Letter Twenty-Three #8
“Not my boyfriend,” I said. “And yeah, right.”
“You’ve no idea how many times I’ve turned someone down and rushed home to you, hoping to spend just a bit more time with you before bed.
Tonight? At Willoughby’s party? With that girl?
I barely heard a word she said, too worried about you, and how you were coping, and what Willoughby was probably doing to you in his room to keep your mind off things.
So stop giving me that murderous look, Wednesday. ”
Your confession pricked my heart. How could I be so awful and unfair to you?
You pushed your fingers across my cheek. “Don’t be like this,” you begged, dropping your forehead to mine. “None of those people have ever meant anything to me. You know me better than all of them. I’ve been more real with you than I’ve ever been with another person.”
My heart squeezed, and I so wanted that to be true, even if I didn’t deserve it. “But this can’t ever go anywhere, right?” I said, drawing back. “So maybe being real is pointless.”
“Ever is your word—not mine. I’ve told you: I need to sort myself out. To stop asking your dad to lie for me. To tell the Harrises the truth.”
“And what if it takes too long? Or what if, by the time you’re done, I’m with someone else?”
You shrugged. “You’ll break up with him.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you to assume. What if I’m in love with this guy?”
A look of pure indignation crossed your face. “Don’t even say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re meant to be with me. You and I are meant to be together.”
A laugh huffed out of me, despite the liquid-hot pleasure of those words coursing through my veins. “Again, that’s awfully presumptuous of you to assume.”
“I’m not assuming anything,” you said, blue eyes flashing. “I know. I feel it. Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t feel it, too.”
“Let’s say I do. Let’s say I want that. What happens when I get too real and you can’t handle it?”
“It’s you. I’ll be able to handle anything.”
“Anything? So if I had a drug problem, you’d be okay with that?”
You pinched the bridge of your nose. “You don’t have a drug problem, Elliot.”
Leaning back on the counter, I reached down between us and lifted my skirt. “No, but I have this problem.”
You swallowed hard at the sight of my lace underwear—at the lace garter belt, attached to the tights—but the second you clocked that huge purple mass on my hip, your expression changed, tightening with concern. Just like I knew it would.
“You did this to yourself?” you asked, lifting your gaze to my face.
“It makes me feel better. I said all that horrible stuff to my dad, and Halloween was coming up. And I”—I watched your face—“I needed it.”
You glanced down to study the bruise again. Then, so tenderly that a lump formed in my throat, you swept your fingers over the dark mass and whispered, “This isn’t okay.”
“No shit. It’s part of the reason I ended it with Willoughby tonight. He couldn’t handle this about me.”
“I’m not him. I get why you do this stuff. I don’t like it, but I understand it.”
“That’s impossible—even I don’t understand it, Casey. It’s messed up.”
“It isn’t the best way to cope, I’ll give you that. But there are worse ways.”
“But why this?” I whispered, voice breaking. “Why do I have to cope this way, while other people choose…better ways?”
“Other people drink until they pass out, or get high by putting toxic substances into their bodies, or completely isolate themselves from everyone—I’ve done all three, and those ways aren’t any better.
They hurt, too. Sometimes worse than this bruise.
You aren’t messed up. You’re just…human,” you said, looking deep into my eyes, still lightly skimming your fingers over my hip.
“I certainly wish you wouldn’t do it, but I don’t think any less of you because you do.
It doesn’t change the way I feel about you. ”
You’d not only soothed the sting of Willoughby’s rejection—you’d filled me whole with something else: acceptance.
Which is why I lifted up, grabbed your face, and pressed my lips to yours.
And when you kissed me back, that felt like acceptance, too.
Like something warm and rich flowing through my veins.
But this kiss wasn’t like the others. It was desperate and deep and definitely filthy, like you were trying to make a point.
We gave and took, didn’t we? We surrendered ourselves to the hot rush of letting go.
Of your hand slipping up my sweater and mine slipping into the waistband of your pants, needing you closer.
Of you pulling back, your breath hitching, and me flicking my tongue against your top lip.
Of you making some low guttural sound that shot off sparks in my body and me gasping at the stinging grip of your hand at my hip, your fingers digging into my bruise.
