Chapter Four
Jona
The sun shines thickly in my eyes.
I run a hand over my face and groan, shifting to find a woman sleeping on my chest. I’m on the beach, surrounded by half-naked bodies. Thankfully, mine’s still fully-clothed, something that hardly ever happens waking up with a hangover.
I shift my head to check out who’s sprawled across my chest. Monika’s curled up on top of me with my hoodie on, legs wrapped around mine. There’s a seagull on the trail post, watching me shake the sand from my hair with its beady eyes.
Bikini clad limbs are strewn in the sand like shrapnel from a beach party, and the taste of balls and salt are thick in my mouth. But I have nowhere to be, so I lie back down, wrapping my arms around Monika’s shivering body.
Bits and pieces of last night come back to me. Shots, bonfires, and a whole lot of bad college girls. I was too drunk to drive and laid down in the sand, passing out with my new friend.
“Mon?” I whisper, giving her a shake. “I gotta piss, sugar.”
“Hmm?” she groans, lifting on her elbow and staring around, confused. She puts two and two together alarmingly fast, which makes me think she stands a chance in this city. “Yeah, okay.” She lets me go, cheeks pink.
I push to my feet and head out to the water, skull throbbing like the girls kicked me to sleep. After I’m done writing my name in the sand, I return, eyes burning.
“You girls want a ride home?”
They all look up at me in the sand, bleary-eyed, hair covered in sand, bikinis dirty. I know something’s truly wrong with me at the sight of them. They should be naked, in my bed, and my balls should be drained. But they all look like Hillary, and there’s no way I can go down that road anymore.
“Yes, please.” Monika rises, dusting off her cute little ass.
“I’ll be in my car. Take your time.” I watch them from my car. I can only imagine what they’re talking about, avoiding eye contact, and the buzz of booze gone from their system. I probably look like a bad idea again. They’re right—I am—but there are worse ideas out there.
When they come to the cove, I move the clutter out of the backseat, finding Justine’s cell phone and purse in the stuff I bundled up on the beach from last night. I pocket her phone.
“Where to?”
“We live on campus,” Monika says, trying to cover her legs with her hands.
It’s time.
“Ladies? Don’t talk, just listen. I’ve lived in Crystal Gulf my entire life. I’ve been to a million parties, threw some incredible ragers, and I’ve slept with more women than I can count. I’m a piece of shit on so many levels; I can’t even find a good thing to say about myself. But there are worse men out there. Bad men, who would take one look at your innocent beautiful faces and do his best to ruin your lives. I could have been one of them tonight. You got in my car without knowing that.” I glare at Monika, who’s wide-eyed and caught in my anger. “I could have hurt you. Killed you. Tossed your body out there for anyone to find it!”
She squeaks. “Jona … I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what? Didn’t think that I’d hurt you? That’s stupid. So damn stupid. I’m going to give you my number. The next time you guys need anything, please call me. Don’t ask some random rapist douchebag on the beach to buy you booze.” I can’t breathe, I’m so pissed. My brain keeps showing me Hillary Hayes passed out on my bed, skirt up, blond hair splayed above her head, her black eye already forming, and the look in her sea green eyes like every part of her that was good had been shattered in my house. “She could be you. Any of you.”
There’s a hand on my arm, and Monika’s pressing her chin on my shoulder, looking up at me from under her long golden lashes. “We’re sorry. Aren’t we, girls?”
A quick unison of “Yes,” comes from the back.
“Fuckin’ cutie,” I mutter, giving her a small smile. She’s too sweet for me. So sweet she’d light up all my ruined parts until I hated myself even more than I already do. There’s no part of my bad that wanted anything to do with her good.
I want someone whose bad is like my own. Confused and damaging—I want to be ruined.
Her eyes flash to my smile before she blushes. “Thank you for looking out for us. Really, Jona. I had fun.”
She doesn’t get it. I can see it in her eyes. Justine would get it. She’d find a way to get her own booze, not rely on someone like me. I feel a sudden emptiness thinking of her. It’s so quick I have no time to prepare myself. I miss her. Want her.
