CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost remind my heart to beat!”
Emily Brontë
PAST
“Let’s ditch school,” I told Dante.
“And do what?”
“Go watch movies at my grandma’s house.” She wouldn’t be there. She was gone from seven a.m. to seven p.m. every single working day like clockwork.
And Dante never said no to movies at my house. It had become our thing lately.
In fact, it had become my favorite thing in the world.
He shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. I’m not in the mood for school anyway.”
We walked back toward my place leisurely, side by side as we strolled, so close that our arms and hands kept brushing against each other.
The third time it happened, he took my hand and laced our fingers together.
A thrill ran through my entire body, and I couldn’t hold back a smile.
Neither of us said a word about it. He’d been doing it more and more lately when we were alone, but we never talked about it.
We’d been doing lots of things when we were alone together that we never talked about.
Nothing like what his mom had suggested, in fact all of it could be called more or less innocent, just physical contact that kept progressing, lingering until we couldn’t seem to stop.
But he’d never even kissed me. I was starting to worry about it. From what I heard other girls talking about concerning boys, it seemed like if he wanted to he should have tried to by now.
It didn’t take us long to walk to my grandma’s house. Okay, house was a generous term. It was a rundown two-bedroom trailer on a plot of land that belonged to Dante’s family.
Still, it was the only place we had where we could be alone.
I let him pick out the movie.
He chose Gladiator even though we’d already seen it like five times. But neither of us actually cared what we watched. The movie was not why we’d started spending all of our free time doing this.
I turned it on and Dante sprawled out on the couch, his big body taking up most of it.
As much as I complained about how fast I was growing, he was growing much faster. He towered over me, and his lean body had started to develop muscles I couldn’t help but notice.
And as fast as he was growing, he was still as graceful, as comfortable in his own skin as he’d always been. I hadn’t seen him suffer through one awkward faze yet.
It was infuriating.
I shot him a pointed look at his spot on the couch and moved to sit on my grandma’s ancient recliner.
This was another game we played. I wouldn’t sit with him until he asked me.
No. Cajoled me into it. I resisted every time. I knew I couldn’t make anything too easy for him. Grandma had slapped that bit of wisdom deep into my skull.
“Psst,” he called to me.
I ignored him, eyes glued to the screen.
“Scarlett,” he tried. “You don’t have to sit on your grandma’s nasty old chair.”
“That couch is just as nasty,” I pointed out. Everything in the place was nasty. Old and cheap and dirty. I lived here and even I thought so.
“Well, you don’t have to sit alone over there.”
“You’ve taken up the whole couch. Where would I sit?” As I said it, I shot him an arch look.
He grinned at me. He was sprawled out, long arms perched at the top corner of the sofa. He kicked one knee up, throwing the other on the ground, and patted his thighs. “You can sit right here.”
I eyed him warily. This was new and a little intimidating. “I’m hungry. Do you want a snack?”
“Do you have snacks?”
Of course not. We never did. It was a wonder I grew so much with the lack of food available when I was at home. Then again, I got free lunch at school and had dinner at Gram’s more often than not.
“No,” I said, sorry I’d asked. But I was hungry.
“You should let me give you money for food,” he added, his tone careful and blank.
This was a very old and very sore subject. And he knew it.
I glared at him. “I won’t take any more of your charity. It’s bad enough your Gram buys me clothes for school and feeds me dinner almost every night.”
His jaw set stubbornly, and I was pissed and bummed. If we got into a fight, it would ruin the rest of the day.
But then he sighed and looked away, breaking the tension.
Sometimes when we locked eyes, it was like predators having a standoff. One wrong move and—blood.
On the flip side, if one backed down then—peace.
He’d backed down for this one, thank God, because I never could have.
He paused the movie.
“Well, I need food,” he said. “Is it all right if I order myself a pizza?”
“All right.”
“I can’t eat a whole one myself. I’ll only order it if you promise to eat some, too.”
That was a compromise I could live with, and he knew it. It didn’t feel so much like charity if he was feeding himself and I was just sharing.
I grabbed the phone and brought it to him. While he dialed, I sat down carefully between his thighs.
We’d never done this before. Usually he just put his arm around me and we’d progress through varying degrees of touching each other tentatively. I’d lay my head on his chest, sometimes, if he was extra bold, he’d rub my knee with his hand.
