Bad Wrong Things

by C.P. Harris

I envied Clint’s ability to wash me away. I’d never been one to easily forget things. I remembered each scar given and taken. Every bit of pain received and dished out. Every ounce of high-octane love inflicted on my heart.

Oh the drama i guess this is 8 years after what the book blurb described it was about, then?

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.

It takes confidence to refer to your asshole as an open flame

I stood there confident in knowing that the worst mistake I’d ever taken part in was the best decision of my life.

WTF. Is this like a parody of super dramatic stuff?

Without a chance to explain or fight. Without an opportunity to clean up the last of the ugliness he’d spilled on me.

I had vanished into the night with only the clothes on my back, then burned them as soon as I had the chance, because everything I owned reminded me of him.

Pretty intense decision dude

A night of sleep wouldn’t change anything. Tomorrow would come, and I’d wake up to find every exit nailed shut.

Dying to know if this is literal? Like I can’t tell if Raven is dramatic or Clint is that unhinged?

“Are you locking me out, or locking yourself in? Because there’s a difference, Raven.” “And what difference would that be?” “Are you afraid of what I may do, or what you may do?”

If he locks himself in he can still unlock it, that’s not much of a deterrent

All you have to do is make it through the night, Raven.

I mean you could literally walk out though? You have a hotel?

I strained to recapture our last night in this room. “Tell me no.” “No.” “Say it like you mean it, Raven.”

This whole chapter is just dramatic fuck yous to readers that want context 😭

He didn’t know if I was dead or living—living because I hadn’t been alive, not really. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t have survived that. I’d deserted Mansfield before he and I had reached an agreed upon conclusion. And in addition to denying Clint closure, I’d also denied him peace.

The fuck is Mansfield? And why would Clint assume you are dead?

He’d hated himself for what we had become, for the lies we had to tell, even the ones by omission. We’d turned each other into poisoned goods, and I’d taken the brunt of the blame—as I should have.

Author: tee-hee I bet you wish there was any explanation for what was happening in the book you just paid for

If I allowed Clint to fuck me, he’d lose all restraint. He’d chain me to him and bolt us into this room if it meant keeping me there.

I like that this is disproven immediately in the same chapter

his fat cockhead touched my willing hole, entering my body before it was ready for him. The smooth and bare tip of him warm against a place that had been cold for far too long.

A second asshole temperature reading in the first chapter. I expect regular updates on the flame to cold asshole temperature range throughout the book now.

He wanted to leave the imprint of his obscene manhood behind, rendering me incapable of moving, let alone walking through the door come morning. Tiny flurries of plaster rained down around us like snowfall as the headboard drilled into the sheetrock as if it, too, wanted to run from this.

“We’re so toxic even the wall we hit is damaged because of our toxicity not physics” uh nah dude chill out

I wasn’t a small man. Clint had embedded the importance of fitness into us early on, and I was above average height, but fuck did Clint make me feel like a pea in his fucking huge pod.

A pea in his huge fucking pod? Good lord

I moved to my stomach, feeling betrayed by the moon that basked in the glory of the darkness.

Not even the author knows what this is supposed to mean.

I wasn’t stupid. Far from it. I’d just missed too much school because of my shitty life, and it had left me a step behind. I was small for nine-years-old, but strong. I had to be.

Start of chapter 2: fuck you he’s 9 years old now. In chapter 1 he was 8 years after a falling out, good luck figuring out the timeline

I liked his house but didn’t get why one man and a little boy needed it. Guess I was too used to living in places no bigger than a match box.

The author is just DOING THE MOST

It reminded me of the kitchens in the old sitcoms Mom would watch when she wasn’t high or passed out drunk—she alternated between the two—and when we had electricity.

Okay we established last page that you’ve had no electricity for a while and your mom was both drunk and high, we get it.

I peered down at my insignificant limbs, hiding my legs under the table. The result of poor nutrition even from within the womb.

