“And now,” he says quietly, voice low. “What do you need now?”
The question lands like a weight on my chest. The air turns thick. I keep my eyes on the windshield, but I don’t pull away when his hand closes over my knee. His touch is light, testing. The shift in him feels seismic.
“What do you need?” he repeats, thumb skimming up a centimeter, slow as fog creeping up glass.
My hand hovers in my lap uselessly. The memory of his mouth on my scars ignites in a rush, heat curling low, breath catching. I force my voice to steady. “I needed you yesterday,” I say. “And it was a mistake.” My throat tightens. “I wanted to believe your touch meant something, and that was stupid. Drunk bodies...” I swallow. “They react. You said that.”
His thumb slides higher, pressing into the inner edge of my thigh, feeling the warmth through the cling of cotton. The movement is barely a stroke, yet it traces fire up my spine. I keep breathing, barely. My fingers drift down to his wrist, but instead of pushing him off I hold him there, anchoring the tremor shaking through me.
“And now?” His voice has dropped lower, roughened by something that has nothing to do with anger. “What do you need now?”
I stare at the fogging window, the blurred shapes of students weaving around puddles. Every muscle in my body is tight. The ghosts of last night’s kisses flicker across my skin.
“I need to know you didn’t lie,” I manage, so quiet I barely hear myself. “That it wasn’t just the alcohol.”
His hand tightens on my thigh. The car feels too small, too hot. The heater rattles. Rain taps out a rhythm on the roof. Slowly, he shifts his palm up along the inside seam of my leggings, pressing the fabric into the straining muscle. He stays there, thumb nearly brushing the seam of my underwear beneath the thin material, as if he’s forcing me to acknowledge exactly what his touch does to me.
“I’m sober now,” he murmurs. “And you’re still shaking.”
“So am I,” I fire back. “So why am I not stopping you?”
His thumb presses harder, rolling over the fabric with precise pressure that grinds the thin barrier into my clit. Heat detonates low in my stomach. He watches me carefully, eyes flicking between mine and the slight twitch of my hips. The conflict on his face mirrors mine: hunger and restraint, guilt braided with something so relentless my knees press farther apart.
He doesn’t dig inside the waistband. He doesn’t shove the fabric aside. He keeps me clothed, keeps the barrier in place, yet uses it like a fuse. His palm cups me through the leggings, sliding up and down the damp seam, making sure I feel every ridge of his fingers as they stroke. He drags the heel of his hand slowly, slow enough that the friction grows sticky and obscene. My breath comes jagged. I realize I’m clutching his wrist, not to stop him but to keep him there, locked to me.
He leans over, mouth hovering near my ear. “This,” he says, voice barely more than a whisper. “How you are right now. It’s addicting.”
A tremor shudders through me. My thigh muscles clench. The wet fabric grows even slipperier beneath his hand.
“I’m no better than an addict, Octavia,” he whispers, breath hot against my temple. “And you keep handing me the needle.”
The words slam into me. My throat tightens. “Did you want this?” he asks, eyes burning. “Want me to feel you like this?”
My response is a tiny nod, choking on the truth of it. My entire body is tuned to the rhythm of his thumb. His hand cups me deeper, the fabric dragging against sensitive flesh in a wet, relentless grind. Each pass gets more deliberate, as if he’s memorizing how my hips jerk, how my eyes flutter, how the slick sound filling the car belongs to me.
“Then we’re both going to have problems,” he says, voice soft and lethal.
His hand tears away suddenly, leaving a vacant burn between my legs. He curls his fingers into a tight fist, knuckles white, fighting whatever war is raging in his chest. The loss makes a broken noise slip past my lips, one I bury as fast as it escapes. He sees it anyway. That almost-undone expression flickers over his face, a crack in the armor, before he grabs the door handle.
He yanks the door open, cold air knifing in. “Don’t push me for answers again,” he mutters, the words razored low. Then he steps out and slams the door, leaving me in a car that still smells like him, thighs trembling from a touch he made me crave, knowing this is devouring us both.
CHAPTER 14
Octavia- years ago
Such a delicate creature.
Its wings are bright green with splashes of pink, the fuzzy little body almost too soft-looking to belong to something real. Every few seconds, its tiny legs tap lightly against the glass jar like it’s testing the limits of its world. Dropping another leaf inside, it immediately sets to work, nibbling at the edge as if none of the rest of life matters.
This beautiful moth used to be a caterpillar.
Just a tiny thing crawling along the windowsill, seconds away from being crushed beneath Hannah Killian’s stupid shoe before I scooped it up. Hannah is gone now anyway, adopted out a week ago. I’m not sorry about it. Sharing a room with her was a special kind of misery, the sort that made sleep feel like a gamble and silence feel suspicious.
Now her bed sits empty across from mine, sheets stripped, mattress bare, one more reminder that people come and go from Brightside all the time.
Mostly go.
The emptiness should feel lonely. Instead, it feels like relief.
