twenty-three
3 MONTHS LATER
Rumor Has It… A certain blogger who reached celebrity status by graduation is going on tour with a former rebel boy’s new band! Watch for a brand-new blog full of juicy tales, and as always, check back here to see what Drops of Tea I spill along the way!
Gloria Walton
“I can just walk around out there?” I ask, balking at the door.
“Of course.” The blue-haired woman smiles up at me, her eyes sinking into the wrinkles on her face. I think about what my mother would have said, if I was still her daughter and she still cared enough about me to tell me to take care of my skin and use sunscreen and night cream—or enough to show up at my trial. I smile back at the woman. I hope life gives me reasons to laugh until I have all those wrinkles on my face too.
I step out the door into the sultry, suffocating blanket of summer heat. The buzz of crickets and cicadas drones as low and long as the slant of sunlight over the manicured lawns and giant oaks. For one brief moment, I think I see Spanish moss swaying from the branches, but it’s just a trick of the light dappling the ground with the leaves’ shadows. Savannah is far away, far behind me. I no longer cling to the hope of going back. I can never go back from the things I’ve done.
“I can just be out there with all these people?” I ask, gesturing to the few blankets scattered before us, a few people in the shade, others soaking up the last rays of evening sun. “How do you know I won’t hurt someone?”
“They said you were unlikely to reoffend,” says the woman whose nametag reads Ruth . “That’s why you’re here. Now go on, get some fresh air. It’ll be good for—”
“How do I know when to come back?” I ask, gripping the door so she can’t close it. Suddenly, I’m terrified to be alone after three months of craving just a moment of solitude to think or reflect or just be. Guards and other inmates were always watching, psychiatrists asking questions, lawyers prompting another recitation of the answer we had to give on the stand.
“Whenever you like,” the woman says with a patient smile. “Dinner’s at six in the dining room, but many of our residents prefer to eat alone. You can put in an order with the kitchen until ten if you prefer solitude or have special dietary needs. We provide you with a suggested schedule, but the only requirement is that you attend all your doctor’s appointments.”
“And my shrink,” I remind her.
“That’s one of our doctors, dear.”
“Sorry,” I mumble. “It’s just so… Free.”
“Most things are, compared to where you’ve been.”
“Right,” I say with a little laugh, releasing the door. “Sorry.”
“Try to relax,” she says, giving me a gentle smile. “You’ve been through a lot. Remember, this isn’t a punishment. You’re here to heal.”
“Right,” I say again. “Thank you, Ruth.”
She holds out a picnic blanket, but I shake my head, and she tucks it under her arm. “Enjoy your walk,” she says. “And welcome to Cedar Crest.”
I stand in the thick, lush grass for a minute, and then I slip off my shoes so I can feel it under my toes. It’s obviously watered plentifully every night, or it would be dried up and withered by this time of year. I start to walk, the warm, silky sensation so alive under my feet I want to laugh out loud. But that would probably make people stare, and I had enough of that the past few years—and the past few weeks in the courtroom.
My trial was expedited, and it’s only by some miracle I ended up here instead of McPherson. Actually, I should credit my fancy, top-notch lawyer instead of a miracle. Instead of the public defender I expected, Faulkner’s best defense attorney showed up and informed me she was taking my case. I’m still not sure how that happened, since my family couldn’t have paid for her even if they hadn’t disowned me, and I sure as hell hadn’t saved enough at the club to afford Vivienne Swift. She assured me she had been paid, though.
At first, I thought it was Harper using Royal’s money to make some kind of amends for the shit he did to me, but she insisted it wasn’t. Which left me to wonder, eventually settling on the legal fees being guilt money from the Norths. It’s hard to picture them all hanging out at a barbecue, but Harper says they have close ties with the highbrow attorney who graduated top of her class at Harvard Law a few decades ago. Then again, when you’re the leader of a gang, you probably need the best defense attorney money can buy.
I come to a path of smooth river stones with ornamental plants along it, but I veer around, keeping my bare feet in the grass. I’ve heard of Cedar Crest plenty, but I didn’t realize how huge it was. It’s a whole complex, with different wings for different types of patients—or “residents,” as the staff calls us. Most of the residents are voluntary commitments, though one or two are probably here through court mandated sentences like me.
