’ve caught him
looking at you and all.”
I made a disgusted face. “Jimmy wants me because he thinks I’m an
easy lay. The ironic thing is I’m not even a slut.”
“Live up to your slut reputation then.”
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, no, it’s not Jimmy. This guy doesn’t go to
high school. He’s…older.”
Her lips spread into an excited smile. “Like how much older?”
“Just…older.”
“You getting a sugar daddy?”
 “Not that old. He’s in his twenties.”
“What does he look like?”
“Matt Bomer.”
She sucked in a breath. “Oh, my God. You said that about that doctor
all those months ago.”
I gave her a strange look. “How do you even remember that?”
She tapped her head. “I catalogue all discussions of hot men in this
brain of mine. I wish it was like that with math, but I can’t complain at the
end of the day. Hot guys are way more important than finding out what the
x is.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Unbelievable. Well, the doctor was the
one. I saw him at the bus stop. He gave me his umbrella.”
“Oh,” she swooned, putting a hand over her heart, “he’s one of those
guys?”
I bit my lip, fighting my blush. “It was probably nothing, but he called
me beautiful.”
She nodded. “Shit. Be careful. He could be a crazy serial killer.”
“He’s hot.”
“Ted Bundy was hot.”
I laughed. “Well, he’s definitely not Ted Bundy. Again, he’s a doctor.”
“Doctors are the worst kind of serial killers. They tear you apart slowly.
You should watch the crime channel more often.”
“You’re insane.”
She looked at me for a moment, studying my face. Her smile faded
away and her brows slowly came together. Then she abruptly grabbed me
by the arm and steered me to the back of the stairwell where we were alone.
Turning to me, she leaned forward and whispered, “I know about
Aston, El. I’ve always known.”
My smile dropped. “At this point, everyone knows, Cindy.”
 She shook her head. “They think he rejected you and you were in love
with him, but…I know there was something going on between you both.
Am I right?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, no use denying the obvious. How many other
people know?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at her wryly. “Come on, be honest. Who have you been talking
to?”
Cindy frowned. “El, I don’t talk about you. I never have. I’m not that
much of a fucking drama queen. I talk shit about people, sure, but not my
friends. Well, not my closest friends. If I wanted the world to know that you
and Aston had gotten it on, believe me, they’d know. It’s all rumours at this
point.”
My lips pursed. “Why are we having this conversation?”
“Because…I don’t know if you should be thinking of another guy when
you’re heartbroken.”
“I’m heartbroken because my dad is dead, remember?”
She rubbed my arm caringly. “There are different kinds of heartbreak.
Yours reeks of Aston. I’m trying to be a good friend here, and you can tell
me if I’m out of line, but…are you ready to move on?”
I rolled my eyes. “I was just flattered a hot guy paid me attention, Cin.
I’m not looking to fall in love all over again. I also don’t want the doctor.
He was caught up in his own shit, and I think he knew I needed the
attention. I’m just grateful he gave it because…I liked it.”
She looked at me carefully. “Sooo…you’re up for a little fun?”
My heart said no but I nodded anyway. “Yes.”
Her smile spread slowly. “Good.”
“Thanks for the concern, though.”
“You’re the longest friend I’ve had who hasn’t bailed on me.”
“Believe me, there were moments.”
 With that, we headed up the stairs just as the school bell rang. We
parted ways and I made it to my grade 12 English class with a couple of
minutes to spare. The door was still closed, and other students stood around,
waiting for the late teacher (it wasn’t her first damn time). I rested my back
against the wall and nibbled on my cupcake, which was pretty amazing.
Cindy had some serious baking skills. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I
checked my inbox, hoping for a message from either Mom or…Aston.
It was empty, and I bottled up my disappointment. I shouldn’t have
expected anything. Without expectations there was no room for
disappointment.
“Do you really need a cupcake?”
I looked up from my phone and at Michelle, a girl I no longer hanged
out with since the ninth grade when she decided to fuck half the school and
talk shit about girls, including me. She was a bottle blonde bitch in barely-
there clothes standing next to her dim-witted clique who hid their smiles
behind English textbooks they probably couldn’t read. I narrowed my eyes
at her, wondering if I should bother. The anorexic little weed had just called
me fat in a roundabout way.
Well, I was told I was beautiful this morning by a doctor whose
opinions mattered more to me than this bitch, so I decided not to respond. I
looked back down at my phone, pretending to read when I was really
waiting for her stuck up face to fuck off. I heard her giggling to her friends,
and them pushing her to “say it” over and over again. Giving into that peer
pressure, he finally turned to me again and added, “Did your brother make
you that cupcake after you fucked him?”
Blood drained from my face. It felt like someone had poured ice cold
water down my spine. All good feeling vanished in a blink of an eye. I
stiffened and looked up at the giggling bitches. Michelle flipped her hair
behind her shoulder and glimpsed at me, that smug smile suddenly gnawing
through an anger that had laid dormant for months. The edges of my vision
blurred, and that horrid fogginess set in.
She turned her back to me, and giggled again. And it was that fucking
giggle – that claws-on-a-chalkboard giggle – that made my insides SNAP!
 I threw the cupcake at her head, grateful that it hit, otherwise it’d have
been embarrassing as fuck. Her hand flew to the back of her skull, and she
looked down at the scattered remains of the cupcake before her face
darkened and her mouth dropped. “Crazy bitch,” she hissed.
I dropped my books on the floor and approached her. “Say it again. I
dare you.”
“Say what?” she retorted, smug attitude present. “That you fucked your
brother? The whole school knows you sucked his cock–”
I grabbed at her hair and pulled. Hard. She shrilled at the top of her
lungs, falling against me. I didn’t let her go. With my fist buried at the base
of her skull, I tightened my hold and swung her around. She screamed
louder, in a panicked way, and it was glorious. Like music to my ears.
Her friends screamed around me, telling me to let her go. And then
they intervened, grabbing at me from both sides, one by the arm and the
other around my own hair. Pain shot up my skull and in my arm where pink
acrylic nails dug into my flesh, drawing blood. I still didn’t let Michelle go.
They would have to try their fucking hardest to take me down.
“Let her go, you sick bitch,” one of them demanded. “Just fucking do
it!”
“Go fuck yourselves, you ugly cunts,” I growled back.
They grunted, hurting me even more, and that only made me want to
fight back harder. I pulled so hard, tearing apart the strands of straw-like
hair from Michelle’s head. She scratched at me, pushed at me, and her
friends did the same, but I didn’t care. The pain I felt was worth it so long
as I was inflicting it on the stupid bitch that thought she could hurt me with
her tongue.
“That’ll teach you to open your ugly mouth next time,” I gritted at her
just as a whistle sounded out.
Teachers descended on us, breaking the four of us apart. The other girls
panted, fake tears falling down their eyes, gaining the quick sympathy of
those around them as they played victim. Meanwhile, I glared, my anger
thick and unrepressed, a dark smile flitting along my lips as I watched
Michelle pull out loose hair from her face with horrified eyes.
 Obviously, I received no sympathy from anyone.
I was the crazy brother-fucker after all.
*
“Given what you started this morning, Miss Wright, I’m technically
allowed to expel you,” Principal Caul told me solemnly, clasping her hands
over her desk as she looked at me severely. She was a tiny woman with
fiery red hair that fit her fiery shit temper she was known for.
And I was about to get expelled. I didn’t know whether to feel
panicked or amused by the whole thing. That hysteria from when Aston left
had returned, and I was bouncy and energetic, close to laughing even.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins, and it was a remarkable feeling. Like
being alive. I savoured it before the remorse hit.
“But,” she continued, looking harder at me in thought, “I know what
that girl said, and I know it’s also your birthday, and that you’ve lost your
father during the summer just before school started. I would feel unjust to
kick you out this late in the school year. It would put you in a difficult
situation.”
My arms were crossed as she spoke. My eyes moved to the clock
hanging on the wall above her head. “Don’t single me out,” I muttered
lifelessly. “Treat me the way you would to any other student. I’m not going
to skate through life being pitied because my father’s dead and it’s my
birthday.”
“Where would you go?” she asked, frowning. “You’d be travelling to
the other side of town for high school.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got a bus pass. I’ll make it.”
“That’s if they accept you.”
“Then I’ll drop out of school if they don’t.”
She froze, and then shook her head. “You can’t be serious, Elise.”
“Why would I not be?”
“You have decent grades. English and Arts are your strengths. Despite
your actions this morning, you’ve been present and you’re handing in your
assignments. You’re going to graduate with a nice average at this rate.”
 “Then why this talk about expelling me in the first place?”
“I’m letting you know that any other principal might not have been so
lenient.”
“Alright, your lordship, shall I go down on my knees and thank you –”
“Watch your tongue!” she shouted, causing me to jump in my chair.
Jesus fucking Christ, I’d hit a nerve.
She cut me up with that icy glare. “You may have had it rough, Elise,
but that does not mean the world is going to tolerate your poor attitude.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be. I’m giving you another chance and you’re being a
smartass.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated regretfully. “I…I don’t know why I said that. It
just came out. I’m sorry, Principal Caul.”
She exhaled slowly and studied me for several seconds. “I know you
are,” she finally said, her shoulders relaxing as the tension in the room
evaporated. “Now, I can’t simply let you off the hook. I have to do
something, or else I’ll never hear the end of it. Michelle Anderson has a
judge for a father, and I’m sure he’ll be calling my office in a matter of
hours, demanding what punishment I’ve given you.”
“You really don’t have to be lenient,” I said.
“What you did was vicious, and there is absolutely no excuse for
violence, but I don’t think you deserve being expelled given the details of
what happened before you tore her hair out of her head. You’re going to get
a three day suspension instead, and then you’re going to return, attend class
and go about your business. Ignore those girls the next time they pick a
fight with you, because after this, I am positive they will.”
“And I should just accept it?” I replied, astonished.
“You would have accepted it before, wouldn’t you?”
“That was before I had a backbone.”
“No, before you would have thought of the consequences.”
“Yeah, but that was…” I paused, my chest constricting.
 She tilted her head to the side. “That was what?”
“That was when Aston was here,” I finished, blinking back the sudden
emotion flooding to the surface. “He…He wouldn’t have approved.”
Because he’d have done something about it himself.
“Is this your way of getting back at him?”
My mouth opened and no words came out. We stared at each other for
several moments, and I felt like she’d spread me wide open and looked
inside my soul. “You should have been a therapist,” I whispered.
Her lips spread into a soft smile. “Where would the fun be in that? I
like to torture a kid or two every now and then.”
I smiled back, surprised by our conversation.
She let out a long sigh and added, “You are crying for attention, Elise. I
see that, and I hope this is the kick you need to get your life in order. Keep
your hands to yourself from now on, no matter how hard it is. The
consequences are simply not worth the pleasure you feel in the moment.
Understand?”
It took everything in me to nod, but inside I was coiled up and
screaming. I didn’t agree. Those bitches deserved it. I’d gladly do it again
today, tomorrow, every fucking day of the week.
But she was right at the same time, and I felt horribly divided.
“Good,” Caul said, looking suddenly older than her forty-three years.
“Now you may go, but…please, Elise, take care of yourself. I want to see
you graduate. Let go of that anger. Without it, you’re a wonderful, sweet
girl.”
I shut my eyes for a brief moment, relishing in her compliment. Man, I
felt so vulnerable.
