It started with locks.

I was ten, he was twelve. It was a rainy afternoon, and he showed me how to use a paperclip to open doors in our house that we weren’t supposed to open.

That sort of became our thing - going where we shouldn’t go and opening doors that we shouldn’t have opened. And that theme continued, until the whole thing blew apart.

From locks, it was petty theft like pulling candy bars from Conlin’s down on Main Street. First me keeping a lookout by pretending to peruse magazines by the counter while Silas stuffed Milky Ways and Snickers down his shorts. But then it was me, and the thrill of my first “pull” - a can of Coca Cola.

Carbonated sugar had never tasted as good as it did that day.

And that was the thrill and the allure of Silas - the boy from across town, the boy I never should’ve gotten involved with. It was knowing deep down that he was trouble, and being powerless to say no to it.

My parents had known his from church; that’s how he and Rowan got to be friends in the first place. I was young the night he stayed at our house to watch movies - the night the truck driver on interstate 93 topped off a forty-hour long-haul with half a bottle of tequila and drove right through his parents’ car at the Milton toll booth.

Technically after that, he lived with his uncle, Declan. But there wasn’t a day that he didn’t spend at least partly at the Hammond household - basically just another brother to all of us.

Well, not all of us.

Because to me he became something more - something much more. Stolen sodas turned to stolen beer on the roof of O’Donnell’s, which turned to stolen kisses.

Places we never should have gone.

And then I fell, in the stupid, silly way you only do when you’re young and think you understand the world. He showed me things I’d never known - how to open doors, the illicit thrill of taking what you shouldn’t.

And then the thief stole my heart.

* * *

Back home in my old bedroom, I pull off my heels, the skirt, the top, letting the air out slowly as I poke through my old chest of drawers for a t-shirt or something to sleep in.

I pause in the full-length mirror, my eyes dropping to the small little mark on my left ribcage.

I always make sure this is covered in pictures. Sport bras cover it, and I photograph the other side in bathing suits. Nothing on Instagram or anywhere else shows the ink I doubt anyone outside a few know I even have.

The delicate outline of a key.

It’s stupid, and I should have covered it up years ago. I’m sure he has.

The boy with the matching one.

I stop in the mirror, running my finger over it, tracing the lines and pretending I can actually feel the ink beneath the pad of my finger. I’ve always thought about getting another one - something else, anything else, if only just to diminish the weight this ONE tattoo carries.

Except I never have.

So instead, it’s just became one more piece of that picture of my past that I can’t seem to let go of. Another stupid thing from back then that I’ve hung onto for all these years.

And it’s not the only thing.

My hand moves from the tiny tattoo to the thin chain that hangs around my neck, to the small pendant that hangs delicately between my breasts.

I had the ring itself destroyed after he left. I couldn’t wear it, not after that and not after everything that happened and everything that was said. But I couldn’t throw it away. It was ingrained too deep, too much a part of me. So I had the stone and part of the setting reformed onto the thin metal chain, and there it’s been.

For eight damn years.

I roll my eyes as I turn away from the mirror. Why I’ve hung onto this I don’t even know or fully understand.

I’m sure he hasn’t.

I’m sure there’ve been so many girls too, since me. The thought makes my face hot, and the jealous demon inside claw at my heart. That stupid, roguish smile, those dangerous and gorgeous eyes. Those dimples, the grooves of his face.

The velvet temptation of that voice.

The things he does with his hands.

…Or with his tongue.

The heat comes unbidden, undeniable, like it always does. The flush in my cheeks spreads down my neck to my breasts, my nipples puckering even in the summer heat.

I blush as I turn back to the mirror, raking my teeth across my lip as I let eyes dip down over my naked body. My fingers move again to the ink on my ribs, but they don’t stay there this time.

This time, they wander.

I trace the soft curve of my breasts with both hands, moving my hands slowly up to and then over my nipples. The electric buzz of it tingles through me as I linger there, teasing the swollen pink buds as my body slowly responds.

I move one hand down, tracing over the softness of my belly, down under the waist of my panties until I feel the heat pulsing there.

The kind of heat that only comes from thinking of Silas Hart.

My eyes flutter shut as my fingers push between my lips, sliding wetly across my seam and rolling electrically across my clit. And I think of his hands, because I’ve never been able to forget them.

There’s a saying that you “never forget your first.”

Forget? Hell, I can still feel Silas’s hands on me. Eight years later, I can remember every touch, every kiss, every lick, every caress.

Every thrust.

The moan catches in my throat as I sink a finger inside of me, curling it as I push my hand deeper beneath the cotton of my panties. My breath comes quicker as I stroke that place just inside, letting my thumb brush across the throbbing clit aching for attention.

I force my eyes open, seeing how flushed and how red I am, which only make me blush even deeper of course. My eyes flit to the tattoo, and then move to the ring again, warm against my breast on its little chain.

I step back until I feel the bed behind me. The panties slide down my legs into a heap at my feet before I kick them off and fall back into the bed.

I can remember our first time in this bed.

After months in the cab or the back of his truck, or out on the sand by the breakers on low tide the night we went skinny dipping, we finally had the house to ourselves. My parents were at a conference in Worcester, Stella at college in Boston, Rowan also in Boston doing God knows what he was up to for the three years he spent there. Sierra and Kyle were both at friends’ houses for sleepovers.

The whole house to ourselves.

I remember feeling so nervous, almost more so than the first time. Doing that here in my childhood bedroom felt almost sacrilegious, even if it was in the most sinfully wonderful way. I remember the strange mix of childhood stuffed animals still on the shelves and teenage music posters on the wall, mixed with the very adult feeling of sitting astride Silas Hart riding his perfect cock until I screamed out my climax.

So wrong, so dirty, and so fucking good.

Here in that room again, I can feel my body beginning to clench as I replay the memories. My fingers stroke in and out, my thumb tracing lazy circles around my clit as my breath and my blood pumps higher, hotter, faster.

I remember him spreading my legs and taking me for a second time here in this bed that night - holding me, kissing me, claiming me.

Making me his.

All it takes is one more stroke of my fingers and one more rolling thumb across my clit after that before I’m rocking my hips off the bed and turning my head to bury my scream into the pillow. The memories sizzle through me, the ink on my ribs throbs, and the ring burns like a hot little coal between my breasts a I come.

I lay there after, chewing on my lip and toying with the ring pendant again.

And as hot as it just was reliving my past with Silas, all I can think about is how silly it is that I’ve kept it.

Because again, I’m sure he hasn’t. And again, I’m sure there have been so many women after me that he’s forgotten the memories I still relive as fantasy like some sort of silly girl.

The thought makes me furious, and then even madder that it has that effect on me at all, and I suddenly slide from the bed and skulk across the room to the dresser. I yank on an old softball t-shirt and sleep shorts.

I don’t give a shit what Silas’s done since us. Because that all ended when he left. Let him chase skanky townie girls in townie bars all night, exactly like he was always meant to.

Budweiser and Red Sox games, that stupid vintage pickup truck.

It was a lie I was chasing before, and I’m done doing that.

I’ve grown up.

I slump back into the bed.

Right?