CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
PAST
Tiffany was only a despised name in my head for years before I actually met the girl.
When her parents started sending her to stay at Dante’s house for a few weeks every summer, I was already solidly turned against her.
It is a fact that I never gave her a chance.
Blind hatred will do that.
Dante was kinder than I was, or at least that’s what I told myself back then. He tried not to hold their mothers’ crazy ideas against her.
When I first got wind of it, we were alone in Gram’s parlor right before dinner. We were sitting side by side, waiting for her to finish a phone call.
He had a hold of my hand when he told me the news.
I wrenched it away.
I was already his girlfriend, already possessive of him and sure of my ownership.
And so I threw a fit.
“She’s staying at your house?” I was trying not to raise my voice. It was the thing I’d been dreading since his mother had told me about her.
He shrugged, looking helpless. “She’s just some girl I don’t know. My mom invited her. It’s not like I can stop them, but who cares? I’m hardly ever home. The only thing I do is sleep there.
That sounded ominous enough to me. “If you stay in that house with her, I’m breaking up with you,” I told him.
He did not like that. I’d never threatened him with such a thing, never even thought of it before.
“Are you kidding me?” he spoke low, temper flashing in his eyes.
He tried to grab me, but I evaded him, standing up and walking away. “You let me know when you decide what you want to do.”
Of course he didn’t let me leave like that.
He caught me, picked me up, and carried me back to the couch. He had me pinned on my back, face looming over mine when he said. “Stand down, tiger. Who do you think you’re talking to? Whose side do you think I’m on?”
I was not standing down, still fuming, face turned away, lips trembling. “I don’t even know.”
“You do. Pretend all you want, but you know I’m on your side. Don’t you?”
“No.” I knew I was pouting like a brat, but I felt so helpless. I couldn’t stand the thought of him sleeping in the same house as that girl in the picture.
A picture I’d kept, buried somewhere in the bottom of a drawer, my fear of what she represented not buried nearly as deep.
He was the only thing of value in the world that belonged to me, and the thought of losing him made me feel impotent and weak. Made me want to lash out at anyone and anything. Even him.
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered right into my mouth. “I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t you know I’ll do whatever you want?” His voice was cajoling. Seductive. Completely unfair.
And as he spoke, he was shifting on top of me, moving his hips until he was lying flush between my thighs and we were both breathing hard.
He shifted, grinding against me. “Anything you want,” he repeated, “but don’t threaten me with that again. It’s not okay. It’s not an option. Don’t you know it’s not an option?”
I had, but I didn’t know how to pull my punches when I was blindly lashing out. “I don’t want you sleeping in that house with her,” I told him.
He had his lips on me now, was placing deep, drugging kisses on my cheek, my jaw, my throat, as he said, “Okay. Fine. That’s easy. I’ll stay with Gram until she leaves. Is that all?”
I nodded and he started kissing me. With a groan, I kissed him back, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his hips.
He groaned into my mouth and kissed me deeper, grinding harder against me.
We made out like this just about every chance we got, but we normally weren’t this shameless about it. We usually found someplace where we knew we were alone before we did anything like this. The fight had distracted us both.
“Dante, get off her,” Gram’s exasperated voice broke through the air.
He leapt off me like she’d burned him.
I sat up, straightening my clothes as I looked guiltily at her. More than anything, I wanted her approval, and I hated the idea that she’d look down on me for finding us like that.
But she just rolled her eyes at me. “Boys!” she said, throwing her hands up. “What on earth will we do with this one? Too brazen for his own good!”
I smiled, sending a disgruntled Dante an evil look. I even stuck my tongue out at him. He’d been blamed for the whole thing, and I couldn’t make myself be sad about it. It had been his fault.
Over dinner Dante casually asked Gram if he could stay over for a few weeks.
She didn’t hesitate. “Of course. Any time. You don’t have to ask. You’re welcome here, always. You too, Scarlett. Come for a sleepover any time you like.”
