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“I desire very little, but the things I do consume me.” ~Beau Taplin
Clint and I were like hot oil kissing water. Gasoline crooking its finger at an open flame. We came together like animals in heat, marking and pissing over our territory. And love had everything, yet nothing, to do with it.
years, I stood there confident in knowing that the worst mistake I’d ever taken part in was the best decision of my life.
“Promise me. And if you can’t promise me all those things, then please, lie to me.” Never breaking promises was a cardinal rule ingrained in me, and I didn’t want to lock myself into saying something I’d regret come escape time. “Yes, you fucking own me, Clint.” I gave him a different truth. It was the best I could do. “And no one fucks me like you do.” I scraped a nail along his jaw. “I’ve missed you so much I’ve gone blind. Feeling my way through life. My senses are fucked, Clint. Nothing looks the same since you, nothing smells or tastes the same. The world is bland.” But I can’t stay.
No never stopped us. Especially not after we’d decided that turning ourselves into monsters would be the only way to cope with the pain. To be more deserving of it.
“Hey, I know you. You’re in my class. I don’t see you that often, though.” “I don’t make it that often,” I said to Clint’s visible displeasure. “I don’t have an alarm clock, so sometimes I miss the bus.”
“This is your room? Fuck,” I said, forgetting to play it cool. I didn’t want him knowing nice shit was new to me.
I wanted to promise I’d share my mom with him if he shared his dad with me, but then I thought about the stinky trailer, having to attempt homework by flashlight, and the parties that went late into the night and often ended with someone in an ambulance and vomit soaking into the stained carpet. I had nothing to offer Joey. Nothing to offer either of them.
“I’m Jillian. Clint’s friend.” “I know all of Clint’s friends,” I said, straight-faced. “He’s never mentioned a Sally before.”
testy lil bitch lmao
Every year, since around my thirteenth birthday, I’d show up to my mother’s run-down trailer, hoping she’d be different for me, but she was nothing if not consistent. Without fail, I’d storm outside to find Joey waiting there for me. “I’m never gonna let her ruin another birthday for you,” he’d say before slinging an arm around my shoulder and taking me to the park to play ball until Clint picked us up for dinner, cake, and ice cream. I’d let my fantasies go a few years ago, but Joey needed the repeated confirmation.
I circled back to the day it clicked that I was in love with him. It was six years ago, and a rhythmic thumping woke me from my sleep. Low but consistent and climbing my bedroom walls from downstairs. I’d followed the sound to Clint’s bedroom door, pressed my ear against the wood, and through the pounding in my eardrums, I heard the distinct sounds of soft moaning and slapping skin. Took me a moment of self-evaluation to conclude that the eviscerating stabs to my chest cavity were being inflicted by jealousy and betrayal. Unwarranted, but real, nonetheless.
On principle, I avoided people, unless they were my people, and I didn’t have many people, and rarely were there openings for me to take on more people.
“Why does it feel like something’s died between us tonight?” “It hasn’t. I promise, Clint.” He grunted. “You used to call me Dad. Took you a while, and I didn’t make a big deal about it when you first said it because I didn’t want you to take it back, but damn, did it hurt in the best of ways.” He hit me with a side glance. “And then one day you stopped. Out of nowhere. And that hurt, too, but in the worst of ways.”
“My heart’s already spoken for,” I whispered, and for a minute, I thought he got it. I thought I’d underestimated his ability to solve me. But then his wide-eyed expression cooled, and his lips turned up. “I’m sure there’s room in your heart for your ambitions and romance. You have one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing.”
The scene flipped an on switch to memories of my mother coming home plastered with some new random, locking me in my room so they could fuck all night, high off whatever they’d taken. Sometimes the fucking would turn to fighting, but I couldn’t open my door to save her. Did I even want to?
I moved in the direction of it before remembering I’d come down in my underwear. These were the types of things men didn’t worry about when attraction wasn’t at play. Clint could be caught strutting around the house in the middle of the night in his boxer briefs, and Joey had no issues coming down for a snack full commando, hand cupping his cock and balls.
sounds like a nightmare tbh
“No. I never really can on this day.” My brows tucked low as I tried to pluck the importance of the date from my memory. “Brandon’s birthday.” I’d been out with him all day and completely forgot. Looking back on our time kicking up gravel and chasing the sunset, I was sure forgetting was what he wanted. Compartmentalizing had a way of catching up with you, though.
Clint smiled proudly. He measured success by one’s character. Joey and I could scrub toilets for the rest of our lives and Clint would feel accomplished as long as we were great men.
Brandon was visibly upset in the photo, arms crossed, eyes facing away from the camera. “That was the day after his tenth birthday. The last time I saw him and my father alive. The last memory I have of my vivacious baby brother was of him being unhappy, and I’d made him that way. I’d killed his spark and never got a chance at making it return.”
“It was a weekend-long event out of state, so we’d make a small vacation out of it rather than do the four-hour drive there and back every day. This particular year, I didn’t want to go. I was seventeen and the parents of the person I’d been secretly hooking up with happened to be going out of town that weekend. We’d been having sex at that point, nothing more than stolen moments in the woods or behind a dumpster somewhere, though. I was teeming with testosterone. No way I’d pass up an opportunity for a sex marathon—in a bed. So I bribed Brandon to take my place with Dad.” He pointed to
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“You never told me this before.” “I didn’t want you to think less of me,” I said. “And now?” “You coughed up your pain for me, and now I think more of you. And I’m gambling that sharing my worst mistake makes you think more of me, too.” “It does,” he whispered.
My feet cleared the final step at the top when his whispered words hit me like a physical touch. “Good night, Raven.” They’d traveled up from the bottom landing. Had he stood there and watched me ascend? I decided having the answer to that would do more harm than good, so I willed my head to remain forward and forced my legs to carry me to my room.
