Brittany #2
I sit up, dragging the old T-shirt down over my thighs like I need coverage even though I’m alone. My head pounds, and shame hits me in waves, each one bringing back another fragment.
My hands on his dick.
My body pressed way too close.
My laughter.
People watching.
Bethany’s eyes.
I press my palms to my face, breathing hard.
“Oh my God,” I whisper into my hands, and it comes out like a prayer and a curse together.
Because now I know.
I wasn’t just a girl who danced.
I was the girl who made a scene.
And Hell, Kentucky doesn’t forgive girls who embarrass the wrong woman.
Not ever.
I stumble to the bathroom on legs that don’t feel like mine, one hand pressed to my mouth, the other braced on the hallway wall like the house might tilt if I let go.
The floor is cold under my feet. The air is colder.
My stomach rolls like it’s still full of shine and bad choices, even though I haven’t had a drop since the Lockup.
I barely make it to the toilet before I’m gagging.
Nothing comes up but bitter spit and panic, but my body tries anyway, heaving like it can cough out shame. My eyes water. My nose runs. I grip the porcelain with both hands and breathe in sharp, humiliating pulls, like I’m learning how to exist again.
A laugh slips out of me, small and broken. It doesn’t match the moment. It’s the kind of laugh you make when you realize you’re the punchline and the whole town has already started telling the joke.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I flush even though there ain’t a thing to flush, like the sound might reset me. It doesn’t.
The mirror over the sink catches me when I lift my head.
My face is pale. Eyes too wide. Hair a mess. I look like a girl who thought she could go to the Lockup, and keep her dignity intact. I look like I got proved wrong.
I turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my cheeks. It beads and runs down my neck, and the cold should help, but it only makes the memories sharper.
My hands on his chest.
My laughter, too loud.
My hips moving like I had nothing to lose.
Oaks’ grip on my wrists, steady and firm, not hurting me, just stopping me, like he knew exactly how far I would go if nobody held the line.
His voice, in my ear, low and rough. You’re drunk.
And my own stupid voice, slurred and brave. So?
I swallow hard, and my throat tightens like I might cry, but it doesn’t come. Tears feel too soft for what this is. This is embarrassment with teeth in it. This is fear dressed up like gossip.
I grip the sink, breathing, trying to shove the dream back into the part of my brain where I keep things I can’t afford to feel.
It doesn’t stay there.
It crawls right back out, vivid as bruises.
Bethany.
Her eyes in the dream, cold and polished, taking inventory of me. The way she looked at Oaks’ hands on my wrists like it was proof of something. The way she looked at me like I was a stain she couldn’t scrub out.
The sickest part is, I don’t even know what I did for real. Not all of it. I don’t know what I said. I don’t know who heard what. I don’t know how loud I was, how reckless, how many people watched me throw myself at a man with a ring.
I only know the feeling.
The pull.
The heat.
And the mortification that follows it like a shadow.
I press my palms to the counter and try to breathe through it, but my body ain’t cooperating. It’s doing the opposite of what my pride demands. It’s remembering the music and the smoke and the way Oaks stood there like a wall, like a judge, like something dangerous holding itself back.
My stomach turns again, but it ain’t nausea this time. It’s want.
That pisses me off so bad my eyes sting.
“Are you serious?” I whisper to my reflection, like my body can hear me and decide to act right.
It doesn’t.
My thighs press together without permission. My pulse skitters. My nipples tighten under the old T-shirt like I’m still in that room, like I’m still close enough to smell leather and smoke and his clean, male heat under it. My mouth goes dry again, but not from panic.
From hunger.
I grip the sink harder.
I should be ashamed. I am ashamed. I’m also wired, and the worst part of being scared is that your body can’t tell the difference between danger and desire when they show up wearing the same face.
Oaks.
His hands.
His voice.
The restraint in his eyes, the way it felt like he was holding back something bigger than both of us.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shake it off.
Instead, another fragment hits me, sharp as a slap.
Not from the dream, from my imagination, from the pieces I’ve been assembling all week.
The way Oaks checks on me in public when it costs him something.
The way my whole body reacts to him.
That with the memory of his offer. Find him when I’m sober. And I don’t know if my mind invented the words. Or if when he’s talking about me remembering does he mean that part.
Does the biker think I remember everything? Is he coming around for us to finish what I started?
Damn, Brit, you’re slow.
