24. Haven
Chapter 24
Haven
I didn’t expect him to go down the first time. I sure as shit didn’t expect the second time either.
But I’m running on instinct now. Fueled by a primal rage I didn’t even realize was percolating under the surface until I stared into the eyes of my best friend and saw how much he despised me.
And that fucking pisses me off, because he makes out like I killed his first born child or something.
I was sixteen when my dad left town. It happened a few days after my birthday, a few days after I saw Kai. If I’d known it would be the last time I’d see him, things would have been so much different.
I would never have sent that letter, the one I submitted for Professor Rooke’s assignment.
I WISH I NEVER MET U
I FUCKING HATE U
BURN IN HELL
I didn’t have a say in the move. God, I didn’t even get to pack my shit. My dad shoved me in the car and drove us out of Agony Hollow like the fucking devil was on our heels.
It took me a few months to realize how true that was.
My meth head dad had wracked up an awful amount of debt with his dealer. If we’d had anything left to sell, he’d probably have pawned it. But there was never money to replace anything, like ever, so his only option was fleeing.
I wish I’d had some kind of warning. Kai would have come up with a plan. We could have run away to the beach and gotten married like we’d always wanted to.
But maybe my dad knew somewhere in the still functioning parts of his meth-addled brain that, given any notice, I’d run for the hills.
Hillside, to be exact.
Because that’s where Kai was living by then.
The Jordan’s got lucky. Somehow, they escaped Riverside’s sticky web.
I thought I’d escaped too, when we moved to Ashwood.
Who knew hell had a basement?
I tried to stay in touch with Kai, even after I sent that awful letter. Told him where I’d moved to, and how much I hated the tiny one-bedroom apartment. How the stink of fried fish from the corner shop below got into every inch of that place, even my clothes.
I told him about my dad nearly ODing. Twice.
How much I hated my new school, because I was really struggling to concentrate, and everyone kept calling me Fish for Brains.
But I didn’t tell him what my uncle tried to do every time my father left the two of us alone. How it got so bad that I stopped coming home after school. That I would wait at the bus stop until midnight, hoping everyone would be asleep when I let myself inside the apartment.
That, some nights, my wish came true. But not always.
Not always.
All those letters. All those apologies.
And Kai only ever wrote back once.
A reply to my hateful letter.
Two lines, scrawled so hastily, so savagely, it almost tore the paper.
FUCK ME?
FUCK YOU!
So, yeah, when Kai calls me a fucking slut and wants to walk away like he’s dusting his hands of me…I get mad.
I get so mad, I don’t even know what I’m doing until it’s done.
Jerking his ankle, sending him sprawling to the grass, getting even more stains on his expensive white sweater.
Scrambling over to him on hands and knees like a crazy person.
Clawing at him. Possessed.
He probably thinks he looks so hot with his sleeves pushed up like that.
And he does.
He looks fucking gorgeous in white.
And that just makes me furious.
I think of every letter I sent that he never answered. How my heart would flutter when I got to the mailbox, and how my stomach would sink when I found it empty.
“Fuck you, Kai!” I wail in a strangled, choking voice. “I hate you!”
I think he was too surprised to react when I pulled him onto the grass, but now he’s coming back to reality.
His green eyes glitter with malice as he knocks away my clawed hands. “Stop!”
“Fuck you!” I don’t know if I’m sobbing or howling or what the fuck is going on with me. It feels urgent, raw, so fucking deep.
Like inside my soul deep.
His arm comes up to block me, and I clamp down with my teeth. He tries to shake me off, yelling when I don’t let go.
I taste blood, can feel hair between my teeth. And that just makes me clench even harder.
“Jesus, fuck!” He kicks, rolls, our legs tangle. “Get off!”
Still I hold on.
It’s only when my back slams into something, and my jaw unlocks for a gasp of pain, that Kai can rip his arm free.
His face contorts with rage as he pushes to a stand, towering over me again.
Always fucking dominating.
