We live in the same house, but we might as well be living in separate towns with the way he looks past me. Even worse is when he looks at me like I’m his next meal, with the menace in his grin and the hint of darkness in his steely gaze.
Trace Saints is scary in this predatory way, and when he’s around and we’re alone, my heart pounds so hard I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. My stomach also knots, and every nerve ending comes alive. Am I scared? Excited? Turned on? They all feel the same, and Trace can help me tell them apart.
Then, when I see different boys, I’ll know the difference.
I pull the blanket from under me, shake it off, and drape it over his shoulders. He shrugs it off. I put it back on. “I can hear your teeth chattering.”
I can’t, but he must be cold in just a T-shirt. I lower onto my canvas bag and hug my knees to my chest. There are two heartbeats of silence, and then Trace scoots over and covers us with the blanket. It doesn’t fully stretch across us. We’re holding on tight to the edges.
“Lean into me. Wrap your arms around my bicep.” His warm breath lifts the baby hairs along my hairline. “The fucking temperature’s dipping, and no way in hell will I let you freeze on my watch.”
I do as he says. “What will take me off your watch?”
“When you move out.”
I thought so. I overheard his father threatening to cut off Trace’s weekly allowance and take away the new truck that was his gift for helping his team win the championship. If I ever have children, I would never put conditions on my love for them or take away a gift. A gift is just that—something given, and it’s that person’s to do with as they want.
“I’ll be out of your hair soon.” I rest my chin on his shoulder. It seems like the most natural thing to do with my body turned into his and my arms wrapped around his muscular one. “Then you and your parents can have your lives and home back.”
He doesn’t have a comeback. The silence stretches on. It’s my chance to fill it. To ask him a question I couldn’t before because I didn’t have a way to bring it up.
Talking about catching feelings and him compartmentalizing is my way in. Plus, out here, it’s neutral grounds. It wouldn’t have been right to ask him in his home, his territory.
“Trace?”
“Hmm.” He looks straight ahead.
“I don’t have a lot of experience, and you do. It amazes me that you don’t fall in love with the girls you sleep with.” It doesn’t. I hate that he’s seeing other girls. “Can you teach me how to compartmentalize too?”
5
Trace
I sit in stony silence.
Did Sorrow ask me what I think she asked me? “To be clear, are you asking me to teach you how to keep from catching feelings for the guy you’re banging?” I grind out. “Who’s the motherfucker?”
This deep rage eats me up from the inside out, and it takes every ounce of control not to grab her by the throat and demand she stop with the hookup, effective now.
She rears back like I’ve slapped her. I take charge of my tone and my language and soften my delivery. “Why not get him to teach you?”
She drops my arm like it’s on fire, and using both hands, she grabs her hair and covers her face with the onyx strands, using them as a shield.
It’s a nervous tic of hers. I’ve scared her. Damn it, I should apologize, but the little mouse has to learn to fight back, to tell me to fuck off when I scare her. Or have the courage to call me out when she doesn’t like the way I treat her or speak to her. She’s doing none of the above, and it pisses me off more.
Sorrow Sophia is stronger than anyone gives her credit for. A weaker person would’ve curled into a fetal position and hidden from the world after what happened in that house, but Sorrow?
She’s endured the entire town’s judgment of her and her parents, and guess who gets up every morning and faces the judgmental motherfuckers with her couldn’t-care-less stare? Sorrow Sophia, the girl with two first names.
“There isn’t anyone,” she mumbles from behind her hair. “I don’t want to get taken advantage of, and I don’t want to fall for a guy.” She shrugs a shoulder. “I have my whole life ahead of me.”
“You’re keeping your options open.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t a question. We’re too young to be committing to someone for life.
She tucks her hair behind her ears, giving me a better glimpse of her face. High cheekbones. Flawless skin. Pouty mouth. Sharp nose. I look away. Sorrow Sophia is easy on the eyes.