“Thank you,” I told her. I was thanking her for not expelling me, but
most of all I was thanking her for her sweet words. I needed it more than
she could ever know.
I left after that and walked back to the bus stop in the rain. This time I
had an umbrella to shield me, but no man at the bus stop to make me smile.
*
 I lay in the bathtub, hot water up to my neck. My wet fingers were
wrapped around a pink leather wallet with a glittery name on the front.
“Michelle,” I whispered, reading it with a sick smile on my face.
I opened the wallet for the first time since I’d snatched it off the ground
after the fight. It was a shock nobody had noticed it before I did. I wasn’t
sure exactly why I took it. Part of me felt she deserved it, but holding it in
my hands and peeking through the contents, I felt like a dirty thief.
Technically I was.
She had several fifty dollar bills inside. “Rich bitch,” I muttered. There
were also receipts to the nail salon and spa. “Typical rich bitch,” I added.
I threw the money on the toilet seat and then pulled out a key in the
front pocket. Rich bitch was going to have a problem trying to get home
without her car key. Did I care? No. She shouldn’t have said what she did
and then none of this would have happened.
You reap what you sow.
Or maybe my idea of justice was skewed.
I threw the wallet on the other side of the bathroom, hearing the key
clink along the floor. Instantly, Tuck pushed the door open and waltzed in,
investigating the sound. He nudged the key around, and I should have told
him to leave it alone, but I didn’t. Whatever. I tried to convince myself she
deserved it, even though the voice in the back of my head said to return it. I
was sore everywhere. Those bitches had done a number on me. I just hadn’t
felt it at the time, but now…now I was covered in scratches on my face,
neck and body. They’d kicked me too at some point, though I couldn’t
recall when.
I worked my hand through my hair, pulling out long blonde strands
from the fight. I tangled it up in a ball and threw it in the bin. Then I
continued laying there, swallowed by the silence with just one thing on my
mind.
Aston.
Fucking Aston plaguing my thoughts every time I was alone. He
consumed my every waking moment.
 Hayden Crowe? He was sexy and generous, but he still paled in
comparison to Aston, and I was terrified of disrespecting what we had
together if I had indecent thoughts of Hayden’s sexy face. Could you
imagine the anger Aston would feel if he knew?
You say that like he still cares. He hasn’t talked to you in over six
months. You’re not on his mind. He hasn’t even wished you a happy
birthday.
But…fuck, it was the truth, wasn’t it?
He left us.
Goddammit, he… left us.
“Why can’t I just let you go?” I whispered, thinking of his deep green
eyes.
I wanted to punch a hole in my chest, remove my heart and toss it in
the bin. I didn’t want to feel like this anymore. I wanted to be numb. I
wanted to stop feeling. Because I was so tired of being miserable! I was
tired of loving and feeling alone. At the same time, I knew how amazing
love could be, and I was struggling. When it came down to it, I was
frightened of letting him go.
Sucking in breaths, I grabbed my phone and texted Cindy. I needed out
of here. Away from my thoughts that profusely revolved around Aston.
I’ll go. I texted her. When do you wanna pick me up?
As I waited for her response, Tuck leapt from the toilet seat into the
tub, splashing me right in the face. He surfaced a second later and chilled
out by my feet, the only part of him visible being his head.
“You are so fucking strange,” I told him.

OceanofPDF.com
23.
Elise
The doorbell rang an hour later. I was already dressed and ready in dark
skinny jeans, black Sorel boots, and a long grey cardigan. I hurried down
the stairs and opened the door. Cindy stood on the porch, dressed similarly
to me.
She smiled. “You ready?”
I looked over her shoulder and at the van in the driveway packed with
students from school. They honked the horn once over their obnoxiously
loud music and I rolled my eyes as I shut the door behind me. “I’m ready,” I
told her.
We climbed into the back of the van, squeezing in against girls and
guys who already smelled of alcohol and weed.
“Was this really the best you could do?” I asked Cindy, who was
practically sitting on my lap.
“I don’t have my licence yet, so yeah, this was the best I could do,
princess,” she replied.
“Is there something wrong?” asked the driver, looking over his
shoulder at me. He was a meathead, and the last thing I wanted was to
disgruntle a man who probably had a long history of ‘roid rage.
“Nope,” I lied.
The car pulled out of the driveway and screeched down the streets.
People tumbled against people. Cindy’s ass was now over my knees and her
arm was pressed against the window of the van as it twisted and turned
viciously, tossing us around the congested death trap. It was a fucking joke.
I was almost convinced I’d die of the smell, but then it stopped suddenly on
the side of the street and we all filed out like cockroaches under a light.
“Next time transportation is on me,” I hissed at Cindy as I straightened
my clothes.
 She laughed and wrapped her arm around mine. “We made it in one
piece. I deserve more credit than you give me.”
“Honestly, how did you even get that ride?”
“You may be hotter than me, but the guys still like me enough to
extend a favour here and there.”
“I’m not hotter than you. You just have low self-esteem. You’re
gorgeous, dumbass.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll believe it when a hot doctor hands me his
umbrella under the rain, El.”
We walked down the sidewalk, and I watched as more people jumped
out of their cars and joined us. By the time we made it to the giant lit house
on the end of the street, we were a large crowd of teenagers, most carrying
packs of beer in their hands. Cindy remained close to my side as we
marched up the porch steps and opened the door. We stepped into havoc.
There were people everywhere. Music pumped through the house, bottles of
alcohol lay empty on the hallway floor, kicked around by dozens of passing
drunks moving in and out.
I could hear ruckus laughter and shouts over the music. We followed
the sounds to a large living area. The sliding door to the backyard was open
and cold wind whipped inside. I spun around the room, my eyes feasting on
the guys downing their drinks, the girls dancing in their own groups, and
the countless bottles of unopened alcohol on the coffee table.
“What do you wanna do now?” I heard Cindy ask me.
My eyes continued to travel around the room, continuously lingering
back on the alcohol. I listened to the music and suddenly wanted to feel it in
my bones. I’d felt stale for so long, and in a span of a day I had beaten the
snot out of a girl, stolen her wallet and got suspended from school.
I needed this day to end, and I didn’t want to look back and remember
a single moment of how it ended. The people I had cared about the most
had forgotten me. Tonight, I would forget them.
“Now we have some fun,” I told Cindy, determined.
Our first stop was the alcohol.
 *
There were so many things about that night I could remember vividly.
Drinking a beer, then doing Bacardi Limon shots among a group of jocks
who shouted at me to keep going. Then I did something I hadn’t done in so
long. I listened to Hayden’s advice and just…danced. The alcohol took
over, and I felt wondrously loose and free. I hadn’t danced like that since
Dad died. I went to the bathroom sometime after and shuddered at the
condom wrappers on the tile floor. I washed my hands before catching sight
of the cracked sink, and then I analysed that cracked sink, wondering if it’d
broken under the weight of several fucks.
After that, I returned to more shots, and then…things got a bit blurry.
Cindy danced with a guy, and made out with him for what I thought was a
very long time. Then I was suddenly on the couch, talking to a guy who was
passing me more alcohol. It was rum and coke and it tasted awful. I shook
my head but still drank. He got closer to me, and I felt his fingers on my
hair, and I liked the feeling because I was so numb and the attention was
nice.
I heard screams and a blurry blonde was pointing at my face, telling me
I was chatting to her boyfriend. “You’re going to make me apologize for
your boyfriend’s shit behaviour? I don’t fucking think so,” I remembered
saying. She flipped me off, and I laughed carelessly, and that pissed her off
some more. Her boyfriend had to carry her out, and I said something to her,
something not so nice judging by the wide eyes of people around me, but I
didn’t know what.
I drank something else by the bucket loads. It was cinnamon flavoured
and it burned the back of my throat. I liked the burn. It was addictive, but it
also made me want to hurl. I slumped back on the couch, my eyes glazed as
I watched people chatter like little mice around me. When I ran out of
drinks, I got up and things went black again.
I was back on the couch and drinking more shots. People continued
moving from room to room, like waves the room receded into almost
emptiness and then flooded back in again with little crowds everywhere. All
the while the music continued to bleed from one song to the next.
 “It’s the brother-fucker,” came a giggling voice. I followed it to the
blurry face of one of the bitches that tried to pull me off Michelle.
“Do you want me to fuck you up?” I brazenly asked her, glaring at her
evenly. I felt immortal. Alcohol had given me a fearless edge.
She heard me and hesitated, staring at my face before she rapidly
turned away to her friends. Not so fucking tough now. I continued staring
her down, until her face reddened and her whole body tensed. After some
time, she took a girl by the arm and steered her out of the room.
Someone in passing – I didn’t know who – passed me another shot of
that cinnamon burn, and I guzzled it down. Then I was suddenly back inside
the bathroom, kneeling once more, analysing the crack in the sink like it
was some fucking Doctor Who crack in the universe before I stood up. The
fast movement made my head swim and I almost threw up. I clutched the
edges of the sink with both hands and looked up. My eyes connected to the
mirror and they widened at the reflection. My make-up was shocking. I had
raccoon eyes, my hair was in my pale face. I was practically
unrecognizable, but I didn’t seem to care.
Go out and finish this night.
I was floating with the music when I re-joined the others. I searched for
Cindy for a long time, but I couldn’t find her. Vaguely, I remembered her
telling me she was going to do something, but the timeline was so messed
up in my head, I didn’t know how long ago that was. I settled on dancing
again. A guy wrapped his arms around me and I rested my head against his
chest, forgetting, feeling numb, pretending it was Aston.
More blackness.
And then I was screaming and shoving the guy away. “You left me!” I
screamed over and over again. “You left me when I needed you the most!”
More blackness.
I was running out of the house, falling to the ground, slumped against
the fence of the backyard. I felt scared and I couldn’t recall the exact reason
why. I was shaking everywhere, glancing at the backdoor of the house like
some evil being would come out of it. The world spun and I wanted to
throw up, but nothing happened. I cried and closed my eyes instead, dozing
in and out for seconds at a time.
“Please stop,” I muttered, half-consciously aware someone was
touching me. I smelled booze and heard ragged breaths as a body pressed
over mine. Hands went where they shouldn’t go and I cried harder, realizing
the evil being I’d been running from was Deck.
“You’re not saying no this time,” he rasped angrily as he shoved my
pants down. My hands shot up and tried pushing him away but he overtook
me and continued until they were completely off.
“Stop, stop,” I howled at him, my nails digging into flesh. “Stop!”
“You’ve fucking lost it,” he chuckled. “No one will believe you after
I’m done. So shut the fuck up and enjoy it.”
I struggled beneath him and went crazy, but he forced me so hard
against the earth, I felt strangled and trapped. I could hardly breathe as he
lowered his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Where’s your fucking guard
to protect you now, Elise?”
Panic swarmed me. I blacked out for seconds from the terror of it all as
he started on my underwear. I was so still, I couldn’t understand why I
wasn’t moving. Inside my head, I was screaming to fight, but my body was
so tense and frightened, I couldn’t get it to work. I was in shock. Pure
shock. This was my fault. Again. I’d put myself in this position, vulnerable
to him and others. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I was asking for it. Maybe I
should shut the hell up and let him just take it so he could finally leave me
the fuck alone.
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” I’d asked Aston after the first time I was forced
by Deck. “You’re not saying anything because it’s my fault. I was probably
asking for it.”