I want my Justine.
After I drop my new friends off at the University’s main entrance, I fish out her cell phone and stare down at it. There’s a huge crack across the middle, and the back is chipped. A password keeps it locked.
I try her birthday, and then I try it backward. I try as many number combinations I can think of before I’m about to give up. Right before I turn down frat house alley, I type in my birthday.
The screen unlocks.
“Hmm,” I mutter, trying hard not to think too deeply about that. She remembers my birthday enough to use it as her passcode, but doesn’t call me when it happened this past December? It was like her. To care from afar, so much so I wonder if she cares at all.
I open her contacts and close it immediately, sickened by the number of guy’s names that are listed. Probably because my phone’s the same way. Her pictures are next. They’re empty, except for one folder. JONA <3 is the name of the file.
“How girly of you, baby.” I press on the folder, opening an entire two years’ worth of pictures. They’re all of me. Drunk, smiling, and angry; playing guitar, eating, and drinking; staring away, back turned, and sleeping; even with other women and with Bach. Every single picture is of me. There’s a huge gap where the last six months were. I turn the camera on and flip the view, getting a shot of my face. I hit RECORD. “Damn, I’m a handsome fucker.” I turn this way and that, giving her what she wants. Me. “You have to wonder, baby, what else there is? What else is there if it’s not you? I don’t need anything else. Food, water, money, a home—I don’t need any of that shit. Just you, Justine. That’s probably why that’s your name. My Just-ine.” I grin at the camera. “Shut up, prick. That was funny.” I run a hand through my hair, feeling empty again. “Tell me what I want to hear, baby. Please.”
I stop the recording, my finger hovering over the DELETE button a long time before I press it. At least something knows how I feel.
I grab her purse and put her phone inside, peeking to find that it’s empty. There’s no money in her wallet. There aren’t any debit cards in her wallet either. We’re both broke. Broke and lost.
My house is quiet when I come in. It smells like something baked. I inhale deeply, coming into the kitchen to find the nerd brigade elbow deep in waffles and hot cocoa.
This is your life now, I think in aggravation. Here comes coffee and the newspaper. I don’t know what terrifies me more. That I’d someday read the paper, or that I’d care about the news.
“Morning, teeny weenies.” I put Justine’s stuff on the counter and lean over, smelling the waffles. “You mind if I grab some?”
“Go ahead,” Jacob says, pointing behind me. “There’s coffee and bacon too.”
Hayden and Max are at the table too. They look so … normal. Freshmen away from home trying to find a slice of what they miss. Then there’s me, stinking of whiskey and regret. I spent the night on the beach with a naive girl in my arms, after hooking up with the woman I love and threatening to more or less cheat on her. The amount of disgust I feel for myself in that moment is overwhelming.
I clear my throat and step away. I don’t deserve their food. I don’t deserve anything. “Um, nah. It’s cool. I’m going to shower.” And forget how everything around me isn’t wrong. It’s fine. It’s only me who’s falling.
The hot water of the shower washes away last night. The faint hint of perfume on my skin, Justine’s and Monika’s, washes down the drain. I grab some workout clothes blindly and drag the towel through my hair, heading down into the garage to work off some of my aggravation.
As I pass by the hall, my new roommates giggle and snort. I can only imagine what they’re laughing at. “Perfect losers,” I whisper harshly, letting the garage door slam behind me.
I spend hours in the garage, lifting weights until my arms feel like they’re going to fall off. I grab my jump rope and lose myself in the slap of the rope on the concrete floor, sweat dripping down my body in sheets, my heart pounding; I still don’t feel alive.
The life in me was either never there to begin with, or I’m empty. Missing something.
I move on to the punching bag. I beat the ever-loving shit out of that bag. My knuckles are bloody. My eyes are blurry. I can barely walk up the stairs to shower again.
My emptiness follows me for over a week, which is as long as I can go without seeing Justine. It follows me through bottle after bottle; my body slumped in on itself in my room. It follows me through every hangover I spend in front of the toilet. My roommates get quiet when I enter the room and don’t speak until I’m gone. It chases me as I run, beating me down the harder I try to breathe.