After ten minutes or so, I’ve reached the south side of the building. I come over a small swell and see, halfway down, a lone figure sitting on a picnic blanket. For a moment, I think it’s him, and my heart beats wildly, a caged bird battering itself against the bars of my ribs.
I shake the thought away. Of course it’s not him. Now that I’m not in a jail cell, I’ll have to get used to seeing him everywhere, his face around every corner, in every crowd. The loss of him will haunt me like a ghost until my dying day.
To prove to myself I’m not insane like they said in my trial, that it’s just some rando with blond hair pulled back at the nape, I march down the hill toward him. I’m standing over him before I comprehend the truth.
He turns, squinting up at me against the murky sunlight. He shades his eyes, as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing either. Finally, a slow smile spreads over his face. “Hey, Lo.”
“Colt,” I breathe, taking a step back, dual urges to fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness and to turn and flee warring inside me.
He looks me up and down, and my hand goes to my middle, as if one small hand can cover it all—the shame, the fear, the relief to find a valid excuse for what I did, the guilt for doing it, the months of having to tell lawyers and judges and a courtroom full of strangers and familiar faces alike the things I’ve done, the ways I crumbled and pieced my broken shards back together and finally snapped under the pressure of it all. And then to have it all thrown in my face, scoffed at, made to look small, my words twisted and turned back on me, used as weapons, my experiences called into question, their validity mocked with eye rolls and incredulous tones, just the way I knew they would if I ever spoke them aloud.
I’m glad I kept most of my secrets, only giving them the bare minimum, enough for my attorney to defend me but not enough to bring the Dolces’ wrath down on me.
Once, I thought I saw him there, in the crowd. But I couldn’t be sure through the tears.
I’m sure it’s him sitting before me now, in the last place I expected to find him. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. He always finds a way to invade my life, my heart, my dreams and my reality. We are tied together, inextricably bound, and cutting the stitch that held me to Dixie didn’t sever our connection. Of course it isn’t that easy.
He scoots over and pats the blanket beside him. “Sit.”
I sit.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, finally getting my wits about me.
“Would you believe me if I said I was visiting my mom?”
I glance around. “I mean… I don’t see her.”
He laughs quietly. “She’s in long-term care in another wing of the building. Though Dad’s been talking about bringing her home now that he knows she’ll be safe there. She’ll have to have a full-time nurse, but it won’t be so bad. Maybe she’d like to sleep in her own bed again.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, swallowing past the trembling sickness in my throat.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of her the past month,” he says. “I didn’t want to visit her for so long, but after talking to your mom…”
He glances sideways at me, and my throat closes. “Why would you talk to my mom?” I croak.
“I wanted to find out what happened to your car.”
“June Bug,” I whisper, my eyes aching with unshed tears.
“Yeah,” he says with a grin, leaning back on one hand. “That’s a badass little car. I thought maybe she’d sell it to me.”
“And?”
“No offense, but your mom’s kind of a cunt.”
I let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah.”
“Made me realize my mom’s not so bad,” he says. “I don’t blame her for what she did. Sure, she doesn’t know who I am now, but maybe she will. And if she does, I don’t want her to remember that I’m the son who never visited her, and to think I didn’t care.”
“That’s really sweet, Colt.”
“Nah, it’s selfish,” he says with an easy grin. “I just don’t want to look bad.”
“My car?” I ask, swallowing past the ache.
“Your mom didn’t have it,” he says. “It went to auction.”
I nod, unable to speak.
“So, how long you in for?” Colt asks.
“A year,” I whisper.
He lets out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s a long time to wait.”
“Better than prison,” I point out.
“True.”
“Why are you really here?”
“Rehab,” he says. “Detox. Whatever you want to call it. Turns out getting sober is a lot harder than I expected.”
“I’m sorry I ran over your girlfriend,” I blurt out, swiping at a stray tear that escaped.
“When a dog goes mad, you put it down,” he says. “Somebody had to do it.”
I laugh through my tears. “You don’t hate me?”
“Why would I hate you?”
“Because she’s your girlfriend.”
“No, she’s not,” he says, giving me a funny look. “She wasn’t then, and she isn’t now. I haven’t talked to her since she was in the hospital, when I went to apologize for everything I did and get the ring back and put it all behind me.”
