Chapter 11 #4
“Okay.” I didn’t hesitate. I made my way to the exit he was talking about and stood waiting until his black sedan pulled up.
He didn’t say anything when I got in the car, just took off toward the other side of town.
There was tons of empty land out there. Bradley kept driving until we reached an abandoned lot, acres away from the nearest house.
He turned off the engine and looked at me.
“We can’t tell anyone,” he told me sternly. “If we do this.”
“Who am I going to tell?” I asked sarcastically. “You’re the only person who talks to me.”
He rested his head on the steering wheel for a few seconds before leaning over and kissing me.
It was more passionate than it had been in his classroom.
He slipped his tongue into my mouth as his hands gripped the back of my head.
He had handfuls of my thick black hair, gripping it to keep me pressed tightly to him.
He pulled himself over the center console so that he was on top of me, putting one leg between mine.
His knee grazed my underwear. He moaned into my mouth as his hands moved to my hips.
I felt him reach behind me and push my seat so that we were horizontal.
Bradley was perfectly on top of me. I loved the weight of it.
We made out for a long time, while his fingers explored my thighs, hips, and waist. When he finally got the courage to reach for the top of my dress, I slipped my arms out of it and undid my bra, tossing it into the back seat.
He groaned again at the sight of my breasts, perky and too large for my frame.
By then, he seemed to have no more reservations.
His pants were around his ankles seconds later.
Neither of us had brought any kind of birth control and didn’t discuss it.
I wasn’t going to ruin the mood. He fucked exactly like I thought he would, in strong, confident strokes, telling me how good I felt.
After that, we had sex several times a week for months.
It was usually in his car. Or a on blanket on the ground in some remote part of the woods.
Bradley lived with roommates and was paranoid someone was going to report him if I came over.
I didn’t care where we did it. Having sex with Bradley was the best distraction.
I didn’t think about Will or Alexandria or Cassandra or Victoria when I was with him. I just felt good.
But eventually, the temptation wore off.
By April, the act of sleeping with him no longer felt as exciting as it had before.
I liked doing it, and I liked him, but it didn’t give me the same overwhelming sense of pleasure.
We had gotten too comfortable with each other.
I spent more and more time after our encounters complaining about the town and the Hopelys.
“I wish they’d just move,” I said bitterly one afternoon a few weeks before graduation.
I was lying topless on the blanket. Bradley had come only moments before and already my mind was back on them.
I had beaten Cassandra as salutatorian and Mrs. Hopely had started an online petition to get it changed.
It had already received over five hundred signatures.
People didn’t understand how it was possible that it could be me: murderer Will Dearling’s slutty little sister.
I didn’t know why they were so shocked. I had always been smart, and schoolwork was one of the other distractions I poured my energy into. I had indeed gotten into Dartmouth. My life made one hell of an admissions essay; Bradley had seen to that.
“Well, they probably wish your family would move away too,” he said, turning on his side to look at me. His hand was still stroking my chest.
I ignored him. “I mean, who stays in the same house where their daughter was killed?”
“Who stays in the same house where their brother killed a girl?” Bradley countered.
My stomach dropped—I guessed I wasn’t the only one getting too comfortable. I narrowed my eyes at him. “He didn’t kill her.”
“I’m sure you believe that.”
“You aren’t helping,” I said.
Bradley shrugged. “You don’t want help, Rose. You just want someone to agree with you.”
I was annoyed at that and made him go down on me.
We lasted only another two weeks after that.
I was ready to move on to the next stage of my life.
Bradley hemmed and hawed a little about getting a teaching job in New Hampshire, but we both knew he wouldn’t.
This thing between us had run its course.
The last time I’d seen him was graduation.
Until now.
I tried to reconcile that version of Bradley, a twenty-six-year-old who was so enamored with me that he was willing to lose his job and reputation just to keep sleeping with me, with the measured thirty-three-year-old I was talking to now. Had he ever actually loved me?
I hadn’t blamed Bradley then, or at any point since.
He had been my rock, and for a long time after, I appreciated that.
I refused to let us become a talking point.
I had been a mature eighteen-year-old then.
I’d had to be. And I had assumed Bradley had seen that.
We were two people who had grown to care for each other.
We were just a few years apart in age, and it hadn’t been illegal.
But had it been immoral? My body resisted the idea, but then when I imagined Hazel in my position, only a little younger now than I had been then, I was filled with disgust. Hatred.
But it dissipated as I looked at the man in front of me.
Logic aside, I struggled to see him as a predator.
He was still just Bradley to me. The man who replaced my suicidal thoughts with ones about an Ivy League future.
I had found so much comfort in him. My feelings toward him wrestled painfully inside my brain, leaving me confused and uncomfortable.
“I really tried to do my best to help you, Rose,” Bradley said.
“What you had to go through, and what you’re still going through.
It isn’t fair.” He stopped, watching my eyes water, and moved a step closer to me.
He stroked his thumb against the side of my face.
“I’m really proud of you for writing the book,” he said.
“Regardless of what I think happened back then, it was ballsy as hell.”
“Thanks,” I said, sighing. I felt tired of this conversation, and I was going to be late to meet Kayleigh if I didn’t leave now. “I should go. I’m meeting someone.”
Bradley frowned. “Can we exchange numbers at least? That way you can call me if you want to talk some more.” His eyes lit up a little. “Maybe we can even grab a drink?”
I didn’t give him an answer, just a strained smile as I handed my phone over and let him put his number in. I had zero plans to grab a drink with him, but it would be good to have a way to call him in case I had any questions about Hazel.
I didn’t look back as I left the classroom.
I walked back through the courtyard and a heavy dread sat in the middle of my chest. Seeing Bradley had been more emotionally draining than I’d expected.
But I knew it was good that I had done it.
I would always have wondered if he was somehow involved in all of this.
He might be a creep, but I felt confident our relationship had been an isolated incident.
Despite my relief, I couldn’t help but think: Well, there goes another suspect.