I just want to be at my parents’ house. Even if Henry only talks to me enough to open the door, that’s fine with me. Mom and Dad won’t be there which means I’ll be able to relax. There’s so many fucked up memories in my house but it has nothing to do with my brothers and sister and everything to do with our parents’ nonstop fighting and how they’d sometimes pit us against each other and drag us in the middle of it.
“Say something, Sloane.” He says it in a low voice. Barely a whisper. That surprises me. And I actually turn to look at him when he adds, lower still,“Please.”
His handsome face is illuminated by the blue lights from his dash and I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s part anger, part wanting, part humiliation, all confusion.
But he asked nicely, even if the questions were rude.
“You interrupted that. The fingering, I mean.”
His eyes flash to mine for a heartbeat before his gaze is back on the road. He seems surprised I was so direct because he doesn’t really know me, does he?
“And no. I’ve never seen his dick.”
He shakes his head halfway, like he’s trying to get the words and the idea out of his head. The more I study him, the more I notice those shadows under his eyes haven’t gotten any better. Before I can say anything about it though, he speaks.
“You’re too good for him.”
“You put a lit cigarette out on his eye.”
“Oh, we already know you’re way too good for me. That was never up for debate.”
I raise my brows and open my mouth, but my stomach drops with his words and I don’t like them, not to mention I’m surprised he would say something like that.
Might be true but he seems too arrogant or indifferent to notice.
Maybe I don’t know him, either.
“I’m not sorry for it,” he keeps going. “The cigarette. He should respect you more than to touch you like that, there.”
“As I recall, you touched me too.”
He glances at me and doesn’t smile. “Did you hate it?”
I hug myself tighter and force myself to look away from him. I don’t give an answer. “Why do you look so tired?” I ask quietly instead.
Seconds pass, Bush drifting from his speakers. “Machinehead.” I guess he does likesomenineties music after all. I expect he won’t answer me. That he’ll take my question as an insult or give me the same silent treatment I gave him when he asked me if I hated him touching me. I start to think it’s better this way, us riding in silence. I’ll hop out at the house and he won’t have to say another word at all to me when I do. We’ll stop circling around one another because I don’t want tobe in his world of shit and I’m moving in with Heather after my graduation trip and I’ve got my eye on a building space for my marketing agency after I get it off the ground and even if that doesn’t work out, I want to live at the beach.
Storm seems content here in the mountains.
I love it too, but I love the water and the sun and the ocean in the air more.
But after a moment, my eyes heavy and sleep tugging at me, he starts to talk.
“I did something bad Sunday night.”
The little hairs on my arm stand on end. I hunch my shoulders close and don’t look at him. “Who’d you hook up with?” I joke because I’m uncomfortable but we both know it wouldn’t matter to me if he fucked someone else. At least…it shouldn’t. And the hypocrisy of it would be astounding, since maybe I didn’t let Dax finger me but I would have and he was right there anyway.
“You’re funny,” he says, but he doesn’t sound amused. “And you wouldn’t care. This was much worse than that.”
I would care.It’s on the tip of my tongue. And I’m not sure if it would be worse for my heart but that’s a tangled web I don’t want to weave.
“Go on.” I glance at his knuckles curled around the gear shift and have the sudden urge to fuck his fingers but I try to focus on the matter at hand. He did something bad.How bad? How worse?Like…worse than he usually does?
He doesn’t keep talking though.
I try a tactic I’ve used with my siblings in the past. Sometimes they might want to share something but they don’t want to say it. They need me to ask.
“Where were you?”
