24. Knox
CHAPTER 24
KNOX
Q uinn looks beautiful lying in my bed like that, with nothing but her bare body on display.
The evidence of last night is still marked on her skin: bruises littering her form, from her neck to her breasts, from her hip bones to the creamy inside of her thighs. I hadn’t left one inch untouched, more than eager to hear all of the different sounds she’d make for me while I traced her skin into the early hours of the morning, and after another around of raucous sex, she’d fallen asleep in the warmth of my arms.
Even with her comforting presence beside me, sleep evaded me.
I don’t want her to leave. Thanksgiving break begins later this week and now that I finally have Quinn, touched her, tasted her, fucked her, I don’t want to part from her. I can still taste her on my tongue, sweet and fresh, see the faces she made for me and hear the pretty noises that escaped her lips.
Last night must have been some sort of dream because it doesn’t seem real. How could I have taken out the girl that has been on my nerves all semester and found something that I actually liked? She showed me a side of her I haven’t seen before; the tenderness she displayed, the understanding, her acceptance of my apology I didn’t know I truly needed until I felt her tongue on mine.
She broke me down without even trying. I admitted things to Quinn that I don’t offer easily to others. Hell, Ace and Slate don’t even know the entire story of my accident, and somehow, I found myself admitting every fucking ounce of pain and frustration it brought me.
I still flinch when my friends come up to me and clap me on the shoulder in greeting. It was that exact motion my step-brother had given me right before he told my father the secret I’d been keeping. To this day, I still don’t know how Dick found out.
Quinn is a whirlwind of fresh air. She seems infatuated by the scars lining my body instead of disgusted, if the time she spent last night tracing every one of them with her tongue proved anything. She didn’t shy away. No, she had kissed them and caressed them, and until then I hadn’t realized just how much I missed the touch of someone else. Someone confident and tender like Quinn.
She means more to me than I thought she would.
I held her, long after my fingers began itching for the familiar feel of my charcoals. Wide awake, I snuck out of my bed and over to my desk, flipping through the sketchbook filled with drawings of her—the very same one that had her tearing up—to a fresh page.
I’d gotten lucky that she didn’t react poorly to what is essentially my shrine to her. Pages upon pages of drawings of her, in this single sketchbook that I normally keep hidden away on my shelf. How had I been so stupid as to leave it out? Right, because I was so fucking nervous about the exhibition that drawing was the only thing that could ease my racing mind and shaking hands.
The apartment is silent, has been all night from what I can remember. I don’t care if my roommates had heard us anyway. The amount of times I’ve overheard Slate taking a girl to “pound town” as he so aptly calls it, is astronomical with these thin walls. He's not shy about it, either, sometimes not even making it to his room before the apartment becomes a symphony of sex drenched sounds and creaking furniture.
Sleep wears on my body, trying to drag me down, but my mind is wide awake. Creative, is what I call it; insomniac, others might say. I won’t dare sleep a wink when Quinn is here to draw my attention. She sleeps so prettily with the morning sun cascading over her body as it rises, casting shadows across her skin in the most interesting way, highlighting those marks I left on her body…
For now, the marks are hickeys, but my mind is already flooded with ideas for tattoos to give her.
I take my pencil to the paper. I only have minutes to get this down in my book, if that. I don’t know when she’ll shift, if the sun will wake her or if everything that happened last night will come flooding in like a nightmare. I wonder how Quinn is going to react when she wakes up, if it will be a poor one where she pouts, or if she’ll frown and demand me back into the warm cocoon of blankets she’s surrounded herself with.
I just hope that she doesn’t regret it.
I shove the thoughts from my mind and focus back on the sketchpad.
I snag a kneaded eraser, blackened with use. There are shards of charcoal strewn about my desk, brushed to the sides for a clean workspace. The chalk clings to my skin and I breathe a sigh of contentment at its familiar texture. Rolling the stick between my fingers, I peer back over to her, the sudden urge to press my sooty fingertips against her perfect skin barreling through my thoughts.
My heart skips a beat at that, the idea of Quinn covered in the essence of my art, of me.
The drawings in my sketchpad are both rushed and not. Lazy, languid strokes when I have all of the time in the world to recount how she glared up at me. Quick, harsh lines of a fleeting smile, her gaze brushing mine.
