I bite his pulse slightly; his taste, his smell explodes on my tongue, and his hold on me goes even tighter.
“I can’t believe this is where you go almost every night. What if you get caught? What if the cops come and arrest you? You wanna go to jail, Zach? Is that your plan? Is that –”
I stop talking when my back thumps against something – the door of a rusted, white truck – as Zach deposits me against it, and we come apart.
We’re far away from the crowd and roars of flying bikes and all I can hear is our roughened breaths.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he growls, leaning into me.
His hands go down to my butt and squeeze the flesh over my skirt, and I bite my already-torn lip at the pressure.
“I followed you.”
“What?”
“After that dinner… I didn’t want you to be alone. I didn’t –”
Another squeeze of my ass. “Who said I wanted your company?”
God, he’s rude.
And big and bad.
He hasn’t changed. He’s still the same as he was back at St. Patrick’s.
I, however, have changed. I have changed the way I look at him. His rudeness doesn’t bother me. It just… fits. Fits him like armor.
He probably needed it for all the wars he has fought, living in that glass tower.
I tug at his hair with equal pressure. “Me. I said you wanted my company so here I am.”
His nostrils flare. “Is it going to take a restraining order for you to keep away from me?”
“Try me. I dare you.”
Zach bows his body toward me even more. It’s like the clouds are obstructing the moon and the world has gone dark.
It’s okay.
I’m wrapped around darkness; I’m not afraid of it.
“Remember the line, Blue. You’re very close to being on the side of stupid,” he warns.
The strands of his hair graze my forehead and my nose bumps against his. Even that slightest touch is enough to make my back arch and dig my nails in the nape of his neck.
“You’re stupid too,” I whisper, thinking about the tattoo on his wrist. “Look what you’re doing. Jumping across canyons. Even though, it was… a teeny, tiny bit magnificent.”
It was.
Now that I’m not scared out of my mind, I can admit that he looked really, really sexy and invincible. A daredevil.
Zach’s eyes rove over my face. “You are obsessed with me.”
“No.” I flinch, then, “Kinda.”
He presses me into the truck with his body. His torso is pressing into my belly and his chest is flattening my heavy, throbbing breasts. His weight must be crushing me but all I can feel is a sense of freedom.
A sense of life.
So much life that I might die from it.
“Didn’t your mom teach you to stay away from your bully?” he rasps.
It’s so reminiscent of all the things he said to me when we first met that it takes me a second to gather my breath.
In that second, I imagine him when he was twelve, all angry and arrogant, and I was ten, all indignant and annoyed. I imagine what would’ve happened if he wasn’t so screwed up and we hadn’t fought that day.
Maybe we would’ve been friends. And maybe one day, we would’ve become something more.
Instead of a hate story, our story would’ve been one of love.
I look into his eyes as I cradle his hard cheek. His stubble is rough under my fingers and his skin is hot and that expression – the one I’ve been chasing after ever since I saw it when he cornered me in the hallway.
It’s regret.
I can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out. He’s regretful. Probably of all the things he did to me and put me through.
“If you’re my bully, then I’m the bullied, right?” I begin. “Well, I’m moving on. I have the power. So I’m choosing to forget. I don’t remember the guy who bullied me. Who stood by and watched me get humiliated over and over. Who I hurled insults at. Instead of him, I remember the guy who came to my rescue when I cut my palm that first night at the party. I remember the guy who gave up cigarettes because I wanted him to suffer. And who ate that custard even though he knew what I was up to. I remember the guy who sent Ashley away and defended me. I remember the guy who pulled a five-year-old kid out of a hole and who made that kid feel better about his situation. Instead of my bully, I remember the guy who said he wanted to protect me and when he didn’t, he hated himself a little more every day.”
This is my catharsis.
Tina was right. I have to let go and I am letting go, of old anger, the past, the sense of injustice.
I just didn’t know it would be like this, wrapped around the guy who hurt me.
But I guess it makes sense. He’s been the center of my universe. Why wouldn’t he be with me when I take this step?
“And to answer your question, my mom taught me to stay away from my bully but she also taught me to never stand by if someone was getting bullied.”
Zach’s breaths are harsh and halting and I can feel them down to my bones. I can feel his pain, his anger, his outrage and torture, everything.