But I somehow manage to stay away from other women.
Because for the first time in my life, I’m willing to admit there is no replacements anymore.
Ruined perfection, that’s what Justine is.
***
On my run today, I find myself heading down a different path, over the railroad tracks. The gutter of Crystal Gulf. I grew up four streets over, in a house my foster parents rented. They kicked me out when I turned fifteen. I guess having a pissed off teenager around was too much for them. I can still remember being hungry, feeling empty and alone. I was with that family—the Littles—a few years. Before them, it was some older woman in a trailer down on the edge of Crystal Gulf who ended up losing everything to her gambling. I was passed down from family to family my entire life.
I felt nothing for anyone.
Until I was fifteen and Justine Fenton opened her mouth on that beach and stole my fucking heart out from under me.
Her old man’s house looks like shit, like every house on this dusty street. The driveway’s empty. Her old man is a prick; I only came over in the past to pick her up or drop her off. Spending no time inside unless I had to carry her in after a night of partying.
I wipe the sweat from my face with my shirt and head for the door, giving it a light knock. I knock again after a minute, and no one answers. The doorbell doesn’t work when I try it.
“Jus?” I call, not getting an answer.
I head around back, kicking the gate open and stepping over dry grass in the backyard. The porch swing out back is swaying mid-swing like someone just got up. The back patio door is open. I dip inside, stopping in the kitchen. It’s disgusting. Even for me. The smell of garbage and beer create a stench that takes my breath away.
“Jus?” I call again.
“Go away,” comes her frail, terrified voice.
“Where are you?” I step into the hall, finding her back to me in the alcove in the living room. She’s wearing a black hoodie, even though it’s eighty outside, and her hand on her hip shakes. “What’s wrong, baby?”
She shakes her head. “Don’t call me that.”
“Is this about the other night?” I ask.
“No,” she shoots back. “As if I care what you do. Who you do it with.” But she’s shaking harder, and her face falls into her hands.
I don’t want to look. I know what probably happened. She never cries. Unless her old man hits on her. My hands ball into fists. I remain where I am. “What happened?”
“Leave.” She turns quickly, hiding her face as she makes a run down the hall. A second later, her bedroom door slams.
The house looks abandoned. Garbage and beer cans are everywhere. It smells like a dump. There’s a heavy, oppressive weight hovering inside. It makes my stomach turn. I have to calm down the slow burning rage inside of me before I go to her bedroom door.
The handle’s locked. “What happened, Jus?”
Inside, she sobs. Heavy, gut-wrenching sobs. The kind that comes from a broken heart. Her pain filters through the door, punching me in my chest. It’s so strong … so heavy.
“Justine, open the door.” I take my backpack off and set it on the floor near her door. Her sobs answer me. “Please, baby. Open the door.” My tone increases, growing louder in my panic. “I’ll kick it open.”
“There’s no point,” I hear her say. “There’s nothing left.”
I shake my head, not understanding her thoughts. “If you don’t open this door right now, I’m going to hunt down your piece of shit old man and kill him.”
“No,” she begs, sounding childlike and small. “No, Jona. No, Jona …”
She says this repeatedly, her words muddled with her sobs.
I step back and eye the knob. Then I kick my foot where the lock is, sending the door flying open and banging on the back wall. Splinters of wood fall to her floor as I come barreling inside.
She looks up at me from her bed, her mahogany hair swirling around her head, her stunning chocolate eyes shining with red tears. Her face is saturated in slickness. Her lips are swollen from her sobs. She looks broken in a way I’ve never seen her.
Like she won’t come back.
I sit down and cup her face, blinking my own tears out of my eyes. My thumb caresses her cheek. “What did he do?”
In answer, she pulls her sweatshirt collar down, showing me her throat. A throat that is covered in black and purple bruises. Thick markings, like fingers, curl around her throat. She swallows hard and flinches like it hurts to do. Her eyes have blood vessels popped. She’s shaking.