Of you dropping your mouth to my throat and me shivering as you dragged your tongue across my skin.
Of your fingers tangled in my hair, gently tugging, tiny pinpricks of pain rippling across my scalp.
And then you were pushing me back against the counter and shoving my skirt up again and dropping your mouth to a more tantalizing place: my hip, lips gently sweeping over the bruise.
You kissed it repeatedly, almost…reverently, fingertips grazing the lacy hem of my underwear, your other hand digging into my thigh.
I gasped, aching down low. You lifted up slowly, gaze scorching mine.
“What did you and Willoughby do in his room earlier?”
“We hung out.”
“Did you fuck him?”
I swallowed, heart spiking. “No.”
“Good.” You dropped your head again, and then your lips continued to roam.
The birthmark. You kissed it next. Kissed it more than once, tracing it again and again with your tongue.
And I ignored the little voice in my head saying I shouldn’t let you do that—after him.
But I let you go on doing it while I squirmed back on the counter, and you moved with me, still kissing, lips roaming dangerously close to the place I wanted them most. You tasted the crevice between my underwear and thigh with light flicks of your tongue, and I must’ve made a sound, because you did, too. Something low. Rough. Anguished.
“Casey,” I rasped, which you took as encouragement to keep going, when I’d actually meant for you to stop. You unlatched the garter belt straps from the tights, then hooked your thumbs under my panties and tugged.
“Casey.” I slipped my fingers through your hair, jerking close to your scalp. “Hey,” I said, fighting to catch my breath. Our gazes met over my heaving chest. “Come back here.”
I’m not sure what you saw in my eyes, but yours were wild and dark, nearly all the blue gone, blotted out by your desire for me.
“But I’m just getting started,” you said, lips parted, voice a husky drawl, a desperate yearning in your gaze that pierced straight through me, sharply digging in.
“What if my dad walks in?”
You stopped to think. “Right,” you said breathlessly, nodding. You took my arm and gently tugged me up, putting us face-to-face again. And maybe you saw it—some glimmer of what I felt—because your gaze quickly softened to one of concern as you took my face in your hand. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, pulling you into a hug. I buried my face in your shoulder. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” you asked, driving your fingers into my hair, clutching the back of my head.
“Yes.” But I wasn’t fine—not entirely. Being with you scared me.
You might want to take it much further on that counter.
You might want to give yourself to me and, selfishly, I would let you.
I would let everything light and good about you touch all the darkest places of me, and I would know, as it was happening, that I wasn’t worthy.
And, somehow, I’d ruin that, too—like I’d ruined the moment you’d chosen to be real with me.
I pulled back. “Can I get that cuddle you mentioned? And a scary movie?”
“Of course.” You planted a small kiss on the tip of my nose, effectively melting me inside, then held up my water bottle. “First, though, drink this.”
We chose something at random, a movie playing on TV.
One of the Scream movies—the second one, I think.
You leaned back against the pillows, pulling me down with you, wedging my body in the corner of the sofa.
I threw my legs over your lap. You threw your arm behind my back.
We turned the movie down low, and while we pretended to watch, I laid my head on your shoulder.
My scalp tingled as you gently raked your fingers through my hair.
In retrospect, it probably hadn’t been a great idea to choose a movie where people were being chased down and killed, because it all rushed back, sharply and violently: Greer’s hand around my throat.
That dead look in his eyes. The panic clawing through my chest as I fought to breathe.
I tried pushing those terrifying memories out of my head, and when I couldn’t, I gave voice to the most terrifying memory of them all. “I thought I was about to die.”
Your fingers paused in my hair. “When?”
“Last year. At this time. He was choking me, and I thought, Well, this is it. This is the end.”
“I’m so sorry,” you said, voice thick with emotion.
“I pictured everyone I loved, all my favorite moments with them, but I pictured you the most. Just you—there at the end—when I started to slip away. I regretted that I wouldn’t be here when you told John the truth, but my biggest regret was that I hadn’t told you how much you meant to me yet, or that my world was brighter for having you in it.
” You were quiet for so long that I pinched your cream t-shirt between my fingers and added, “It’s corny, I know. ”