She’s like a stone wall. Unspeaking and unmoving as she watches Rhett. The moment he came out of the water, her whole demeanor took a sudden shift. She stands rigid, as if she’s looking at a ghost. As Rhett heads toward the parking lot, I reach out. The second I touch her, she coils away from me with turbulence in her eyes. I quickly draw back.
She realizes her harsh reaction and is quick to mutter, “I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she lies and gives me a crap-ass smile meant to delude me, but I’m done allowing her to hide from me. The last time I gave into her bullshit, I lost her.
I hold my hand out to her. “Come here.” She slides her palm into mine, and I walk her over to where my backpack is, and we take a seat. “What was that reaction all about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know exactly what I mean. With Rhett.”
Her eyes fall away, and she turns them to the water. She brings her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around her bent legs. I watch as her brows subtly knit together, and I expect her to dismiss me with some lame excuse. Instead, she surprises me when she reveals, “He was there.”
“What are you talking about?”
She refuses to look at me, and when I catch her bottom lip trembling, she bites it for a moment before saying, “That night . . . Rhett was at that fraternity party with me. This was the first time I’ve seen him since.”
With a much more cautious hand, I reach around her shoulders, and this time, she doesn’t flinch.
“Seeing him . . . it triggered me in a way I haven’t felt in a while.”
I press my hand against her, and she freely leans into me, something she never would’ve allowed before. I’ve tried endless times to console her in the past, but she always pushed me away, asserting she was fine and getting mad at me for assuming something was wrong.
“Does that happen a lot?” I ask, wanting to know every ounce of what this did to her.
“It used to, but not recently.” She drops her head and rests her cheek on her knees. Her eyes full of pain as she looks at me.
“Talk to me,” I request gently, hoping that she’ll finally open herself up to me a little more.
“He offered to walk me back to my dorm, and I turned him down. None of this would’ve happened if I had just gone with him.” She blinks against tears that fill her eyes but don’t fall. “Why didn’t I go with him?”
“You can’t do this,” I tell her, seeing her internal struggle with faulting herself. “You can’t blame yourself for something you had no idea was going to happen.”
“But why did it have to happen to me?” Her voice is strangled and small, and the moment I pull her to me entirely and have her wrapped in my arms, she trembles.
“I wish I had some profound answer for you, but I don’t. These things just happen. And it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, no one is invincible.”
She curls against me, and I simply hold her, comfort her, and lend her whatever strength I have. All the things I wanted to do in the past but she deprived me of, and here she is, finally giving me an opportunity not to feel so entirely worthless to her. This is what I always wanted—to be the one she could lean on. I would’ve taken all her pain and bore the weight on my own if I could’ve.
Cradling her against my chest, her body soon settles into stillness, and as much as I know I shouldn’t, I can’t help myself when I bend my neck and kiss her bare shoulder. Her warm skin is soft against my lips, and when she turns her head, I’m not quick to retreat.
“Why aren’t you mad at me?”
I shoot her a dumbfounded look.
“I lied to you. I pushed you away, and I left,” she says. “You should hate me.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Taking my thumb, I brush it along the crest of her cheek. “Your lies and even your abandonment, it was never enough to make me stop loving you. No matter what you do, I’ll never stop caring about you.”
She turns away, wearing confliction so vividly as if my words are weapons inflicting pain upon her. But my words are truth, and with so many years lost and so much left unfinished, I refuse to let another day go by holding this shit in. I’m going to lay it all out there in the open because I’m sick of skating around what we both know is between us.
“I love you, Adaline.” She turns right back to me when I say this. “We’ve lost so much time, and I don’t want things to go left unsaid, but I’m in love with you. You’re all I wantbut I’m in love with you. You’re all I wantbut I’m in love with you. You’re all I wantbut I’m in love with you. You’re all I want. Still to this day, you’re the only one who makes me feel this way.”
With as closely as I’m holding her, I can feel her chest rising and falling as her breathing grows in tempo. She then reaches up, slowly grazing her hand along the scruff of my jaw. “I feel the same way when I’m with you,” she reveals, and I swear those words knock the wind out from my lungs. “It’s like time hasn’t changed us . . . but it has.” She drops her hand from me as she hesitates. “When I’m with you, everything beyond us fades, but when I’m not with you, I have this whole other life that I’ve built and created, and I . . . I have Micah to think about. My heart is being pulled in two different directions, and that terrifies me. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I also can’t keep pretending that I don’t still love you.”
Finally hearing the truth from her causes my heart to hammer against ribs that threaten to splinter under the pressure. I want to grab her face and kiss her relentlessly, but she doesn’t give me the chance when she begins to speak again.
“I talked to Micah before I came here to see you.”
