Chapter 5 #4
"Sure. I mean, I'd try it once, at least. You don't know if you'll like something till you try it. I never thought I'd let anyone put anything in my bungus, but here we are. I let you put your finger all up in there, and I liked it. So yeah, if you asked me to, I’d eat your ass."
I shook my head. "Good to know, but no. Fingering? Yes. I'd let you finger me. But eating it? Nah. Even clean, that just seems like a good way to get, like, pink eye or…dysentery or whatever it is."
"I don't think it's dysentery. That's what you die of in Oregon Trail, and something tells me people weren't eating ass until they died on the Oregon Trail."
"Oregon Trail? Are you a fucking millennial now?"
He rolled his eyes at me. "When I was ten or eleven, Papa Lucas cleaned out a storage unit he'd been holding onto for, like, twenty years.
Lots of old shit in there from when Rem, Ram, and Rome were kids, including this old desktop computer.
He found out that it still worked, and he had all these old computer games, like on the big floppy disks from the olden days.
He brought it over to our house and showed us how to use it, and me and Dunc used to spend hours every weekend playing those old games.
Oregon Trail, Carmen San Diego, and this weird typing practice game with a rocket ship or something. "
"Okay, hold on. Who's Papa Lucas, and who are Rem, Ram, and Rome?"
"Oh, right. I forgot you don't really know my family. Papa Lucas is…um…technically my…great-uncle? I think? I gotta think about it. He’s basically my grandpa. My actual grandparents are all long gone, dead before I was even a twinkle in Dad's eye."
“Ew."
"Why ew?"
"Because a twinkle in your dad's eye means his eyes were twinkling because he was thinking about putting you inside your mama through his dick."
"Dude, Linz, what the fuck? That's not what that means."
"Sure it is, in a roundabout way."
"Well I'm not using the roundabout way." He shuddered. "I do not need that in my head, woman, Jesus. It's bad enough that my parents are all over each other like white on rice without you putting shit like that in my head. Thank fucking god I've never walked in on them."
I laughed. "I walked in on Mom once. Although, in my defense, she had her bedroom door open, and it was three o'clock in the afternoon in July, so she knew I was around, she just chose to let Barry Godwin bend her over her bed, anyway.
I walked in to see this skinny little bald dude with the dangliest ball sack I've ever seen in my life pounding her from behind.
That shit is seared into my brain. She was all splayed out over the foot of the bed, and skinny fuckin' Barry was drilling away at her like Ramjet the Rookie.
Mom turned to look at me, must've heard something, and just gave me the finger.
Barry didn't even know. Just kept on fucking. "
"Good lord."
“I swear, his balls hung halfway to his knees. It was like watching a pair of tube socks stuffed with baseballs swing back and forth."
Dane winced. "Thank you so much for that visual."
“He could've tossed them over his shoulder. Legit."
"Lindsey!"
"They were pink and hairy."
"Fuck me, woman, I get it. Shut the fuck up about the man's balls."
I dissolved into laughter. "I wish I was kidding! I just felt like if I have to have that in my head, then so do you."
He groaned. "You're demented. I could've gone the rest of my life without knowing that." He paused. "Wait, though. If he was facing away from you and standing up, then how could you see his balls?"
"He had his legs really far apart. They swung so far back each time he fucked her that they smacked him in the asshole."
"Dear god."
"I called him Long Balls Barry after that. He stopped coming around after a couple of weeks. Couldn't take the heat, I guess."
Silence.
"Linz, I…" he looked at me, frowning, sighed, and started over. "So now what?"
"Go home, Dane," I whispered. "You deserve someone who can…" I swallowed. "Someone who's not me. Someone that doesn't have a freight train a mile long full of trauma and baggage and bullshit."
"I don't like that answer," he murmured
"I know. But I can't be what you need. Not now. Maybe not ever. What I went through, Dane? You don't just get over it. You don't just…forget. It'll fuck me up the rest of my life."
"Maybe I'm willing to stand beside you anyway."
My eyes burned. "I don't know how to let you. I've told you more than I've ever told anyone other than Rune, and I'm barely keeping my shit together as it is."
"Linz, I—"
"I don't do feelings, Dane. I don't do tender and sweet. I don't do lovey-dovey."
"Recent events lead me to believe otherwise."