Guilt twists inside me, and I stare down at my fingers in the grass at the edge of the blanket. “I didn’t mean it, Colt. It was like I lost my mind when I thought I’d lost you. I don’t know what happened.”
“What happened is you endured years of trauma, followed by your brother dying, your family kicking you out, and the entire school turning on you and bullying you, led by Dixie. You snapped. That’s what they said in court.”
“You were there?” I ask, raising my eyes to his, halfway hopeful and halfway mortified.
“A few days,” Colt admits. “Until I checked myself in here.”
I grimace at the thought of what everyone in Faulkner is saying about me. They treated me like a murderer even though I didn’t hit her hard enough to break a single bone. She sustained a lot of bruising, including bone bruises, and had a mild concussion from her head slamming down on the hood of my car. I saw the headlines: “Cheerleader from Hell,” and “God Save the Prom Queen” and others graced the front page for weeks.
Of course Dixie milked it for all it was worth, posting all over social media that I tried to kill her, sensationalizing her victimhood and my evil intent. Among all the scandals that rocked Faulkner this year, it was close to the top. But people got bored after a month or so, since I couldn’t respond or fight back. Still, she grew her platform, vilified me, and made the news, which must have made her happier than she’s ever been. I assumed Colt was part of that.
“She said you got back together,” I whisper, my heart opening like a chasm. “She had a picture of you in bed with her.”
“We were together for three years,” Colt says. “She has lots of pictures of us in bed together. Doesn’t mean we were together then. Or now.”
“Wait… So… I ran over her for nothing?” I ask, swiping at my tears.
“Well, I wouldn’t say it was for nothing,” he says, cracking a grin. “It sent a pretty clear message not to mess with what’s yours.”
I swallow so hard I can’t speak.
“I mean, not a single girl flirted with me at graduation,” he says, looking wounded. “Not even Dixie.”
“But… She said she got me fired and kicked out of Yale. Do you think it was all a lie?”
“I’m sure it was.”
“Damn,” I say, sniffing up my tears and sitting back on one hand like he is. “I guess she really is smarter than me. She got me to do the dirty work for her. And I stepped right into her trap and self-destructed without her having to lift a finger.”
“I don’t think she anticipated you hitting her with your car,” he says. “She’s not that self-sacrificing. She would have waited until I got there and pushed me in front of the car if she knew you were going to go full psycho.”
“Hey,” I protest. “Too soon.”
He shrugs and shoots me a grin. “If you can’t laugh at yourself, someone else will.”
“That’s for sure,” I mutter. “You think I really got fired?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m not sure there’s a big market for strippers here.”
I roll my eyes. “Seriously, though. Scarlet testified at my trial as a character witness. She must not hate me too much.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” Colt assures me. “In fact, she said she’d come visit if you were up for it.”
“Okay,” I say, tugging at the grass. “It’s not like I have family coming on visiting days. I might as well.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“So, if Dixie was lying about all of it… You think Yale would still be interested in a chick who ran over another girl for stealing her man?” I ask, wiggling my toes. “I mean, I’m pretty much the white trash poster child at this point. Maybe I could write an essay about it.”
“I don’t know about Yale, but I’m interested in her,” he says, leaning his shoulder against mine and smiling down at me.
“Colt…” I look away, my pulse fluttering in my throat.
“I know,” he says. “We both have a lot of work to do on ourselves. But I’m going to do it, Lo. I want to be the man you deserve.”
“I don’t deserve you,” I point out.
“You deserve better,” he says. “But I’m going to change that. I’m going to get my shit together while you’re in here. I’m going to wait for you, and when you get out, I’m going to be there, Lo. I’m not going anywhere. You’ll see.”
“It’s a whole year,” I remind him. “That’s a long time to wait.”
“Not for you,” he says. “I’ve waited three years for you, and I’d wait three hundred more if that’s what it took.”
“What if I change, and you don’t like me anymore?” I ask. “I won’t be the same person after a year here.”
“I won’t be the same in a year, either,” he points out. “But we get to choose to love each other, no matter who we become.” He leans in, slowly winding my hair behind my ear. “Just like we’re doing now, even though we’re both different than we were a year ago.”
“I loved you then, too,” I admit. “It was always you, Colt. I always would have chosen you if I could have. And now that I can, I’ll always choose you, and I’ll keep choosing you every single day until forever.”