My shame shifts, turns, finds a new edge.
If I’m going to be humiliated in this town, if I’m going to be the girl they whisper about, the least I deserve is to stop trembling like prey in my own damn bathroom.
I turn the lock on the door.
The click is small, but it’s something I control.
I lean my forehead against the cool mirror and let myself breathe. Slower. Deeper. Trying to settle the quake in my chest. It doesn’t settle. It pools lower, hot and needy.
My hand slides under the hem of my shirt. My skin is warm. My palm shakes. I hate that it shakes. I hate that I’m doing this because I’m mortified and scared and my body still wants what it wanted in that dream.
Oaks.
But wanting is the only thing that feels like mine right now.
I slide my hand lower, over my stomach, down between my thighs, and the second I touch myself I bite back a sound that would embarrass me if anyone could hear it.
My legs tense. My head tips back, breath stuttering, and for a moment the whole world narrows down to sensation and pulse and the raw truth that my body does not care about small-town rules.
I think about Oaks.
My fingers move slowly at first, like I’m testing whether I’m allowed to do this, whether pleasure is something I’m still permitted after making a fool of myself in my own head.
Then the want takes over, and I stop pretending I’m gentle.
I brace a hand on the sink, knuckles whitening, and rub myself with a pressure that makes my knees soften.
I close my eyes and the Lockup blooms behind my lids, the music, the smoke, the heat, Oaks’ hands on my waist, his breath at my ear, his voice telling me no like he meant it and liked it at the same time.
I imagine his mouth close to mine, not kissing, not yet, just hovering, making me earn it.
I imagine him looking at me the way he did in that dream, that dark, controlled stare that says he sees every bad decision I’m about to make and he’s deciding whether to stop me or let me burn.
My breath comes faster. My hips rock, chasing it, angry at myself for how good it feels, angry at how much I need the release, how much my body wants to discharge the fear the way it discharges hunger.
I whisper his name without meaning to.
It comes out like a confession.
The mirror fogs near my mouth where my breath hits it. My thighs tremble. My hand moves quicker, harder, and I’m past pride now, past embarrassment, past the version of me who wants to be good.
I’m just a girl in a locked bathroom, trying to remember what it feels like to be in control of at least one thing.
The orgasm hits me sharp and fast, making my belly clench and my breath break, a silent gasp that turns into a shaky exhale. My hand stills, then slows, then pulls away as the aftershocks roll through me like a tide.
For a second I just stand there, forehead to the mirror, eyes closed, breathing like I ran a mile.
Then the shame tries to rush back in.
I wipe my hand on toilet paper and wash it like I’m scrubbing evidence, like I can clean myself back into the kind of girl who doesn’t do this after a nightmare about a married man. An older married biker.
The water runs warm over my fingers. The soap smells like cheap lavender. It doesn’t matter. Nothing feels pure in this town. Not my reputation. Not my fear. Not my want.
I look at myself again.
My face is flushed now. My eyes are still wide, but there’s something steadier in them. Not confidence. Not yet.
Resolve.
Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep walking into public and pretending I don’t feel the whole county’s gaze on my skin. I can’t keep getting cornered by whispers and threats and polite warnings that ain’t polite at all.
I can’t keep being seen.
Not for a while.
I unlock the bathroom door and step into the hallway, and the house is still too quiet, but the quiet feels like a choice now instead of a trap.
I grab my phone from the bed and open my calendar app like I’m making a plan for survival, because that’s what this is. The smallest kind of survival.
One week.
Seven days.
No Hollar Dollar. No salon. No gas station at night. No wandering around like I’m invincible just because I’m too stubborn to admit I’m scared.
I will do my classwork.
I will stay inside.
I will let Hell get bored.
I will let the whispers move on to somebody else’s sins.
I swallow hard and stare at the dark window like it might stare back.
“I’m not leaving the house for a week,” I say out loud, because saying it makes it real, and I need something real right now. Even if I know I have to go to work.
Then, softer, like a threat I’m making to myself.
“And I’m not thinking about him.”
My body betrays me with a small, aching pulse between my thighs, like it’s laughing at that promise.
I ignore it.
I crawl under the covers, phone in my hand, doors locked, lights on, and I listen to the house settle around me like an animal trying to decide if it can sleep.
Outside, Hell, Kentucky keeps breathing.
Inside, I do my best to disappear.