I rolled out of bed, taking the quilt with me, leaving Dane naked on the bed.
"I'm trying to be nice about this, Dane.
I'm trying like fucking hell to be nice to you.
If you were anyone else, you'd be gone already.
Most likely, you'd be on a plane back to Alaska, and you'd probably be crying because I was such a vicious bitch to you.
I can be like that. I'm kind of like a praying mantis or black widow.
Once I fuck a dude, I turn mean. That way, they leave me alone before I get hurt. "
He followed me across the room to the window, where I was standing with the blanket around my shoulders.
I saw him in the reflection—huge and hard, all sun-browned skin and rippling muscles and messy, sexy, I-just-had-my-hands-in-it hair.
"News flash, darlin'." He wrapped his arms around me from behind.
"You were mean to me for months. You screamed at me.
Ghosted me. Blocked me. Avoided me. Ghosted me again after the wedding.
Yet I still hunted your ass down despite all that.
And here I am, willing to keep taking the punishment. "
"Why?" I asked. "Because we had some good sex?"
"Was it really just good sex, Lindsey?" His voice was deep and commanding, now. "Was that really all it was?"
"No," I whispered, unable to lie about it.
"No," he agreed. "It was the best sex either of us has ever had, by an exponential factor. You know it, and I know it. But it was also more than that, Linz, and you know that too. I'm not here hoping for a repeat of the sex. If that was the case, we'd have fucked just now instead of what we did."
"Don't," I whispered, the word a breathy whine.
"You know it's true. If I'd given you the slightest hint, we'd have fucked." He put his lips to my ear. "You know you want it again every bit as much as I do."
"Stop, Dane. Please just—just fucking stop."
"But we didn't fuck, did we?" He wasn't stopping. “We just fooled around. But you wanna know something, sweetheart?"
"Not your sweetheart," I growled.
He ignored this too. "Fooling around with you, just now? That was more intimate and real than an all-night fuck-a-thon with anyone else." He nipped my earlobe. "Tell me I'm wrong."
I said nothing—and that said it all.
"Say I listen to you,” he said. “Say I walk out that door and go home. You think this would be over between us?"
I was breathing hard, now. Swallowing a hot knot. "Shut up."
"You can't forget me. You can't get over me."
"Shut the fuck up!"
"I'm under your skin. I'm in your heart, Linz. You fucking know it."
"You're wrong."
"I'm not. You can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to me." He grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and pushed me back against the window, the sill biting into the small of my back.
He cupped my face in gentle, powerful hands. His lips touched mine, teased, touched, slid—claimed. Hard. Fast. Deep. Just when I was about to soften into his kiss, he broke away.
Kept his hands framing my face. "You felt that, didn't you?"
"No."
"Liar." He slashed his mouth onto mine again, and kissed me until my heart pounded frantically and my knees shook and my belly flip-flopped. "Lie to me, Linz. Tell me you felt nothing."
"I felt nothing," I lied. "Not a single butterfly."
He yanked the blanket off of me and hurled it aside. His erection nuzzled my seam. "You want to try and fuck me out of your system, Lindsey?"
I whimpered. My hands lifted on their own and gripped his shoulders; I rested my forehead on his chest. "No."
"No?" He cupped my breast, bent, and sucked on my nipple until I gasped. "You sure?"
I shoved him away roughly, violently. "STOP IT!
" I screeched. "So the fuck what if I'm falling for you, Dane?
What aren't you understanding?" I stomped toward him and shoved him again; he let me push him, stepping backward, fully in control. "I can't love you! I’ve never been loved! I’ve never been anything but used and abused! Rune and her parents took care of me, sure. But that was as much pity as anything else. I have nothing to give you. Nothing!”
"Lindsey," he started.
I bent over the bed. "Is this what you want?
Take it. Take me! Fuck me! Use me, just like every other man has.
" I straightened and whirled on him. "Or no, wait—I've got that backward.
I use them, Dane. You know why? Because some fucked-up part of my brain thinks if I have enough sex with enough random dudes, maybe I'll somehow get over what Danny fucking Cohen did to me every fucking day for four fucking years!
I know I won't, but I do it anyway because I'm a dumb fucking whore!
I'm a dumb fucking whore with a useless fucking degree from stupid fucking Stanford.
