THIRTY SECONDS.
I forced myself to stare back in the mirror after making myself come.
The first time I’d come since before The Incident.
The first time I’d masturbated since that night.
At first, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to at all. It wasn’t that I was not attracted to men, because I was. But it was in the same way you admired paintings and sculptures: from afar, knowing they were heartless, soulless, not to have, and definitely not to hold. As I propped my butt against the sink and spread my legs, however, the surge of heat and excitement I’d felt before The Incident came crashing into my body like a wave. I pushed my lips apart, looking down at my clit.
Swollen, throbbing, begging.
It’s been a long time. Touch me.
I did, but it didn’t feel as good as Bane’s thigh. His body was rough and callused, lithe, and male. My fingers didn’t hold a candle to his strong leg. Frustrated, I pulled a towel from the steam cabinet and dumped it across the bathtub edge. I hoisted one leg and straddled it, riding the edge like it was a mechanical bull.
I closed my eyes, imagining Bane.
The hard planes of muscles under his thin over-washed Billabong shirt.
His rough fingers finding my clit. Big, dirty, and inky.
His cinnamon breath and ocean scent as my thighs straddled his bearded face while I rode his mouth, my juices dripping down his chin. I moaned, squeezing my thighs against the bathtub, biting my arm to stifle my little yelps of joy—sheer, newfound bliss—as the first flood of pleasure washed my inhibitions and anxiety away. I was coming. Feeling. Falling. Breaking the chains of misery that anchored me down.
It wasn’t about my physical needs. Not all of it, anyway. It was about taking my power back. It was about reconquering my sexuality, a piece of land that had always belonged to no one else but me.
It was about finding my way back to the world.
I nearly skipped my way back to my room after washing my face and hands. Darren was still there, and that surprised me, because he usually barely had the guts to knock, let alone step inside.
“It’s mine,” Bane said conversationally, but his posture, tense and commanding, suggested that he was a breath away from tackling Darren.
“What’s yours?” I leaned against the door, folding my arms over my chest.
“The boutique hotel on the promenade. The one that’s being gutted,” Bane bit out, his voice manufactured and detached. His eyes were still hard on Darren, and the threat was there, stark clear and shining in his pupils. “Your stepdad has some very elaborate ideas of what I should do about it, even though I never asked for advice.”
Bane grabbed my hoodie from my bed and walked over to me, tossing it into my hands and looking back to my stepdad, who stood there, in the middle of my room, looking like a wounded soldier who’d come back home to find out that everything he knew and loved had been consumed in flames.
“Come on, Snowflake. Food, then we’ll take Old Sport for a walk.”
“Shadow is sleeping,” I muttered, still confused by the entire exchange.
“Dogs are always sleeping. We’ll wake him up.” He mussed my hair, like I was an adorable kid.
The way he touched me, so casually, as if it was okay, as if I was normal, made my heart skip several beats.
I stole one last look at Darren, trying to find the pity I had usually felt for him. His eyes were blank, his jaw tight.
Usually, looking at him losing another battle made my heart pinch.
This time it didn’t.
We didn’t talk about what had happened in my room.
Something told me that the minute I addressed it, it wouldn’t happen again, and that was a scenario I didn’t want to entertain. We put Shadow—who was looking slightly better—on a leash, then grabbed some pizza downtown. I ate two slices and whimpered at the first bite, surprised by how much flavor it had.
Then we sat in his rusty red truck and called Dr. Wiese’s office. The receptionist yawned a generic don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you, adding that it’s been hectic at the clinic, so we might need to wait a few extra days. Then we dropped Old Sport back home and headed to the beach. Bane had promised Beck he’d surf with him, and I didn’t care what we did. The sky was dusky, and for the first time in a long time I felt liberated.
Liberated from the idea that Bane would think my “slut” scar was ugly.
Liberated from worrying about Shadow’s blood work.
There was a perfect moment on that beach, right after Bane introduced me to his friends, Beck—whom I’d already met at Café Diem—and Edie, a blonde surfer who was every insecure woman’s worst nightmare. Petite, pretty, and approachable. It was when they were paddling deep into the water while I settled against my backpack, drowning in the words of The Princess Bride. The feeling of solitude holding hands with intimacy. I was hanging out with Bane without really hanging out with him.
I looked up every now and again and smiled.
Sometimes he didn’t notice me.