I get up without another word, seeing pure unadulterated red.
“No!” she begs, her voice hoarse when she gets up to pull me back in. “Please don’t leave me. Please, Jona.”
I don’t know what to do. Kill her old man now, or wait until she’s not shaking anymore. She wraps her arms around my waist, sobbing into my chest. I hold her head to me, unable to form words. All I can do is think. Rage twists around my heart.
“He … he—” She can’t finish.
“Choked the shit out of you?” I growl, feeling her head nod against my chest. “How long ago?”
“Days ago. The night we hung out on the beach.”
I close my eyes in regret. “Why didn’t you try calling me?”
She doesn’t answer for a few seconds. “Because there’s nothing left.” She pulls away, peering up at me with red tears and bruises everywhere. “There’s nothing left.”
I don’t understand what that means. “You’re left. That’s everything.”
She shakes her head. “There’s nothing left.”
“We have to get you out of here. We’ll go to my place. Okay, baby?”
She sniffs, moving away from me. “There’s nothing left for me there.”
“Where?” I demand, grabbing my backpack where I left it. I start stuffing her clothes on top of her purse and phone I brought to give her. An excuse to see her. I didn’t know I’d find her like this.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she sits down, crying silently at the wall. I pack as fast as I can. She doesn’t have much here that I can’t get her anyway.
“Let’s go.” I grab her hand and pull her through the house, leaving the door open as we walk down the lawn. It’s then I realize I ran here. “Shit. We have to walk. I didn’t bring my car.”
She grabs my hand, curling her fingers around mine. “There’s nothing left.”
I eye her. Her eyes are far away and in the present, broken right now and tomorrow. Her feet are bare as well. Seeing no other option—she’s never stepping foot in that house again—I pull her to me and bend, lifting her into my arms. The sun beats down on my back as I walk with her. She hides her face in my sweaty chest.
“Thank you,” she whispers at one point.
I don’t reply. I’ve done nothing to warrant thanks. I left her with her old man for another woman. I hold her tighter. When we get to my place, I kick at the door with my sneaker, unable to get the lock.
Jacob answers, eyes widening when he sees me. “What happened?”
“Move.” I struggle with her up the stairs, feeling him follow. I’m glad he is because my bedroom’s closed. He dashes forward to open my door and then ducks aside for me.
I set Justine down on my bed. She falls away to her side and curls up, passing out in seconds as I stand behind her, pouring sweat and rage.
“Watch her,” I bark, grabbing my car keys from my dresser. “If she wants something, you give it to her.”
“Where are you going?” he asks, following me downstairs.
“To prison.” I wrench the front door open and head for my Mustang, knowing there’s only so many places to hide in Crystal Gulf.
***
Justine
I don’t dream.
How can I?
There’s nothing left.
I feel eviscerated and gutted, emptied of the small amount inside of me that may have mattered.
But there’s Jona. I roll over in search of him.
“He’s not here,” an unfamiliar voice says. “But I’ll hold you anyway if that’s what you need.”
I open my eyes to find Jacob in bed beside me, smiling with worry in his eyes.
Men don’t comfort me. They hurt me. They damn sure don’t offer to hold me. I frown at him. “You’re really cute, you know that?” He’s startlingly adorable. I can imagine some sweet girl falling in love with him.
He’d probably fall right along with her. No pain, no loss—no ruin at all.
Red fills his cheeks. He clears his throat as he struggles to hold my gaze. “Thanks. You’re really pretty too. Like super pretty. My girlfriend would be so mad if she knew I was in bed with you.”
I’m surprised by my smile. “She should be.”
His eyes widen. “I don’t think so. I’d never cheat on her.”
In the past, I’ve gone down this route. Proved those men wrong. I don’t want to do that to Jacob. Right now, I think I need some sign that I’m not doomed. That not all men are going to leave me blacked out on a dirty kitchen floor with bruises on my throat. “Good boy, Jacob. Where’s Jona?”
“I don’t know. He took off.”