He’d gripped my face and leaned closer to me, until I was swimming in
his green eyes. He stared hard at me and I saw the anger he’d been
suppressing; a kind of rage that he was trying not to frighten me with. I also
saw his horror and fear, and his desperate need to protect me. I felt so
comforted by that look. It did things to me I couldn’t describe. “Don’t,” he
told me, “Don’t you fucking dare blame yourself. None of this was your
fault.”
He was right.
I felt my body move again, and the fight in me finally travelled to my
bones. I opened my mouth and screamed as loud as I could. Deck’s hand
went over it, forcing it shut. My nose was blocked from my crying, and I
couldn’t breathe. He was strangling me and didn’t know it. I shook beneath
him, trying to get a breath in. My hands grabbed at anything I could. His
hair, his face, his arms. I clawed so hard, he winced and growled, and his
grip around my mouth loosened. I sucked in a breath of air and then I bit
down hard on his knuckle. I bit like it was a piece of meat to a mutt and
tasted blood. He moved off me just as voices shouted at him. Like a
spooked animal, he got up and fled. A commotion ensued, an angry yell
sounded out and I heard a voice…a voice that was so familiar.
“What did I say about touching her?!” he screamed.
Aston?
No way, it couldn’t be.
I tried hard to turn my head, but it felt like a bowling ball. Too
delirious, I passed out.
When I opened my eyes again, someone was flashing a light in my
eyes and I went crazy. No, I didn’t want to be touched again! NO! I shouted
and cursed, pushing the person away every time he neared. Cindy’s voice
rang out in the background. She told me to calm down, but I didn’t listen. I
went nuts. More arms wrapped around me and I was being picked up,
carried away and settled inside the back of a flashing ambulance.
I was reckless. I screamed and cried and got pulled back into the
darkness. When I came to again, I was forced down a hospital bed by
nurses. Voices spoke all around me, some familiar, others not. I continued
thrashing my body like some insane mental patient until something pricked
my skin.
Everything went loopy, and I knew, before I passed out, they had
sedated me.
OceanofPDF.com
24.
Elise
Confused, I opened my eyes in the silence and looked up at the ceiling.
My mouth was dry and my head ached. I opened my mouth to breathe
because my nose was blocked.
I sighed softly, searching my mind for events. Images from last night
flashed before my eyes, and I cringed inwardly at my behaviour. Fuck, I
was a monkey. What the hell had I done? I groaned in humiliation. I
disappointed myself most of all. If this was how I felt about what I did
remember, what would I feel after I learned all the other things I had done?
And then…then I remembered Deck. His hands. My pants being
removed. His body trapping me into the ground. That fear made me tense
because I could still feel its grip inside my chest. Had I pushed him off me
before he’d done it? I didn’t feel any different between my legs, and my
whole body ached as it was, so…no, he didn’t. I’d bitten him and he’d
pushed off. Yes, that was what happened.
Relief eased my fears and I took a few deep breaths, telling myself it
was going to be okay.
I felt like I was floating. I was drunk still. I raised my arm and the
movements were slow. Horrified, I looked at the IV in my wrist and
followed the tube to the pouch of clear liquid it was attached to. Oh, my
God. Why did I need this?
“How are you feeling?”
My eyes broke away from the IV stand and at the deep voice across the
room. My heart hiccupped a little in my chest. Doctor Crowe. Hayden. Matt
Bomer doppelganger. Whatever he was called. He was in the room, leaning
back against the wall, looking at me. How long had he been here? Why was
he here?
“I feel like shit,” I rasped out.
 His lips crooked up on one side. “I would be too. You had alcohol
poisoning. 3.16 percent. Lot of people die at 4, by the way.”
I slowly sat up on my bed, digesting his words. The room spun again
and I huffed. “How long am I going to be feeling like this?”
“A little while longer.”
I swallowed. “I, uh…Is there water around?”
“Right next to you.”
I looked at the overbed table against my bed and at the plastic cup on
top. I grabbed it with shaky fingers and sipped the lukewarm water. God,
my throat ached. It was hard to swallow down. I felt queasier every passing
second, and after three sips, I put the cup back down.
We didn’t speak for several minutes. I looked at him and he looked
back at me. I didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
“I thought I heard your voice,” I whispered. “At least, I think I did.”
“I was here when they brought you in,” he replied.
I winced. “I’m sorry…I don’t know what happened.”
“You were very drunk.”
“I’ve never…that’s never happened to me before.”
He stared at me hard for several seconds. “Your mother was called. She
said she’d come down sometime this morning, along with a police officer.
Apparently there was an incident with a man.”
I swallowed thickly. “He didn’t…get there.”
Ugh, why was I telling him this?
He looked at me like that mattered a lot to him. “I’m very relieved to
hear that, Elise.”
I cleared my throat, feeling awkward as ever now. I regretted saying
anything. It wasn’t his business one bit. “You don’t…You don’t have to be
here.”
“I’m off-shift,” he said. “I’m about to go. I just wanted to see how you
were before I headed out.”
 “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you want to see me before you headed out?”
He sighed quietly, his brows furrowed. “You remind me of someone.”
I gave him a strange look. “Is that a bad thing?”
“She was very destructive.”
“Is that what I am?”
“Yeah.”
I frowned and looked back down at my hands. “You’re wrong.”
He chuckled wryly. “You came to me with a hand split open after you
wielded an axe around. Months later I find you on a bench, bawling your
eyes out over a horrible loss. Then you’re dragged in here last night,
kicking and screaming, your alcohol content through the roof, and your
behaviour deplorable. You also have a wallet that belongs to a Michelle in
your purse, and I’m not going to start jumping to conclusions, but upon
discovering your scratches and bruises on your body, your friend stated you
had also gotten into an altercation at school with a girl by the name of
Michelle.” He tilted his head to the side, looking at me evenly. “Am I still
wrong?”
I blinked back tears. “When you say it like that…”
I sounded like a fucked up lunatic. What had possessed me to react that
way? It sounded like a stranger. Had I really fallen so far?
“It’s okay to cry,” he said sympathetically. “You’re depressed.”
I scoffed. “I’m eighteen,” I rasped out. “What does an eighteen-year-
old really have to be depressed about?”
“On the contrary, everything. Eighteen is a scary number. Life hits you
hard. You’re officially an adult, and you discover there’s nothing really
great about it. You’re part of the system, and the system eats you alive and
doesn’t care that you lost your father, or that you’re alone. Eighteen is a
violent number when it wants to be to a person as vulnerable as you.”
 I didn’t speak. He’d knocked me speechless. I just nodded at him,
though his words travelled to the deepest part of me.
“And what happened last night to you,” he added, frowning now, “was
not your fault. It’s very important you know that.”
My bottom lip quivered so much, I had to bite it. I nodded again at him,
no words.
He pushed off the wall and took a step forward. He glanced out the
door of the room before looking back at me. “Down the block from the bus
stop we chatted at, there’s a bookstore. It’s called Bookworm.” When he
caught my look, he chuckled. “My mother thought of the name, not me. I’d
have been more original. Anyway, I’m there Fridays and Sundays if you
ever need to talk. There’s also a spot available for work if you’re looking
for it. I can put a good word in.”
I smiled softly. “You think I need a job?”
“Better than stealing wallets, right?”
“I have a job already, and I didn’t steal that wallet. I picked it up
and…” Ugh. I sighed, resignedly. “Okay, I took it. It wasn’t intentional, I
swear. I haven’t used the money. I put te wallet back in my purse intending
on returning it…sometime.”
He smiled back. “I’ll believe it when it happens, Elise.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”
He licked his bottom lip thoughtfully as he studied me. “There’s a
small gathering tomorrow at the bookstore at eight. It’s a book club but we
always welcome newcomers. My mother likes to do readings followed by
dinner, usually pizza or something. You’re welcome to join if you’re free.”
“Will you be there?”
He smiled again. “Yeah, I will be.”
Was the doctor asking me – the drunken eighteen-year-old destructive
moron – out on a date? It didn’t really seem like it, and I hoped he wasn’t.
What first dates involved taking your date to the bookstore your mom
owned? Still, it was a nice gesture whatever it was, and I didn’t to look at it
as anything more than that.
 Before I could answer, a form filled the doorway, drawing me out of
the conversation. I turned my head and froze. My eyes widened and my
heart picked up. Aston. I blinked hard, but not even my drunken eyes
deceived me. It was him, plain as day. It was Aston.
He stood in the doorway, tired and expressionless. I glimpsed at him
from head to toe. He looked…different somehow. They were subtle
changes. He was bigger around the shoulders and his hair was tied back in a
messy bun (some things never changed). His skin was the palest I’d ever
seen, making his green eyes – god, they were beautiful – leap out of his
face.
We stared at each other for some time, and I felt a myriad of emotions
all battling with one another inside of me. Joy and excitement were the first
to flood me. Then, as it tapered out, reservedness and anger took its place. It
lingered longer as I recalled our last words and him leaving me. But then, as
that too left, I felt sadness most of all.
“Take care, Elise,” I heard Hayden say quietly.
I nodded vaguely as he walked out, pushing past Aston. Aston didn’t
even acknowledge him. He was too concentrated on me.
When we were completely alone, he finally moved into the room. His
pace was slow and cautious. He stared at me like I was a wild animal. I
didn’t blame him. I felt like I wanted to both flee and attack him for my
own safety. I did neither, of course. I wasn’t that far gone from normalcy.
He took a seat by the bed, and it was too close for comfort. My eyes
remained wide as I gawked at him, waiting for him to break the silence,
because it wasn’t going to be me, no way.
“How are you feeling?” he asked me, his voice soft and cautious.
I eyed him dubiously. How was I feeling? Really? I clenched my jaw
and narrowed my eyes at him.
His lips pursed. “Not going to talk?”
No, because I couldn’t.
“Adrian is coming. He’s going to talk to you about…about last night.”
His face flashed with something dark. He sniffed gruffly and looked away. I
recognized this expression. He was angry.
“Deck was arrested,” he added. “They’re going to charge him with
intent to rape. You were…partly unclothed and people heard your screams.
Not sure how his rich daddy’s going to get him out of this one.”
I didn’t respond, though I was relieved Deck wasn’t going to get away
with this. I turned away, feeling shame over my actions, my intoxication,
my vulnerability and poor decision making skills. My head still swam and I
processed my environment slowly. I leaned back into the bed and turned my
back to Aston, though every inch of me wanted to bend in his direction. I
just couldn’t allow that to happen. Like a knife, he had cut me so deeply,
and I wasn’t going to forget about it just because my heart was overdosing
on his presence right now.
I heard him sigh long and slow. His defeated sigh. Yeah, well, I sighed
that same damn sigh so many times since his absence. I didn’t care for it
now. That was what my anger was telling me anyway.
I shut my eyes and dozed to sleep. I felt his presence every time I
stirred awake. He didn’t leave me once.
*
Adrian showed up an hour later. Aston reluctantly left the room to give
us space to talk. By then my head was a lot clearer. Like usual, Adrian was
supportive. He held my hand and patted my back. He did things Dad would
have done, and for a moment, I pretended it was my dad.
After he took my statement about the attack, he put away his things and
said, “Your mother couldn’t make it. She’s stuck at work.”
I barely missed a beat. “Of course she is.”
My resentment toward her had escalated to a boiling point, and I wasn’t
surprised in the slightest.