Dante and I shared a look, both of our minds going to the same place, which was he and I sleeping under the same roof, quickly followed by thoughts of us in the same bed.
I blushed and looked away. It was a hopeless fantasy. My grandma would never let me sleep over at Gram’s, especially if she had an inkling that Dante was there.
“How about it?” Dante asked me later as he walked me home. “Want to have a sleepover with me at Gram’s?” He was grinning ear to ear.
My whole face went red. “Knock it off.”
He laughed, backing me into a tree, pinning me there with his big body. “You don’t want to have a sleepover with me?” he laughed some more. It was contagious, and I found myself smiling up into his face.
“I swear sometimes Gram still thinks we’re ten years old,” he told me.
“She didn’t think that when she found us dry humping in her parlor earlier,” I said wryly.
His eyes did something fascinating when I said that. “Dry humping, huh? As opposed to what? Wet humping?” He wasn’t even smiling anymore, his body crowding me.
“Stop,” I told him.
“When are you going to let me wet hump you, Scarlett?” he was laughing again, which was good. For a second there he’d seemed too much for me to handle.
“Shut up,” I told him, my usual retort for being teased.
“We’re almost to your house,” he told me, though we really weren’t since we weren’t even moving anymore. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
“Are you going to stop teasing me?”
He leaned in close. “Never.” He kissed me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back. We were good at it by then, we’d done nothing but practice lately. It was a new and dear hobby.
And I was very good at giving him a little then backing off, never letting him get too far since my grandma had put the fear of God in me.
I won’t deny that the thought of another girl as competition had more than a bit to do with it, but we got a little more carried away than usual. He was grabbing my butt, holding me against the tree while he ground his hardness into me, rooting around for my softness through our clothes.
I brushed my breasts into his chest, rubbing them back and forth against him until he made the noises I liked best.
My nipples were so hard and sensitive and I couldn’t seem to stop doing it, brushing them back and forth, making him feel what he was doing to me.
He ripped his mouth away, panting as he pressed our foreheads together. “Jesus,” he muttered, a refrain that let me know he was reaching his limit.
Licking his lips, I started pulling my shirt up. Since that first time, when we’d been caught by my grandma, my breasts had been pretty much off the table, but I decided right then to put them back on it.
He pulled back to watch as I exposed my bra, his hips moving in little movements that I doubted he even knew he was making.
I unsnapped my bra and pulled it apart, letting my breasts swing free.
“God,” he said, reaching for them.
I let him fondle me while I watched him through heavy lids.
“Does this feel good?” he asked me, kneading at my flesh.
“Mmmhmm,” I hummed. So good. “Does it feel good to you?”
His breathing was heavy, his hips circling as he started tugging on my nipples. “You have no idea.” He bent his head down to me. “Can I?” he rolled his eyes up to look at me.
I bit my lip and nodded, covering his hands with mine to lift myself up to his mouth.
He started licking my nipples, sucking and tonguing them, back and forth. It felt so good, especially with the way he was moaning while he did it, but he stopped abruptly, setting me down and backing away, a hand dragging through his hair.
“Your grandma’s going to be home soon,” he told me, eyes still on my bared breasts. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.” He paused. “And I don’t want to freak you out by taking it too far. I’m feeling a little too crazed not to do something you’re not ready for.”
“Okay,” I said, because he was right about all of it, so I couldn’t argue.
I straightened and started working at getting my ample boobs back into my bra.
Dante happily helped me, bending down to nuzzle between when we had them back in place. “Can we . . . hang out at your grandma’s tomorrow? We’ll meet at Gram’s. I—“ he paused voice thickening, “need some time alone with you. More than a few minutes in the woods.”
I kissed him, then kissed him again. “Of course. We can watch a movie or something.”
He looked amused. “Whatever you want to call it.”
But when I showed up at his gram’s the next day she was there with him.
I turned around and started walking home.
He caught up to me, stopping me with a hand on my arm. “Stop. Just meet her, okay? She’s not that bad. Just come get introduced and we’ll make an excuse and leave, huh? But there’s no need to be rude. She’s not rude. Trust me.”