I sit up. “Shit.” The idea of him finding Wesley leaves me ill. He’ll kill him. I know he will because if things were reversed, I’d do the same thing. If Jona knew how close I came to never breathing again, how gone I could have been, he’d gladly don a prison-issued jumpsuit. “We have to go find him. You have a car? How long was I asleep?” The light outside the window is almost dark.
“Long time. I have a car,” he answers, following me downstairs. “Where are we going?”
I don’t get a chance to answer. The front door opens as we’re descending the stairs. I eye Jona up and down as fast as I can. His hands aren’t bloody, his face is clean of wounds, and he doesn’t look like he just killed someone. Not that I know what that would look like, but I imagine lots of blood and torn clothes.
He looks like my home base. His warm brown hair is damp with sweat and messy. His cinnamon and amber eyes are burning with barely contained rage. His keys are in his fist, and he’s coiled, ready. The fight leaves him when he sees me.
He stops at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me as I stare down at him. Everything on me hurts. It’s easier to swallow today than it was a few days ago. Wesley wasn’t there when I woke up, and he hasn’t returned.
He probably thinks my body is rotting in his house and fled to save his ass.
Dear father of mine.
“Where is he?” he asks, eyes boring into mine.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jus. Where would he go?”
Jacob slips up the stairs, leaving us alone. “Jona, I don’t know. He probably thinks he killed me.”
“Did he?”
His question dismantles my heart. Tears burn in my eyes and my throat aches, piercing with the struggle to keep them away.
My head bobs.
“No,” he hisses, coming for me. He embraces me on the stairs, holding me together even though I’m sure there’s nothing left to mend. “He didn’t. You’re so strong. You can’t let that son of a bitch take that from you.”
“He choked me,” I whisper, crumbling. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” My pain is acute, pouring through my empty body in a flood. I cling to him; my fists clutches his shirt in a stronghold. “I was so afraid I’d never see you again.” I didn’t know I could cry this hard.
Or that he would cry with me.
He rocks us back and forth, his tears soaking into my hair. I think he knows what happened in that kitchen. He’s not holding on to me like I’ll fall. He’s holding on to me like I already did.
“I don’t know what to do for you.” He pulls away, hands cupping my face. “What do you need?”
It’s kind of simple. “You.”
His eyes narrow. His lips part. His breathing deepens. I totally just turned him on. His cheeks flush. It’s a new kind of tenderness I’ve never seen in him, let alone coming from me. But I don’t feel so empty right now, staring into his eyes as his hold me in place.
“You have that. You always have. What else do you need? You should go to the doctor.”
“With what money? I’ll be fine. My throat hurts on the inside and the outside, that’s all.” But that isn’t all. I tuck my shaking hand in the front pocket of my jacket.
“I don’t have any money either. I can get some together. Can you give me a few hours?”
Doctors are expensive. To make enough money in a few hours rang alarm bells. I knew Jona sold drugs and he bought them. I didn’t know if he was still, but I knew he wanted to. Something about that no longer felt … safe. I wanted to feel safe. “How?”
“I can call my old dealer. He can front me some pills. One party and I’ll have enough. Summer’s not over yet.” He starts to go upstairs, and I follow.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t call your dealer.”
“Why not?” he wonders, his tone as confused as I feel.
Maybe it was almost never seeing him again, almost losing my always there, that makes me want to pull him from anything that could do that again. “I don’t want you to.” I know all too well his accuracy following my rules. He never does.
“We need the money.”
“I’ll be fine.” I close his door behind us, alone with him in his room. Safe. “Please, Lover?”
He pauses with his hand on his backpack that lay discarded on the floor. It’s packed full. I vaguely recall him stuffing it with my things.
“We still need money,” he says, but he leaves the bag alone. His cell must be in there. “You want some painkillers at least?”
“I’ll get them. Medicine cabinet, right by the lube.” I flash him a grin on my way to his bathroom. I open his glass cabinet and sift through the old tubes of deodorant for the painkillers. Shaking out three, I toss them back with a sip of water from his sink. When I return to his room, he’s standing in the middle waiting for me, eyes following my every movement.