Sometimes he smiled back.
When he took me back home, the thought that he might be going to one of his clients slammed into me, hard, and suddenly, prolonging our time together as much as I could, in some half-baked plan to make him cancel on whoever this woman might be, took the front wheel.
“Edie is nice.” I opened his glove compartment to find a mountain of cinnamon gum and a small plastic bag with weed. I took two pieces of gum and closed it.
Bane shrugged, but didn’t answer.
“And she’s a surfer, so she’s obviously your type.” I searched his face.
His mouth curved into a comma-like smirk, his eyes still hard on the road. “Obviously.”
“Come on, Bane. You wanna tell me you’ve never considered dating her?”
“I have. And I did. For a year. Ish,” he said, so casually, though I guessed for him, it was. My mouth went dry. Up until then, I’d suspected I was jealous of Bane’s clients. But I wasn’t. Because this was jealousy. The thought that Edie—whom I’d enjoyed hanging out with and actually shared a joke or two with—was the devil and public enemy number one. My head swam, and I curled my fists beside my body.
Bane took a left turn, tipping his chin down.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. It was in high school.” I hate high school.
“Who ended it?” I tried to sound chipper, but it came off a little manic.
He pushed his lower lip out, giving it some thought. “I don’t know. It was never serious. We mainly fucked, and I took her to prom. Guess we stopped dating when we started fucking other people, too. Then she met her husband, Trent, and we just stopped completely.”
I love Trent.
Seriously. It was getting pathetic, how relieved I was to hear Edie was married.
Bane used the neighborhood’s remote nonchalantly—like it wasn’t illegal for him to have one—and eased his truck in front of my house, cutting the engine. I stayed put in my seat, half-wishing he’d forget that I was there and decide to take a spontaneous nap.
Yeah. That’s very likely.
“Umm…” He looked at me incredulously, silently questioning why the hell I was still there.
“Will you be at Café Diem tomorrow?” I asked. He turned fully toward me, resting his elbow on the steering wheel. His hair was messily thrown into a bun and he looked so youthful and so gorgeous I wanted to cry.
“Maybe.”
I swallowed, changing the subject. “You know, I have a tattoo, too.”
I was blabbing. But I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to roll someone else between his sheets. Didn’t want his hard inked thigh pressing against someone else’s sex. I could have died just thinking of his full lips skimming the jawline of a paying customer.
He smirked. “Show me.”
I turned around, gathering my long hair up into a ponytail. I felt his eyes on my neck. My eyelashes fluttered, my eyes hard on the row of palm trees facing the Morgansen estate through the passenger window. I waited for Bane to react. I felt his fingers brushing my ink. Trailing down, to my spine, further south, to my waist. He clutched my hipbone, and not gently. His mouth pressed against my tattoo, and it was warm and perfect against the roughness of his beard on my skin, just like I’d imagined earlier in the bathroom. A breathy grunt escaped me the moment his lips touched my flesh.
“Saw it before,” he whispered.
“You did?”
He nodded into the curve between my shoulder and neck. “At the beach. A few years ago. Red bikini. Cherry-patterned.”
I remembered that day. What surprised me was that he remembered me. I licked my lips, waiting for him to continue.
“I was going through some shit that got me thinking. On the brink of stopping the whole escort bullshit for a hot second. I thought that quote was aimed at me. I’ve always been a Pushkin fan—well, actually, my mom and wannnabe-stepdad—they were never actually married—liked him. They’re, like, mega-Russian. Anyway, it seemed like a sign. Like the universe was screaming something at me, and I didn’t speak the language. I was gonna hit on you, but then you crawled into this pasty fuck’s arms, and I realized it wasn’t a sign. It was a big fuck-you from God for thinking I could be something else. Or, you know, someone else’s.”
I twisted back to face him, inwardly inviting, praying, begging for him to break his rules and ruin this. Ruin us. Because once his lips were on mine, it was on. We were no longer friends. Or enemies. Or two lonely skies—one empty and starless like me, one full of lights. One hidden by walls, and the other by ink and a beard. We’d just be free to be.
We were looking at each other now. He was inching closer into surrender, and I wanted his defeat.
“You’re poisoned. Sheltered. Yet, you’re no Snow White. Wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“Snow White waited for the prince. You’ll be the one saving yourself in this story.”