Adrian let out a long breath. “She loves you, Elise. She’s just not what
she once was, but we’ll bring her back again. It just takes time.”
I eyed him tiredly. Adrian was always so eager to defend her. It didn’t
make sense to me before, but now it was sort of obvious. “You’re in love
with my mother, aren’t you?” I asked him in disbelief.
 He just looked at me, and his silence spoke a thousand words. Yes, he
loved her. He loved my absent mother and I pitied him. She’d never look in
his direction, not when she was swimming in her own despair.
“Aston said he’s taking you home after you’re discharged,” he quietly
said. “Get some sleep, alright?”
I nodded and he patted me softly on the shoulder before leaving.
*
It took forever for someone to come around, and the silence between
Aston and me had become unbearable. When they finally told me I could
go, it was afternoon and my head was aching with the need for sleep.
I walked with Aston to the parking lot. The last time I’d been here was
when Dad died. I hated the feeling that gave me. I was exhausted and
wobbly on my feet, but I refused his help when he leaned close to my side
to keep me steady.
In my still half-drunken mind, I hated him. I didn’t want him near me.
The sooner we got home, the better. I’d close my door on his face and pray
he went back to his precious school and leave me alone. And then at the
same time, the thought of him leaving me again killed me.
When I saw his beat up car, I nearly tripped over my feet. So many
emotions flooded me at the sight of its crappiness. I couldn’t believe it was
still alive. I glanced in Aston’s direction, but he was already unlocking the
doors, keeping his face fixedly solemn. The deja-vu was strong as I then
opened the passenger door and climbed inside. The smell of Aston’s
cologne hit me, along with panic at the thought of everything that had
transpired between us.
I was shaking when he slid into his side and started the car. I kept my
face turned so he couldn’t see it, and stared out the window as he peeled out
of the parking lot. God, the car was loud. I’d almost forgotten its shocking
sounds, choking down the road. I couldn’t help but study the worn out
dashboard and at the marks I’d made with my feet kicked high over it.
I’d danced in this car, sang bad songs and smiled at the guy next to me
like he was my world, and now…now it was a hollow memory; a lifetime
ago even though it had really been only seven months.
 I couldn’t help but glance at Aston. A tingle journeyed down my spine
when I caught his eyes already on me. He looked wretched, like he knew
what I was thinking. I quickly turned away, unwilling to get drawn in by
those green irises.
*
Aston followed me out of the car and to the house. He followed me
inside and up the stairs. And when he followed me to my bedroom, I turned
to him and shook my head firmly. He looked down at me for a solid two
seconds before he said, “I’m not going anywhere, El. Not after what
happened to you last night.”
I frowned and stomped inside my room. I quickly made to shut the
door, but he was already pushing past me. I watched him sit down on my
reading chair, which was a shitty old rocking chair I’d snatched for five
dollars at a garage sale some time ago. It creaked under his weight and I
half-expected it to break in half.
We locked eyes and I saw the determination in him. He wasn’t going
anywhere, and the scary part was I hoped he wouldn’t. I kept my shaking
lips sealed tightly in fear of confessing that.
A form slithered past my legs. I looked down at Tuck as he came to
inspect the intruder. He circled around Aston, assessing him and sniffing
him. I hoped he attacked him. Aston watched my bodyguard approach, and
he extended his hand out to him, offering him his palm. Tuck stared at the
palm for a long moment, almost bored, before he approached and sniffed
again. Then…he nudged his nose against it. What.The.Fuck? Traitor! He
probably recognized the scent of Aston still lingering in the house. Yeah,
that was all. He didn’t like him or anything.
Aston smirked at me, and I rolled my eyes. I turned and disappeared
inside the bathroom, not wanting to watch my cat cheat on me with
someone else. Unreal! I slammed the door shut and rested my forehead
against it. Shit, he was here for five minutes and he was already getting
under my skin. Already finding passage to that spot reserved specifically
for him.
 I undressed and avoided the mirror. I slipped into the shower stall and
turned on the water. I washed myself slowly, all the while listening in on
any sounds outside that door. I purposely took a very long time under the
water. Part of me hoped he would be gone by the time I finished. Things felt
awkward, and I didn’t want to confront that awkwardness because it meant
sorting through what happened and why he left me the way he did.
I hated him for it. I reminded myself of that over and over again. You
hate him, you hate him, you hate him. Don’t fall for his bullshit. If he cared
at all for you, he’d never have abandoned you like that.
I finished a long while later. I tiptoed to the door with the towel
wrapped firmly around me. I opened it a tiny bit and peeked out. Aston was
still there, his arms crossed, his chin settled on his chest. His eyes were
closed and he breathed deeply and steadily. He was fast asleep, and as I
opened the door and quietly changed into my pj’s, I felt my heart tug deep
inside my chest. He looked so peaceful with his scruffy short beard and hair
over his forehead. He must not have slept at all last night.
I found Tuck sleeping against his legs. On a huff, I picked the
traitorous ass up and settled him outside my bedroom. “You can sleep on
the couch tonight,” I grouchily said. Tuck turned away without another
blink and scurried across the house, destroying shit. I closed my bedroom
door and crawled under the covers of my bed. The air had a chill to it. I
buried my face in the pillow and closed my eyes. I had that many more
hours of drunkenness to burn off. I fell asleep before I could even think of
anything else.

OceanofPDF.com
25.
Elise
“Happy Birthday.” The voice was in my ear, and it came out in a husky
whisper. “I never got to say it ‘til now.”
I felt fingers brushing the hair from my face and the warmth of a large
body stretched beside me. Confused, I opened my eyes, my heart rate
already accelerating as I focused on the body spooning me from behind.
“Aston?” My voice sounded strained. Tears already threatened to spill.
I could smell him all over me. I knew I hated him but…god, I couldn’t
push him away if I tried.
“Yeah,” he replied, running a finger down my nose and across the
crease of my lips. It was like the past day hadn’t happened, like I hadn’t just
ignored him and loathed him so vehemently. I didn’t understand what he
was doing here in the first place. What had prompted him to come back all
of a sudden?
“What…Why are you here?” I asked him.
“You thought I’d miss your birthday?”
My lips quivered as tears fell from my eyes. “I didn’t think you’d
remember,” I admitted.
He sighed, brushing his lips against my ear. “How could I forget? I came
back last night hoping to find you here, and you weren’t.”
“Then how’d you find me?”
“I called Cindy and she cursed at me but then said you were acting out
so it was best I come get you. By the time I got there, that fuck was over top
of you.”
“You were really there?”
He wiped my tears as I lay there, still in a sleep-induced fog. “Yeah, I
was. You thought he was howling in pain over nothing. I hit him and I’m
fighting my anger real hard right now, El. I’m scared of how much he
touched you because I want nothing more than to rip him to pieces.”
“Don’t. He’s been arrested, Aston, and he didn’t touch me like that.”
“But he tried to, right?”
“He did, but…I fought him in the end. He didn’t get anything out of it.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah.”
He let out a long breath. “Okay.”
He continued wiping the tears from under my eyes, and I both ached
for his touch and wanted to push it away.
“What are you thinking?” he asked me gently.
I shut my eyes tightly, fighting back all those suppressed emotions
since he’d gone, but…I couldn’t.
“I’m so angry at you,” I told him hastily, my voice cracking. “You hurt
me so much, Aston. All I wanted was for you to be there, and you weren’t.
You left me.”
“Forgive me,” he replied tightly, his voice in distress. “I didn’t mean to
be away, El. I just…after everything, I’ve been hurting. The thought of
coming back to this place where he was…it kills me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I can’t…I can’t stay away. I couldn’t be at my place and know you
were here, thinking I forgot your birthday or didn’t care.”
More tears fell. “But this is worse.”
“I know.”
“This hurts more.”
He exhaled. “I know.”
“How am I meant to handle this?”
“Just…try,” he pleaded. “Please, try.”
He turned my face to him. In the dim light cast by the lamp on my
night table, my eyes adjusted to him. From up close, he really did look older
somehow. His face had filled out so much. There wasn’t a single boyish
feature in him anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized contritely. “I’m so sorry for leaving you like
that. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and I’m so sorry for hurting
you.”
I stared at him for a long time. This was real, wasn’t it? He wasn’t a
figment of my sleepy imagination. He was actually apologizing to me and
touching me and staring at me in that goddamn way I yearned for.
I raised my hand and touched his face. He shut his eyes as I ran my
finger down his cheek and across his jawline. My heart hurt and exploded at
the same time. This was misery and happiness twisted together as one. He
leaned into my touch, until he was inches from my face. I felt his breaths
against my mouth. He opened his eyes slowly and looked into mine. His
breathing picked up and his thumb drew circles on my cheek as we gazed at
one another.
“How have you been?” he asked me, his voice still wretched.
“Terrible,” I answered quietly.
“I’m here now, okay?”
I nodded, circling his lips with my thumb. They were so soft. God, I
missed the feel of them.
He inhaled sharply at my touch, and his jaw tensed. He looked
conflicted for a moment, and then he asked, “Has there been anyone since I
left?”
I shook my head slowly, still staring at his lips. “No.”
He let out a breath and dropped his forehead to mine. His hand drifted
from my cheek to my hair. I felt him grip a chunk as he looked down at me.
Minutes passed with him inching closer, until we were practically breathing
each other’s breaths. My hand drifted down the side of his body and I urged
him to get closer. His body began at my side and ended with him over me, a
position that was all too familiar – all too missed.
There were so many unresolved issues between us, yet we still
gravitated to one another. All of that weight faded into the background as
we locked eyes. This man was my need, my love, my obsession. Right from
the beginning, the boundaries between us were made to be broken.
“Has there been anyone since you left?” I asked him back.
He shook his head solemnly. “You know there hasn’t been, El. There
never will be.”
I couldn’t feel emptiness anymore. Couldn’t even remember what it
was like when he was touching me like this.
He studied me fixedly as he slid his hand down the side of my body. He
was seeking permission, and when I didn’t react, he continued.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he told me. “It’s fucked up, El. I have
to force you out of my head and think about numbers just to make it
through the day.”
“Then stop forcing me out of your head,” I muttered back.
He lifted my shirt up and stroked the bottom of my stomach. I shivered
beneath him, feeling blood rush straight to the spot between my legs. He
continued watching me, his breathing picking up as he inched beneath the
hem of my pants.
“Can I feel you?” he asked in a whisper.
I bit my lip, hesitating. “Just a little bit.”
His lips quirked up. “Just a little bit?”
I nodded. “Little bit.”
His fingers slid further down the hem of my pants, brushing against my
tender skin, and I shivered at the feeling.
“Is that a little bit, El?”
“No,” I lightly moaned. “A little more.”
“A little more?”
His fingertips brushed against that sensitive spot again, harder this
time. I opened my mouth to gasp when he kissed me.
His kiss was deep, thorough. His tongue tangled with mine and I felt
sparks from head to toe. Why was this man so different than all the rest?
Why did he turn me inside-out and leave me utterly defenceless?
 I didn’t know. I didn’t care.
He rubbed me as he kissed me, stealing my breath as I moaned and
writhed.
“A little more,” I panted, flushed from head to toe. “More, Aston.”
He slipped my pants down my legs, until there was nothing separating
him from me. Then he pulled back and moved down my body, spreading
my legs apart as he settled his head between them.