“It was always you for me, too, Butterfly,” he says. “Even when I didn’t know it. And it will always be you.” He slides his hand behind my neck, pulling me in. His lips meet mine, soft and tender, and the last few months begin to disintegrate, the monotonous dread of each day crumbling to ash and disappearing on the breeze. The cold, heavy darkness lifts, and the light creeps back in, the sunshine of his smile against my lips bringing daylight to a darkness that would have lasted an eternity without him.
At last, he pulls away, his fingers fisting my hair. He smiles, his lips red from our kiss, his eyes dark with lust. “Now, my pretty whore, I want you to crawl for me until your knees are stained green and your pussy’s soaking the grass like dew.”
“Someone might see,” I whisper, my core throbbing with a dull ache at his words and the hunger they arouse in me, one that was all but forgotten the past few months.
“We have hours until bed check,” he says. “And I intend to spend every single one of them with my cock buried to the hilt inside one of your wet little holes.”
“Won’t we get in trouble?”
“You just told me I have to go a year before I can see your pretty pink pussy spread open and dripping for me again,” he says. “I don’t give a single fuck about getting in trouble. I’m going to wreck you so hard you feel it until release day. Now get on your knees and let me hear you calling me your king.”
He stands, dragging me by the hair until I fall forward on my hands with a cry. A growl of approval sounds above me, and he releases my hair and steps back into the grass.
“Now crawl, my demon queen.”
I crawl, and he steps backwards, making me follow him across the lawn on my hands and knees. My face is burning with humiliation by the time he leads me back to the blanket and stops.
“Now let me see your knees,” he says.
I sit up and lower myself to the blanket, letting my skirt fall around my hips so he can see my grass-stained skin.
“That’s my good girl,” he says, smiling down at me with approval. “Now pull aside your panties and let me see how wet that made your hungry little cunt.”
I glare at him, pulling aside my underwear and opening my lips so he can see the wetness pooling between them. I give my clit ring a little stroke, and a shudder of pleasure ripples through me. Colt growls and drops to his knees, throwing my legs over his shoulders. His tongue lathes from my ass to my clit in one long, rough stroke. He moans against my flesh, the vibration making my back arch. I fall back with a soft moan of my own, his name on my lips.
He grabs my panties and rips the fabric apart between my thighs, then spreads my knees wide. I tug my shirt down self-consciously, though I know my confidence always turned him on. A groan rumbles through him as he takes me in, though, and then he buries his face in me. Animal growls echo across the quiet green lawn as he feasts, sucking and biting and thrusting his tongue inside me until I cum, crying his name again and again.
At last, he rolls onto the blanket beside me and pulls me over to face him, planting a wet kiss on my lips that tastes like my release.
“Fuck, that was good,” I say, my breath coming in little gasps as I recover, my thighs still quaking with aftershocks.
“Don’t act like it’s over,” he says, giving my ass a firm slap. “I’m just getting started. Give me five minutes to catch my breath, and then I’ll have you screaming so loud you break every window in the place.”
“When is it my turn?” I ask, tracing my fingers down the front of his damp t-shirt and hooking them into his belt.
“When you’ve earned it.”
“And how do I do that?”
“By giving me as many as I want,” he says, pushing two fingers into my slippery opening. “Now fuck my fingers until I feel your cum running down my arm.”
“How many is that?” I gasp out, rocking my hips obediently.
“I’ll tell you when you can stop.”
He mashes his thumb down on my clit, and a whimper escapes me. He makes me cum again, and again, and again, until I’m begging him to fuck me and swearing I can’t go on. Then he makes me cum one more time, as if to prove he can, before he rolls me onto my side and kneels over me, holding my knees together and forcing his thick, pierced cock into me. He fills me so full I can’t hold back, and I give him another, whimpering at the sensation that’s so overwhelming it’s painful. It’s just what I need, the pain making me even hotter, and when he orders me to cum again as he slams into me a final time, his cock straining against my walls as he erupts into my core, I obey, a sob wracking my wrung-out body as I cum yet again.
At last, he lowers himself behind me, his body curling around mine.
“Atta girl,” he says, sliding a hand around me, resting it on my swollen belly. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to recover before I fill your mouth with cum until it pours down your chin and drowns you.”