The smooth, cream paper is fresh on both sides, a blank canvas inviting me to soil it with my charcoal. The blackness, like the voice of night I often find myself awake in, instead of letting it calm me to sleep. My eyes ache to fall shut but my mind won’t allow it, a thousand different images of Quinn from the night I have yet to add to the rapidly filling book propped over my knee.
I breathe in deeply, letting myself bask in the picture of her again, the sheet twisted around her body, barely covering her sex. I haven’t been so fortunate that she kicked it off in her sleep.
Maybe next time.
I’m quick to get Quinn’s form down. Her face, a circle for her skull, a smaller one following for her cheek where it’s pressed into the pillow. A line that marks the mattress. A box for the window so I can draw the rays of sun washing in over her. Maybe I’ll even add a halo to her disheveled blonde hair.
The curve of her body is drawn in such a fluid motion that it surprises me for a moment, but after last night, I feel like I know the dips of her silhouette better than I know my beloved motorcycle. The drawing of Quinn spans across both pages. One wouldn’t be enough to capture the raw beauty of her this morning, though I might already have five other sketches of her sleeping from when I found her in my bed a week ago.
I draw the swell of her breasts, her hand, relaxed at her hip, sketching the general shapes of her body before she shifts. Before she realizes that I’m missing from her side.
And not once do my hands shake.
With two quick drags of my chalk, there are her eyelids. My hand moves on its own and I do nothing to stop it. I almost don’t draw the fabric of the sheet. Instead, there’s a fleeting moment in my exhausted mind where I think about drawing that sweet little pussy of hers but it’s gone as fast as it comes, even if my dick does twitch in response. I drape the bending lines across her hips before filling it in with the flat of the stick, using the eraser to mark the highlights and my fingers to smudge the lines until they’re buttery smooth.
I love the way that the chalk sticks to me. The onyx dust coats my hands and covers the blemishes adorning my fingertips. It feels like a second skin, a plate of armor against unwanted stares—except for Quinn’s of course.
My mind always tends to wander to the self-hatred shadowing its corners when I’m tired. The loud music only helps on some nights, but in Quinn’s presence, it seems as if she’s scared them away like a beacon of light I’ve been missing for so long.
Tracing the lines of her fingers, I begin to add the finer details now that I have my base. I study the way the light spans certain areas of her body and hides others, filling in the paper with the thick stick of charcoal. The eraser waits in my other hand, ready to pull out the chalk from the chunk of black I’ve just colored in.
Occasionally, I blow the soot off of the page. It lifts, swirling around in the rays of the morning sun and I’m distracted by how pleasing it looks. Reminds me of the whorls of ink scattered around my body.
I scrub the powder into the grains of the paper. My hands are a mess and the medium sticks to the eraser I’m kneading into a point so I can carve out the shape of her nipples, tight from the brisk morning air. My gaze flickers to Quinn and back down to the paper again, tongue poking from between my lips as I focus on the important task at hand.
It’s a shame that she hasn’t woken up yet. I’ve finished my picture and I don’t know what to do now, what to draw because she hasn’t yet shifted in her sleep. I think about climbing back into bed with her because every blink feels like there’s sand in my eyes.
I know that I need to sleep. I know there are dark circles around my eyes and my skin is getting that sickly look my mother used to scold me about when I was young and stayed up all night studying anatomy on the internet.
Instead, I pull the chair closer to the bed. I can move behind Quinn and draw her backside, but I think better of it, wanting to sketch the more intimate parts of her like her face or where the crook of her arm barely covers the curve of her chest.
I focus on one thing at a time. Her hand. I draw her breasts and the hickeys I left surrounding them last night. Chalk up that tiny scar on her shoulder I have yet to ask about. So many things I don’t know about her, but her body is not one of them. I draw the shape of her ear and the piercings punched into them. Sketch the column of her throat, also mottled with marks from my lips.
I wonder if she’ll be upset with me when she notices them, knowing that she has class tomorrow.
I smirk at the thought of Reid getting an eyeful of those; of the guy I saw her with at the library seeing the bruises on her skin. I want them to know that she’s mine, that she’s off limits. It hadn’t been my intention when I was kissing them into her skin, but the thought makes my chest puff with protectiveness.
She hadn’t had sex with Reid, she told me. That sweet pussy is all for me. Only me.
I look at Quinn again, watch her even longer, hand frozen over the page. I’m staring again but she’s not awake to catch me.