I blinked at him, thinking about what my dad used to say, his accent thick, almost as strong as his words.
“You don’t need a prince, princess. You need a sword.”
Bane had my back. He believed in me, and that made me believe in myself. My body was saturated with hope. “You can be my sword,” I said quietly. God. That was pathetic. What if he couldn’t? What if he didn’t want to be?
He brushed my cheek with his thumb. His eyes crinkled. They were expressive. Real. Older with his experience. “I’m afraid I’m going to wound you if I’m not careful.”
“You’re not your father, Roman.”
“Maybe I’m not, but it still doesn’t make us right for each other. I’m your boss, and one of your only friends. I’d be taking advantage of you if I laid a finger on you. Tell me you understand that, Jesse.”
I knew he was holding my faith in his callused hands, and I understood where he was coming from. I needed to gain independence for us to be equal.
“I’m going to make this job my bitch,” I said.
“I don’t doubt you.”
“But I haven’t been kissed in…” Nine hundred and three days, four hours, twenty-four seconds. Since my eyes had met the red dot of the recorder while I lay underneath Emery. Since my fate had been sealed. I cleared my throat. “In a long time.”
“You will be kissed by a lot of men. A lot of men I’d love to punch in the face. A lot of men who aren’t me.”
Recognizing that I was begging, I scooted away from him, my butt touching the passenger door. I needed to leave, and I was going to, despite not wanting to. I didn’t want him to go to anyone else. It was greedy, and selfish, and uncalled for, but it was the truth. I wanted Bane for myself.
“I don’t want you to sleep with anyone else.”
He smiled bitterly. “You can’t always get what you want.”
“I know,” I grumbled, waiting one more minute for him to say something more. To take it back. He didn’t. I threw the door open and hopped out. I wanted to be mad at him for the way he’d reacted, but he was right. From the outside, it might look like he was using me, had I slept with him. I raced toward my house, refusing to look back. Maybe it was for the best if he didn’t show up at Café Diem tomorrow morning.
“Hey, Snowflake,” he hollered from behind me. I stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Care to explain why you came out of that bathroom all flustered today?”
I put my hand on the door handle, twisted it, and walked in, leaving him high and dry. I thought I heard the thump of his head hitting the leather headrest behind him before I slammed the door, and wasn’t surprised.
He wanted me to feel empowered.
And that’s what I was going to be.
That night was the first in months when sleep came. And with it, the nightmare I’d been avoiding.
It felt like a memory more than a dream.
A black empty room. A figure of my slightly younger self, curled in a corner, on a couch. I watched the entire thing like I was watching TV, outside of my own body.
Young Jesse was reading a book. She flipped the pages, munching on a lock of her hair. Then the scent came to me. Alcohol. The kind my dad used to drink. Vodka. And with that scent, an intense fear that intensified in my gut.
A shadow floated over my figure. A man. I couldn’t get a good look at him. His back was to me, but he was facing young Jesse.
His back.
His back.
His back.
That’s why I did it. That’s why I took pictures of backs.
It was because of this man.
But who was he?
The Jesse in my dream dropped the book to her lap and stared back at him. She looked about ready to jump up and run away, and I wanted her to. Badly.
The man took a step toward me. Her. Us.
She dragged my body to the corner of the couch.
“No,” she said. “Please. I know I shouldn’t be here, but I promise I won’t come back if you let me go.”
My brain ordered my body to move. For my eyes to open. I wanted to get out of the dream before it consumed me. I wanted to get out before I remembered something I was pretty sure there was a good reason for me to forget. The only thing I could feel was my eyelids fluttering in REM. My body was frozen, my mind reeling.
Move. Wake up. Get the hell out of bed right now.
The man inched closer, and she curled inside herself, much like I had after what Emery, Nolan, and Henry did to me.
I wanted to kick my legs. To fall off the bed.
The scent of vodka pierced my nose, settling in my gut.
I finally managed to open my mouth, but nothing came out. Not a whisper, not a scream.
Somehow, I managed to grip one post of the bed and straighten myself up, gulping the morning sun and cracking my eyes open. Panting hard and dripping cold sweat, all I could do was turn around to the pin board behind me and flatten my hands around it, frantically looking for this man’s back. I couldn’t find it.
I put on my Keds, finger Taser, and black hoodie and went out for a run.
This time, I didn’t stop until my knees hit the concrete.