Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
The girl had evidently never had one of these drills before, and if they unnerved me, I could guarantee it had put her on the verge of a breakdown.
“I gotta piss,” I said, on my way out of the class.
I followed the empty hallway to the girl’s restroom. Drew stood at the sink, swiping at her smudged mascara, even though the tears kept coming. I had no business following her in here. No business giving a shit if she was scared for the simple fact that she wasn’t mine. But yet, here I was, making myself weak for her with every passing second.
“You all right?” I asked, my voice echoing off the grimy tiled walls.
Her gaze met mine in the mirror. On a ragged sigh, she dropped her chin to her chest, the sudden movement covering her face with a curtain of hair.
“Guess you didn’t have those drills at your prep school, huh?” I moved behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder as I gathered her hair to the side of her neck. She didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge me. “They’re shit,” I said.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It scared you.”
She turned to face me, wiping over her face again. “It’s irrational to be crying right now. I didn’t die.”
“Out of all the things you’ve done that are irrational, I promise you, baby girl, this is not one of them.” I half-smiled and swept a hand over her damp cheek, terrified at how normal this felt. At how right this felt.
Her gaze held mine for a moment before she grabbed my jaw, then pressed a kiss to my lips. The kind of kiss that didn’t say she wanted me, the kind that said she needed me. And damn, if it didn’t make my chest go tight.
I grabbed onto her waist, pulling her close, and for once, I didn’t feel the need to bend her over and fuck her. I didn’t want to hate her. Just protect her.
“I’m not fucking Jackson.”
“And I’m not fucking anyone else.”
Because I wanted her. Only her.
Her fingers trailed my cheek as she took a step back, her gaze searching mine like there was something she could figure out about me if she just stared a little bit harder. Then, without another word, she slipped out of the bathroom.
Leaving me feeling more vulnerable than I ever had in my entire life.
23
Drew
That afternoon when I got home from school, I was still shaken up. I sat on the couch, feeling numb, and my only thought was Bellamy. He’d seen me cry. And I never, ever let anyone see my cry. He held my hand, kissed me... I could still feel the heat of his lips branded on mine.
Where was the bad guy I was supposed to hate?
I stared at my phone. I was passed caring right now. My walls were down. He’d put a big old crack in them in the space of one class. red
Me: Thank you. For holding my hand
It sounded pathetic when I wrote it out like that.
Dickhead: Yep
Dickhead: Hope it didn’t ruin the whole you hating me thing we’ve got going on...
God, I was so screwed. So absolutely screwed. What was the point in fighting it any more...?
I typed out the first part of a response, then another text came through.
Dickhead: Because you all angry at me makes my dick hard AF.
So, this is where we were going. And this I could handle a lot more readily than the weird emotions that were trying to worm their way through my chest.
Me: That explains a lot.
Dickhead: Don’t believe me. Tell me you hate me, and I’ll show you what it does.
A little blossom of excitement took root, and of course, I rose to it because Bellamy may have been the solid rock at my back today, but normally he was a blazing fire licking over my skin, threatening to singe me. This...this is what we did, and I wanted the familiarity of it, as though my sense of self were tied to him being filthy and bad. I pressed the voice-clip button. “I fucking hate you.”
Seconds later, a picture came through of his fist wrapped around his bare dick. Heat trickled over my skin, and I caught myself squeezing my thighs together. Of course, I’d seen it, had my lips around it, but seeing his hand around it...that was something else entirely. It seemed so much more brutal, almost angry.
Me: You gonna stroke it for me?
Dickhead: You gonna finger fuck yourself for me?
God, when it came to him, I was a sick addict.
* * *
The next day at school, Bellamy wasn’t waiting at my locker, and the sinking sense of disappointment that came took me off guard. Everything with him was so complicated, my feelings never the same from one day to the next. I kept waiting for him to show up, but he never did.