Once we’d even spooned, my back to his front both of us turned to the TV. That had happened two weeks ago and it’d been the most exciting moment of my life.
But sitting between his thighs felt like a decidedly bigger step.
Tentatively I leaned back into his chest while he dialed up the pizza place.
“Any toppings you prefer?” he asked me
I was having a hard time finding my breath. “Whatever. You pick. You’re paying.”
I always said this and never meant it. We got the same thing every time. It was my favorite. I couldn’t even have said if Dante particularly liked it, but he always got it.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone, his free arm moving to drape over my shoulder. “I’ll take a large pie, thin crust with jalapeños, chicken, and sausage. Extra sauce.”
When he hung up I pushed play on the movie again.
We sat stiffly like that for a few minutes before I felt him put pressure on my shoulders, pulling me back more firmly against him.
“Relax,” he said into my hair. “I won’t bite. Just lay on me.”
I tried, but it was impossible to relax like that. He wasn’t relaxed either though, to be fair. I could feel the tension coiled in him like a spring about to bust.
I wiggled my hips, pushing closer to him. He jerked like I’d hurt him, and I stopped. And that’s when I felt it, that hardness poking into me from behind, through our clothes.
I swallowed and spoke, my voice like a croak, “Is this comfortable? Should I move?”
He didn’t answer, but he was breathing hard into my ear.
I laid back, putting the weight of my shoulders more firmly to his chest. I wasn’t any more relaxed, but I didn’t really care. This felt better than relaxed, like something important was happening, and I didn’t want it to stop.
His arm around me moved suddenly, went up, gripping the top of the sofa above us, his knuckles white with the pressure of it.
I started to sit up to look at him, but he stopped me with a touch from his free hand to my belly.
I stilled, my eyes glued to that hand and the way it kept moving, stroking my stomach, pushing me harder into him.
I didn’t stop him, and he just kept rubbing. I started to move my hips, rubbing against that foreign hardness at my back. He didn’t stop me.
This went on for some time. Not progressing, but not stopping, which seemed like enough for a while.
Until it wasn’t. Eventually I craved more contact. I wasn’t sure what. It was a tangible desire for something intangible.
Feeling drugged, my body heavy and aching, I started to turn.
I pushed my chest to his. His eyes were on mine as we breathed each other’s air, our lips less than an inch away.
I don’t even know how it happened, but he was suddenly sitting up and I was straddling him, my fingers in his hair, his hands on my hips.
He was panting into my mouth, and I didn’t know what to do with myself I loved it so much.
He’s finally going to kiss me, I thought in wonder.
I’d been waiting for this for what felt like my whole life. And, at last, it was going to happen.
I didn’t move to him. I wanted him to make the move. I held perfectly still as he leaned that last inch toward me.
The doorbell rang, breaking the spell.
I scrambled off him, cursing in my head. My first kiss ruined by the fucking pizza man.
I was sullen as I grabbed the two cleanest plates I could find and laid them out on the coffee table.
We ate in silence, the movie playing on. I had two slices, Dante the rest. There wasn’t so much as a crumb left by the time he was done. He always ate like that, and it was no surprise with the way he was growing.
He got up, threw the box away, and joined me again on the couch, throwing his arm over my shoulder.
I shrugged it off. I felt my temper suddenly brewing. It felt separate from me at times like this, a storm out of my control. I couldn’t have calmed it if I’d wanted to. I only seemed to know how to fuel it. Every bitter pill I’d ever swallowed was lodged somewhere inside of me, just waiting for these moments.
“So that girl you’re going to marry,” I ground out, voice tight and angry. “Is she nice?” I turned my head to watch his reaction.
He shot me a genuinely baffled look. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tiffany. Fanny. Your mom told me all about her.”
“What? Who?”
“Tiffany Vanderkamp. Ring a bell?”
He looked no less confused as he said, “That’s the daughter of my mom’s best friend. I barely know her. What on earth does she have to do with anything?”
My eyes narrowed on him, looking for any signs of deceit. “Your mom told me you were going to marry her after you graduate from college.”
His mouth twisted, and he glared back at me, his own temper coming out to play.
It seemed to instantly quiet my own. I acknowledged to myself that some perverse part of me loved to rile him.
“You know my mom is crazy. She was fucking with your head. It’s what she does. I can’t believe you let her get to you. You’re smarter than that.”