“I don’t have lube.”
“I guess not. My pussy’s always wet for you anyway.” I lean against the wall, watching him.
He swallows hard. “How is she?”
“My pussy? She’s okay, I guess. I mean she will be. She always is. Even though this time she’s not sure.” I forbid myself to cry again. Wesley’s hit me before, far worse, but he’s never tried to kill me. “She missed you.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, gazing down at me levelly. “I missed her too.”
“What, no lube for anyone else either?” I’m baiting, holding my breath.
“I didn’t screw them, Jus. Or anyone else. I haven’t been with anyone since you.”
I let my breath go. “Good to know.”
He raises one brow, jaw tensing. “What about you?”
“No,” I admit, not in the mood to toy with him. I’m not in the mood for anything at all. I’m empty. “Only you.”
A spark of relief burns in his eyes. “Good. Are you hungry?” I shake my head. It hurts too much to eat. “You want to take a shower with me then? I smell like pits and balls.” He steps around me for his bathroom.
I find the idea incredibly soothing and relieving. Both of us naked, wet, and bare. Safe. We’re safe together. It’s so sudden, so swift, how much I need to be with him.
Behind me, the water turns on. I turn around to spot him taking his clothes off. His running shorts go first, leaving him in a pair of tight sexy white briefs damp with sweat. His ass is divine. He has trashy tattoos on his lower back that always make me wet for some reason. They’re so bad … they’re his kind of bad. Sobriety suits him. I hadn’t had it in me to drink the past couple days, or to eat, breathe, or think about how close I came to never existing again. I’m sober too.
I step into the bathroom as he pulls his shirt over his head, revealing his body. His abs ripple as he slides his briefs down his legs, leaving him nude in front of me. His cock is flaccid, which means this shower isn’t going to be about sex. Still, it’s glorious. Heavy, long, and thick, with a dusting of hair on his balls and a tattoo across the bottom of his V’s. They’re bootprints, like a woman walked across his pelvic bones and left her mark. What’s odd is I have those same cowboy boots. In the same color. Dark brown with magenta stitching. The footprints of the boots are a dark deep pink like the stitching on mine.
Jona bought them for me.
I reach for him, softly grabbing hold of his cock in my hand. He watches me curiously, brows raised.
“Why do you have this?” I point at his tattoo with my free hand, feeling him come to life in my fist. His shaft thickens, turning from soft, smooth flesh to hard hot stone. I play with his piercing. The curved silver barbell covers his tip, pliable as I press softly on it with my thumb.
He hisses through gritted teeth, his eyes lowering. “Because you walk out on me every single time.”
I walk away because I don’t know how to stay. “That’s what I do. Mom and I walked everywhere growing up. If shit got hard, we picked up and went somewhere new. It works.”
“I know. I do it too. But I’m tired of running. I’m tired, Justine.”
In his eyes, I can see his insides twisting and revolting, wanting something more that he doesn’t understand.
Up until a few days ago, I didn’t know either. My throat burns where my father choked. I want what I thought I lost that night.
“Let’s shower.” I release him and step back, pulling my hoodie over my head carefully. My braless tank top goes next, and then my jean shorts, leaving me just as bare in front of him.
His eyes rake over my body, leaving heated trails behind where he studies. My nipples harden as his gaze traces them, leaving me achy. The steam of the shower wraps around our bodies as his eyes travel over my stomach, and then my pussy, pausing long enough to leave her wet and clenching. He studies my thighs, and then my feet before his gaze shoots to mine.
They make slow go of my face. My lips, my flushed cheeks, my hair. He avoids my neck altogether. I know I have a pretty face, and it isn’t hard to know I have a body that matches. But that’s my opinion, and having others check me out never made me believe it more. Plus, I never needed the validation of a man to make me feel attractive. But under Jona’s gaze, I am beautiful. Stunning. I feel like my insides match the outside … but that isn’t true. There’s nothing left inside of me to suggest beauty.
