SULLIVAN
Chapter Twenty-Two
Adrian is unhappy about my two failed courses. For one, it makes me less available to him over the summer, but also, he expects me to be putting his money to good use. Over a candlelit dinner, which I dress for, he wants a full explanation for why I couldn’t pass a class as simple as U.S. History.
I grip the silverware harder to stop my hands from shaking, my mind scrambling to find a reason that will satisfy him but stuck so hard on the truth.
It’s not self-sabotage, or at least I don’t think it is.
It’s more along the lines of a deep, unshakeable depression and crippling anxiety surrounding failure, even when I think the failure is inevitable. “School can be—”
“We broke up,” I tell him.
This shuts him up momentarily.
“I mean we’re still roommates, but it isn’t that.”
“Do you even attend your classes?”
I do attend the music courses, but once I realized there was nothing I could do about history and rhetoric, I stopped going. “I do. I try to.”
“And?”
“And sometimes it feels pointless,” I admit.
“Hm. Rebellion doesn’t suit you, Sullivan. Compliance, however…”
The word makes my stomach roll. I force myself to cut a piece of broccoli in half and eat it.
“You understand how deeply I care about you, yes?”
“Yes,” I say automatically, like he pulled the string he installed in my back to make me comply.
“And you realize you deserve this opportunity.”
“Thank you.”
“Your talent—it’s raw. You’re at school to hone and shape it. To find the best use of it. Is there a piece you’ve been working on?”
“I’ve been focused on performance,” I lie. I haven’t been focused on anything, but I don’t have a piece of music to show him either. “Violin.”
He sneers. “You’ve put down the oboe, I’m assuming? Good. It was a waste of your abilities.”
Swallowing his final bit of food, he drops his linen napkin on the table and leans back in his chair.
He has me all to himself this week since Quinn is in New York, and obviously I prefer only having to deal with Adrian.
There’s an itch under my skin, though—a feeling like he has something planned for me I won’t like, although with only him here, I can’t imagine what it would be.
To be fair, I don’t like anything he does to me, but what he does to me when Quinn is here is so much worse.
“I’m going to shower,” he says. “I’ll find you shortly.”
That night, he gives me a full body massage, his hands attempting to reclaim every inch of my skin with lavender and eucalyptus oil.
His hands aren’t strong or big like Knight’s, nor is his touch as firm.
Still, while I’m lying on my stomach, I push my focus toward remembering the nights in the woods in the back of the truck.
I tell myself when I roll onto my back that this isn’t that bad.
I can’t say no, but it’s not like I’m being tortured. It’s almost impossible for Adrian to get me hard, though, and this frustrates him.
“I remember when you were eager. Has that girl ruined you for my hand? My mouth?”
“No, sir.”
“Or is it my husband’s cock you want? Is that it, Sullivan? You need to be fucked? You need a thick dick in your ass to feel alive?” The words are bitter, but there’s something greedy in them, too. A tone I don’t like at all.
“What you’re doing feels good,” I tell him, trying my best to sound sincere.
“I have a lovely party planned for your next visit. You’ll get all the dick this slutty body needs.”
“What?” I ask, startling away from his touch.
He tsks. “Don’t pull away from me.”
I can’t help it, though. What he just said scares the shit out of me. I put my hand on my limp dick and start to sit up. “I don’t want a party.”
Adrian straddles me, his pale, out of shape, naked body looming over me as he removes my hand from my cock and gives me a light push on the chest. He rests his erection on my balls, gripping himself and me in one hand. “Once you pass your classes, you deserve a reward, don’t you think?”
“Mmph…” I hate this. I squeeze my eyes shut and turn my head.
He grips my face and forces me to look at him. He strokes our dicks together, his ass gliding easily on my oiled thighs.
My body finally starts to respond to the increased friction.
“I have so many friends that want to meet you. I’ve told them about all your talents.”
What? Friends? He can’t mean people in the music industry? Is that who he means? And what does he plan to do with me? Show me off? Give me to them?
It’s so clear now what he wants. To ruin me. He’s only ever wanted to ruin me. I bite back the tears that burn to fall and nearly snap my own tongue off in the process.
I can’t come back here.
He finishes, ejaculating with our dicks in his grip. I’ve barely begun to get hard, but he only regards my semi with a grim expression and doesn’t say anything. “You’ve spent too much time with that girl. We’ll go over the calendar in the morning, and Sullivan?”