My head cleared like I’d been lost in a fog and I was suddenly out of it. He was right. His mother was nuts, and this was just the kind of thing she’d pull whether there was truth to it or not.
“So you know this means she’s going to try to get you to marry that girl,” I pointed out to him.
He rolled his eyes. “Good fucking luck to her. She tries every day to get me to do things. Ask me how often she succeeds.”
I didn’t have to ask. I knew. Seldom, and only when he wanted to go along with whatever it was.
“You really thought I was planning to marry that girl?” he asked. There was a world of reproach in his voice.
I shrugged. “It’s not my business.” I turned my face away.
With a hand on my chin he turned it back. “It is your business.”
I shook my head.
“It is your business, but you of all people know that I don’t want to marry some random girl my mother chose. There’s only one girl I want.”
My heart was pounding so hard I thought both of us could hear it.
Without a word he lifted me onto his lap, turning me sideways, bringing our faces close.
“When are you finally going to let me kiss you, Scarlett?” he whispered to me, both hands cupping my face.
“Now,” I whispered back.
With a smile he gave me my first kiss.
I didn’t know what to do, but it was still good. I didn’t know how to be passive, so I imitated him, opening my mouth, and when I felt his tongue I mashed my own against it.
So good, even with our unpracticed mouths and unsteady hands. It wasn’t long before he shifted me, bringing me to straddle him, our bodies making heavy contact.
Even more than my own pleasure in the kiss, I enjoyed what I was doing to him.
He was moaning into my mouth, his hands all over me, touching my neck, my shoulders, my ribs, all along my sides, then down to grab my hips.
It was wonderful.
It escalated too quickly, I later reflected.
I was so drunk on my first taste of him that I let it get out of hand.
He tentatively touched the side of a breast with his palm, the other still on my hip, moving me, urging me to rock against him, and I did, the core of me discovering the hardness of him and exploring it through our clothes. I felt empty, aching, and hot all at once. And I wanted more.
The hand at my chest stayed there for a while, and eventually I realized he was asking for permission.
With a little suck on his tongue, I took my fingers out of his hair and gripped his wrist, pulling his hand over and onto the center of my full breast, right at my nipple.
I gasped and he moaned as he palmed the aching globe. It was quickly not enough, and I found myself lifting my shirt, pulling aside my bra so he could touch skin.
We both groaned.
And that was when my grandma came home, hours and hours earlier than she usually did.
She went into such a rage, and I got into so much trouble that I avoided Dante for a solid week after that, which was not easy. I had to skip a lot of school to do it.
He finally cornered me at my house, climbing into an unlocked window to get to me where I cowered in my bedroom.
“Listen,” he said, looming over me where I huddled on my bed, “if we went too far, just say so. I’ll back off. Whatever we do, all of that sort of stuff, it’s all on you what pace we go, okay? We won’t do anything you aren’t ready for, not even kissing if you don’t want.”
“I’m okay with the kissing,” I told his feet. “But the rest was going too fast for me, okay?” Grandma’s hours of chewing me out had ingrained in me one important fact: I could not give a boy too much or he’d lose interest in me.
He grinned from ear to ear and perched himself on my bed. “But you liked the kissing, right?
I smiled back. “Yeah. But what does it—I mean—are we . . . “ I couldn’t even finish I was so embarrassed.
His entire gorgeous face was flushing in pleasure. “Yes, Scarlett. Of course. We’re together. We’ve always been together.”
I was bright red and I couldn’t look at him anymore, but I needed more assurances, something concrete. “S-s-s-so you’re my . . .”
“Ah, Scarlett,” he said softly and fondly. “I’m your boyfriend. You’re my girlfriend. Yes. Is that what you were getting at?”
I shot him a look. “Isn’t that something you’re supposed to ask a girl, not tell her?”
He got a real kick out of that, in fact I didn’t think I’d ever seen him happier. He leaned close, touching our foreheads together. “Not this. Not us. Neither of us have a choice in this. You and I being together is not a question, Scarlett, it’s a fact of life.”
And he kissed me. And kissed me.
After that we were making out every day. Every chance we could get. We kissed goodbye, we kissed hello, we kissed in the woods on the way home from school. Anywhere we went where we thought no one was watching, but he was true to his word. He didn’t take it any further until I was ready.