His tongue slid across the most private part of me, and then he sucked
at my clit, the suction rhythmic and constant. The room spun, or maybe it
was a combination of the grogginess and pleasure. My feet dug into the
mattress as he tasted me, using that tongue in ways that left me breathless
and needy. I buckled and moaned. God, I was so sensitive, I was going to
come in an instant.
He hadn’t forgotten my triggers, the way to lick me and how hard to
press his tongue along that bundle of nerves. I buried my fingers into his
hair, grinding myself against his mouth until I exploded. I shook, blown
apart by the intensity of pleasure that swept me.
Wow, wow, wow!
“Was that a little more?” he asked me, humour alive in his voice.
“No,” I groaned. “A little more.”
Fingers still in his hair, I pulled him back up to me. He went willingly,
kissing me hard on the mouth. We fumbled, hungrily tearing apart our
clothes. He undressed me quickly, until every inch of me was bare. Then he
was kissing at my chin and sucking at my throat hard enough to leave
marks behind.
“I missed this,” he groaned, licking feverishly at my lips. “Just kissing
you, tasting you. I never had it enough.”
My hands ran down his hard back, over the indentations of muscles I’d
never felt before – new ones, I realized – before my palms settled on his
ass. I urged him to me, raising my hips to graze against his hard cock.
“More,” I demanded.
“Yeah,” he replied, appreciatively. “More.”
 He was urgent. He didn’t tease. He gripped my thighs, spreading them
apart to accommodate his body. His cock nudged at my entrance, rubbing
up and down my slickness, coating himself with me. Then he pushed into
me in one long swift thrust. We moaned at the same time, and he paused for
several moments, his cock twitching inside me. It felt so good. I’d forgotten
how good.
I was tight, or maybe he was too big. I didn’t know. I just knew there
wasn’t an inch of him I wasn’t hugging. I felt pulsing tingles sweep me at
the stillness.
“Aston,” I breathed, struggling under the weight of him, wanting him
to move.
He exhaled deeply, kissing me languidly without moving his hips. “I
tried staying away, El.”
“I don’t want to hear that. I just want you to fuck me.”
“Yeah, I’ll fuck you.”
I forced him to look at me as I demanded, “Not slow, Aston. I need it
hard, okay?”
He didn’t respond. He just breathed softly, considering my words. Then
he moved. Gripping me to him so there wasn’t an inch of my body he
wasn’t touching, his rhythm was relentless and constant. It was hard and
powerful, the strokes hitting my walls every time he slammed inside me. He
bit at my lip and fucked me to heaven. My god, was he always this damn
good? The release was explosive and instant. I clawed at his back as it hit
me. He swallowed my cries and continued with his deep, pounding thrusts.
“I want another one,” he whispered as he moved, grunting and
squeezing at my flesh. “I want to feel you tightening around me again, El.”
Then he moved out of me and turned me around. He gripped my hips
and pulled me up on my knees. A breath later, his cock slammed back into
me. I inhaled sharply, my mouth gaping open against the pillow as he went
on. This position was sweet agony, and I soared.
He moved faster than before, faster than I could keep up with. It was
the kind of hard I needed. That punishing rhythm hit a chord within me. He
tended to that wounded, deprived part of me that begged for pain; that
begged to feel him even long after he was gone. It was so good…so fucking
good, another orgasm ripped through me. I fisted the sheets as I rode it out,
shaking into the mattress that would smell like us come morning.
“Shit, El,” he rasped behind me, stopping suddenly. He groaned behind
me, and I felt his cock jerk and warmth spread.
He collapsed on top of me and wrapped his arm around my body,
pulling me to him. He kissed me on the head, neck and shoulders. He kissed
down my spine, ass, and down my legs. He kissed me like he was
appreciating every single inch of me.
When he was finished touching my every curve, he rested back up the
mattress, and I turned to him so that we were side by side, staring at one
another. With sated smiles, we lost ourselves in each other’s gazes.
“Why are there scratches all over your body?” he asked me after some
time.
“I fell down the stairs at school yesterday,” I lied.
His fingers were back on me again, tracing along my neck, shoulders,
and along the fresh scratches on my arm. “Where’s Mom?”
“Is she not in her room?”
“No, her car’s not out front.”
“I don’t know where she is. She comes and goes as she pleases.”
“Is she any better?”
“No.”
“Are you two at odds?”
“I’m not at odds with her. At the same time, she doesn’t bother with
me, and your silence hasn’t helped make it any better.” I said that more
harshly than I’d have liked. It couldn’t be helped. I had a lot of aggression
left in me.
He looked away. “Even if I was around, I doubt I’d have been much
help, El.”
I frowned. “You don’t get it, do you, Aston? You think I hold
resentment toward you for no reason. You abandoned me when I needed
you. I looked after Mom all by myself. How would I have helped any better
than you?”
“You’re her real kid. I thought that made a difference.”
“That’s a cop-out answer and you know it. She took you in, and loves
you like a son, and you love her like a mother. You shouldn’t have left like
that.”
His hand dropped from my shoulders. “I would have been gone two
days later anyway, Elise.”
I sat up and looked down at him, my bare breasts distracting him for a
moment. I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Look at me, Aston.”
He smirked. “But you have stunning tits, El.”
“Don’t try and distract me.”
“I’m telling you the truth. They’re gorgeous.”
“Aston,” my voice came out as a warning.
“What?”
“I want to know why you left like that.”
That smirk instantly fell. “Then you’re not going to like what I say.”
“Tell me.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m responsible for killing him. That’s why I ran.”
Was he for real? “No, you aren’t. I already know how it happened. It
was all over the news. Adrian told me everything. Dad was stopping a
couple out front –”
“No,” he cut in sharply. “That’s not what happened. I’m the one that
intervened, not Dad.”
I made a face. “What are you talking about?”
“He told me to stay put because he was off-duty and didn’t have his
protective gear on. He called for back-up because the man had a gun in his
hand and he was screaming at his wife, threatening to shoot her and their
son if she didn’t get out of his way. He was trying to get to the boy. It all
went down because the boy had stolen a packet of ketchup from the
restaurant and had opened it in the backseat and spilled it.”
 I just stared at him, dumbfounded, waiting for more.
“It was fucked up,” he continued. “I felt a trigger go off inside me. The
fuck reminded me of my real father just before he attacked my mother and
us with a knife. It was this… red-hot rage unravelling itself inside of me. I
never felt so determined to stop anything in my life. I couldn’t…I couldn’t
let him hurt them. I really thought he was going to. It was a stupid move. I
jumped him from behind and the gun went off. And then there was Dad,
pulling me off the man and shoving me to the side, protecting me. He…He
had no choice but to try and disarm the man and…and the man was so
pissed, so out of control, he was pushing at him to get to me. They fought.
Dad tried to dislodge the gun from the man’s hands and in the fucking mess
the man pulled the trigger. Just like that, Dad was shot in the chest.”
Aston slid to the end of the bed and sat up, burying his head in his
hands. I stared at him, stunned into speechlessness. These were my father’s
last conscious moments. I almost couldn’t breathe.
“He was dying in front of me,” he whispered, anguished. “I knew there
was no saving him. His eyes were glazed and distant. I kept telling him to
hang on, and then when I knew he was drifting, I apologized to him
because…we’d had a fight in the restaurant. Over you. He…he wanted me
to leave you. He said you were too young and I was too mature, that I had
to give you a chance to know what you wanted for sure or else the pain of a
breakup might destroy the family. And we were all so close, you know? It
would have killed them if we had a nasty end and couldn’t be in the same
room.
“He said I was too involved in my own head to give you the time you
needed, and he was right. I’m really busy, El. You’d drift away from me
eventually, and I can’t handle actually losing you that way. But at the same
time, I know you have to live your own life. If I’d just agreed at that table,
we wouldn’t have left on such bad terms. If I’d have been in control of my
anger, I wouldn’t have approached that man. I’d have waited for the cops to
come and sort him out. I fucked up so badly and it cost me…everything.”
Silence followed. I took a few deep breaths, trying to regain my
composure after that revelation. It was hard to hear, hard to imagine my
father dying like that, but also hard to listen to the pain in Aston’s voice. I
choked up, and then I had to spend a few minutes swallowing the massive
lump in my throat because, fucking hell, I couldn’t stand Aston hurting.
“You tried to do the right thing,” I managed out. “I don’t blame you,
Aston.”
He looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes tired. “You should. He’s
gone because of my actions.”
“He’s gone because that man pulled the trigger, not you.”
He scoffed in disbelief. “You don’t know what you’re saying, El. You
weren’t there.”
“I have to be there to understand?”
“You have to be there and know what it’s like to watch the life bleed
from someone’s eyes. Story of my fucking life. It was preventable. The
entire thing could have been a day him and I both looked back on, knowing
we handled it. I think what kills me the most is how fucking stupid it was.
Spilt ketchup, El. Spilt fucking ketchup and a dumb guy like me acting out
like a fucking wanna-be hero.”
I grimaced at his words. “If you spend your whole life thinking this
way, you’re going to have a whole life of misery, Aston.”
His shoulders dropped and his hand covered his eyes as he breathed in
and out raggedly. “Fuck, you just can’t think ill of me, can you?”
I shook my head, feeling a tear fall. “Never. I tried. I tried so hard to
hate you, Aston, and you’re here for one minute and I can’t think that way
anymore.”
“I’m sorry, El. I’m sorry for leaving you like that. I’m so fucking
sorry.” His voice broke and he sucked in breaths.
I moved to him and wrapped my arms around his back. Nestling my
chin on his shoulder, I replied softly, “And I’m sorry for acting out the way
I did before you left. We’re both at fault. I…I was so desperate for affection
after he died, Aston. I’ve felt so alone, like driftwood, you know?”
He nodded. “I know.”
“I want us to be okay. We don’t have to be together. I understand
you’re busy, and you won’t be around often, but…I want us to talk.” I shut
my eyes. “I can’t handle not talking, Aston.”
He sighed and kissed my forehead. “I can do that.”
It wasn’t the kind of resolution I’d hoped for, but having Aston in my
life in a small way was better than not having him in it at all. The world
didn’t always give you what you wanted, but you had to take what was
given, or risk losing it all.
He took my mouth against his again and led me back to the bed. I knew
I wouldn’t see him for another long while, so I hugged him to me tightly
and whispered, “Slow this time. I need to feel this with you.”
He listened and gave me what I wanted. He rocked into me, slowly and
passionately. We came together minutes later, and it was sweet and painful.
As he lay down next to me, he combed through my hair and said, “Try not
to lie to me next time. I know your bruises didn’t come from a staircase, El.
You’re a shit liar.”
“It was nothing.”
He sighed. “Nothing I would disapprove of?”
I smiled. “Oh, you’d have disapproved of this big time, but you’d have
done something about it yourself.”
He chuckled dryly. “How reassuring.”
He took my hand and traced the lines on my palm, lingering on the
thick scar there with a reflective look on his face. He didn’t ask about it,
and I was glad. Maybe he thought it was old. I felt content for the first time
in so long. I didn’t want this to end.
“There really isn’t anyone else, El?” he whispered to me.
“No,” I whispered back.
“No one’s shown you interest? I don’t believe that.”
“Not at school.” He didn’t need to know my reputation. He was
oblivious in the city, and I liked that.
“Someone outside of it has?”
