14. Chapter Fourteen #2
“Why the fuck not?” I grab the nearest couch cushion and whack him in the head with it.
His hair is messed up. He blinks. “Nice,” he states dryly. “Was that necessary?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I snap. My eyes suddenly feel too wide for my face.
I stand and pace in front of the coffee table, my bare feet thudding across the carpet. “Promise me, right now. No more coke. No more weed. No more pills. And cut back on alcohol. Actually, fuck that. No more booze at all. Like, none.”
He looks up at me, eyes tired. “Vi—”
“I have to tell Liam,” I murmur, mostly to myself.
“Don’t,” he responds immediately. “Please don’t tell him.” His voice cracks.
“Why the fuck not?”
His jaw clenches. “Because I don’t want him making a big deal about it. We’re mid-tour. Nothing can be done until after anyway.”
“Carter, you need scans and tests. You can’t just wander around with this hanging over your head. Surely, there’s space in the schedule.”
“What’s the point?” The next words come out thin. “I already feel dead inside.”
I freeze, and my chest splinters in two.
“The only time I feel anything is onstage,” he admits quietly. “And when I’m with you.”
I quickly shove his words aside before they can take root.
“You chose this,” I say, voice shaking. “You chose this career. The touring. The fame. The chaos. No one put a gun to your head. It comes with responsibility and pressure and yeah, ridiculous privilege. But it also comes with sacrifices, and you knew that. This is the life you made.”
He flinches, barely, but I see it.
“So now,” I say, stepping closer, “it’s time to grow the hell up. Go to therapy. See a doctor. Stop drinking yourself into oblivion like your mom. Fix your shit before it buries you.”
He lets out a breath that sounds scraped raw. “I hear you.”
“You don’t.” I shake my head. “You really don’t.”
I cross to the side table, grab my camera, and flick through the gallery until I find it.
Then I shove it in his face.
“This is you,” I bite out. “Drunk off your face, unconscious in my bed. Remind you of anyone?”
He stares at the screen for a long second, then exhales hard through his nose.
I don’t lower the camera.
His eyes lift—jaw tight, scanning my face.
“You think I’m the only one who’s messed up?” he fires back. “What about you?”
My spine stiffens. “What about me?” I turn away, set the camera back on the side table, then march back to him, my arms tight across my chest.
“You walk around acting like the coldest, toughest bitch alive,” he retorts. “But that’s not you. Not deep down.”
My eyes narrow.
“So, what happened to you, Vi?”
The question hits a nerve.
Tears burn before I can blink them back. “You want to know what happened to me?”
He nods, jaw tight.
“You happened.” The words tear out of me. “You broke what little confidence I had. After all the crap from other kids—the names and the bullying—what you did . . . that was the final blow. The last straw.” There’s a lump in my throat I can’t choke past. “You crushed me.”
His face drains of color.
“So yeah, I toughened up,” I say. “Got hard. Built walls. Locked everyone out. And I stayed angry. I’m still angry!” The rage-fueled last word comes flying out.
His throat moves. “What are you angry about, Vi?”
“I’m angry at YOU,” I fire back. “Angry at the world. Angry at Jeanine. Angry at Liam for somehow getting out of all this semi-normal, while I turned into this.” I hit my chest hard with my palm. “I’m fucking angry all the time. And I’m—I’m exhausted.”
He studies me quietly. “Have you tried therapy?”
I glare. “I’m going to get real stabby, real fast, Carter.”
“You just tore strips off me for not growing up and getting help,” he says, “but you’re doing the same thing. Pot, meet kettle.”
We stare each other down, both of us breathing too hard for words. The silence between us stretches.
Eventually he looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. “Let me ask you something. It’s been stuck in my head ever since I found out you worked at Eden.”
I drop onto the couch, arms wrapped around myself. “What?”
“Do you work there because of me?” he asks. “Because of what happened that night in the living room?”
I shut my eyes for a moment. “What do you think?” I manage.
“I need to hear it,” he says quietly. “Say it.”
I stare at him. “Of course. At the start, that was the reason. My self-esteem was shot. I hated my body. Hated myself. Thought nobody would ever want me. Eden gave me control. I chose who touched me, and I never had to risk hearing ‘no’ again.”
His face twists, some awful combination of regret and fury aimed inward. “Vi, you don’t need men drooling over you to feel sexy,” he says. “You just have to look in a mirror.”