He holds the shower curtain back and waits for me to crawl in before following me. The water is scorching. I step to the back to leave him room, and then I close my eyes, feeling something strange the moment the hot water pours down my scalp.
It may be peace or something like it. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt it. But then again, my father has never tried to kill me either. I never saw my life flash before my eyes, and realized that the only part that mattered at all, in all my years, was Jona. Not even Mom was there.
Just Jona.
I don’t realize I’m crying until his arms come around me. “He tried to kill me.” I shake in his arms. I hate it. I hate feeling weak. Weakness leads to more weakness, and soon, I’m drinking beer and choking the only person who cares about me.
“He didn’t.” He sounds so sure, so positive.
But Jona doesn’t know what it feels like to have the life drain from your body and have no reason to fight for it. My tears increase. This pain in my heart expands, making it so every breath I take feels like I’m only inhaling half of it.
“Justine,” he groans, holding me so tightly water can’t seep between our conjoined bodies. It pours from above, but it doesn’t get between us.
The way so much has.
“I’m sorry. No one should have to go through that once. Let alone as many times as you have. But you’re crazy strong, baby. You’re strong enough to put up with my shit all these years. It’s why I love you so much. I know you’re strong enough to get through this too.”
My fingertips claw at his back, slipping in the wetness that slides down his spine as they try to find purchase. I don’t feel that strong. Maybe I never will again. But I do find strength in his strength in me.
“You love me so much?” We’ve never looked each other in the eye and said I love you. We’ve never let our true feelings bear witness to each other. They know the other exists, but they’ve never met, never touched, never came together. For all I know, his love is a lie I’ve grown used to hearing.
“So fucking much.” He pulls away and grabs a bottle of shampoo, doing what we always do. Hides from our feelings.
I don’t want to hide anymore. I grab his face and force his surprised eyes on mine. “I thought he was going to kill me. He was. You want to know all I could think about?”
He nods within my grasp, lips shining as water drips over them. His wet lashes look thick and ruining this close. Like spice and autumn. There have always been so many obstacles between us, and we were the biggest one.
“All I could think about was that I’d never see you again. Never feel you, hear your voice. It was never having you again, Jona. Would you have missed me?” I blink my tears away, but more follow, and coupled with the shower, I can barely see his face pale.
“Don’t say shit like that.” He pulls free of my hands and turns his back on me, washing his hair furiously, the muscles in his back taut and rippling. “Why’d you have to go there?” he growls, whirling around. “Why?” His shout makes me flinch.
I reach for him, but he moves away, soap dripping down his temples. “Jona—”
“Of course, I’d miss you! Are you out of your fucking mind? I wouldn’t even bother trying to live without you. I’d shoot my fucking vein full of blow before I lived a second without you.” He’s on me before I can argue how stupid that would be.
His lips are rough, angry. I try and kiss him back, but this isn’t about me. It’s about him. He pushes until my back hits the shower wall. He pulls away, grabs my hip roughly and turns me around, and then grabs hold of my waist.
“Bend fucking over. Now!” he barks, when I hesitate.
I bend with my hips, giving him my pussy from behind. He toys my tight opening with the tip of his pierced head right before slamming into me. I gasp when I feel his thick hard cock press into me from behind. In seconds, he’s inside of me. All of him.
My mouth opens as wide as my eyes. I have no time to acclimate, to prepare myself for his girth.
“You want to know the truth? Is that what this is?” He pumps into me so deeply I feel my inner muscles clench around him, pulsing from the sudden intense pleasure. “I’ve loved you since I was fifteen. You’re my entire world. The only part of my life that’s ever felt good. I’ve tortured myself for years because of you. I screwed all those other women because I couldn’t have you. You’re all I want, Justine. Don’t ask me if I’d miss you. I wouldn’t even be alive if it weren’t for you.”
And then Jona Kyles does his absolute best to break me in half with pain and pleasure. His cock feels like it took steroids, it’s so damn big inside of me. He fills my every inch, hitting my g-spot just right with his piercing. My tears are mixed with shower water, and my heart isn’t bleeding after hearing his admission. It’s flying high above my ruin.