Um, make up your mind if you are going to think like a 9 year old or not. You could phrase this like a kid of “the nurse said I would grow more if I always ate until I was full” or something like that

By high school, it was clear Mom wouldn’t change, and so Clint hired an attorney. A hippy lawyer in board shorts and a briefcase held together by tape. The best Clint’s money could buy. Clint petitioned the court for legal guardianship and won. Mom didn’t even put up a fight. Finally, I was his, and he was mine.

I didn’t realize he was basically his dad from age 9 before starting this. Way more taboo than the advertised “Best Friend’s Dad.”

Fourteen years later and Joey still slept like a goddamn rock.

So are they 23? We’re skipping all the teen angst of having a crush on Clint?

Joey was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Good to everyone he met, but inside him, a battle raged. One only I knew the details of. One he had to win on his own. Every now and then, the pressure of what he wanted from life and the parts of himself he didn’t know yet—or didn’t want to face—bumped heads.

Hmm

“Did you lock the door?” “Yeah,” he said, his cheeks heating at admitting his premeditation. “I did it just in case.” We didn’t do this often, and it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t change anything between us.

Okay well this makes the whole thirsty for dad thing even more awkward

he was coming into the latex,

Small mercies, at least Joey uses contraceptives and understands consent. Apparently he didn’t learn either from his dad.

I never came while he fucked me, and I never got myself off while he was going limp inside me. It was my number one rule. A line I never crossed.

Weird one rule to have

When I’m this wound up, though, Trish’s softness isn’t what I want. I want something I can punch over and over and it’ll remain standing.”

A heavy bag? They make those bro.

he said with a note of girlie hysteria. Comical considering his size rivaled a Mack truck.

Ah. Yes. A man with a large penis doesn’t like other people’s semen on him. Very comical. Indeed.

my cheap porcelain lamp sloping to the side and shattering loudly on top of the wood.

okay Joey and Raven broke a lamp wrestling after fucking, this whole breaking furniture thing when you orgasm is definitely genetic

“If you ever want to stop, just say the word. No questions asked. Our friendship comes before this.”

You’re leaving for basic training tomorrow, and going to be gone a long time, weird time to offer

I was working on a new design. An Archangel with Clint’s likeness I planned on getting inked across my left flank and rib cage.

VERY NORMAL BEHAVIOR FOR YOU TO HAVE ABOUT YOUR FATHER FIGURE

Dad was eighteen when my mom dumped me at my grandmother’s door. He quit his dreams, took on a cop’s salary, and blocked everything out to raise me, and then us.” He gestured from me to him. “Let him live a little.”

What dreams? To be a huge tattoo on his surrogate son’s chest?

Clint was a scruff wearing, threadbare jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. He made the act of couldn’t-care-less look intentional. An old school caveman stuck in the modern world, and I had a hunch civility didn’t live under his skin.

I always call people wearing tee shirts and jeans Old Caveman, this totally makes sense. Also WTF he raised you and made you and your bestie his son breakfast just now. He’s the most civil character in this book you weirdo.

I came all over the closed bedroom door. I hadn’t cleaned it up either. I’d let it run and dry until it blended in with the paint.

You came on Clint’s door when you were 17 while he was fucking an adult woman inside, and left the cum on the door? Bro.

listening to the trivial daily bullshit of my so-called peers felt more life-threatening than a needle to the vein.

The drama. “I’m not like other age gap romances, I’m a misanthrope”

“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.” I remembered the year, month, day, and second Clint referred to. The night I shot my rope all over his bedroom door, marking my territory, manifesting the future. No longer was he the pseudo father I’d come to know him as. He was more. And calling him Dad after that made me queasy.

Yikes on all of the bikes

“Let me be your friend, Clint, and I’ll let you be mine.” “Friends.” He tasted the word. “I’ve been a father for twenty-two years. Is there a book on how to turn that killer protective instinct off and become a friend?” “I don’t know. If not, we can write it. Together.”

