“Like what kind of ground rules?” he asked cautiously, his lips twitching withamusement.
“Like…” I trailed off, contemplating. “Nobody can know, and you can’t do boyfriendthings.”
“I’m going to need clarification on ‘boyfriend things’. Technically speaking,thiswould be a thing that a boyfriend does…” Travis pointed out, moving closer to me. He kissed the side of my neck while his left hand drifted down my collarbone, parting my robe. His calloused fingers teased and taunted the peak of mynipple.
As good as it felt to have his fingers toying with my breast, I needed to regain control of the situation. In one fluid movement, I’d straddled him, my eyes locking onhis.
“We meet up, we have sex, we go our separate ways and we don’t tell anybody about it. You don’t text me when you’re gone, and aside from providing me with orgasms, you don’t do nice things for me,” I said urgently. Nice was bad, nice meant succumbing to feelings, and the next step after that was a place I definitely didn’t want togo.
His cock had grown harder and harder with each demand I made and he held my gaze with serious, unblinking eyes. “I think I can handle that,” he murmured, kissing his way to mybreast.
I pulled into the driveway at just after two in the morning, feeling exhausted and satisfied. I was relaxed, and felt as if I could finally sleep for the first time indays.
As I turned off my engine, headlights pulled up behind me. I stepped out of the car, looking over in time to see Ezra Johnson jump from the cab of histruck.
“Hey, Becky,” he said somberly, walking around to the passenger side. The calm, sated mood I’d been in evaporated when he opened the door and my brother practically fell out from the cab. Ezra caught him before his face hit the ground. I rushed over to help him carry Braden into thehouse.
Tessa was sleeping on the couch, her head nestled into Brock’s lap. They both startled awake when Ezra, Braden, and I stumbled inside. I smashed my elbow off the corner of the wall, and swore under mybreath.
Brock hurried over to help, and Tessa watched with wide eyes full of concern, her brow furrowed. With Brock on one side of Braden and Ezra on the other, they were able to get him downstairs to his bedroom. When they returned, the four of us stood wordlessly in the kitchen, the silence thick with thoughts we couldn’tvoice.
Braden was rushing down a dangerous, destructive path, and none of us knew how to stophim.
Becky
August2013
Two weeks had passed,and I reflected upon that passage of time as I sat on the plush white sofa and gazed out of the office window. It overlooked the choppy waters of Georgian Bay, and the view was actually quite spectacular. My fingers ran against the threads, listening to the soothing sound of the aquarium behindme.
I’d already spent the last two sessions recounting Mom’s passing, the wake, and the funeral. Today, I’d mentioned Travis. I didn’t go into detail about what happened between us—I couldn’t, I was still processing—but I’d had to tell someone and my paid therapist seemed like the safestbet.
“Why do you think the intimacy upset you so much?” she asked, urging me to open the door to the past. She felt that we needed to get to the root of my intimacyissues.
“I met Richie when I was sixteen. He was the first boy to ever pay me a lick of attention. I’m not counting the way my brother’s friends would treat me—like I was their little sister, an annoyance under foot. He was the first one to see me as more than Brock Miller’s little sister, and to me—that was a hugedeal.”
“Why was it a hugedeal?”
I pushed my hair out of my eyes as I considered the psychologist’s question. “I guess I was desperate to feel loved, you know? My dad never—he never showed us affection or love. He was just angry all the time…angry and drunk. I think any girl who doesn’t get positive attention from her father will seek it elsewhereeventually.”
“That’s a wise assessment,” Dr. Rootham nodded in agreement, her copper bob bouncing along with her. “So, your brother kept you from making this mistake for a while. Then whathappened?”
Dr. Rootham had been my psychologist for the last two years. I started seeing her weekly to help deal with the trauma I’d been through. Although I still wasn’t completely comfortable speaking about my experiences, I knew that in order to heal I had to revisit thesewounds.
This wasn’t the first time that I had discussed this story, but each time I recounted it—I revealed more details and dealt with morerealizations.
“Yeah, he kept the guys away I guess,” I said, almost chuckling at the memory of my over-protective brother. “Brock wouldn’t let me put myself in those situations, and any guy I was interested in…he managed to scare off simply by being my brother. When he wasn’t around, his friends were. Richie was different because he wasn’t a part of that circle, he didn’t grow up with us, didn’t go to our school and by the time we got together, my brother had already left to compete in bull riding competitions.” I paused, reaching over to the coffee table to grab the bottle of water Dr. Rootham always supplied forme.
“Bull riding competitions?” She smiled and shook her head as if she couldn’t fathom the idea of anyone doing such a thing. Dr. Rootham moved to Parry Sound from Mississauga. She was very much a city dweller, and always seemed somewhat mystified by the strange customs in Northern Ontario, even after living here herself for the last several years. “What made Brock want to ridebulls?”
“The thrill?” I answered, lifting my right shoulder in a small shrug. “The money was good and I bet the freedom felt great…” I trailed off, imagining what it must have felt like for Brock to break free of this town. “We’d always been that family, you know? The family everyone talks about. Brock always dealt with a lot of discrimination from everybody in town—we all did, but he bared the brunt of it. Plus, he had to take care of Braden and me when Mom was working. He was our buffer; he would make sure that Dad would take his frustrations out on him instead ofus.”
Every time I confessed this, my heart squeezed painfully in my chest and my eyes welled up with tears. I couldn’t imagine Aiden having the role that Brock had in our house growing up, although I understood why Brock did it. He was bigger than us, and in his eyes, that made him able to withstand it a littlemore.
Dr. Rootham nodded solemnly, looking to the pad of paper in front of her. She scrawled some notes, and I tried not to let that get to me. I hated that about psychologists, but I knew it was necessary. They couldn’t possibly remember every anecdote a patient tells them without jotting notes down. I took a shaky breath, drawing bravo I didn’thave.
“How did you and Richie meet?” shequestioned.
“He moved to town the summer before I started grade eleven. He was a year older than me and I thought he was mysterious, with his dark hair and eyes, and I liked the fact that he wore a leather jacket, rode a motorcycle and lived in an apartment by himself. He would come to the grocery store where I worked and even if I had a huge line up, he’d wait in it. One of those times, he asked me out and I said yes. I liked the attention this stranger was lavishing on me, and I wanted to get to know him…I thought I found my happily everafter.”