From somewhere behind me, the buzz of my phone goes off. I place my sketchbook back on the desk and rub my filthy hands on a tissue I pull from the box on the shelf. Black streaks the thin material and it’s not enough to clean my skin, but I don’t care. I crumple the tissue and toss it into the trash can.
I find my pants discarded haphazardly on the floor. It’s too early for Slate or Ace to be texting me, and all of my notifications for social media are set to Do Not Disturb. It’s a Sunday, so I’m not particularly sure who it could be.
The screen of my phone lights up with the text and the floor falls from beneath my feet as I read who it’s from.
It’s my father, and the message accompanying the photo he’s sent me makes my blood boil. A letter from the landlord of Third Street Apartments.
I’m not sure how long I stare at the message. All I know is that I snap out of it when Quinn calls my name. Her voice is soft and groggy, confused until she catches sight of me.
When she smiles, my worries seem to melt away.
Everything else can wait when she curls a finger at me, beckoning me back to bed.
“Here you are boys,” Rhonda says with a kind smile a handful of days later. She sets a large stack of pancakes with extra butter in front of Slate and a breakfast special before Ace. My hands haven’t stopped shaking enough for me to be able to pick up a fork yet, nor the hot mug of black coffee I’m clutching for dear life. Rhonda offers me a consoling glance—she’s always reminded me of my mother in a way, with how caring she is, and it makes something pinch in my chest—a feeling I duck away from. “Nice to see you around here again.”
I’m thankful that she refrains from asking any questions. I haven’t shown up to her diner with Slate and Ace since after freshman year when Slate figured out that he could pull almost any girl he wanted and Ace found other places to frequent, places more sophisticated to the trust fund he’s going to inherit next year for his high grades.
It feels like I haven’t seen them in ages even though we live together. Ace has been busy with Rory and Slate’s been chasing tail as usual, and I’ve been keeping a lot more to myself than I normally do since we’ve formed a friendship with our neighbors.
I’ve missed them.
I texted our special code this morning after seeing Quinn off, the one that would ensure both Ace and Slate would drop everything and meet me here. Quinn flew out with Rory and her older sister, Peep, back to Seattle for the short holiday break. I know I’ll see her on Monday, but everything feels too fresh to be apart already. This past week has been bliss, meeting up on campus after classes for coffees and a dinner I cooked her. We even all hung out as a group last night, sharing a bottle of wine and watching movies well into the morning hours. We even found a few more times to fit in some quickies, when Quinn sank to her knees after I told her I sold most of the pieces from my exhibition, and when I gave her three wall-shaking orgasms in reward for when she modeled for me.
Even if she did leave me with a stellar blowjob, I miss her already.
The diner hasn’t changed in the two years we’ve been going, or the fifty years before then. There’s a funky neon boomerang pattern adorning the tables, straight from the 80’s. The bright blue booths and barstools have been replaced since then, but most of them are still worn with time, their pleather ripped open and showing off a yellow foam inside.
The food is just as good as it’s always been, and I don’t understand why we stopped coming here, but I always did find solace in the quiet diner and the company of the owner. It became a safe haven for me when I had a bad day and needed a milkshake to make me feel better and was unable to ride my motorcycle. I could barely grip the straw in the cup after the accident and my hands were so weak that I was almost too embarrassed to leave the apartment at all.
A jukebox sits on the far side of the restaurant and I remember shoving loads of quarters into it and setting a queue so long that it had the other patrons moaning and groaning on Friday nights while Slate, Ace, and I sat in this very booth and had the time of our lives.
These days, I feel like I don’t know a thing about what’s going on in their free time. I don’t know how they’re doing in their classes; I don’t know what grade Slate got on his sculpting project. I don’t even know if Ace still works at the art supply store. He doesn’t have to anyway, but it was nice to get some free erasers once in a while.
Slate doesn’t seem to notice the tension keeping my shoulders rigid, glancing behind him at one of the waitresses ducking into the kitchen with a furrow to his brows. Ace’s blue eyes are tinged with only the worry my emergency message could cause, and he hasn’t touched his meal.
“What’s going on, Knox?” Ace asks me.
“Is it about those noises we heard last night?” Slate tacks on, stuffing a bite of pancakes into his mouth.