“This doesn’t bother you?” I ask quietly, glad my face is turned away, and that darkness has fallen, so I don’t have to see him. I rest my fingers on the back of his hand, and he pulls me tighter against him.
“Does he know?” he asks.
“No.”
“Do you know—”
“No.”
“Could it be mine?”
“No,” I whisper, hating that I searched for hope in his question, that I think I heard it, if only a little.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his hand protective as it cups my round belly. “I’ll raise it as my own. I’ll love it like it’s mine because it’s yours. Ours, if you’ll let me.”
“I can’t have a baby,” I say into the dark. “I’m a mental patient, Colt. A convict. And you’re…”
“An addict,” he finishes grimly. “Yeah, probably not the best choice of parents, are we?”
“Maybe someday,” I say, rolling over and laying a hand on his cheek. “You’d make a good dad.”
“Someday,” he echoes, staring back at me with those deep, endless-sky eyes. They’re sad suddenly, hollow somehow, as if I can see the shadow of his craving in there, hear the echo screaming to be set free like the dragon inside me did.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” I say. “You could have a normal relationship, with a normal girl.”
“Except I’m not a normal guy,” he reminds me. “Who else is going to understand the shit I’ve been through besides you? Maybe we chose different paths to survive, but we know what it was like. No one else can really say that, can they?”
“Maybe you’re right,” I whisper. “Maybe someday, when we’re both in a better place, and we’re ready, we’ll find each other again. When we’ve healed enough to give a baby a fighting chance, maybe we’ll have one. And it’ll be ours, really ours, together. You’ll be the fun dad, and I’ll be the mean mom.”
“Sounds about right.” He smiles a little, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
I move my hand from his face, resting it on the thing forming inside me. “This… I think someone else needs this one right now. Someone who will love it in a way that I don’t have it in me to do. I think…” My breath hitches unexpectedly, and my throat tightens.
“What?” he asks, stroking my cheek and drawing my chin up. “Tell me.”
I can barely meet his eyes. “I think I’m a monster, like her lawyers said in court. I don’t want this inside me, Colt. Sometimes I want to cut myself open to get it out. It feels like it’s attacking me, like it wants to kill me. I know it’s all in my head, but sometimes I think… It’s evil.”
“Because it’s…”
“Maybe not,” I say, my lips trembling, shame burning through me as I list out the other possibilities. “It could be DeShaun’s, maybe even Rylan’s. I don’t know when it happened.”
“Not Maverick’s?”
“He was always careful,” I whisper. “Same as Cotton. I don’t think two forms of birth control failed. It has to be one of those four. I try to remember it’s innocent, that it’s not at fault. But it feels like a parasite, some foreign enemy invading my body against my will, like they did.” A tear spills down my cheek, and I can’t look at him anymore. “Sometimes I hate it.”
He slides an arm around my lower back, pulling my body tight to his and pressing his lips to my forehead. “You’re carrying your rapist’s baby,” he says. “I think you’re allowed to feel anything you want to about that.”
“But it’s not the baby’s fault,” I say. “Does that make me a monster too?”
“No,” he says, cradling my head against his chest. “A monster wouldn’t want to give it a better life with someone who would love it. You recognize that you’re not what it needs, but you still want to make it happy—and some family you don’t even know too. I don’t think that makes you a monster. I think it makes you the best mother you’re capable of being right now.”
My body shakes as I cry into his shirt for a long, long time. When I’m done, he lifts my leg over his hips and pushes into me again, and things go back to the way they were. I’m eager and ready for it, to think about something else, to be someone else, not any of the labels I’ve had slapped on me in my life. I don’t want to be a queen or a whore, a monster or a pregnant teenager, a victim or a villain, a disgrace or a tragedy. I just want to be a girl that a boy wants to fuck, pure and simple and innocent is that.
And for tonight, for a few more hours, Colt lets me be just that. He sees me, and he knows what I need, and he gives it to me. He makes me crawl and beg and cry out in pain and bliss, and he makes me cum, and afterwards, he cradles me as gently as a fragile butterfly in the strong, warm cocoon of his arms.
The next morning, I wake in a strange, new, white room with the blinding sun streaming through the window. The bed is cold beside me. All that’s left of him is a delicious ache between my thighs and in my throat, the grass stains on my knees, and the whisper he left in my ear as I slipped away.
Until next time.