Maybe this is what they call telepathy.
This, right here, is transcendence.
“I’m sorry but…” I squeeze his sides with my thighs. “Your family’s fucked up. Like, really fucked up. Your dad?” I shake my head and fist his t-shirt. “He’s a bully. Do you understand? You don’t have to go to Oxford or whatever to be a Prince. It’s all bullshit. Don’t let him tell you that you don’t belong. Don’t let him make you believe all the crap about you, Zach. You don’t deserve that. You –”
Zach pushes his hips into me and rubs up against my core, making me shut up.
“Yeah? What do I deserve?” he asks roughly, staring at me with a breath-stealing intensity.
God, he’s so close.
And hard, and I’m wrapped around him so shamelessly.
But I won’t let him distract me. He needs to know that his dad is an asshole. That he doesn’t deserve to be treated like this because of something that’s not his fault.
“I’m serious,” I tell him.
“Me too.” He rolls his hips against mine, making me shiver. “Tell me what I deserve, Blue.”
“Not this. Nobody deserves to be treated like this.”
Clenching his jaw, he uncurls my hand from his shirt and grasps my palm.
A sharp pain flares in the center of it, reminding me that I fell the moment I got out of the car. Zach’s thumb is pressing on that wound. It’s the same palm I’d cut the night he came back, my left one.
Frowning, he looks down. “What happened?”
“I fell. Because I was dizzy. When I got out of the… c-car.”
The scrapes on my knees pulse as well. It’s like the mention of the car is making all my injuries flare up.
Still holding onto my hand, he looks up. There are a few seconds of confusion on his face but then it clears off.
“You followed me in your car.”
“Y-yes.”
He shakes his head once. “I’m giving you a ride home.”
He goes to move away from me but I tighten my legs around him. “No.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to go. Not yet. I want…”
“You want what?”
His eyes are intense. They glow in the dark. Like beacons. Except, a beacon is supposed to be safe, but his eyes come with a danger of drowning.
“I-I want you to kiss me.”
Gosh, did I really say that?
The sharp inhale of his breath says yes. I did say that and he’s surprised.
Well, why wouldn’t he be? I ran away from him last time when he made me feel something.
But I guess I was lying then. To myself and to him.
I think I’ve wanted him to kiss me for years. Even when he was just my bully.
Maybe it’s pathetic and I’m the girl in horror movies who dies right in the beginning because she just can’t stop herself from checking out the basement.
So be it.
I’m that girl.
I’ll go down in history as the girl who courts heartbreak and hence, deserves tragedy.
“I make you bleed,” Zach murmurs in a low tone, rubbing his thumb over the seam of my lips. A tone laced with regret.
“Yeah.”
His thumb traces the torn skin of my lip in the middle. “I make you cry too.”
I blink and a tear slips out; I didn’t even know it was hovering at the edge. “Yes.”
Wiping off my tear, he whispers, “I won’t stop. I don’t know how.”
He will stop. I’ll make him stop.
This cycle of bullying that started with his dad. It ends with us.
I’ll change our story.
If he’s a false prince, then I’m his street Cinderella. I don’t need glass slippers or a pretty gown to change our stars. I can do it in my quiet leather boots and my gray uniform.
“It’s okay,” I whisper.
His nostrils flare at my answer, as he watches me with a strange possession. It’s dark and scary and thrilling. It makes me hold onto him even tighter.
But he easily shakes off my limbs and steps back.
Suddenly I’m adrift and my legs come down on the ground, my spine sliding along the metal door of the truck. They are shaky and numb, and my feet are bare. My Mary Janes fell from them a long time ago and I’ve completely forgotten how to stand on my own.
“Zach?”
And to my shock, he comes down on his knees – falls, almost – and grabs my hips to keep me steady. His face reaches up to the bottom of my breasts and he buries his nose in the valley. It doesn’t matter if they are covered with clothes, Zach has a habit of destroying all the barriers between us.
Wrapping my hands around him, I whisper, “What are you doing?”
He lifts his head and stares into my eyes. I notice all the dirt smudges on my white shirt, how twisted up and stretched out my buttons are, straining against my heaving breasts.