When I don’t say anything, he goes on as he climbs off me. Off the bed.
“For all I’ve done for you, I would expect some gratitude.”
I swallow hard and nod, my voice thick as I say, “Thank you, sir.”
“How the fuck do I get out of this?”
“Calm down, babe. Take a breath.”
Chelsea’s familiar voice does nothing to stop the shaking and panic pouring through me.
It’s late—after midnight. I’m in the closet, fully dressed and also wrapped in a robe, tucked into the smallest version of myself in the corner.
I’m on a burner phone I tucked into one of my boots because Adrian often insists on going through my actual phone—the one he pays for.
I’ve deleted anything incriminating there, but he sometimes takes it away.
Tonight he let me keep it, and it’s charging on the nightstand, but I wanted to be able to call Knight while I was here.
Instead, Chelsea is who I had to call because Chelsea is the only one who knows what I’m doing here.
“I can’t go home. If I leave, he’ll say I stole his car. He’d probably have me arrested.”
“Then don’t take the car. Call an Uber.”
“He’ll cut me off.”
“Would that be the worst thing in the world? Look, babe. I know you want to go to school here, but you don’t need it. You’re so talented—”
“Talent doesn’t matter if I’ve got nowhere to use it—no idea what to do with it. I let him take control of my whole life.”
“No,” she corrects me sharply. “Not your whole life. He doesn’t get to have that.”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I have to stay here. If I have to come back,” I say in a whisper.
“It makes me crazy when you talk like you don’t have choices.
You do. You can go to community college.
Fuck, you could go to trade school and learn how to fix heaters or something.
You’ve got options. If you can’t stand this one—if you can’t do it—then stop.
” She’s doing her best to sound encouraging, but her frustration with me is evident.
“Why does it sound like you want me to stay here?”
“I don’t. I literally just told you to leave.”
The thing Chelsea doesn’t understand, the one thing I was too ashamed to tell her was that Adrian isn’t only paying for me.
He’s the one making it possible for my mother to work by paying for the “scholarship” my sister is using for the special school she attends.
He also owns my mother’s house and is responsible for the lower rent she’s been paying.
Over the last few years, he’s worked his way into every corner of my life making things possible that never would have been without him, and I certainly can’t pay for if I drop out of school and go to community college.
“How much money do you have?” she asks.
“Something like ten grand.”
“Okay, well, that’s a start—”
“It’s not enough, Chelsea.”
She sighs. “Okay. What do you need? A way out or a pep talk?”
On the verge of tears again, I cover my face and hunch over even more. “I don’t know.”
She takes a beat to let me have my hopeless moment then asks, “Have you ever watched those Only Fans guys?”
“Not really. You think I should do that?” It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, but I also don’t think I have anything all that great to offer—not compared to what I’ve seen of the guys already out there.
“That’s not what I’m saying. Those guys—they’ll do anything to make their fans happy. They work for tips, and they hustle. Who knows if they’re at all attracted to the people they fuck, but they sure as hell act like they are because that gets them the tips, right?”
“What are you saying? Fake it till I make it?”
“I’m saying own it. If you’re his prostitute, and this is the choice you’re making—because, again, you have choices even if they suck—then choose it. You already know he’s an old perv, and he’s powerful, but he’s not all powerful. He uses you, you use him. Right?”
Jesus, is this what she has to tell herself to fuck the Atlanta guy? I’m not sure she’s the person I need to be talking to at all anymore. Still, she’s making a depressing kind of sense, and I blow out a breath as I rub my chest where my guard is trying to rebuild itself.
“Remember when we started running the business, and you said you wanted to be involved? You remember what you said?” she asks.
“It’s just my mouth.”
“You said they never hurt your body.” She means Quinn and Adrian.
I’m nodding. It’s true. They haven’t hurt my body. They’ve used it, they’ve defiled it, but so have I. “This is the pep talk?”
“I’m kind of getting that’s what you wanted to hear.”
It’s a horrible truth that she’s right. Adrian gets to use my body on occasion, but he lets me live my life. At least he has so far. “Okay,” I say quietly. “I have another call to make. I’m gonna let you go.”
“Okay. I’m sorry if this didn’t help.” She sounds like she means it, like she’d start over and backtrack on some things if she could. She and I are so fucked up. I sometimes have to remind myself we’re still not much more than stupid kids.
“I’m sorry nothing can,” I say, and on that bleak note, I hang up. Without stopping to think, I pull up Knight’s contact and put through a call.