Chapter 35
“Y ou don’t have anything the rest of the day, right?”
Avoiding Crue’s gaze in the mirror as I try to fix my makeup, I shake my head. Already dressed, all he had to do was wash his hands and he’s set to stroll back out of the bathroom looking relatively the same as earlier. My appearance, unfortunately, takes a little more correction. Crue’s teeth left an imprint on my jaw that no amount of makeup is covering up.
I finally shoot him a scowl, and he smirks.
“Do you know how many fucking hickeys you had on your neck when we met?” Before I can even open my mouth, he answers himself, saying, “Too many.”
I roll my eyes. Like I could remember.
Like I want to.
“Hickeys can be covered up with a turtleneck. This…” I point at my jaw. “Can’t.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time.”
A shiver races up my spine. Next time. One of these days—soon—there won’t be a next time, but today, there is. And that makes me so…happy. I’m pretty sure the last time I was happy was at Hide and Keep.
Biting my bottom lip, I keep my growing smile to myself.
“So you’re going with me then?”
“Where?”
“To get that tattoo.”
“The butterfly?”
He nods.
Or course I’m going with him to watch my art get inked onto his body.
Not wanting him to see how excited that makes me, I blow out a long sigh and grab my chai latte before spinning around to face him, whining, “It’s not like I can go anywhere else.”
Crue broadcasts his smile openly. “You know I’m on to you now.”
Oh. Shit.
“About what?” I ask with a steady voice despite the dizziness threatening to overtake me.
“When you’re faking it.”
The laugh that leaves my numb lips is as artificial as it gets, yet somehow Crue doesn’t notice, proving him wrong. Thank Goddess.
“Would a scarf work?” he offers.
“For what?”
He points at my jaw.
I look my bodyguard over, asking skeptically, “Do you have one on you?”
“No, but you could use my shirt as one.”
“And what? Let you walk around shirtless?”
“ Let me? I’m—”
“Mine. More now than ever. Just because you turn into a marshmallow after sex doesn’t mean I do. The only one that gets to ogle you is me.”
Crue has the audacity to laugh.
“You’re really fucking cute when you’re possessive, you know that?”
“No,” I answer honestly. It doesn’t feel cute. It feels natural, like a knee-jerk reaction. Someone eye-fucks my bodyguard and I immediately want to cause harm to them in the worst possible way. Very simple. Very reasonable.
“Well, you are.”
“I doubt Johanna Flemming shares that opinion.”
The expression he pins me with is pure confusion. “Who?”
“My professor.”
He shakes his head. “Nah. Doesn’t ring a bell.”
I catch the side of his lips curving upward as he turns for the door.
Good bodyguard. Very good bodyguard.
Holding the door open, he waves me through, saying, “After you, little bat.”
Parked in front of the tattoo parlor, Crue doesn’t rush out to get my door like he usually does. Instead, he’s…checking all around us.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I do, too.
What is he looking for?
“Do me a favor,” he says.
“What?”
“Lift up your skirt for me.”
I return my attention to Crue, finding his already on me.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Hem up to my chest, I lift my dress.
Arm draped along the dashboard, Crue leans over, his gaze locked on my thighs.
“Why aren’t your panties soaked through?”
I release the fabric from my fingertips, cutting off his view and causing him to lift his eyes to mine instead.
“Why would they be?”
“I just filled you to the brim with my cum.”
“I’m aware. I’m the one that had to put toilet paper in there to catch it.”
His eyebrows nearly jump off his forehead. “In your pussy?”
“Ew, no. In my underwear.”
“Is that what took you so long in the stall?”
The same stall I had to kick Crue out of when he tried following me in it.
“I wasn’t gonna let it ruin my outfit.”
“I wanted it to.”
“Is that why you fucked me?” I sneer.
“No.”
His face comes in close to mine. When he makes no move to cover my lips with his thumb, I inhale sharply. Luckily, he only presses a kiss to my chin, his top lip just below my bottom lip.
I don’t dare release my breath.
“I fucked you because you begged me to.” Another kiss, this one half a centimeter higher so our lips do graze. “And because I was dying to sink my cock into your sweet.” Kiss. “Little.” Kiss. “Cunt.” Kiss.
Only after he sits back do I exhale.
“Little?”
“What? Isn’t that a good thing? To be tight?”
“It’s a normal thing. Vaginas aren’t airplane hangars.”
“I know that.” He frowns, not so much like he’s offended. More like he’s confused.
“Do you? You didn’t seem to know girls have to pee after sex.”
“I…didn’t. I’m not usually around…” He gestures vaguely. “After.”
“What do you do, run out while you’re still wearing a condom?”
His silence tells me everything…and nothing.