I was fuming, but I went back with him.
If only to get a closer look at the girl his family wanted him to marry.
Dante introduced us.
I mumbled out a surly, “Nice to meet you.”
She seemed unfazed, beaming at me. “Nice to meet you too, Scarlett.”
We did not leave right away, much to my chagrin. Instead we stayed while she chatted with Dante and I glared at them both.
She was very sweet, even to me. And she had an obvious, extreme crush on Dante. She looked up, up, up at him like he was the center of her universe.
I knew the look well. I wore it often myself.
Meeting her didn’t help. I hated her more than ever. The sweeter she was, the more it made me sick to my stomach. I’d wanted to her to be awful, and ugly.
But she was beautiful and good.
It made no sense.
I was a fighter. A warrior of a girl.
She was a delicate flower. A shrinking violet.
Why did her timidity cow me? How?
Self-disgust resonated through me, and I steeled myself.
Just because she was something I couldn’t understand, something he might like, that didn’t mean I’d back down.
I studied her while they talked, eyeing her head to toe. She was thin in the way that models are thin, not an ounce of fat on her, but still some shape, even if it was just the way her skin molded around her bones. She’d look good in anything. She had no breasts to speak of, so she was basically a walking clothes hanger.
Everything I wore pulled across my breasts, drawing eyes, making things fit worse than they should have.
And her hips were nonexistent. That I hated even more. Breasts, particularly big perky ones like mine, were well beloved by boys, and more importantly, well beloved by Dante.
But fleshy, shapely hips? It was anyone’s guess. Mine were a handful and then some.
I had mentally catalogued every inch of her by the time either of them turned back to me.
They seemed to be getting along, which made me sick.
What if he liked her more than me?
Maybe he’d had enough of sharp tongues and rough edges. Maybe he longed for someone soft.
I couldn’t even stand the thought.
I turned around and started striding away.
“Did I say something?” I heard Tiffany asking him.
“Nah. We just had plans. Catch you later.”
I heard him running up to me, falling in beside me, but I ignored him.
“You don’t have to come with me,” I bit out. “Go back to your new girlfriend. Do whatever you want. I don’t even care anymore.”
I swear I could hear him grinding his teeth, but he didn’t respond at first. We were into the trees before he spoke.
“What the fuck?” finally burst out of him. “What is it with you? I was being polite. We talked about nothing for five minutes with you right there. I was just being nice.”
“You and I were supposed to have plans. You weren’t supposed to bring her along.”
“I didn’t! She came by Gram’s house to say hi to me. The timing wasn’t good, but it was a perfectly normal thing to do, unlike how you’re acting right now!”
I rounded on him. He’d hit a nerve and I wanted to hit him back. “If you don’t like the way I’m acting, if you don’t think it’s normal enough for you, then leave me the hell alone. If you don’t want to fight, you followed the wrong girl! Go follow her instead, if that’s what you want!”
He made a noise of deep frustration. “It’s not what I fucking want! What is your problem? Why do you turn everything into a fight?”
“That’s what you think I do? Turn everything into a fight?”
“Sometimes it feels that way,” he responded with no hesitation.
“That’s all you think I am,” I returned dully. My jabs were delivered furiously, but his always hit harder. “One messy fighter of a girl and apparently now you’re sick of the challenge. Why do you even bother with me?” I started walking away again, because I didn’t know what else to do. I just wanted to go somewhere and lick my wounds.
He didn’t let me get far, but when he tried to touch me, I fought him.
He wasn’t deterred, hugging me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides. He buried his face in my neck. “Not true,” he finally spoke.
He was out of breath from the struggle. At least I hadn’t made it easy on him.
“You’re letting your insecurity get the best of you,” he continued. “You’re a fighter, yes, but that is far from all that you are. And I do see all of you, Scarlett. You’re more to me than a challenge.”
“What, then? What am I to you?”
He moaned and kissed my neck, which was about the fastest way he could weaken me. “My angel.”