Chapter Twenty-Eight Banks
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Banks
“Brake. Brake. Brake. ” Banks slams his foot down on the imaginary pedal on the passenger side the same time I hit the actual one, gripping the handle above his window.
Stopping in the middle of the dead-end road, I white-knuckle the steering wheel and let out a shaky breath. We’re inches away from a ditch that drops deep enough that a tow would have probably been necessary if I went in.
“I’m horrible,” I state.
Banks takes a minute to collect himself before shaking his head. “No. You’re learning. There’s a difference.”
I bet he was way better at driving when he started. Putting the truck into park with a shaky hand, I lean back into the bench seat.
“I got my learner’s permit when I was sixteen,” I tell him, closing my eyes and willing my heart rate to calm down. What I don’t admit is that I technically failed the first exam because I panicked and started answering the questions randomly. I’ve always had test anxiety, but my brain was still fuzzy from the chemo I’d been undergoing. Mom told me to wait to take it until I was done with my first round of treatment when I could process things easier, but I didn’t want to be behind my friends.
Ironic, considering I barely had any of those by the end of the year.
I blame the toxins for making me forget everything I studied in the manual before going in. Maybe the people behind the counter felt bad for the girl who looked as sick as she was because they simply went over the answers one by one and passed me when I should have never walked out of there with a permit.
I hate pity. Always have. Always will.
What I hated more were the looks on their faces when I had to fill out the information that would appear on my future license. Their eyes went to my hair when they read what I’d put for my natural hair color because the wig, which cost more than my mother’s monthly car payment, wasn’t anywhere near the tone I’d been born with, and my eyes, which Dad used to say reminded him of the ocean, were so dull from the drugs that they looked gray.
I could feel their questions—their doubts—but they never came. The day that I’d been looking forward to for sixteen years was nothing like I’d expected at all. It was ruined, along with every other big milestone teenagers should experience.
I don’t want Banks to look at me like that—like the broken girl I am. I want him to like me, to judge me, to be here with me in the moment even when I almost kill us or total his truck.
“Where’d you go?” he asks, his hand coming down on mine to bring me back to earth.
I simply shake my head. “Nowhere. I’m here.” Curling my hand around his, I caress his skin with my thumb and think back to the look on his best friend’s face earlier. “I think Dawson saw us holding hands.”
Banks’s gaze drops, his fingers involuntarily squeezing mine. “Screw Dawson.”
I give him a sad smile. “You don’t mean that. That’s what makes you a good person.”
The scoff that comes from him has me frowning. “Maybe I don’t want to be.”
I don’t believe that for a second, but the way his eyes flash has me unbuckling and sliding over to him. He watches each movement carefully, his eyes darkening as I find the courage to climb into his lap and straddle him.
His hands find my hips. “Hi, Birdie.”
I smile innocently. “Hi.”
Cupping his face with my hands, I lean my forehead against his.
“What are you doing?” he asks, voice a notch lower than normal as I feel him harden underneath me.
Taking a deep breath, I move my hips experimentally and hear him groan. I shake my head and whisper, “I don’t know yet.”
I stop the conversation with a kiss, silencing any other questions he has. He meets my lips, his fingers digging into my hips before moving upward to cup the back of my head.
It’s a sea of sadness and passion all mixed together, and he doesn’t even know it as the kiss grows deeper and more demanding. The ball in my chest tightens, expanding, consuming me as I undo the button of his jeans and pull the zipper down.
“Birdie,” he rasps, catching my wrist.
“You will always be a good person,” I tell him. “Who deserves so much better than what he’s gotten. One day, I hope you see that.”
His throat bobs with a thick swallow.
Peeking at him through my lashes, I dare to close the distance between us, wrapping my hand around him until he jerks. I let him watch me as I stroke him through his boxers, fascinated by how he grows in my palm.
Leaning forward, I press a tentative kiss against one side of his mouth, then the other. My lips trail downward, nipping his jaw and then the column of his throat as I keep moving my hand.
A breath stirs when I slide to the truck floor, nervously peeking up at him as I free him. One palm wrapped around his base, I lean forward and hear him suck in a breath right before my lips experimentally cover the tip.
One of his hands goes to the back of my head as I take my time with him, not guiding me, simply resting there as if he needs to be grounded. I can feel his eyes on me, so I angle my head up while still keeping him in my mouth.
Banks cusses, shaking his head before pulling me away and tugging at my jeans.