It was a tree I hit. My fingers scrabble against the bark as I scramble to my feet so I can punch him, kick him, fucking hurt him.
But he’s not waiting for me to attack anymore. He’s going on the offensive.
Kai grabs my hair and yanks my head up.
The pain is effervescent.
All I can manage is a whimper. My hands latch onto his wrist, the rest of my body following meekly as he slowly forces me to stand.
“Fuck me?” he whispers, his eyebrows darting up at the fucking audacity. “Fuck me ?”
He twists his fingers in my hair, and I’m on my toes with a yelp. Tears leak out of my eyes, but if he sees them, he doesn’t fucking seem to care.
“Nah.” He laughs quietly. “Fuck you .”
It’s not the cruel twist of his mouth.
Or the tremor in his arm.
Those don’t frighten me.
It’s when he glances over his shoulder, scanning the campus garden to make sure we’re alone.
No witnesses.
That’s when I realize I’ve pushed him too far. That whatever happens next is something that could have been avoided had I only crawled out of here on hands and knees, whimpering and begging for forgiveness like the meek little slut he wants me to be.
Forgiveness for what?
Being his friend?
Keeping him company?
Not telling anyone how his brother used him as a punching bag and his parents didn’t care?
Wanting to give him the one precious thing I had, then being pissed off when he didn’t want it?
Loving him?
The tears are really flowing now. It’s not all physical pain anymore. This runs deeper.
“Kai, please…”
He turns back to me, a wild light in his eyes that makes my heart patter frantically, desperately, in my chest.
“Kai—” I cut off with another yelp of pain as he uses the grip in my hair to drag me around the tree.
He slams me against the trunk so hard, leaves flutter down around us. Dragging his hand out of my hair, he grabs my face, eyes darting to my lips.
“Shut your filthy slut mouth,” he pants.
Again, his eyes flicker away. Searching.
My heart is going a thousand beats per second now.
“Stop, please, Kai, don’t?—“
His slap sends my head spinning to the side, my mind reeling. Then he’s gripping my face again, his nails digging into the soft flesh of my cheeks. My eyes are drawn to the row of not-nearly-symmetrical-enough teeth marks on his arm. To the rivulets of blood trickling down, staining his white sweater.
But as soon as he speaks, my gaze flashes back to him as if summoned.
“You fucked my head up,” he whispers, his voice so soft, so low, he sounds lost in the woods in the dark. “I wanted you back. I wanted you to stay gone. I was so fucking confused.” His eyes flinch to slits, then widen with an intensity that makes my stomach churn. “I could never stop thinking about you, Haven.”
Again, his eyes drop to my mouth. His thumb swipes over my bottom lip, then back. Pauses in the middle.
And he presses, presses, until it feels like he’s pushing my teeth out of their sockets. Bark scrapes the back of my head. I can hear my hair crunching between my skull and the tree.
My hands come up, flattening against his chest, trying to push him away.
Useless.
So I slide them up, wrap my fingers around his throat.
I can feel his pulse. Throbbing. But my fingers don’t touch. His neck is too thick. Muscle and bone and windpipe I can’t damage.
His thumb invades my mouth, bringing with it a bitter-sweet hint of grass. Skin slightly rough, mostly warm.
He leans his hips forward, crushing them against mine. “Try it. You might just like it.” Which is confusing as fuck, because now I can feel his cock. A rigid length digging into my pubic bone.
Is that what he’s talking about?
“I’ve strangled someone before,” he says, so matter of fact, my knees want to give in. “It’s hard work, Heavenly. I kept at it as long as I could, but it didn’t get the job done.”
My eyes flutter as I squeeze his throat.
He lifts his chin, eyes flashing down at me, daring me.
So I squeeze harder, and harder. Harder.
I could teach courses in compartmentalizing. Run masterclasses. I’ve been doing it all my life.