As uncomfortable as this next question’s going to be, it’s necessary. It’s a little late considering the deed’s already been done, but I’d rather find out now than not at all.
“You do use condoms, right?”
“Yes. Every time. Except today obviously. You?”
“Yeah. Same.”
Neither of us willing to expand on our previous partners, we both find different spots in the car to focus on for a while.
Crue speaks first. “It was so much better without one.”
I’m quick to agree. “Mm-hm.” It was. But for me, the lack of protection was only one small part of what made it so great.
“I’m new to all of this.”
“Sex?” I mock. Crue definitely wasn’t a virgin.
“Females.” He makes more random motions with his hands, causing me to glance back over at him. “The only woman I’ve spent a lot of time around is my mom and she never told me about…you know…anything really. Not this kind of stuff. Not anything that’d help me help you.” Those green eyes make their way over to my blue ones. “I’m trying to learn as fast as I can, but there’s a lot.”
I know he is. And he’s probably never going to know everything. Sadly, I probably won’t either. For all the ridicule females are constantly under, we’re not studied medically as much as we could or should be. Knowledge is power after all and the more knowledge we have about ourselves and how to not only survive in the bodies we’re in but also thrive, the more powerful we’d be.
What’s the biggest threat to a patriarchal society? Empowered women.
“Do you mind explaining to me what was wrong with calling your cunt little?”
“It’s not that it was wrong . I just have to question that descriptor coming from a man with seriously skewed depth perception. I mean, four inches is—”
Crue’s laughter cuts me off before he exits my car. He’s still smiling as he opens the passenger door, maybe even while he’s putting my heels back on. I can’t be sure as I’m too focused on watching his back muscles flex beneath his shirt. I do know he’s not when he bites one of my thighs, promising to ruin my panties next time.
Next time.
Inside the tattoo parlor, the artist is still setting up his space, so Crue and I walk around, perusing the hundreds of sketches on the walls. All different styles. All different perspectives.
“You never told me why you’re getting this tattoo,” I say without taking my eyes off a snake wrapped around a sword.
“I’ve been wanting another one for a while.”
“But why a butterfly?”
“Why not?”
We move to another wall.
“So there’s no reason at all for that specific kind?”
“Does there need to be?”
My gaze plummets to the floor. No, there doesn’t.
I hoped there was though. I hoped it was me, the girl in the cornstalks who left a big enough impression for him to want a reminder on his body for the rest of his life.
But that kiss— our kiss—from Crue’s perspective could’ve meant something completely different than what it meant from mine.
It could’ve meant nothing to him. I could’ve meant nothing to him.
I probably did.
“Do you always have a reason for the stuff you draw?”
“Not always.” I shake my head. “But usually.”
The heat of Crue’s stare blasts the side of my face and I brace myself for what I know is coming next.
“What’s your reason for drawing me?”
Relocating my hands to behind my back, I twist my fingers together before saying, “I told you already.”
“You told me bullshit. You don’t spend that much time drawing someone you look down on.”
“You do if you don’t know anyone else worth capturing.”
There’s a pregnant pause where I replay my words no less than two hundred times. Capturing? I sound like a psychopath.
“On paper,” I add in vain.
“What makes me worth drawing?”
I glance up at him.
“What doesn’t?”
Even though I know it’s coming, it still squeezes my heart to watch Crue tap one long finger to the scar under his eye.
I wait until my voice is clear to say, “You can place the same rose in front of a dozen artists and you’ll get a dozen variations. The colors will be different, the size, everything. Some will include thorns. Some won’t. Some will focus on every blemish because that’s reality. Nothing’s perfect. Some will only capture one or two because imperfections aren’t nearly as ugly as we assume our own are. Someone in there won’t even include a single flaw because all they see is a beautiful rose. The subject is the same, yet everybody’s perspective on it is vastly different.”
“You draw my scar. You see it.”
“I do.” I glance at the crescent scar before meeting the eyes above it. “But it’s not all I see when I look at you.” Because I do draw realistic, I do include it in my drawings, but that doesn’t make Crue any less beautiful to me.
“What else do you see when you look at me?”
My answer is immediate yet honest. “A misplaced time traveler.”
Crue frowns. “What makes you say that?”
“You don’t belong where you are.”
“Where do I belong?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t think you do either or you wouldn’t be my bodyguard, stuck living the same day over and over again.”
“What I was doing before being your personal protection agent was repeating the same day over and over. This gig’s the most challenging I’ve ever had.”
“Is that why you took it?”
“I took it because…” Now he’s the one looking away. “Of the money. After three years, I should have a little over a million dollars stacked up.”
A million dollars? He won’t even make a tenth of that.
“What are you planning to do with it?”
“Promise not to laugh.”