I cringe every time she puts his name on her lips. “What did you tell him?”
“The same thing I’m telling you. That I’m scared. That everything—graduating, moving, getting married—is happening too fast. I told him I needed to slow down. I can barely think straight anymore. It’s as if I’m running on pure emotions, and that worries me.”
“What’s there to think about?” I question. “Would you really marry another man, knowing you’re still in love with me?”
“It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”
“There’s no other way to put it, Adaline.”
“But I love him, too,” she affirms, yet it comes out too meager, with too much uncertainty. “We have years together.”
“Yet, here you are . . . in my arms.”
Her fake façade is wasted on me because she exposes too many cracks. I know this girl doesn’t want to inflict pain on anyone, and I have no doubt she’s scared, but at this point, someone is bound to get hurt, and fuck if that person is going to be me when I know that she was put on this earth to be loved by me.
Lightning strikes down into the ocean, followed by a loud crack of thunder.
“We should get out of here,” I tell her before standing to grab my backpack, towel, and skimboard.
Adaline gets up with her flip-flops dangling from her fingers as she gazes up at the storm that’s blowing in.
Another flash of lightning spears down.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
She leads the way to where she’s parked, and after giving myself and my board a quick rinse down at the beach shower, I dry off and hop into the SUV. She suggests going back to her place. The drive feels longer than what it should with the silence between us. Adaline grips the steering wheel tensely with both hands, and I hate that she is going through this.
Reaching out, I run my hand along her arm, tugging when I get to her wrist, and she easily lets go of the wheel and allows me to hold her hand. When she glances my way, I give her a slight, reassuring smile, but I practically have to force it because the bite of urgency starts to creep in.
When she looks back to the road, I grit my teeth and try to focus on something else. I flip on the stereo and turn it up, but I know all too well that I’m powerless against this addiction of mine. Hell, I’ve already jerked off three times today. And as much as I’ve been trying to fight myself from fucking other girls now that Adaline has been coming around more, I couldn’t hold back. I hooked up with some stranger I met on the internet yesterday. She sucked my dick and after about a five-minute recovery, I fucked her until I couldn’t see straight.
I squeeze Adaline’s hand when my balls tighten and draw up, and the moment she looks at me is the moment I look away.
This is my goddamn dilemma, knowing she might actually be better off with Micah but being too stubborn to let her go.
A week ago, she pushed me to seek some sort of treatment. I told her I would think about it, but I lied. As much as this controls my life and makes me feel like the lowest piece of shit human there is, the high is too high. It’s unearthly, unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life. The thought of giving up that kind of pleasure is nearly debilitating. I swear I need it to survive even though it’s killing me.
As soon as we pull up to her house, I grab my bag and walk inside. “Give me a few minutes to wash up,” I tell her before heading into one of the guest bedrooms that has its own en-suite bathroom. I pull out my dry clothes from my bag, toss them next to the sink, and then hop in the shower. My erection is already raging hard. With one hand braced against the slate wall and the other gripped firmly around my dick, I beat off. It doesn’t take long before I’m coming as the hot water pelts against my back.
Self-loathing consumes as I clean the salt and sand from my body and wash my hair. The internal abuse I inflict on myself is brutal when I think about Adaline downstairs and how badly her heart is being torn. Maybe I should make this easier on her. Yes, I want her, but I’m so not worthy enough for her to give her life to. I remember so vividly how much pain she put her body through because she felt this incessant need to take care of me, and now my hunger is so much stronger than what it used to be back then.
Once I freshen up and throw my clothes on, I grab my bag and head downstairs. The second I see her, my chest pangs in misery. “You mind taking me back to my place? I forgot I had some stuff I need to do,” I lie, not wanting to subject myself into a false hope that we actually have a chance at making this work.
“We just got here,” she says with need in her eyes. “Don’t go just yet.”
Christ, this girl. I can’t resist her for the life of me. I know this rope she is giving me will ultimately be the noose I die from, but I’m not strong enough to walk away.
“Can we just spend some time together?”
I drop my bag at the foot of the stairs, and when I walk over to her, she takes my hand and leads me outside to the couch that’s under the veranda. The storm has caught up to us and the rain is coming down in sheets. I kick back and lie down, and she crawls on top of me and right into my arms the way she always used to. Her heart beats against mine, and with her head on my chest, I close my eyes and pretend she’s mine.
“I miss this,” she breathes against my neck.
Closing my eyes, I flex my muscles around her and hold her closer, dreading the moment this will all come to an end. I breathe in her scent as the rain falls from all around. All I can do as the minutes bleed into unknown time is savor the feeling of her body against mine. It’s something I thought I’d never have again, and I don’t want to waste this moment.