I’m only now, right now, realizing how I’ve been repressing. A hundred million thoughts bubble to the surface of my mind as I try to strangle the life out of Kai, because fuck him, I was ready to give him everything, and he just fucking ghosted me.
“Don’t hold back,” he says, and then his other hand is on my stomach, curling around my side, sliding down my ass. “Kill me. If you can.”
I grimace, my arms shaking as I strain to tighten my grip, but his face isn’t even turning red.
“Yeah, just like that,” he murmurs. “Nice and tight.”
He ducks, his hand darting between my legs from behind. If his thumb hadn’t been pressing down on my tongue, my squeal would have been much louder.
I try to knock him away, but then he has me by the throat, and I can’t even take a breath. My hands claw uselessly for his face, punch his waist. But he has me pinned with one fucking hand.
And all the while, he’s staring down his nose at me like I’m every bit the poor, needy slut he thinks I am.
“Kai!” My voice is hardly loud enough to carry past the tree line, but I still try to reason with him.
Or maybe I’m just antagonizing him so he’ll end it faster.
God knows, I haven’t always been Haven Shake-It-Off Lee. In my darkest days, those where I slunk home at midnight only to hear my uncle’s bed creak as he got up to greet me, those nights I prayed for death.
I don’t know what the hell I want now.
For it to end?
For it to continue?
For it never to stop?
Now that I can breathe, my body is coming alive again. Pin pricks in my fingers and toes to remind me I’m still here, that I can still fight. A slow, hard ache in my core. Taunting me.
Because I still want him, just like I’ve always wanted him.
Kai was my one and only. My everything.
And despite the hatred seething in his eyes, the bittersweet pain radiating through my chest, I never stopped wanting him.
It explains why, when he uses his stranglehold to lift me up against the tree, that I barely struggle.
That, when he growls, “Spread ‘em,” and jerks my thighs apart, that I let him.
And I don’t hesitate to wrap them around his waist, because he might just throttle me, or he might just fuck me.
I don’t know what I deserve.
Or what I want.
But he doesn’t give me the choice.
I never had a choice, not now, not when we played in the woods. And I liked that, because I’d spent most of my short life deciding for everyone else, including myself.
Kai gave me the freedom to just be.
My eyes flicker closed when he drags the hem of my sundress up my thighs. They fly open again when he sinks his fingers in, deep enough to dimple. Hard enough to bruise.
The hand around my throat tenses and relaxes as his attention shifts. His green eyes dart from my lips, to my throat, to my heaving chest, to where he’s clamping down on my leg.
“When did you become such an obedient mutt?” he muses to himself as he drags his fingernails up my inner thigh. They’re not long, not sharp, but he still leaves deep scratches behind that burn like hell.
When he shoves his hand between my legs and clamps down on my pussy, an electric thrill tears through me. I gasp, spluttering at his eyes dart back to mine and he tightens, tightens, tightens his grip on my neck.
I can’t speak anymore. He’s taken that from me, too.
Can’t object, can’t call for help.
Would I want to?
I’m holding onto his wrist, my fingernails digging in, drawing blood. I don’t remember when I grabbed him, only that my arms are tiring.
My legs shaking as I struggle to hold on to his waist.
He leans in, his breath a hot pant against the side of my neck as he uses the flat of his hand to rub my pussy. Back, forth, the friction driving me insane.
I grab his hair, yank at his head. His neck bends willingly enough, but the vicious gleam in his eyes is all the warning I get before he punishes me for interfering with his game.
He scrapes aside my underwear and shoves two fingers inside me so suddenly, so violently, that I gasp despite his strangling grip. My body bucks, but I’m not trying to get away.
I’m pushing him in deeper.
And then I’m rocking, hips arching, desperately chasing a growing ache burning inside me.
“You trying to come before I choke you out?” The tendons in Kai’s neck stand taut as he stares down his nose at me. “Yeah, I like the sound of that game. Let’s play.”
He steps back, and I lose my grip around his waist. My feet thump back onto the uneven ground, one ankle almost twisting as it lands on the edge of an exposed root.