“Did I do something wro—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence,” he cuts me off, somehow undressing the bottom half of me quicker than I ever could.
I gasp when he pulls me back onto his lap and crushes his lips against mine before his fingers do a dance of their own between my thighs until I’m panting into his mouth.
From there, it’s a frenzy.
Everything is clouded by lust, and everything that happened today gets pushed to the side the second I feel him nudge against me before slowly, torturously, sliding in.
He helps me set a pace, showing me what to do from the position I’m new to. Not controlling but giving me everything I need to take the moment.
And I take it. Because I need it. Need him. Need this. I need this to last. To savor it. To enjoy it, knowing it’s bound to end. Every touch sets me on fire, and every murmured word between hungry kisses fuels it.
When I lean down to kiss him, he presses me against his chest and meets my hips to go deeper. The full feeling still offers a bite of pain, but nothing that his gentle touches along my body can’t distract me from. His tongue grazes mine, tasting me, testing me the same way his fingers are as they tease the sensitive spot above the apex of my thighs.
My stomach tightens as he plays with me, causing my movements to become jerky and uneven above him, which Banks doesn’t seem to mind at all. He simply holds me against him with one arm around my waist and pumps his hips up again and again and again until—
The noise he makes as he buries his head into the crook of my neck causes stars to burst in my eyes. Head tilting back, I can feel him twitching inside me as our harsh breathing mixes in the otherwise silence of the steamy truck cab.
I stay like that for what feels like forever, not wanting to move. Not wanting to let go.
Let go, let go, let go.
My heart starts thundering for reasons outside what we’ve just done, remembering what I told his father, the words echoing like I yelled them into a tunnel until they’re deafening.
Eventually, I pull away to see him staring at where we’re still connected. “I didn’t use protection.”
I stroke his face, hoping to comfort him. The last thing we have to worry about is a child, but I don’t bother with that reassurance. “It’s fine.”
“You’re on…?”
I nod, suddenly grateful for all those talks Mom forced me to have.
At least it doesn’t make me a liar.
This time.
“If driving lessons end like this every time, we should schedule one again soon,” he muses as the two of us put ourselves back together.
Biting my lip, I buckle into the passenger seat as he opens the windows to clear the steam. I’m lost in thought, leaning against the glass when he says, “Go out with me.”
My ears ring as I keep my face turned away.
If you can’t love him the way he deserves, the best thing you can do is let him go.
Slowly, I turn to him and say the only thing that I can. The only thing that’s fair to him.
I say, “No.”
“Birdie?”
“Take me home,” I whisper, unable to meet his eyes. It’s the choked “Please” that makes him put the truck into drive after a long, tense moment.
We’re a few minutes down the road when he breaks the tense silence. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out.”
That’s the thing. We can’t. “You’re going to ruin everything,” I whisper.
The truck slows. “What are you talking about?”
I can’t look at him. Not if I’m going to get through this. “We said casual. That was all I wanted.”
He’s quiet. Too quiet. Then, “You’re serious.”
Did he think I was kidding? “You said you liked the simplicity of casual. There were no expectations. It was easy. I need easy.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
He stops the truck in the middle of the road, not caring about whom he may block. “Because why ? Talk to me , Sawyer.”
“I don’t want to talk. I don’t want…” It hurts to swallow, my fingers going up to brush the swollen lymph nodes that remind me why I have to do this. “I didn’t want feelings or complications. That’s why I wanted this. That’s why I wanted you .” My voice breaks on the last word, and I hope he chalks it up to anger and nothing more—not the lie that it tastes like.
“If you didn’t want conversations or feelings, then maybe you should have entertained Dawson when you had the chance,” he replies coolly.
“Maybe I should have,” I agree emptily, my eyes going back to the window. “It would have been easier than this.”
“You would have been miserable.”
Aren’t I miserable now?
“Misery loves company,” I answer.
“And Dixie? What about her?”
I never would have intentionally hurt her, which is why Dawson was never an option. Even if he was the easiest one. He could have offered me the mindless fun I needed because I would have never fallen. If Dixie wasn’t a part of my life, maybe I would have thought of him as a choice.
Banks doesn’t need to know any of that.
“None of that matters, does it?” I say.
You don’t matter is what he hears.
He tries to talk. To argue.
But I shut down.
Shut him out.
My hand rests under my jaw, the swollen lymph nodes pressing on my throat.
In my head, I hear the clock.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
It’s better this way.
For him.
Only him.