“Not if you say you’re gonna spend it on a time machine.”
He rolls his eyes before bringing them back to me. “No. Just regular travel. I want to go somewhere no one knows me.”
I don’t laugh, but I do tell him, “See? You don’t belong here.”
“Do you?”
“This is the birthplace of Munreaux Motorcycles. Of course I do.”
“Do you want to be here though?”
Aside from the climate and the history, I don’t know enough about Sea Haven to know if I like it, only that I don’t like who I am here—who I have to be here.
“Anonymity isn’t an option for me,” I say instead.
“Especially not after you take over for your father.”
I force my head to bob slowly.
“Why don’t you want anyone to know who you are?”
“I just think it’d make it easier.”
The tattoo artist beckons us over.
“Make what easier?” I ask on our walk to the back.
“Living.”
My steps slow momentarily, causing me to have to hustle to catch up.
“What’s hard about living here? For you?”
“The people. I can’t go anywhere in Sea Haven without running into someone from high school. You saw what happens when I do.”
The police officer. Sure, that was awkward, but not exactly flee-worthy.
As Crue listens to the artist’s spiel about his process, I settle in next to the tattoo chair. This parlor isn’t technically in Sea Haven. I assumed Crue drove this far out because he wanted the same artist that did his other tattoos, but there doesn’t seem to be any familiarity between the two men whatsoever.
“So it’s just the people from your high school you want to avoid?”
“Them…and anyone that recognizes my name and looks at me the same way you did when you found out.”
“How did I look at you?”
He scoffs. “Like I was guilty.”
“Well… I mean, you were drunk—”
“I wasn’t though. I hadn’t been drinking at all that night.”
“Why did the news report that you were?”
“Because I said I was.”
“Crue, why the hell would you lie about that?”
“I was covering for Yaz. She was the one drinking. She was the one…” He shakes his head. “Her dad was ex-military, a perfectionist, a real hard-ass. He had so many rules for her, the top one being not to date his wrestlers.”
“She was your coach’s daughter?”
Crue nods.
“And you were dating…”
“Looking back, I don’t know if dating is the right word. We were—”
“I think I get it.” I hold up a hand, stopping him before he can get too detailed.
“No, you don’t. Nobody does because nobody ever asks. It’s always just assumptions and accusations.”
I could be saying those same words about my own life. I could be saying a lot of this about my own life.
I say to him what I wish someone would say to me. “So then tell me the truth.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
He eyes the tattoo artist’s bowed head. We wait until the tattoo gun turns on, then I scoot closer to Crue.
“Yasmin and I, we…considered ourselves together. I thought of her as my girlfriend, and she called me her boyfriend.”
Each of those words hits me almost visibly, like I’m in one of those comic books with the onomatopoeia in the speech bubbles. Wham! Bam! Pow! But I fight not to show the pain. This is one of those rare instances where I actually did ask for it.
“We wanted to date but couldn’t. Not really. Not like our friends could. We barely even talked outside of the few classes we had together.”
“Because of her father?”
“Yeah. Wrestling was my life. I was on track to get a full ride to any college I chose. I didn’t want to mess that up. She didn’t want to defy him. She was…scared, I think.”
I lose Crue for a few minutes while he mentally travels back in time.
He is a time traveler.
But is that why? So he can visit her?
“Crue?” I say, bringing him back to the present. To me.
“Anyway, yeah, we liked each other. We didn’t even know each other, but we liked each other. You know?”
My eyes flutter closed on a half-nod. I fell for a man I never spoke a single word to.
“For homecoming, we both went with a big group of friends so her dad wouldn’t suspect anything. And he didn’t. It was perfect. We danced, we talked, we laughed, we got to hang out for once. It was the closest thing to a real date we’d ever gotten.”
Pushing my raging jealousy aside, I try to picture a seventeen-year-old Crue being so carefree with his crush. I doubt it’s something I’ll ever get to witness myself. I don’t think he knows how to be carefree anymore. I’m assuming because of what he’s about to share.
“Things were going…well. So we decided to sneak away…just the two of us.”
Just like that, the jealousy is back, trying to shove all rational thought out the window.
Crue studies me carefully.
I wave him on. Let’s get this over with.
“The plan was to only be gone for a little while, twenty, thirty minutes at the most, before getting Yaz back to her friends so they could take her home. The second we got in my car though, she wanted to…” His eyebrows pick up what his voice just put down.
“Mm-hm.” Got it. He’s not a virgin. I knew that. I know that. We’ve both been with other people.
We’ll both be with other people.
I don’t exactly want to hear about either, but again, I asked for this.