I know he’s about to come when his fingers dig into my thighs. A hot flood of his end fills me in the best way, like being doused in his warmth from the inside out. It’s enough to send me into my own orgasm. My fingers slide down the shower tile and my thighs quiver. The only thing I can manage to say is, “Jona.”
What else is there but him?
His lips press against my ear. “You get what you wanted?”
I nod senselessly.
“Good,” he growls, pulling free of me. I slide to the shower floor and gaze up at him, the water in my eyes making him glimmer, just on the edge of my pleasure. He stares down at me, eyes ablaze, cock standing at attention. “I’m sick of bullshitting. I love you. And you love me, right?”
“Right,” I mouth, but he doesn’t need to hear it. My eyes say it all.
“So why do we keep doing our best to hurt each other? I don’t want to cause you any more pain, and there is none for me if I can have you.” His chest rises and falls under the weight of his admission. “No more of this shit. We’re together. No failing. No breaking. Don’t ruin me anymore, and I’ll do my best to make you happy. And if I can’t, I can make you come. And that’s pretty damn close.”
He finishes showering as I lay there, lost in the confusion of what he’s offering. I’ve dated many men, but it was always weak promises made that both sides knew would be broken. I’d never been in the kind of relationship I watched Bach and Harley have. Or even Dylan and Hillary.
I’d never had anything real.
“Up.” He offers me his hands. I give him mine, and he pulls me up, turning me around so he can wash me. His hands on my body feel marvelous. Strong, protective; I never want him to stop. After washing my hair, he moves on to the rest of me, cupping my breasts and caressing my stomach before washing my pussy delicately. “Let’s get out.”
In his bedroom, I dry off with him, sharing towels. I sift through the clothes he packed, trying to forget waking up on my kitchen floor in an empty house. Alive.
I lived.
And I think Jona is the reason.
The intenseness of gratitude and warmth that rushes through me is unsettling. I sit on his bed naked, watching him towel dry his hair. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a black shirt.
“You know how hard this is going to be, right?”
He looks over at me, hair chaotic. “Us?”
I nod.
“I think it’ll be even harder on our own,” he responds.
I sigh and look down at my thighs. “I don’t rely on people. I don’t do it. Every time I have it blows up in my face. But something changed because of this.” I point at my bruises. “I’m relying on you for a lot. You’re the reason I woke up. I can’t wake up tomorrow and have you not be here.”
“I didn’t take off for six months.” He crosses the room to me. “I was here, the entire time waiting for you. If I go anywhere, you’re there. If,” he adds, “you don’t run away again.”
I take the jab. I’ve taken so many; his is one more in my bank. “I’m not going anywhere.” For the first time, there’s no weakness in my promise. When I saw Jona at the end, that’s because I wanted a beginning.
His eyes shine for a moment before he blinks what looks like relief away. Then he gives me a soft crooked smile. “Now what?”
I laugh breathlessly. “Hell if I know.”
“Food, maybe? Dinner? We can go out. I think. That’s what couples do, right?” He cringes, sweeping a hand through his hair.
I simply stare. I have no idea. My dates consist of beer cans and sex in cars. “Dinner sounds boring.”
“Exactly. Maybe we should try the boring shit first. We’ll make a list. Knock out all those cheesy things we laugh at in movies and stuff. Like holding hands in the rain, or something.”
“It’s summer.” My goodness, was he out of his mind? Were we going to send back our virginity too? That was long gone. Long, long, gone for both of us.
He glares. “Well, we can’t go snort lines off your tits and hook up in the backyard hammock.”
I grin. “That sounds amazing.”
“No. No more dope. Normal people don’t spend their days and nights high off their asses, baby.”
“We’re not normal. If that’s what you want, we may as well give up now.”
“I don’t want normal. I don’t want perfect. I want you.”
I feel my lips rise. “You charmer.”
He chuckles. “You know what I mean.”
I do.
That’s why I get dressed with him and follow him down to his Mustang.
I have this feeling I’d follow him right over the edge.
And our screams will chase our fall.