I smiled timidly. “I did meet a guy or two.”
He watched me closely, an unreadable look on his face. “Two?”
 “It’s nothing. The first guy is a homeless dude who feeds birds at the
lake we use to swim in. His name is Ray. He’s crazy, but we don’t talk
much. I seem him once a week over the weekend.”
“That’s weird, El.”
“I know.”
“And number two?”
“There’s nothing between guy number two and me, but…I like talking
to him. I think he offered me a job too.”
He didn’t look like he gave a shit about the job. “What’s his name?”
“Hayden.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a doctor.”
He paused and continued staring at me, this time with realization.
“You’re talking about the doctor from the hospital, aren’t you? I saw the
way he looked at you.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, it was him.”
“What job could he possibly offer you, El?”
“At a bookstore.”
“And you agreed?”
“I didn’t really answer him.”
“But are you going to do it?”
“I’m thinking about it. It might be better than the paintball field. He
invited me out tomorrow night. Apparently they do readings there or
something, I don’t know.”
“And are you going there tomorrow night?” he pressed.
“Well, I don’t know yet. I need to think about it.”
Aston pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose and breathed
slowly. “I’m going to assume you’re not going to take a random job some
stranger offered you, El, because you’re smarter than that.”
 I was taken aback by his change of tone. I scowled at him and replied,
“I’m a big girl, Aston.”
“You’re eighteen.”
“And you’re nineteen.”
“But I’m smarter.”
My jaw dropped and I immediately scooted away from him. “You’re
smarter?”
He winced. “Shit, I swear I didn’t mean it like that –”
“You did mean it like that! Just because you have nice grades and a
bigger brain, it doesn’t mean you know everything about everything –”
“All I meant was you’re really young, and maybe naïve to think it’s
safe to agree to some guy’s job proposition, or to even go out tomorrow
night after everything that’s happened to you already–”
“I’m not listening to this anymore,” I sharply interrupted, crossing my
arms and leaning back against the headboard. I stared ahead, fuming. He
didn’t respond, and for some reason that ticked me off even more. “You’re
being unreasonable. I’m not that gullible, Aston. If it concerns you so
much, Cindy can be there with me.”
“Great, two one hundred and twenty pound girls,” he sarcastically
retorted. “That changes everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be a dick.”
“You don’t know who this guy is!”
“Yes, I do!”
“So because he’s a doctor that makes him safe?”
“I’ve spoken to him a couple times already.”
“Wow, that sure does change everything! It makes him less of a
stranger, right?”
I almost growled. “How am I meant to meet someone if I should steer
clear because they’re all strangers? Everyone is a freaking stranger at one
point, Aston.”
“I’m just concerned for you. Look what happened to you last night –”
 I vehemently cut in. “I will never repeat that behaviour again! It was a
huge mistake. I wasn’t myself. I felt so lonely thinking of Dad and how
robbed I felt not being able to share another birthday with him. I’ll never do
it again. Never.”
He sat up and rested against the headboard beside me. “It’s just…
We’ve just fucked twice, El, and you’re going out tomorrow to see some
guy. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Congratulations for making me sound like a slut.”
He let out a frustrated breath. “No, you’re not a slut.”
“You’re the only guy I’ve been with.”
“And I want to be the only guy you’ll ever be with.”
I tensed and looked at him evenly. “You just told me to be happy with
or without you. You’re sending mixed signals.”
He sulked for several moments. “Fine,” he eventually gritted out.
“You’re right. I’m sending mixed signals, so I’ll stop. You can do what you
want. You’re a grown woman now. If you want to meet some doctor
tomorrow, be my guest.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Fine.”
He slid off the bed and stood up. Seriously, he was getting off the bed
because of this? With a dark expression, I watched him gather his clothes,
unable to look away from his naked body flexing naturally as he moved.
Why was he so big and sexy? This defied stereotype.
“Why can’t you thin out a bit?” I asked him, annoyed. “Why must you
look like that?”
He paused and turned to look at me. “How am I meant to look?”
“You’re meant to be a scrawny nerd with a pedo moustache and coke
bottle glasses.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Would it have been easier to see your lover
tomorrow if I looked ugly? Oh, wait. You’re already seeing him, so it
doesn’t matter either way.”
 I rolled my eyes. “Who’s being naïve now?”
“Just stating the facts.”
“Why are you getting dressed?”
“Because I’m going.”
“Shut up, Aston. It’s midnight. You are not going. When would you get
back to your place?”
“Three.”
“You’ll fall asleep at the wheel.”
“I’ve been sleeping next to you all day. I’ll be fine.”
“Just lay the hell down,” I snapped, exasperated by him.
He shook his head. “I’m not laying down next to you. I’ll just fuck you
again, and I don’t want to do that because I kind of fucking hate you at the
moment.”
“Hate me? I haven’t done anything!”
“I’ll go to my own room.”
Ah, shit. I looked down at my hands. “You can’t go to your room.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Uh, well…your room is sort of out of commission right now, Aston.
This bed is your best bet because Tuck’s taken the couch and he doesn’t like
the share.”
He glowered at me, confused. “What’s wrong with my room?”
“It’s under renovation.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s…in need of work.”
He studied me suspiciously. “What did you do?”
My jaw dropped. “You automatically assume I did something to it?
What if a meteor hit it?”
“What did you do?” he pressed again.
I sighed, defeated. “Nothing good.”
 Before I could further explain, his face went blank and he stormed out.
I bit my lip nervously as I heard him enter his room and move things
around. He cursed under his breath. If he thought it was bad now, he should
have seen how bad it looked right after my episode.
Currently, it wasn’t in total chaos. The floor had been cleared, glass
and wood picked up. But I’d driven that axe into his mattress, headboard,
into his desk and television screen, and those things had remained with the
promise of finishing the job later. Only later became never, and neither
Mom nor I ventured back in there.
If I’d known he would come back…well, it would have been pristine,
every surface polished by my tongue if need be. I was that obsessed to have
him.
He returned minutes later and stood in the centre of my room, staring at
me with his hands on his hips. “What the fuck, El? All my shit is broken.”
My cheeks warmed. “I uh…I sort of had a breakdown.”
“With a fucking chainsaw?”
“It was an…axe.”
“An axe,” he repeated in disbelief before his eyes zoned in at my
hands. “That scar on your palm, it was never there before.”
“I hurt myself.”
“Purposely?”
“No.”
“With the axe?”
I let out a long breath and nodded.
“Fuck, El.” He slowly moved to me and collapsed on the mattress. He
unclasped my hands and ran his finger down the scar on my palm, cursing
again at the sight of it. Then he raised it to his lips and placed a soft kiss
there. “You’re crazy, aren’t you?” he questioned with an amused smile.
“Only when it comes to you,” I answered breathlessly, watching him
rest more kisses on my skin. I broke out in goosebumps, and he chuckled
when he saw them, rubbing his fingers down my arm.
 “I love how affected you are by me.” When I didn’t reply, he looked up
at me, his gaze warm. “I surrender. I’ll stay.”
“In bed with me,” I added.
He tilted his head to the side, green eyes trailing over my face and then
down my bare torso. His other hand reached out and grazed my breast,
cupping it with a light squeeze. “Only if I can play with these,” he told me.
I bit my lip to stop from grinning like an idiot. “Okay, but you have to
be naked.”
He grinned back and stood up, ditching his briefs in a split second.
Then he climbed back into bed with me and spooned me near the edge of
the mattress. He pulled the covers over our chilled bodies and continued
stroking my breasts. It was like he’d never been gone. Only the right guy
could make you feel that way.
“You can see your doctor tomorrow,” he said to me before I fell asleep.
“But I don’t agree with it.”
“You’re overreacting,” I mumbled in return. “But thanks for your
permission.”
“I’m not overreacting. I just know he won’t be better than me.”
“Is that right?”
“No one knows you like I do.” His hand drifted down my stomach and
between my legs. “And no one can make you come like I do,” he whispered
into my ear, stroking me.
I shivered against him and then pushed his hand away. “Your ego is
very unattractive.”
“Doesn’t fit the stereotype?”
I laughed. “No. You’re meant to be awkward. You’re not meant to
know how to please a lady.”
“But you’re not a lady.”
I elbowed him and he laughed. “If you weren’t so good with that
tongue, I’d have cut it off.”
 Just to torture me, he licked my shoulder and up my neck, using that
delicious tongue to wet me in more areas than one. I shivered against him
again.
“Good night, angel,” he whispered.
“We’ve been sleeping all day,” I whispered back. “I don’t think I’ll fall
back asleep anytime soon.”
“No? We can do other things then.”
I turned my face to him and he kissed me. It started slow and innocent.
I pressed my lips harder against his, until he parted his mouth and slipped
his tongue inside mine. My heart raced as his fingers trailed my body again,
touching every inch of my skin.
It escalated very quickly after that.

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26.
Elise
We’d found sleep a couple hours later, pressed against one another.
When morning came, I woke up before Aston and slipped out of bed. I went
to the toilet and then downstairs to turn the coffee machine on. Tuck was
passed out on his back on the arm of the couch. Weird, weird cat. I shook
my head at him when I entered the kitchen, and then I startled at the sight of
Mom already seated there, mug to her lips, flipping through the news on her
tablet.
“How long have you been up?” I asked her on my way to the
cupboards.
“A while,” she answered.
“What time did you get home?”
The vaguest answer came. “Late.”
I made myself a cup of coffee, trying to figure out how to tell her that
Aston was here and…in my bedroom. We’d never discussed the rumours.
She’d never asked me, and I didn’t even know if she heard them to be sure.
Words failed me at the moment, so I stood there at the counter, cupping the
hot mug.
“I wasn’t here yesterday,” she then told me. “I didn’t get to wish you a
happy birthday and I left the card in the car.”
I turned around just as she slid a birthday card across the table. I
walked over to it and picked it up. I blinked back tears at the glittery
butterfly on the cover, thinking of Dad and his nickname for me, before
opening it. There was a small note telling me she loved me, and a couple
ten dollar bills.
“I would have given you more,” she told me apologetically, “but we’re
a bit tight on money.”
 I removed the money and placed it in front of her, swallowing back my
emotions. “You need it more than me, Mom.”
Seeing the bags under her eyes and the slump in her shoulders, she was
dressed for another day of work and she looked exhausted.
“Just take it,” she told me, her fiery blue eyes hard on mine. “I’ve been
absent from your life, Elise, and I owe you more than twenty dollars for
your goddamn birthday, especially after what happened to you the other
night. Please, just take what I’m offering, okay?”
I wavered for a moment, and then I sighed and took a seat. She slid the
money to me, and I accepted it, knowing it meant a lot to her that I did.
“Working late again?” I asked her, purposely steering the conversation
away from what happened the other night. I could tell she wasn’t in the
right frame of mind to discuss it. She just…wasn’t the mother I once had.
“Yes,” she answered. “Are you okay for dinner?”
“I’ll make myself some mac and cheese.”
“Okay.”
I tapped my mug, looking nervously into it. “Uh…Aston is here,
Mom.”
“I know,” she responded casually. “I saw his car out front.”
I looked back up at her, surprised. “He’s in my bedroom.”
She glanced at me before flicking through another tab on her tablet. “I
know.”
Oh-kay. Why was she so calm about it?