My anger flares. “You told me to never touch you again,” I fume. “You made me feel so dirty and shameful. Do you have any idea what that does to a seventeen-year-old girl?”
His eyes shut on a wince, every word finding its mark.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks. “I fucked up. I should’ve explained instead of losing my shit.
I was asleep and having the best fucking dream about you sucking me off,” he grits out.
“I was so close to blowing, and when I woke up and saw you there, real, willing, and underage . . . I panicked. If Liam had come down those stairs, he would’ve killed me.
I don’t even remember what I said. I shoved you away to stop myself from doing something stupid like pinning you down and fucking you senseless.
I’m sorry for how much it fucked you up. ”
His voice drops even lower. “I’m sorry . . . for everything.”
Heat pricks the back of my eyes; I shove it down.
“I’m sorry too,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have done it, I know that now, but when I heard you say my name in your sleep, I thought it meant something real.
” I pause, gathering strength for the question that still haunts me.
“I just don’t understand—why did you run? Why didn’t you stay in touch?”
He looks at me, jaw working, fingers curling into fists against his knees.
“I couldn’t,” he says. “I couldn’t stand being near you and wanting things I had no right wanting. The guilt ate me alive. I couldn’t look Liam in the face while I was thinking about his little sister every damn day.”
The room shrinks around us.
He drags in a breath. “It has always been you, Vi.”
The words take a sledgehammer to my walls; years’ worth of shit I never let myself feel rushes up, heat and hurt and want all at once.
“I’m still fucking angry.” It comes out small but fierce.
“Then let me fuck the anger out of you.”
He launches across the couch before the sentence fully registers. I’m flat on the couch and his mouth is hard on mine, stealing every thought I have. I make a strangled sound, and then I’m kissing him back, fingers clutching at his T-shirt, trying to get closer, deeper, more.
We’re a mess of teeth, lips, tongues, and moans clashing together.
His hands try to be everywhere at once; mine aren’t much better.
I get his shirt bunched up with both fists, nails scraping at bare skin every time he shifts.
He drags the hem of my top up, palms skimming my ribs, my sides, anything he can reach.
We overshoot the edge of the couch, and gravity takes over.
We tumble off, clip the coffee table, and send it flipping.
It clatters onto its side and half on us as we crash onto the carpet.
Neither of us stops. He shoves the table away with an impatient arm, half lying over me, and dives back in, his mouth finding mine again.
This time, we get the rhythm right. Our first real kiss, and it’s everything I dreamed it would be and more. His lips move firmly over mine, catching and pressing, coaxing my mouth open until his tongue slides in and the taste of soda and him mixes with mine. It’s like coming home.
“Mmph—” I whimper against his mouth.
He breaks away from my lips, breathing hard. “What was that?” he asks, not wasting time before his lips are dragging across my jaw, my cheek, my throat, putting his mouth on any skin he can reach.
“Take—” I gasp as his tongue slides into my ear, and my spine turns molten. “Take this off.”
My hands tug at his shirt again, impatient.
He pushes up to his knees, still braced between my thighs, and yanks the T-shirt over his head. I don’t know where to look first; his tattooed, muscular torso is a feast for my eyes. I run both hands over his pecs, thumbs brushing his nipples. They tighten under my touch.
“This is gonna be quick,” he warns. “And it’s gonna be dirty.”
“Fuck yes.”
He strips me out of my clothes in record speed. Jeans and panties gone in one pull. Top and bra in the next. He shucks his sweats in a blur, and then he’s lowering himself between my thighs, fitting there like he was always meant to.
His fingers glide down my slit, and he hisses. “You’ve been wet for me a long time, haven’t you?”
His blue eyes bore into mine.
“Fuck me, Carter. Fuck me, hard.”
He drags the fat head of his cock down my slit, and I feel the smooth, cold piercing against my wet flesh. After eyeing him in the shower the other night, I already knew he was big. But being hard is a whole different category. Walking tomorrow is overrated.
“I’m gonna make you feel so good, Vi,” he breathes.
He pushes the tip inside and I gasp, bucking to chase more. He pins my hips with a firm grip, holding me down, controlling the pace.
His hair falls into his eyes as he hovers over me. “Once I’m inside you,” he says quietly, “there’s no going back. You hear me? This pussy is mine. Your stubborn little heart is mine. Your soul, every dark corner of you, mine. You got it?”
“Do it.” I say it like a dare, every fiber of my being egging him on. There is no going back, not with us.
He pushes in.