I want this to be over. I want my strange reactions to him to disappear. I want to go to my history class and be bored like I planned before his text lit up my phone.
My knees hurt. I want my stomach to stop squirming, my thighs to stop twitching, my clit to stop throbbing with its bizarre need.
You shouldn’t want him, but even if you do, you can’t have him. He’s already taken.
Something Kari believes but Lachlan seems to need more proof of to convince him.
And it clicks. “That I should be grateful. When you offer me an escape route, I should take it.”
“Such a smart girl,” he whispers, and I hear Patrick in my mind,you’re a smart cookie, then?If he was here, I could point to everything that just happened as a reason that’s a firm no.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble as a tear works its way free, not even sure what out of the whole mess I’m apologising for. I move my arm to wipe it away, then pause, glancing at Lachlan to see if he wants to catch it like he did on the night of his father’s party. He does, wiping it away on my cheek with the ball of his thumb rather than licking it.
We’re in company, after all. No need for embarrassing displays.
“Come on,” he abruptly says, standing and tugging me upright.
My right knee crunches again on the tiles as I scramble around, finding my feet. I rub it with my palm, my fingers wandering next to the healing bite mark, then dancing up to touch my throat where the bruises have already faded.
“Is that…?” I falter, licking my lips and smoothing down the front of my shirt, adjusting my hair, pulling at the waistband of my skirt. “Is that all?”
Lachlan tilts his head to the side, staring at my sweaty hair, my unkempt second-hand clothing, my mouth still rank with whatever he trod in over the past couple of weeks.
He stares and his eyes dance as they flick over me, like a filthy impoverished degraded girl was exactly what he most wanted to see.
“That’s all,” he says so softly only I can hear it. “Run along, back to your normal life.”
He clutches the back of my neck one last time, his expression briefly altering, awash in sadness so deep it looks like despair. A second later, a smiling mask shutters down and he releases me, heading off to his art lesson, whistling.
The remaining students bugger off to their classes and after a minute to collect myself, I do the same.
The restof the day drags like some low-budget horror film. I can’t concentrate enough to lose myself in the lessons, usually my simplest refuge. My brain is full of recollections; some from today but many more flood in to fill the gaps in the night I’d half-forgotten.
Every time someone speaks, another lightbulb goes off, another synapse fires to illuminate a pathway to the poorly stored memories.
By the time school ends for the day, I feel like I’ve relived every second of the party and its aftermath a dozen times over. The small talk, the meal, the anger in Lachlan and Creighton as they faced off over the dinner table.
I remember my finger hovering over the call button on his phone, the knife pressing against my body. The fear. My rapid heartbeat. The scolding, the feeling as he shoved his fingers into my mouth and his cock into my cunt and the final ecstasy as I came while he still thrust inside me, and it seemed I’d crush his hand into a pulp I squeezed it that hard.
I relive the shame, the fear, the gratitude, repeating the highlights on a show reel again and again. The relief at having access to them again is immense.
All the memories are better than my current reality, havingto grapple with the name calling and pulled faces from the other students.
There can’t have been more than fifteen pupils milling around us in the cloakroom. Yet after the two remaining periods, each an hour long, the entire school seems aware of what happened. People are sharing surreptitious videos, re-cutting them to add their jocular commentary.
Bad news certainly travels faster than other types of gossip. As I run for the bus, all I can do is pray it dissipates just as quickly. I don’t hold out much hope.
My shift at work is short, clearing up the last from the lunch crowds before another worker slots in for the evening service. Two hours. Not enough time to get bored.
Enough time to flick through my new treasure trove of memories, though. Flick through them and feel embarrassed.
As if it wasn’t bad enough to recall that I’d broken down crying when he made me come for the second time, the thought that he’d trailed a knife over my body, had inserted itinside me, and my only reaction was to grow wetter spurs an aggressive bout of self-hatred.
If he hadn’t noticed, I might be okay, but he had his face all up in my business. He saw, he knows.
Lachlan must have been so confused by my behaviour afterwards. The picture he forwarded to me was a sweet gesture after all, a nice memento of a shared memory. Except I just blanked him when he sent it. As the thought takes hold, I grip the edge of the sink hard and screw up my eyes, trying to force it back out of centre stage.
Patrick thinks he’s a rapist.