Kai lets me take one sweet breath, then his hand is pinning my throat against the trunk again. I grab his wrist on instinct, but he tsks me with a shake of his head.
He holds up the hand he had between my legs, spreads his fingers.
“Look how fucking wet you are,” he says, glancing at the sticky web spanning between his fingers.
I shudder as he sticks those fingers in his mouth, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks. When he pulls them out, they’re soaked in saliva.
That wetness streaks my skin as he puts his hand up my skirt and tugs my underwear down to my knees.
I try to twist my thighs, but it doesn’t matter to him. Neither does clamping my legs closed. He shoves the blade of his hand between them anyway and twists, wrenching me open.
The hand around my throat tightens.
“Ready…set…go,” he whispers.
My eyes roll into my head when he rams his fingers inside me.
“Yeah, you love being manhandled, don’t you? Pretending you’re the flowers and chocolates, making love by the fireplace kind of girl when all you want is someone to use you like they lost the receipt.”
The sound of his fingers slamming home drowns out everything, even the furious thump-thump of blood in my ears.
Heat builds on my face. Blood getting trapped. Air stagnating in my lungs. Prickles dance over my cheeks, down my arms.
But those sensations are faint, barely there compared to the wild, furious jolts of pleasure he sends into my core with each hard thrust of his hand.
Faster and faster he fingers me, until there’s a new heat building, and it’s between my legs, and I’m chasing it like a dog after a ball.
“Open your fucking eyes and look at me when I use you.”
My eyes flutter, but I force them open because I’m as curious as he is.
“There she is,” he murmurs, scanning my face, but locking back onto my eyes as his hand speeds up even more. I’m going numb in the most delicious, awful way. “Feels good when I hurt you like this, doesn’t it?”
My eyes roll up again. My hands fall away from his wrists. That numbness is spreading, moving through my body in a wave. The ache becomes a burn, an itch, a desperate, clawing urge to tip over the edge and fly.
Or fall to my death.
Kai ducks forward, his mouth by my ear. There’s a pinch, as if he bit my earlobe, but it’s distant, phantom.
“Hurry up and come, slut,” he hisses. “I don’t think you’ve got a lot of air left in those tiny lungs of yours.”
He’s right, but I don’t give a fuck anymore.
I’m blissed out, strung out, so fucking high on the thought that my one and only, my ever true love, is giving me what I’ve wanted since the moment I laid eyes on him.
That our souls are so entwined that he knows what I need without having to ask.
That he loves me enough to do this for me.
My lower body shakes, the rest of me limp as the last of my air is eaten by my starving lungs.
“Fucking come.” His voice echoes through a dark and hollow place inside me. I think I smile, but maybe that’s just in my head.
My lower back thumps into the tree as his fingers spur me on. I’m groaning, grunting like a fucking animal, but I don’t hear a sound.
It’s so silent. So quiet. Just the fiery ache, the tingling numbness, spreading, spreading.
God, I’m so fucking close.
“Haven, you gotta fucking come.”
Something brushes my asshole. A slick finger, warm and hard.
“Yes.”
But there’s no sound.
I open my eyes, but it’s still dark.
Yes. Do it. Finish me. End this.
“Haven!”
I gasp as air surges into my lungs. I’m on my side, face pressed to the ground. Grass-stained sweatpants. Kai kneeling.
“Look at me?—
…when I use you…
—Haven. Please!”
Another huge, spluttering breath. I tilt my face, gaping up at Kai.
I was so fucking close.
He flinches when I grab his wrist, but does nothing to stop me when I roll onto my back and shove his hand between my legs.
My voice sounds like a chain smoker’s when I rasp out, “I wasn’t fucking done.”
The shock on Kai’s face sends an invisible whip crack through me. He rips his hand away, staggers to his feet, throws a look around like he doesn’t have a fucking clue where he is, and then he runs.
He fucking runs .