We can write it together? *gag*

Yeah, a tad pathetic, but when how well you parented and loved your tribe defined your life, and then one day you’re left alone for your troubles, it was hard to move on.

Missing your son who is going off to the military is pretty normal and not pathetic, dude

“What’s got your panties patrolling your pucker today?” Bobby asked as I parked the cruiser in front of the station, her twang a melting pot formed from a life spent moving throughout the South and Midwest. “Can’t you say panties in a bunch like the rest of us?”

Bobby, you’re fired without pay.

Bobby barely skirted my elbow, but her tough-as-nails attitude and platinum-blonde buzz cut made her scary as hell. Her most dangerous weapon, though, was her outlandish tongue.

All the 5’0” women that aren’t the FMC in MF Romances are partner cops in MM romances with law enforcement or nurses or whatever

I swept my gaze around the bar filled with strangers. Women who could only offer me a few hours of escape but nothing more. I needed more. I needed a connection.

Go on a dating site then or something

After reaching our destination and securing the canoe, we watched the sunset sitting side by side on a boulder in the sexiest moment of silence. The kind where you grew, both separately and together. The kind of silence that forced you to take a deep breath afterward and look to the person you were with for confirmation that they’d felt the connection to something greater, too. We’d shared a shy smile of gratitude for not having to experience the moment alone, knowing in that short span of time we’d both become something different, something more fearless. And without saying a word, we knew we’d return, that it had become our spot. The power of a sunset.

Well that’s a real loaded sexy silence.

I want to know what’s been haunting you for the last six years.”

He came on your door when he was a teenager. He didn’t even clean it up. Your carpet is haunted by his jizz, just like his soul.

he’d never truly see me because there’d always be a part of me hidden from him. The part that wanted us writhing in the pit of our ugly because I wanted him too much to ever settle for something as superficial as pleasant with him. Fuck pleasant. I wanted the kind of passion that left us standing in a pile of rubble.

New underground emo band, “In the Pit of Our Ugly” with their new hit single, “I’ve been haunted by jizzing on your door for 6 years.”

He patted the cushion next to him, and with apprehension raking its nails down my spine, I slid over.

Late night in undies photo album viewing of dead relatives

We’d been having sex at that point, nothing more than stolen moments in the woods or behind a dumpster somewhere, though.

Was behind a dumpster the only option? What about behind something less smelly if cars and beds aren’t options?

“It wasn’t your fault.” Clint gave the same nod I offered when he’d tell me my mother’s addiction wasn’t about her not loving me. The thank-you-for-trying-but-you’ll-never-convince-me-otherwise nod.

“If I was content to continue fucking my fuckbuddy behind dumpsters specifically, my younger brother would still be alive” I can’t with how specific that is. How is this part of your tragic backstory to specify you fuck behind dumpsters 😂😂😂 It’s not like the dumpster killed him

I was rolling in ecstasy the moment the 18-wheeler struck Brandon’s side of Dad’s car. They took their last breath as I was trying to catch mine. I didn’t even feel it. Too busy being selfish to notice my heart being torn down the middle.”

I mean you aren’t psychic dude, it’d be creepy if you were finally banging some chick in a bed instead of a dumpster and screamed “MY BROTHER DIED”

“Saving my mother was the most selfish thing I’d ever done. Not one part of it was for her. It served my fears, my trauma, my need to have something,”—no matter how bad it was—“than to have nothing.” “You were a kid.” “I’m not a kid now, Clint. And I’m telling you, it was purely self-serving. Made it easier to accept all the fucked-up shit that happened afterward because I’d made sure I was now deserving of it.” “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.”

Raven has anyone gotten you some therapy?

I swore I’d spend the rest of my days falling asleep with that mural watching me, and when the time came for me to leave Clint’s, another one would go up at my next destination. 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.

Raven, we should really look into therapy.