I peered down at the expanse of skin on my rib cage, then back at my work in progress. A wall wouldn’t be enough. I needed Clint seared into my flesh. I wanted to pay tribute to him with my body. I wanted him with me forever. Because what I hadn’t told Clint downstairs was that my selfishness had paid off. If mom hadn’t survived that day, I would’ve been in a foster home instead of the park, weeks later, where Clint had saved me for the first time from a world he’d continued to save me from thereafter.
And yeah, I read way more into the fact that he’d been here for twenty minutes and hadn’t noticed anything outside of me. Sue me. Or pray for me.
“What-if can’t coexist with right now, Raven.” Those words would come back to haunt us both.
I inhaled a long, agony-fueled breath and gave the key a hard turn. The engine didn’t purr, it motherfucking roared. “Holy shit!” Clint fell back to his ass, his jaw slack with shock, and I jumped out of the car and ran laps around it, screaming with my hands in the air. “You did it,” I said, stooping in front of him and shaking his shoulders. Behind me the Chevelle began to smoke and groan before seizing and cutting off. “Fuck. You,” I said to the heavens. God had officially made it onto my shit list.
How was it that with all life had thrown at him, Clint still had it in him to look at the world in wonder? If I played a part in that, I’d accept it gladly. It’d get me through the rough patches that came with wanting but not having him. It’d sustain me until the next time I needed something to get through it. There’d be plenty more next times as long as I didn’t own him.
He charged for me exuberantly, squatting as if he were gearing up to wrap his arms around my legs and heave. I jumped back. “Do not pick me up,” I cautioned with my hands outstretched. “Not unless you plan on fucking me against a wall.”
“What? Straight people don’t joke with their friends like that?” Clint shook his head slowly, bewildered. “I wouldn’t know. Jesus, take it easy on me, would ya?” “I’ll work on my filter,” I said with fake ease.
The hot spray of the water pounded my right side as I leaned my palms into the clear shower door, biting down on the folded strap of my belt and fucking myself onto the dildo suctioned to the tiled wall behind me. I refused to touch myself. When I came, it would be to the thought of Clint taking me like this, without mercy. That mental image would work better than any hand jacking my dick, including mine.
My chin remained in his grasp, and when his thumb swiped featherlight over my skin, I gritted out a curse and launched away from him. I was coming apart. Clint’s brows formed a deep V at my overreaction. A touch is not just a fucking touch from you! I wanted to yell.
“Should I tell him about the time you got violently sick riding pillion on my bike?” I asked with my pencil between my teeth. Clint was used to the Harley now. That first time, however, would remain memorable. “Only if I can tell him you panicked and capsized our canoe over a bullfrog.” Clint smirked devilishly.
“And I’ll be sure to tell him how much you’ve grown,” he said as he scribbled across the pad. “You’re the only one that didn’t already know that, Clint.” Yeah, I’d need to work on that filter pronto because the conflict my comment stirred in Clint’s eyes made me wish I hadn’t said a thing.
I was coming to learn there were few things sexier than watching him take care of himself. I was attracted to the innocence and vulnerability of him testing old waters and discovering they hadn’t gone cold on him. They were waiting, warm and welcoming, and he invited me in with him.
I’m addicted to him. To his companionship, his easy smiles, and his godforsaken filthy mouth.
Still, I chafed at not knowing where he’d raced off to tonight. Whose bed would be keeping him warm? Whose arms did I need to break?
I want to see you and love you, anyway.
We were inevitably connected when riding, though until now that connection hadn’t weighed heavily on my conscience. Indecent images cruised into my head of us whizzing down a discreet road with Raven fastened to my cock, and I cursed myself for not opting to take my truck. We can’t ever do this again. I gripped him tighter, the side effects of knowing it’d be the last time.
“You being territorial over me feeds my need to be loved or some shit.”
The singer’s intentions were unknown to me. If music fell under the realm of art, to be interpreted by the listening ear, then the lyrics spoke of unrequited love. About the wickedness of one falling for their object of desire, when the desired couldn’t fall in return. And all I kept thinking as it played on a loop in my room, and then in my nightmares, was who did I have to hunt and kill? Who didn’t love Raven back?
I hung there, limp in the arms of a stranger, hair and clothes off-kilter, as the man I loved glared at me without an ounce of recognition, then turned to flee with someone else. They looked good together, and it hurt.
strained to see the fine print, because no way was I getting any closer to him. The county court seal adorned the envelope addressed to Raven Miller. I snatched it from him like that would make him forget. “It’s nothing.” I lowered to my haunches, stuffing the letter into the side pocket of my duffle bag. “You’re receiving legal documents with my last name. That’s not nothing.”
“The person I was having sex with—the reason I sent my baby brother to the expo in my place—was my neighbor. Adam.”
He’d succeeded at convincing me my sexuality was a nonissue. But something else was at play. What am I missing here?
I decided to be brave first, to go out on a limb. A thin, ready to snap, barely even fucking there limb, because we’d been through too much to let it all end on a miscommunication.
“Were you pissed at seeing me with a man because you think it’s wrong or were you jealous, damn it!” “Both!” The side of his fist met the counter, rattling the dish rack. “All of the goddamn above! I was shamefaced and angry at myself for wanting you. Pissed because you being with a man is wrong, if that man isn’t me. Jealous because the only set of hands that should be setting your body on fire are mine.” Clint lurched for me, his fingers going around my throat, a growl rumbling up his chest. “I wanted to rip his fucking tongue out and spank you for being such a whore.”
Operation get Clint to fuck me and fall in love was in full effect.
The house sat on a lake that put ours to shame. Ours. I’d subconsciously thought of everything now as ours. Except him. My brain stored him under mine.