Thunder rumbles in the distance, and the rain continues to fall, eventually lulling Adaline to sleep. I whisper her name, and when she doesn’t respond, I take more than what I should when I slip my hand under her shirt and run it up her spine, which is damp with sweat, reminding me of how hot she always used to sleep. I flatten my palm against her back and press her against me even more, absorbing her perspiration into my body that will always beg to have her.
And with her everythings consuming me, it’s impossible to ignore the ache between my legs. I endure my dick straining against her belly as long as I can, until the pressure of urgency radiates down my legs and into my arms, causing my hands to grow jittery. I pull them from under her shirt and shake them out, but the tingles don’t relent. Shifting to my side, I settle Adaline between me and the back of the couch. I grab my dick from outside my shorts and readjust as I take in her beautiful face. Every soft angle, every lash that’s fanned along the peak of her cheekbone, the way her lips curve so perfectly. I sneak a kiss like a bastard because I miss the way her lips feel against mine.
Sharp pain shoots up my lower abdomen and into my chest, yanking me away from her and rendering me too weak to avoid the unavoidable.
I slip off the couch and leave her out here alone as I rush inside, but this time, my sick need to feel close to her in any way I can leads me to her room instead of one of the others. I lock myself inside her bathroom, and with her smell all around me, I yank my pants down and, for the fifth time today, jerk off with Adaline tucked behind my eyelids.
This time, I don’t come so easily. Gripping the edge of the sink, I bear down and grind my teeth, picturing all the ways I want to touch her, feel her, taste her, and fuck her. I imagine her naked and spread beneath me as I try to recall the sound of her voice moaning my name when she would orgasm. A sheen of sweat breaks from my hairline, and when my vision blurs and my breathing staggers, growing louder, I blindly reach for a wad of tissue before I explode into a million fractions of heartbroken euphoria.
I will my body to drain itself because I don’t want to be doing this again, at least not for today. I’m spent, and after a few more contractions, I toss the filthy wad into the toilet and flush. I return to the sink and splash a handful of cold water onto my face before staring into the mirror at all my decrepitness. I swear it eats away at my soul daily, and I wonder at what point it’ll swallow me alive.
I dry my face with a towel and shove my dick into my pants, needing to get back downstairs before Adaline notices I’m gone. But as soon as I unlock and open the bathroom door, she’s standing there with pity in her eyes. Shame spews from my veins, knowing she heard what I was doing in her bathroom. With bitterness on my tongue, I bite, “This is why we’ll never work,” as I try to walk out of the room, but I’m not fast enough. She rushes in front of me, blocking the door.
“We worked before.”
I can’t even bring myself to look her in the eyes. “I was a lot more in control back then.”
“You can be in control now. You just have to want it.”
Turning away from her, I pace over to the bed with a frustrated hand clawing through my hair. “I can’t do this.” I drop my hand to my side and look her dead on. “I want to. God, I want to be with you so much, but I’m too fucked, and I can’t put you in the middle of this nightmare of mine. You’re too good for this shit.”
“Says who?” she argues as she steps closer to me.
“Says me.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I’m too good for or what I can handle. That isn’t up to you.”
“You’re kidding, right? You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” I lash out. “I’ve been here for a little over an hour, and I’ve already fucked my hand twice. Then there’s the three times this morning, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not even close to being done for the day.”
“You think I’m blind to the fact that you’re suffering through this?” she fumes, balling her tiny fists at her sides. “I know how badly this hurts you.”
“Are you forgetting how badly it hurts you. How much pain I’ve put you through? How I’d make you fucking bleed?” I rip at old scars with that last one and cringe, balling my hands over my eyes, but she’s quick to grab ahold of my wrists and pull them down.
“That was my choice. It’s still my choice.”
“This isn’t what you should be choosing. This is an excruciating life.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
I shake my head and pull my wrists out of her hands.
“You aren’t the only one dealing with this,” she says, softening her voice, and when I lower myself onto the edge of the bed, she sits next to me. “There are people you can talk to. Doctors or psychiatrists or whatever, but there’s help out there. You just have to ask for it.”
“What if I’m too far gone?”
“I promise you that you aren’t,” she asserts before turning toward me and sitting on her knees. “And if you think you’ll have to fight this alone, you’re wrong. We’ll fight it together. But don’t you dare think you’re a lost cause.”
She has no idea that this monster living inside me has grown outside the realm of control. I’m powerless against it. But even if I could fight, I don’t know if I would because I don’t know a life outside of this craving.
It’s all I’ve ever known.
“I don’t care what I stand to lose; I’m not giving up on you.” She then takes my face in her hands, stressing every syllable of every word with fervency, as she proclaims, “You are not beyond saving,” but she fails to feed me the strength I need to believe her.