Sensing my confusion, she added, “When you’re a mother to two
teenagers, Elise, nothing escapes you. You’re just lucky your father was a
heavy sleeper and didn’t hear your footsteps every single night to Aston’s
bedroom.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know what to do. If I told you I was aware of it, that wouldn’t
have stopped you. If I told your father about it, he’d have lost his mind.
Denial seemed to be the only strategy that kept both sides content for the
summer. I didn’t want there to be a blow up before Aston left. He might
have been driven away and I couldn’t bear to not hear from him.” She
laughed scornfully and looked away. “Funny that it turned out that way,
anyways.”
I didn’t reply. I took a few sips of my coffee, and didn’t taste a thing. I
didn’t know if she was okay with it. Maybe part of me didn’t care.
“Mom,” said a deep voice.
She looked up and over my shoulder. Instantly her face brightened in a
way I’d never seen in months. She smiled brilliantly and stood up, rushing
to Aston as he stood at the threshold of the kitchen in nothing but his jeans
on. She hugged him and he held her tight to his bare chest as she broke
down. She wasn’t crying in that breathless way I’d overheard her doing
when she thought she couldn’t be heard. No, she was crying from
happiness, telling him how much she missed him, how much she thought of
him and how nice it was to hold him again. I watched them and forcefully
sipped my coffee, trying my hardest not to smash it on the floor from the
jealousy that ripped through me.
She’d never reacted that way with me. She would happily go for days
without seeing me. Aston took off on us, and she still hugged him to her
like a lifeline. While I…I’d been there for her, trying my hardest to soothe
her broken heart, and she rejected me time and time again. Did I have to die
to get her attention?
My vision blurred with angry tears. I quickly stood up, set my coffee
mug in the sink and walked past them. I ran up the stairs and took another
long shower.
*
“Are you upset with me?”
I looked up at Aston as he came through my bathroom door. I was
seated in the corner of the shower, knees to my chest, drenched by the hot
water. He sat down on the toilet seat and watched me, waiting for my
answer.
“I just find it remarkable that you can do no wrong,” I told him quietly,
spitting out the water between my lips. “I try so hard with that woman, and
I’ve gotten nowhere.”
“Maybe you should stop trying,” he replied, concerned. “Maybe it’s the
trying that wears her out.”
“Maybe she’s a selfish bitch for pushing her daughter away.”
He looked alarmed. “What’s gotten into you, El?”
“I’m…angry,” I replied, feeling tears behind my eyes. “I’m so angry,
Aston.”
“At her?”
“At…everything. I don’t know why.”
“You’re depressed. That’s why you’re angry. The anger distracts you
from feeling pain.”
“Then I like being angry more.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“I don’t care.”
He let out a long breath, looking anxious now. “Why don’t you come
with me, El? When you’re finished school, pack your shit and come live
with me like we talked about before.”
Once upon a time, that offer would have been heaven. I’d have done it
in a heartbeat. But now…now I knew it wouldn’t solve anything. It’d be
like running, and no matter how stale Mom was to me, I couldn’t leave her
just yet… or maybe I was making excuses because I was frightened.
Whatever the truth was, I didn’t want to face it.
I stood up and turned the water off. I opened the shower stall and
ripped the towel from the hook. All the while, he sat there, waiting for a
response with a tentative look on his face.
“Elise,” he pressed desperately, “tell me you’ll come to me.”
I wrapped the towel around my body and stood there, looking down at
him. I wanted to run my wet fingers through that blond hair, tug it back so
his face shot up to mine, and then drown in his beautiful green eyes.
“What am I meant to do over there?” I asked him.
“Be with me.”
 I smiled sadly at him. “There’s nothing for me there, Aston. I’d be a
burden to you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t have a life outside of this town. I might be needy and social
over there. You’d be locked in your schoolwork, and I’d feel neglected and
isolated in a city I don’t know.”
“Then come to know it.”
“You’re not understanding, Aston. I have zero aspirations, and you…
You’re a star, and you’re going to shine.”
“And what are you, El?”
I shrugged. “I’m your black hole. I’d drag you down and put your shine
out. I’d demand things, distract you, pick fights with you when I don’t get
my way. We have two separate lives now, and I have to accept that. We both
do.”
He stood up and looked down at me, his face grim. “I just want us to be
together. I love you, Elise. I want you for myself.”
“You’d want me until you forgot all about me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then how come you haven’t contacted me once since you’ve been
gone? I get that you were hurt, but not even a single text or an email?”
He chest rose and fell faster at my question. He was conflicted because
he didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to admit the truth.
“It was because you’re locked inside your head,” I answered for him.
“I’m surprised you remember to eat.”
“You’re basically telling me to choose my head over you.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing –”
“I did it because I was hurting!” he interrupted harshly. “I don’t know
how to deal with things when I hurt, El. It’s why I turned to numbers when I
was a kid. I found a fucking multiplication chart in the garbage when I went
out once. I didn’t know what it was. It was just a sheet of paper. I smuggled
it in my pocket so the next time they locked me up I’d have something to
look at.”
My heart sank. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Aston.”
“I’m not asking you to be sorry!” He walked out of the room and sat
back down on the edge of the bed. Running his hand through his hair, he
looked up at me and said calmly, “I’m asking you to be with me. When I’m
distant, bring me back again. When I’m too busy, remind me how much I
belong to you. I want you, El, and I want to find a balance.”
How was he supposed to find a balance when all his years were spent
chasing after me and then fading into his room for weeks at a time? He had
to pick one thing over the other. I knew that, he just didn’t want to accept it.
“It’s not going to work,” I whispered to him quietly. “We wouldn’t last,
Aston.”
“Not with that attitude.”
“It’s the truth.”
He looked defeated and desperate. His knee bobbed up and down and I
could see the wheels spinning inside his head. “Then I’ll stay,” he finally
said. “I’ll stay and be with you.”
“You’re being absurd –”
“So what would you rather do? You want me to listen to Dad’s advice
like I already tried doing? You want us to be apart and pine for each other?
You expect me to stay there and accept that you might love someone else
eventually?”
“There’s nobody.”
“Odds are against me. You’re so fucking beautiful, and you’re funny
and you’re…just amazing, El, you’re bound to attract a whole fucking slew
of men. Those aren’t odds I’m willing to take.”
I sighed, frustrated. “You can’t use numbers for everything in life,
Aston. That’s not how it works. You don’t know that will happen.”
“But I’m right, and you know it. So I’ll pack it all up and come here
and be with you, and that way we’ll make it work –”
 “No!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Goddammit, didn’t he
understand? “You can’t throw it all away, Aston! You’re meant to get out of
here and make something of yourself! And I’m not going to be with you
and watch you settle for less. It’d be like watching you degenerate. We
can’t. I’m…a fucking mess, Aston. I’ve got rage issues and I’m depressed.
I…I am absolutely pathless right now, and I’m terrified of being destructive
to you. Being isolated in a city outside my comfort zone is the last thing
that is healthy for me right now.”
He looked at me for a painfully long time. He was beaten. I could see it
in his eyes. He was beaten and it was killing him.
“So that’s it then?” he said resentfully. “We just go our separate ways.”
I looked away from him. “We…live our lives, Aston.”
“I succeed, build an empire, all the while you’re absent and stuck in
this piece of shit town. Does that sound fair?”
I scoffed disdainfully. “Actually, yeah, it does, Aston. It sounds like
life.”
He tilted his head to the side. “You are such a disappointment, you
know that? You are weak. Weak for not even trying.”
“I’m strong for letting you go live your potential,” I replied evenly,
glaring back at him. “Maybe one day you won’t be so fucking selfish and
realize that.”
“I’m not selfish for wanting you. For the first time in my life, I’m a
fucking idiot for wanting you, El. I should’ve kept you at a distance. Dad
would have been alive. You’d have sulked and drowned in your fucking
angst, but you probably would have moved on eventually. We’d have been
fine, and I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to talk you into being with me and
hearing you feed me bullshit about choosing a different path over you.”
He stood and moved to me slowly. His eyes were cold, colder than I’d
ever seen them before. I didn’t move as he approached. Despite how much
his words cut me to the bone, I stood tall and waited.
“Thank you for breaking my heart,” he whispered, close enough his
breaths hit my face. “I’ll leave you in peace and give you what you want.
But that’s fucking it, El. I close that door and I’m not going to open it back
up again.”
I rolled my eyes in spite of his seriousness. “Don’t make promises you
can’t keep.”
“You think I’m talking shit?”
“I think you’re trying to hurt me, and you’ll be back in this room next
week, fucking me, holding me, asking me to be with you again.”
“Is that right?”
“You’re obsessed with me.”
“Fuck you, El.”
“Yeah, whatever. You know it’s true.”
“I know I’m as obsessed with you as you are with me, and we love
each other.”
I groaned and walked past him. He was just going to keep arguing with
me. He wouldn’t stop until he won. I knew it. He knew it. Why wasn’t I just
giving in right now?
“I’m not going to the city with you after I’m finished high school,” I
told him, “and that’s the end of that. Get over it. Move on.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?!”
“I love you too much to let you go.”
“You wouldn’t be letting me go! I’m not going anywhere! I’ll be right
here, putting my life back together.”
He moved to me again, cutting me with his stare. It wasn’t cold
anymore. It was determined, and a determined Aston spelled trouble.
“You want me to grow without you there. You want me to make
something of myself without you there. I’m going to be successful one day,
and I’m going to have a job and all the time in the world, and you’re not
going to be there on that journey. It makes the experience worthless, Elise.
If we stick by each other, defy those odds, and make a go of it, we’ll have
journeyed through it all – the ups and the downs, the bad days and the good
days. It’s better than being apart and coming together again when we’ve got
our shit sorted out. I don’t want that. I want us to grow together and come
out on the other side. Any time apart is time wasted.”
He made a compelling speech. But I was stubborn and determined too,
and burdening him with my bullshit felt selfish.
“No,” I told him sharply. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why?” he demanded, exhausted.
“Mom needs help around here –”
“Stop making excuses!” he suddenly shouted, nostrils flared, eyes
narrowed. “Tell me why!”
My entire body started shaking uncontrollably. “She really does need
my help –”
“Shut up about Mom, Elise. She’s with Adrian, alright? He told me
about it.”
My eyes widened. “What? When did you –”
“He said it last night, and he’ll take care of her. He promised after I
told him I wanted you out of here.”
I didn’t respond. He shook his head and paced the room, looking like
he wanted to strangle me. He should join the club. I wanted to strangle
myself too sometimes.
“You’re afraid,” he told me. “I know what you’re feeling because I’ve
been trying to conquer it the last seven months. You know what I realized at
the end? You never get over the fear, El, you just learn to live with it. You
confront it every single day. You face the unknown, the possibility of loss,
and you learn to endure. We can do everything we talked about. You can
dance and find your path wherever you go, but I want to be there and watch
it.” His voice broke as he stopped to look at me. His eyes were red with
unshed tears. He was killing me with that stare. “We can do it as long as
you believe it and want it. Think about it, El.”
He turned and left the room. Tuck was waiting on the other side, and he
strode in and circled around me, nudging me with his head. I fell to the
ground and welcomed him into my arms, all the while I stared out the
bedroom door, conflicted and…yeah, scared.

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27.
Elise
I showed up at the bookstore, and I was pretty sure I was late. There
was a crowd of people inside already seated. I slipped through the door and
immediately spotted Hayden in the far back of the room, a book open in his
lap. There was an empty chair beside him, and I had a feeling it was for me.
