We could fight back, her and me, in small, stolen moments and behind locked doors.
I stared into her despondent gray eyes, and I decided then and there that we could help each other. We could fuck the shit out of each other and not feel a damn thing except revenge toward my father.
“I never knew you liked to draw,” Waverly says, snapping me into the present moment. I can’t help but feel dirty against her pure-white presence.
I pull the sketchpad out of her grasp and shut the cover, shoving everything back into my bag. Mrs. Davenport is talking at the front of the classroom. The hour is over. Waverly’s stare is invading, intrusive. She can have me at face value. I’ll give her that. But my past? That’s something she’ll never touch. I won’t allow it. She wouldn’t understand.
“Do you have more of those?” she asks. She won’t fucking drop it. I’m not sure why she cares.
“Of you? No.”
“No, any more drawings.”
“In my art class, sure.”
“At home.”
I shake my head. “Left everything at the old house.”
It was true. I left that place with a few clothes shoved into a duffel bag. Juliette cried as my dad assured her since I was eighteen that it wasn’t statutory rape. I’ll never forget my father standing there, knuckles bruised and bloody, and he’s calm as a fucking yoga instructor as he shoots the shit with the cops our neighbors called when they heard Juliette’s guttural shrieks. I left with a bag of clothes and the social worker. As for Juliette’s fate, I’m sure my father roughed her up pretty good, and for the first time, I wasn’t there to protect her.
“You’re incredibly talented,” Waverly says.
“You seem surprised.”
“It’s not a bad thing. I’m impressed, is all.”
Claire Fahlander spins around and shoots Waverly a dirty look before shushing us both. I have half a mind to break her heart just for the sport of it. I bet she’s one of those girls who ugly cries.
“That’s what happens when you judge a book by its cover.” I smirk.
She leans close, her steady breaths tickling my ear. “Likewise.”
I knew it.
I fucking knew it.
Underneath her prim and proper façade is a girl dying to break free from the confines of her ass-backward religious restraints. She’s straddling the line. I can see it. It’s written all over in the way she looks at me, like I make her feel things that terrify and excite her all at the same time.
Any guilt I might have felt by pushing her buttons last night evaporates. I have my work cut out for me, that’s for sure, but I’m so not done with her yet…
CHAPTER 10
WAVERLY
I forced myself to talk at dinner tonight. I couldn’t take another family meal smothered by the weight of Jensen’s stare. I’m a big girl. I made a decision. I touched myself last night, and I enjoyed it.
End of story.
Bellamy always says everyone has secrets; some are just better at hiding them than others.
So now I have a secret. It burns hot inside me, fresh as the instant it was placed there by the most earth-shattering orgasm I could’ve ever dreamed up. But it’s there now, and there’s no getting around it.
I finish dish duty and glance out the sliding door toward the backyard, where Jensen is outside playing with Gretchen and Gideon after the light drizzle we got that evening. They’re half-siblings, but they look nothing alike. They have soft features like Kath does, but their hair is almost colorless. Dad said his hair was that pale when he was a kid. The twins are like two effervescent angels. Jensen is dark and hardened. The three of them all laughing and playing together is a sight to see.
A warm hand wraps around my shoulder. “You okay, Waverly?”
It’s my father.
“Of course I’m okay.” I force a smile and pray to God he can’t see right through me.
“Is Jensen bothering you?” His lips go straight and his brows meet in the middle. “You haven’t been yourself since he came around.”
“School stuff,” I say, placing my hand over his. “Getting nervous about getting into college. Still haven’t heard from my number one and graduation’s coming up.”
His face relaxes as he kisses my forehead. “You worry too much about your future. You know I’ll always make sure you’re provided for.”
“I appreciate it, Dad, but this is my dream.”
Dad leans down, kissing my forehead. “You’re a good girl, Waverly. Heavenly Father has big plans for you. I feel it in my soul.”
“After college, Dad.” I smile. “I just want to study literature, make some friends, and then I’ll settle down.”
He doesn’t say much, which concerns me, but I chalk it up to my anxiety about not hearing back yet from the University of Utah.
“I’ve been doing good, though, right, Dad?” I glance up at him, meeting his eyes with as much hope as I can muster. “I’m doing all the right things. Making you proud. Showing you I can handle being on my own for a few years.”
“We need to get through the rest of the summer,” he says, his eyes whipping outside to Jensen. “A lot can happen after high school graduation. People change. Attitudes change.”
“Dad.” I tilt my head. “You know me. I’m not like most young women my age.”
I glance across the room at Bellamy. She’s sitting in Dad’s overstuffed club chair flipping through a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. At almost twenty-two, she’s never moved from home, not even after finishing her associate’s degree last year.
I love my sister more than words, but I have no desire to still be living at home at this age, waiting to be married off—if that’s even what she’s doing. I want to settle down someday, but I want to live a little first.
“You could always go to Whispering Hills Community College.” Dad loosens his grip on my shoulder and pats my back. “Bellamy loved it.”
Bellamy is a closed book. Sometimes I think she talks about everyone else’s secrets just to cover up the fact that she has a few of her own. None of us know what she’s thinking half the time. She could’ve hated college, for all we knew.
“You know where I want to go,” I say to Dad. We’ve had this talk before. I applied to four in-state schools, though my first pick is Utah. As long as I get accepted and get a partial scholarship, I can go. Dad, even on his pharmacist’s salary, can’t afford to send me away. He has way too many mouths to feed here.
He made the requirements crystal clear to me last year. Walk a straight line. Get a scholarship. That’s all I have to do to get out of here.
“Listen, everything will work out just the way Heavenly Father wants it to.” His words, normally a downy soft pillow of comfort on which to land, don’t offer the same effect this time. Dad releases my shoulder from his grip and disappears, retiring to his den for his nightly devotions.
I plop down into a nearby chair, resting my chin into my palm. The solid ground upon which I’d been building my future seems to be shakier than before. The only thing I can pin it on is Jensen. Something about him is making my father doubt my ability to go out into the world on my own.
“I found out what happened to Jensen.” Bellamy’s words hook me hard. “Why he was sent here.”
“Oh, yeah?” I take the chair next to her and do my best to pretend I’m not overly interested. “How?”
“Overheard Mom talking to Kath and Summer.” Bellamy licks her index finger and pages through her magazine. She rests it in her lap for a moment, glancing out the sliding door to where Gideon is stomping into tiny water puddles and splashing Gretchen. Jensen clearly taught him that.
“Okay, so what happened?” I hate that she’s keeping me on edge, but I can’t let on that I care as much as I do.
Bellamy folds her magazine and turns to me, leaning in. I do the same. Her face holds no expression. “He slept with his stepmother.”