“I never found out whose it was but someone in our group snuck alcohol into the dance and Yaz had been downing that instead of the water and punch I’d been drinking. I was trying to drive us somewhere private but she was fucking relentless. She was leaning over the center console, grabbing at my zipper, making it hard to even see the road. When we were hit by an actual drunk driver, my head was turned toward Yaz, trying to hold her off and…”
“Your scar.”
“Yeah, from the airbag. That and the seat belt kept me in the car. But Yaz wasn’t even seated, let alone buckled, so she flew through the windshield. I was able to make it out to her before the cops got there and the only thing, the only fucking thing she cared about was her dad finding out about us.”
“That’s why you lied.” He threw himself under the bus just like he did with me to Officer Ronny Veen.
He nods. “How else was I supposed to explain missing a fucking car headed directly at me?”
“Is that why you weren’t charged with anything?”
“The cops knew I was sober. I blew a zero on the breathalyzer.”
“How did it still end up on the news that you—”
“Because Yaz didn’t want her dad to know the truth about why we were together. Me being drunk only explained why I was distracted, not why Yaz was in my car. She spun a story to her dad that made it sound like I tricked her into coming with me.”
“She put it all on you?” As if I couldn’t hate this girl any more. She put Crue in danger, then lied about it to save her reputation.
“Why didn’t she just say she was sick and that you offered her a ride home? Other than you supposedly being under the influence, it wouldn’t have been all that scandalous. You two knew each other through her father. It’d make sense for you to want to see your coach’s pride and joy home safely.”
“I couldn’t tell you. Maybe because she was drunk. Maybe because she’d gone through a windshield. Either way, her brain obvious wasn’t working at full capacity.”
That doesn’t excuse her painting Crue to be a predator though, especially when it sounds like it was nearly the opposite. I don’t know if Crue sees it that way. He wanted Yasmin that night, but did he at that exact moment? If he told her no at any point, then she was the aggressor.
“You never got to ask her before…”
“No. Apparently, the worst of her injuries were internal, so… I never could’ve guessed that Yasmin being loaded into the back of that ambulance would be the last time I’d ever get to see her. Her dad was already there, by her side, so she… She ignored me. Wouldn’t even look at me.”
That’s why it’s such a big deal for him—me looking at him. Because she wouldn’t. It also explains why he doesn’t drink and why he’s so adamant about consent. Wrongfully labeled as a drunk and a rapist, Crue goes out of his way to not be anything even close to either one.
“After that…” Crue’s voice takes on a hard edge. “Her dad made it his mission to put all the blame on me. There was no evidence to back up Yaz’s claims, not even that I’d been drinking. But I thought I was protecting her by staying quiet, by not refuting any of them. She didn’t care to protect me back. Coach dropped me from the wrestling team while she was still alive and she didn’t do anything to stop him. My life was over before hers was.”
My stomach churns at the stark realization that my father and I are no better. At the end of this, I, too, will turn my back on Crue without a backward glance. I’ll have to. And my father? My father could, and would, do even worse to Crue than some high school wrestling coach did.
“I’m really sorry,” I whisper, unsure if he can even hear me over the buzz.
He shrugs the shoulder of the arm not being worked on, and when he speaks, his voice is softer, kinder. “If it turned out any other way, I doubt I’d be here with you now.”
I almost choke in disbelief. Nothing about this predicament is a consolation prize, certainly not me. Or the money he’s banking on but will never actually see.
I give Crue a halfhearted smile before looking down. The artist is on the bottom of the hindwings and abdomen, not too far into the design that should take hours to complete.
“Is there a restroom I can use?” I ask during one of the brief pauses.
The artist jerks his head toward the back of the shop. “Second door on the left.”
“I’ll come with.”
Crue starts to lean forward, but I rush to tell him, “I don’t need you to.”
“I know,” he shoots back, sounding slightly offended.
He notices the artist looking between us.
“I know. I just—”
“Is anybody else here?” I ask the artist.
“Nope. Just us. This is the last appointment of the day.”
“See, Major? It’s fine. I’ll only take a minute.”
The muscle in his jaw twitches. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I smile brightly. Silly bodyguard, what’s the worst that can happen? I fall in the toilet?
His eyebrows draw closer and closer as he lowers his voice for what’s probably supposed to be only for me but the tattoo artist listening intently can clearly still hear. “You need anything?”
I don’t know if he’s referring to what we discussed in the car or if he’s just asking in general, but since the only thing I could go for is a pantyliner, which I’m assuming Crue didn’t magically acquire in the last hour, I shake my head, and tell him, “I’ll be right back.”
In the dimly lit hall, I breeze past both doors on the left, heading straight for the one with the EXIT sign above it. The cool air that greets me on the other side of it is a welcome relief.
Yasmin didn’t care enough about Crue to help him but I do.