Page 88 of Grace

…

I was eighteen.

Chase slid his brown leather belt out of his trousers.

My body tensed, and my fists clenched at my sides. I looked straight into his eyes, tears burning in mine. I wanted to shout. The words scorched my throat—but that day, Chase wasn’t using the belt to beat me. It slipped from his hand, and the buckle clinked sharply against the concrete in the thick, suffocating silence enveloping us. I saw the desire in his dark eyes, and I felt my own. I hate us for what we turned each other into. Chase crossed the room in two strides and lifted me up at once. My thighs locked around his waist, my bare skin against his hot, bare skin. He pressed my back against the cold, rough wall and captured my lips in a wild, passionate kiss.

“I love you, Grace,” he whispered against my mouth, then pulled off my checked shirt. The cool wall at my back and the desire coiling low in my belly made my nipples harden. I wanted him. Oh, God, I wanted him so much. I yearned for him.

Chase’s lips closed around one of my nipples. He sucked gently while massaging the other. I threw my head back and moaned softly, my hands tangled in his thick, dark hair.

“Chase!”, I moaned. I forgot where I was, that I was a prisoner. The world had shrunk to him and me. Our desire—and his inconceivable obsession with me.

Chase pulled my cotton panties aside and slid two fingers inside me. I chased the pleasure only he could give me. Because that feeling was wonderful… not only because it eased the tension in my lower belly, but because when I looked into those dark eyes, the world disappeared—I no longer yearned for sunlight, because I was basking in our love.

…

I don’t know why I focus on these tender memories of him. Why not on all the suffering he caused me? The abuse. The beatings. Is it only me who wanted to see him as a monster? What if he wasn’t? Or does love make me this blind? Can I really forget all the horror he put me through?

My phone rings. I startle, and sweat breaks out across my skin. Cyrus’s name is flashing on the screen. I lift the phone in a hurry. Shame washes over me—my face and ears burning red. My panties are drenched.

Had Cyrus not distracted me, this wouldn’t have been the first time I’d masturbated to my memories. When I was living with my siblings, I often gave in to those dark desires. But this time, guilt claws at my chest because I should be fantasizing about Cyrus, not Chase. About the man I live with, the one I share my everyday life with. But Chase has become a part of me. A dark part that won’t stop haunting me, won’t stop whispering. He’s infected my thoughts, my heart, my soul. My body has never responded to Cyrus the way it does to him, and the orgasms have never even come close to that all-consuming blaze.

I stare at the flashing, buzzing device for a long time. I glance at the grandfather clock on the wall. The hands tick eerily, and the ceiling fan stirs the stale air with an unsettling hum. A wave of heat and disgust shudders through my body. I pick up the teddy bear, press it against my chest, and clumsily walk into the room. I set the phone on the nightstand, then sit cross-legged on the bed. I love Cyrus, but I don’t want to hear his deep, gravelly voice right now.

I run my tongue along my lower lip and keep searching inside the teddy bear. His message has filled me with a perverse thrill. I find another note, this one in my handwriting. My brows furrow in confusion, my lips part slightly. My heart pounds in my throat, the blood drains from my face—I’m probably as pale as a ghost.

Billy kissed me in the garden. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t even come close to my kiss with Chase. That one felt like someone pressing something hot and burning against my skin. The walls of my imagination were closing in, tossing me around. That kiss happened a month ago, but I can still taste it on my tongue when I think about it.

“Oh my God!” I clap a hand over my mouth. My words—written down when I was fifteen—slap me in the face.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

I bury my face in the crook of my arm and start sobbing. Nikky can’t be right. I’m not a whore! I wasn’t a whore! I didn’t want Chase to kidnap me! I didn’t… I didn’t want to fall in love with him. But now I get it. Nikky had every right to hate me.

Chase

I saw the way she looked at me. She was terrified, she hated me, but she was curious, too. She wanted to know why it was her. But love can’t be explained rationally, because love is madness—it shackles you to another person, body and mind.

So I didn’t answer the questions she kept asking. I just watched her in silence. She cowered in the corner, her tear-filled eyes glistening like the northern lights. Her face was tight with anger, her eyes full of condemnation. But she couldn’t fool me, even though she was fighting against what she felt. I felt it in our first kiss. I saw the way she reacted to me in the van. She trusted me despite knowing I was a wretched person.

I was pulling her toward me with something primal. She may have been dating that Billy Ray… but she never looked at him the way she looked at me. He was only a substitute, a tool, someone she used to dull her guilt. Deep down, I was already lodged in her heart.

Ordinary teenagers have this dumb habit of keeping a diary where they write down their experiences and secrets. They think a tiny lock means it can’t ever end up in the wrong hands. Such a stupid mistake. That lock is easier to break than bones.

Grace made this mistake, too. She kept a diary—one I could get my hands on easily. All I needed was some idiot willing to fuck that blonde girl in their house.

She opened up to that little book about her feelings, about the most important things that happened to her. She was raised in a loving family—their parents’ love was her ideal.

She often referred to Nikky as the black sheep of the family. With Jamie, her relationship had been much closer—until a certain incident. And there was a lot about that giggling girl whose smile looked like she had the teeth of a pit bull. Daisy. Just her name sends shivers through me. She was like the others. She wanted to grow up—to become a woman—too soon, and she dragged Grace onto that path, too. When she got herself fucked by that much older boy, she started something in Grace. She filled her head with stupid shit—things she shouldn’t even be thinking about yet. The diary gave her away. She was planning her first time with Billy, that boy who’d shoved his tongue down her throat.

She filled page after page trying to convince herself it wouldn’t be bad, that she was ready. Of course, she didn’t want to do it right away. She set a strict condition: they had to be dating for a year.

If we stay together for a year, and I keep looking at him the way I’m looking at him right now… Then I’ll lose my virginity to him.

I tore out the page and threw it in the trash. There was no point in wasting paper on that idiot. And she did waste it, because a month later, the guy got stuck in the cloying script that annoying Daisy wrote for them and hasn’t found his way out ever since. Of course, he said more than once that he’d been serious about Grace and shared her vision of their future—while she was secretly being in love with me. But fate intervened.

The parts about Mr. Miller were much more interesting. After my warning and her conversation with her mom, Grace was afraid of him. But she wasn’t in danger for a second, because I was there, ready to punch his number anytime. I wouldn’t have been punished, either. My brother and I do have one thing in common: he doesn’t like pedophiles, either.