I'll never amount to anything. I thought I could escape Boston, but I just brought my shit with me.
" I stepped into his space. "Hear me when I say this, and hear me well, Dane Badd: I—cannot—love you.
I know that's what you want. You want what your family has.
Good! You deserve that. You're a damn good man, Dane Badd.
But you won't get it from me. So yes. Go home and try to forget me. "
He gazed at me in sad silence for a long, long time. And then he bent, picked up his T-shirt—the one he was wearing yesterday—and tugged it over my head. Numb and confused, I let him put my arms through the sleeves. Helpless to stop myself, I lifted black cotton to my nose and inhaled his scent.
Fuck.
My nose stung.
My eyes burned.
"Go home, Dane," I whispered. "Try to forget me. Maybe in a different universe I could be what you want me to be, but…here and now? I just can't be that girl for you."
He let out a long breath through pursed lips. Nodded. "Okay. Okay."
He stepped backward, face crushed by sorrow, regret, wistfulness, anger, and hurt.
Without looking away from me, he got dressed.
Boxers, jeans, socks, shoes—last of all, he put on the white T-shirt I'd kept all this time.
The white T-shirt I'd been wearing for three days without washing—because it smelled like him.
It must smell like me, now…but B-O and pussy stank, not perfume.
He shoved his phone into his back pocket, swept his hand through his hair, messing it up even more. "I'll just ask one question."
I swallowed hard. "Fine. I'll answer one question. One.”
"Why—or how—did it stop?"
“He got arrested for rape and went to prison."
"Good riddance, then." He let out a breath. "Lindsey, I…" he covered his face with his hands for a moment, and then tried again. "I'll go. For now. But I'm not giving up on you. On this—on us."
"There is no us and never will be." My heart broke when I said that, because deep down, that's all I wanted.
I was telling the truth, though: I genuinely did not feel capable of love, giving or receiving. It was too scary. Too big. Too much for the pathetic ruins of my heart, which hadn't survived the trauma of my youth.
He stepped into my space, closer and closer until he occluded the whole world.
"Don’tkissme," I hissed, all in a rush. "Please. I can't take it."
He didn't respond. Cradled my face. Stared into my eyes. My heart broke and broke and broke and broke as I met his gaze, seeing the vast, incomprehensible scope of his feelings for me.
Still, he spoke not a word.
Instead of kissing my lips, he kissed my forehead.
Infinitely worse.
I shattered, then.
Wept.
Sobbed silently.
"Fuck you," I hissed.
"I know."
"You're ugly and stupid, and you have a tiny penis, and you couldn't find my clit with a map and a flashlight."
His laugh was a quiet sniff. "I know."
"I hate you," I breathed, chin on my chest, tears dripping down my cheeks. "I really, really, really fucking hate you, Dane Badd."
“I know. I hate you too." He kissed my forehead again, which was cruel and mean and horrible.
I watched his feet as he walked backward away from me. He reached the door, paused. I shut my eyes so I wouldn't risk looking at him. I might break again if I looked at him.
I'm doing this for him, after all.
“This isn't over, Lindsey."
"Fuck you," I whispered, barely managing that much. "I hate you. Leave me alone."
If this was a Disney movie, he'd be the wild wolf that followed me across the wilderness and protected me from other wolves and I'd be the plucky heroine throwing sticks at him to make him go back to his pack, yelling at him through my tears, but only because I loved him, and when you love someone, sometimes it means letting them go.
Alas, I'm no Disney heroine, just a stupid whore with a broken heart. Dane did remind me of a wolf, though. The shaggy brown hair, the deep brown eyes. Dangerous. Wild. Unpredictable.
I heard the door open, and my stupid whore eyes slid open.
Damn me, he was beautiful. So fucking beautiful. So kind. So funny. So sexy.
Such a lovely penis.
I really must be stupid, running him off like this.
It's for his own good, though.
Stupid whores don't deserve love.
He stood in the doorway gazing at me. His liquid brown eyes were soft and warm and full of sentiment. Affection. Understanding.
"I love you, Lindsey Snelling."
Click.
He closed the door and was gone, after dropping that nuclear bomb in my lap.
I collapsed to the floor, sobbing.
I miss Rune.
I hate my life.
I hate Dane Badd.
I hate everything.
Fuck.