We leave the gym together, walking side-by-side. Ethan keeps his mouth shut the whole time, his jaw flexing, as if he’s holding himself back from either apologizing again or from calling me a dumbass and resuming our regularly scheduled hostilities. I half-expect him to break the silence with another round of ‘you’re here for a reason,’ but instead, as we approach the stairwell, he slows, then stops altogether.
I’m just about to keep walking, determined not to let the moment get more awkward, but Ethan speaks.
“Hey. Wait up.”
I stop, turning halfway, and catch him staring at the floor. He’s chewing his lip, trying to decide if what he wants to say is worth saying. “About before,” he starts, but I cut him off, needing to break the tension before it gets too bad.
“Hey, relax, okay?” I say. “It happened a long time ago. I’ve gotten used to it.”
He shakes his head, still not looking up. “Still, it sucks. And I was an ass for saying that. If you want to report this to Griff, I deserve it.”
I’m so caught off guard by his sincerity that I almost start laughing, but he looks so miserable that I can’t.
“As if,” I say. “I’m no snitch.” I try to sound dismissive, but my voice gets stuck between a laugh and a cough. Ethan’s eyes finally meet mine, and I can see he’s genuinely confused. Either he doesn’t understand why I won’t rat, or he doesn’t expect it from someone like me.
“I thought you were itching for revenge after the spanking I gave you,” he says, the words coming out awkwardly. This time, I do laugh.
“It wasn’t the first time I’ve been hit. It’s all good,” I say, even though the memory sends a weird shudder through me. “I deserved it anyway.”And I’d do it again in a heartbeat,but I don’t tell him that.
He raises an eyebrow, just a flicker of the old sarcastic Ethan returning.
“You got a thing for it or something?” The way he says it is half-joke, half-accusation, and it makes me crack up. That catches me off guard. He knows I do; it was pretty obvious by how hard I got. He wants to hear it coming from me.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I shoot back, winking, daring him. He just shakes his head, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. We walk the rest of the way without talking, and when we finally get to our room, I really want to lie down.
But this beast of a man says:
"Come here, I’m putting some ointment on your bruises. It’ll help with the pain."
Is he really asking me to show my butt so he can rub ointment on it? I look at him, puzzled, and he, bossy as ever, points at my bed. "Come on. Fast. Lie down here.Now."
"Sure, whatever," I say, and I can tell he is pleased I’m doingwhat I’m told. He doesn't ask whether I want it or not, doesn't give me any choice, but deep down, I really want it, and he probably knows. So, I do what he tells me. He pulls down my shorts and underwear, and I bury my face in the mattress, hoping he won't see how red I’m turning or notice the awkward way I’m getting turned on again. It’s like my body has a mind of its own.
"Man, you bruise easily," he says, and I swear I hear a chuckle escape him. I shift awkwardly, shivering a bit from the cold touch of the ointment on my butt. He starts to spread the ointment, and I am frozen in place, fighting my own body’s reactions.
“Idon’tbruise easily. You just went too hard, motherfucker,” I say, making a joke, and, for the first time ever, I hear him snorting.Score.
“You have no idea whattoo hardis if you think that’s it. I can go much harder,” he says, and now my ass is all numbed out and slick with ointment, and it feels like a dream under his strong hands.
I’m honestly almost falling asleep with this massage, then he talks again, softer now. "Look, I didn’t do this to be a jerk. I’m gonna help you stay in line. This way, you might get out of here sooner, maybe even for good behavior," he adds, and my heart clenches a bit.
"But why do you care?" I ask.Fucking weirdo.
He hesitates before answering, "It's my job to help others turn their lives around. That’s what I like to do. And when I get out of here and graduate, I want to work in the system, just like Griff does, even if it’s very fucked up."
Wow. I almost never think about anyone but myself. I feel kind of embarrassed about that. I furrow my brows and look up at him. "That's really weird," I say, but I mean no harm, andhe knows it. And I realize something: “You dolikeme.”
“Shut up,” he says. I immediately see I’m right, and I even manage to draw a small smile from him. He finishes applying the ointment, the massage stopping. I almost beg him to continue.
“You're all done, you may get up now if you want.”
I do, but I don't really want to.
"Where is everyone?" I ask, because I need to say something, or I'll fucking explode.
"They’re at dinner. Since we got held up cleaning the mats, we missed dinner, and they don’t let you eat if you're late."
My stomach growls; I am starving. But I'm used to starving. Back home, I almost never made food for myself. If someone else, Dad or my friends, didn't make me eat, I just didn't. And since I was alone ninety percent of the time, that was usually the case. But I don’t want to ruin the moment by saying that. I know how people look at me when they find out my marvelous relationship with food, and it’s never good. My two stays at the psych ward happened because I wouldn’t eat for a week, two weeks, more weeks… even if I wanted to eat, after a while, you justcan’teat anymore. Your body tells you,motherfucker, you decided to starve me to death, so I’m following through.