I cough. Choke, really. I finally manage a sip of the hot coffee, but it only adds to the blush I can feel fighting its way onto my cheeks. Quinn hadn’t been quiet last night, and I hadn’t made her, partially because I enjoy the way she was screaming my name, and partially because I didn’t realize that anyone was home.
“Slate,” Ace scolds, elbowing him in the side. “I told you not to bring that up.”
“Two whole fucking years since Knox has gotten laid and you want me not to bring it up?” Slate shoots back, glaring. “That’s impossible. I’m only a man, Ace. I need details.”
Ace rolls his eyes, shooting me an apologetic look. I shrug in response, biting back the smile threatening to appear at the thought of Quinn beneath me again, her nails scratching down my back as she begged me for more.
I shake that thought from my head before my cock wakes from its nap. I watch Ace too closely as he spears his fork into the fluffy eggs on his plate, looking expectantly at me for an answer as to why we’re all here.
“I can, uh, go into detail later.” I scratch my head awkwardly. Not. As much as I’d love to brag about finally getting a taste of Quinn, there’s nothing official about us yet. We’ve slept together a few times, but we haven’t talked much about it, too eager to please each other before we had to break apart for the few days off of class that we have. “But that’s not why I asked you here.”
Slate sighs dramatically and I’m confused for about all of three seconds until he pulls out his wallet and slides a crisp twenty over to Ace.
At the look on my face, he says, “I thought this would be girl related.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I answer, tracing the pattern on the table. My news is much worse than that. “My father came to visit me a few weeks ago and?—”
“A few weeks ago?” Ace asks, and he looks hurt, like I’ve betrayed him. Slate’s eyebrows knit, his chocolate eyes brewing with fury at the mention of Travis Foster. “And you didn’t tell us?”
“It’s not that big of a deal, Ace—” Except that it is.
“It is that big of a deal! What did he say?”
He almost explodes, and I feel bad about keeping this from them. I hadn’t meant to, but nothing is confirmed and I thought he’d leave me alone after I refused to scope out the town for him. After that text a few days ago…well, we’ve all been so caught up with our own lives that I haven’t worked up the nerve to tell them. I haven’t even told Quinn yet, and my stomach clenches at the thought of that alone. I’ve had so many chances to talk to her about it since I received the text on Sunday morning and although my father’s purchase of the building is not yet confirmed, it’s only a matter of time before the deal is sealed. I can’t make her upset with me so soon after I just got her to like me. I’m a selfish prick, and I know it.
Rhonda swings around to check in on the three of us and senses the tension immediately. I can see it in the way her eyes narrow and the wrinkles around her mouth deepen. I offer an apologetic look for all of the commotion.
“Are you boys doing all right over here?” She asks, brushing a strand of graying chestnut hair behind her ear. She stands closer to my side of the booth, a protective wall should I need her.
My chest warms at the sentiment.
Ace’s heavy gaze hasn’t left mine and Slate is occupied with something behind the counter, craning his neck around Rhonda to see.
“I need to put in an order for blueberry waffles,” Ace says, “To go, please.”
I deflate in my seat when Rhonda nods, walking away.
“What did he say?” Ace asks, voice low. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
My chest twists at the way that he says it. I don’t know how to tell them this. They’re my best friends for fuck’s sake and here I am, sitting in the booth across from them, twiddling my fucking thumbs because I’m too much of a coward to tell them that the rest of our college experience is going to be fucked because of my fucking father.
I decide that ripping the Band-Aid right off of might be my best move. “He’s thinking about buying our apartment building.”
At their utter silence, I’m starting to think that maybe that wasn’t the right way to do this.
Surprisingly, it’s Slate who takes hold of the conversation. “When those waffles come out, we’re going to the store and getting ice cream, and then we’re going home to talk about everything we’ve missed,” he says, and I finally look up. They ordered waffles for me? Ace remembered? When I told him that my ultimate comfort food was blueberry waffles and ice cream when we’d gotten that misdemeanor for spray painting one of the buildings on the outskirts of town. We’d only gotten a fine and an escort back into the city, but it had spooked all three of us enough that our reign of spray painting started and ended all in one night. I thought my father would kill me when he was informed, and we found ourselves right in this very booth with enough waffles and ice cream to feed a small army. It turns out that Ace had called his father and pulled some strings so that mine never had to find out, and the incident was scrubbed from our records. “We’re sorry you had to deal with that, Knox.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I admit. “For not telling you.”