I tiptoed inside the room as a lady that looked remarkably like Hayden
stood before everyone, reading lines out of a book. When Hayden noticed
me, his face broke out in a warm smile. I sat down next to him and he
handed me a copy of a book. Of Mice and Men read the cover. He
whispered what page to turn to and I hastily did so. We sat in silence as the
lady carried on, finishing out the page and then discussing what it meant to
her. After she sat down, someone else stood up and talked about their
favourite scene. This was the most choreographed book club I’d ever been
in.
“Everything alright?” Hayden whispered.
I nodded, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Aston’s
words weighed on me, and I didn’t know what to do.
“You sure?” he pressed.
I blinked back tears. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted. “Everything is
a mess right now.”
He didn’t respond after that. Instead, he turned back to the speakers,
waiting patiently for everyone to be done. After that, the first lady started
handing out pizza boxes and everyone dived in, chatting to one another.
“It’s lame, I know,” Hayden chuckled. “But my mother forces me here.
I kind of hoped to trick you into coming so I wouldn’t suffer alone.”
I turned to him and studied his soft expression. Then I blurted out,
“Who hurt you?”
 He stilled and his brown eyes shot to mine. I could feel him already
starting to shut down. He scratched at his clean shaven jaw and didn’t
answer me.
“She hurt you badly, didn’t she?” I asked him.
He nodded stiffly. “Yeah. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Whose fault was it?”
“Both of ours.”
“Why?”
He tapped the arm of his chair thoughtfully. “We let ourselves grow
apart. We didn’t fight hard enough.”
I frowned, considering his words carefully. “I thought you were
obsessed with her.”
“I was. I…am.”
“But how could you grow apart if you wanted her so much?”
“I don’t know, Elise. Sometimes it happens and you don’t realize it
until it’s done and the other person is a stranger to you. Like I said, we
didn’t fight hard enough for what we wanted, and in the end it was easier to
leave than work it out.” He turned his gaze to me and studied me. “You’re
hurting over that guy that came to see you, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Has he hurt you again?”
“No, he…he’s fighting for us.”
Hayden’s eyes brightened. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
I avoided looking at him as I muttered, “It’s a scary thing. He might
hurt me again.”
“Of course he’ll hurt you again, and again, and again. That’s what
relationships are all about. You hurt and forgive and fight to make it easier
when it happens again in the future. A relationship is only strong when
you’re facing obstacles. Coming out of it together, even if you’re not in one
piece, is everything.”
 I nodded, fighting back the emotion behind my eyes. “Are you still in
love with her?”
“Yeah,” he answered straightaway.
“Even though she hurt you?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that really love?”
He leaned into me, until his mouth was to my ear, and whispered,
“That’s life.”

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Aston
Where did Elise find this fucking cat?
He was laying on his back in my lap and sucking at the sleeve of my
shirt. What in the holy fuck? I stared down at him, not wanting to kick him
off in fear of losing his respect, but also wanting my fucking body back.
I rested my head against the wall. I was sitting on the bottom staircase
facing the door, waiting for her to come back. She’d been gone two hours,
and I was losing my shit. What was she doing? Had the doctor wooed her?
He probably had, the sleazy good looking bastard.
I’d returned too late after enduring months of misery and darkness. She
deserved to move on. Who the hell was I to come back and fuck with her
head again?
Chances are, she’d come back and tell me to fuck off and I wouldn’t.
I’d keep fighting for another chance because, fuck, I’d never blow it. I
learned the hard way: pushing what you loved away out of fear cost you
everything. And I wasn’t a coward anymore. Numbers were just numbers at
the end of the day. Elise, on the other hand…Elise was everything to me.
When I heard a car pass by, I flicked Tuck off my lap. He landed on his
head – great, I was a cat abuser – and I quickly bent down to check on him,
but he sprang up to his feet and galloped away like nothing happened. Chill
cat.
I moved to the front door and opened it, peering out into the cold
streets. A car door shut and I followed the sound to the neighbour’s
driveway. Becky caught my eye, and she narrowed hers as she hurried into
her house, cell phone already pressed to her ear. “He’s back,” I heard her
hiss as she disappeared inside her house.
Disappointed, I stepped out and walked down the driveway. I stood on
the sidewalk, staring from one end to the other, waiting. Elise wasn’t
coming back. She was with some guy by the name of Hayden, and she’d
probably spend the night with him hoping I’d be gone when she returned
come morning.
 I ran my hand through my hair and clenched my teeth. Pain rocked me
to the core and I had to stop and take a few deep breaths to calm myself. I
closed my eyes and tried to accept it. I had failed her, but god, what a
journey we’d led, and it pained me because I felt like we truly hadn’t even
started yet.
Knock. Knock.
My eyes whipped open. I spun around, searching for the sound.
Knock. Knock.
I stopped mid-step and stared at my car and at the tall, slender figure
leaning against it. My gaze slowly travelled up those black fluffy boots,
snowflake leggings, plaid jacket, long blonde hair, and stopped when it
reached those ocean blue eyes. I took a step closer to her, a lump caught in
my throat as she smiled at me with glistening eyes.
“It’s okay, Aston,” she whispered breathlessly. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
Those were the same words she’d said to me through the wall we
shared the first night I’d slept in our house. I ran a hand over my face,
overwhelmed with emotion. She came to me and the second her arms
wrapped around my body, I crumbled against her. I held her tight against
me, sucking in breaths as I apologized over and over again.
“I’ll never leave you,” I said. “Never. Never. Never. Be with me, Elise.
I promise you won’t regret it. We’ll work through anything. I promise.”
“I’m here,” she said back, breaking apart. “And I love you.”
I pulled away and frantically cleared the strands of hair from out of her
face. I stared down at her and wiped away coating her cheeks. “I love you,”
I told her. “It’s only ever been you, El. We’ll make it work, yeah?”
“On one condition,” she said, solemnly.
“Anything.”
“Tuck comes with me.”
I stared at her for a moment, and then I grinned from ear to ear. “That
fucking cat…he’ll kill himself one of these days, I swear it, but fine. If he
comes with the package, I’ll marry him too.”
 She smiled back. “Then I’m all yours, Aston.”
I kissed her fiercely. “This is it,” I told her, slipping my tongue into her
mouth for a quick lick. “This will be our new beginning. You and me…and
that fucking cat.”

OceanofPDF.com
Epilogue
Elise
Did I return that pink glittery wallet? Yeah, I did. Hayden didn’t let the
matter drop, and I saw an awful lot of him over the months after I joined the
boring book club his mom had forced him in.
I had copped a lot of dirty looks from school, especially when Aston
came to spend every other weekend with me, but we didn’t care what
anyone thought. Michelle and the other bitches kept their distance. It’s
funny what happens when you fight back. Nobody wants to mess with a
difficult target.
Mom was still switched off, and she didn’t show much affection, but
she handled our relationship easily. As long as we still came to see her, that
was all that mattered. Plus, she was less lonely now that Adrian was really
on the scene. They were taking it slow. Like, painfully slow. I warned him
he might have to wait years for Mom to make that leap, but he loved her,
and he told me he’d wait however long it took. I knew Dad would have
approved. I don’t think he’d have found better hands to put her in.
Deck switched schools, but his reputation was tarnished and it gave his
family a bad name. I still saw him around town, but he kept a good distance
from me. He was fighting his intent to rape charge, and I’d probably have to
come back down to testify, but it turned out I wasn’t the only girl who had
something to say about his forcefulness. There were two other girls that
came forward, determined to put him away. He had very little chance at
winning, and I hoped by the end of it his life would be forever marred with
a criminal charge. I heard it was hard to find a respectable job with one of
those…
Everything was taken care of before I left. I touched base with Cindy
and told her to take over my homeless musings with Ray the pigeon and
bird feeder. She vehemently refused to do it. I slapped some sense into her.
It took days of nagging before she finally agreed, but only once a month,
which was better than nothing.
I finished out the year with decent grades. I applied for colleges. I
figured I’d attend a few classes just to pass the time before I really found
something I was happy to do. If the dancing worked out then great, but if it
didn’t…well, there were a million other things in life I could try.
This whole bullshit of choosing your path at eighteen was absolutely
ridiculous. What was the goddamn rush? I was still trying to figure out who
I was, let alone my forever job. Maybe it was one thing, maybe a dozen
others. Life was a journey, and so long as Aston was by my side, I was
willing to venture into the unknown with both feet in.
I battled a lot of depression. Nothing was easy and there was truly no
happily ever after with a cherry on top, but Aston made a difference. He
gave me support and a shoulder to lean on. He made the tough days
bearable, and I hated that he had to cop those emotional shifts in me, but he
proved time and time again that he was staying by my side, no matter what.
There was something beautiful in that kind of love. I wanted us to
work. I wanted to prove Dad wrong and say, “Yeah, you were right to
worry, you were right to express those fears, but look, Dad. Look how hard
we’re working to be together. I can do this. I know what I want, and it’s
him.”
It was nerve-wracking leaving home, and god, the new apartment we
leased was small when I walked in with Tuck pressed to my chest. Aston
seemed proud to show off the empty space, opening up the curtains to every
room, letting the natural light inside so I could see the monstrosity in all its
horrible glory.
“We have a lot of work to do,” I told him, frowning at the derelict
walls.
“You can turn this into a home,” he replied, squeezing my ass as he
stopped to stand next to me.
“It’s bearable as long as we have each other, I guess.”
“Don’t sound so excited.”
“I am.”
 He wrapped his arms around me, and kissed my neck. “One day I’m
going to buy you a castle. I’m going to make you my queen and fuck you
on every marble surface of our abode.”
I cringed. “You know, for a second there, I thought you were on to
something.”
“You’ll be on to something hard in a minute.”
I laughed as he removed Tuck from my hands and set him on the floor.
Then he picked me up and I wrapped my legs around him as he placed me
on the tiny kitchen counter five feet away. Yeah, it was seriously five feet
away. Our place was a shoebox, but it was the first building block to our
empire.
Aston kissed me, running his hands up my short shorts and around the
curve of my ass. “We’re going to make it,” he told me. “It’s going to be
hard. I’ll probably shut down when I’m locked inside my head, but you’ll
bring me back again. I know it.”
I nodded, kissing him lightly on the mouth. “And I might freak out and
scream at you. I might lose my shit and act like a baby who’s starved of
attention, but you’ll bring me back again too, right?”
He looked at me with his disarming green eyes and nodded solemnly.
“I’ll do anything for you, Elise. I promise.”
We kissed me and he slipped my shorts down my legs. I complained
about Tuck bearing witness to our sinful ways, so Aston picked me up and
took me to the bedroom.
The first leg of our journey was done.

The end

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Thank you
Um, so why do you guys read my stories? I don’t get it, but I’m so
humble and grateful you bother time and time again.
This story sort of simmered inside my head for a while, and I puked it
on the keyboard in a matter of weeks. I intended on writing more than one,
but I didn’t want a cliff hanger because I was tired of torturing readers.
Characters are always so alive inside my head. I always feel like one book
never does them justice, hence why I carry on the way I do.
If you made it this far, thank you so freaking much. I appreciate ratings
and reviews. They help an author out like you can’t believe.
For news of my upcoming releases, you can follow me on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/rj.lewis13
Happy reading!

RJ

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