You don’t love me.
“Not true. Not true,” I whispered and without really thinking about it, I rested my fingers over that tattoo.
How could I not? Every kiss was burned into my mind. Every touch left behind scars that could never be seen. Emily’s soft, small fingers gliding along my skin, her hands shaking as I stood in front of her for the first time wearing nothing but my boxers. Me taking those hands, holding them close to my chest to keep them still.
“Are you scared?” she’d asked and though I knew I’d have come off looking bolder, stronger if I’d lied, I couldn’t do it. I’d never lie to her.
“Hell yes.”
We’d escaped the city in the offseason, sneaking away to her family’s cabin on Cane River Lake away from my parents and Emily’s obligations at dating a boy she didn’t like. Eddie Parker didn’t have her, no matter how often her father had him over for dinner or told her his plans for their future.
She was mine, and that March night with the lake around us purring frigid winds over the cottage and the waters quieter than a library during mid-terms, I kissed Emily and knew she would not stop me from going as far as I had dreamed we would.
We’d managed to get undressed, awkwardly holding on to each other as we fumbled to the bed. And when I hovered above her and all that straight, red hair fanned out around her, I thought maybe, once in my life, I’d have a perfect moment. It was something that had never happened for me, something I’d prayed for. “Blessings delayed are not blessing denied,” Bobby would always say, but I didn’t think God cared for my prayers or that the raging hormones in my body edged me toward a sin I wouldn’t want to ever be forgiven for.
“Ransom?” she’d asked, stopping me with her hands on my shoulders and in my mind I worried that she’d changed her mind, or if, like so many times before, Emily had once again gotten scared of what we both professed to want.
Arms trembling as I paused over her, my hips on top of hers, my dick covered in a condom, ready to take what I believed was mine, I looked down at her, expecting that her fear had won out again.
It hadn’t.
Those small fingers moved from my shoulders, to my neck, then to back of my messed hair and Emily touched my face, fingertips on my mouth, the cleft in my chin as though she needed a moment to see me and think about nothing but the two of us right there in that moment. “You’re getting something no one else in the world will ever have. I’m giving that to you because I love you.”
“Em…God.”
My heart broke a little bit then, in the best possible way. I’d never quit loving her, wanting her. Not ever. From that night until the last time I touched her, I’d never stop. If she was with me, near me, I’d touch her, hold her, let the love that I had felt for her from the day I met her grow stronger, fiercer inside my chest. She held on tight as I drove inside her body, that safe, warm, wet part of her wrapping around me, clenching, holding me until I thought I couldn’t stand the grip, until I felt my heart swelling up.
At that moment, I could have pried open my chest, shown her what she’d given me, made her promise to never stop feeding it, begged her to make it stronger with just a flash of her smile, or the subtle, sweet look in her eyes that answered “yes” to a question I never had to ask.
I moved past her resistance, breaking the hymen until I was deep, so deep inside Emily that I could not have told you where our bodies met. And then, just there, with my beautiful girl wrapped so securely around me, with her clutching my arms, gasping against my chest I found my one, perfect moment.
“I love you, Em,” I’d told her and repeated it twice before we fell onto the mattress, still wrapped together in that thick quilt and each other.
No, I hadn’t forgotten a thing.
Liar.
That voice was vicious again, coming from the space that still held the husk of my heart. Now it was cold, cobwebbed by shame, by time, a chrysalis that would never be shed. There would be no wings, no stretch of rebirth or potential to grow stronger.
You have forgotten. You forgot today.
Maybe I had. Rolling to my back, I rested my wrist on my forehead and looked up at the ceiling. There was a thin layer of dust on my fan and in the corner near the window, an old watermark carried the shape of a lightning bolt. The laughter outside my room had gone quiet, replaced by the unmistakable slap of skin against skin and the creak of Trent’s bed.
They have what you can’t. Not ever.
She was right. I didn’t deserve what Emily had given me that night. I didn’t deserve to be the one who’d taken her innocence from her and never given anything back but heartache. I didn’t deserve for Aly, who never smiled at anyone, to smile only for me, to kiss me with everything she had.
She doesn’t know you. She never will.
She might. One day, if I ever stopped listening to that damn voice. I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to ignore the sound, that distant phantom voice that hated me, that wanted me to hate myself. It was the same one that cursed, raged when I thought about Aly’s skin and the texture of her hair on my fingers. One of her eyes was a fraction smaller than the other and her nose was almost too long. She was imperfect, flawed, and I’d been fascinated by the sight of her, all those sensations she worked inside me that day on the piano bench and nearly every day since.
I closed my eyes, numbing myself to the shrieks inside my head, feeling stupid and weak for the guilt, for the shame of my memories. For the first time, I felt bad recalling that night with Emily. Why? I had no idea. I felt worse for the dance I’d get. I felt all these things because I’d kissed Aly twice. And that, more than anything, had the voice growing, the words harsher, crueler, more punishing.
And then came the final memory, the images of that last day: Emily screaming at me as I laughed, her clutching that charm around her white fingers as I gunned the boat’s engine, pushing it faster and faster. Me being too caught up in her reaction, in the humor I found in her worry to realize she was truly terrified. Then, the water, the lake and the sobering fear of what I’d done. To her, to my girl, to my love. To Emily, who I promised I would never hurt.
LIAR!
I shot up in bed, slamming my feet to the floor when those images replayed in my shackled mind over and over, the screaming, the shouts and I closed my eyes, feeling weak, impotent, pathetic.
“Ransom?” I heard, looking between my fingers at Krystal Myers, one of Trent’s regulars, as she peeked in from the door.
Do it. It’s what you deserve. Do it!
I stood, let the sheet fall from my waist, naked except for my boxers, and didn’t care that Krystal’s eyes that had likely seen many stripped men, rushed over my skin like liquid. I didn’t care who she was or what was thinking.
I just didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t try to leave when I pulled her into my room. “We heard you, um, moaning. You okay, sugar?”
She didn’t get an answer, yet made no attempt to stop me or even talk to me again until I had her on my bed. “What are you doing?” she muttered, but it was all for show. She knew. That much was obvious from that poorly disguised grin and the dent of her bottom lip as she bit it.
“I…” Nausea came to me then, clotting my throat until I cleared it away. “I can make you feel good.”
Krystal wore a smile that was stupid and giddy, like a kid being told they could have another scoop of ice cream. She lay back, slipped her thong off, then lifted her arms above her head. I didn’t touch her, didn’t pay much attention to her at all.
My hands would not stop shaking and that voice, though lower, still came at me fierce and badgering, telling me to touch her, demanding that I service this girl.