Bad Wrong Things

by C.P. Harris

Promise me. And if you can’t promise me all those things, then please, lie to me.”

Something about Clint, and now his son, had my brick tower crumbling. I wanted to be liked, to be accepted, to be loved. And I wanted it all from them.

“I’m good at drawing. I could make you something. And I collect bottle caps. I could bring some for the sleepover. You can have the best ones.” “Nah,” Joey grinned, waving me off, and my heart sank. “Bring yourself. We’ve got everything we need here.” Bring yourself. Myself was enough.

I arrived at the trailer later on to find the lights on, the place cleaned, and Mom burning food in the kitchen. I swiped at my damp eyes. Officer Miller.

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’d rather keep what I have than to take more of what I don’t want.”

“Fuck, Clint. Did she blame you?” “Brandon was her favorite. It’s possible she wished it was me and not him. As the years passed and our distance grew, no matter how physically close we were, I thought the possibility to be highly likely. I never faulted her for it because he was my favorite, too. And I’d wished it were me and not him, too.”

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 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 never thought I could feel a pain more crushing than losing them until I hurt you.

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.”

“I wanted to rip his fucking tongue out and spank you for being such a whore.”

Ours. I’d subconsciously thought of everything now as ours. Except him. My brain stored him under mine.

I quickly mouthed the lyrics ingrained in my brain before facing myself in the mirror. Staring back at me was the worn-down answer to the question plaguing me since learning the origin of Raven’s tattoo. I was the one who didn’t love him back.

“Tell me about Adam.” I paused in the middle of poking the fish. “What do you want to know?” “Age, date of birth, address, place of employment, medications he’s allergic to.” He shrugged. “Anything to help me track him down.”

It's giving "Jayden Adler. NASA Headquarters. DC."

“How can you be so sure you’re in love with me?” “Because it’s been six years. That’s seventy-two months, one-hundred and ninety-two hours, forty-three minutes, and twenty-eight seconds, and I still haven’t been able to talk myself out of it.

“I’ve never been kissed before.” I reared back, daggering him with shock-filled eyes. “What?” He laced his hands under his head, using them as a pillow. “The mouth and the heart are connected. That’s why words hurt. I’d never give either to anyone but you.”

“Promise me I won’t regret this, Raven.” “I promise,” he said, placing a hand over my heart. And Millers don’t break promises.

“Who does he want?” he asked, perplexed. “Law.” “His father?”

Bruh???

“When did your feelings change?” “When the best part of my day became returning home. When I realized home was wherever you were.”

“When the curve of your neck stopped being just the curve of your neck. When it became a place I wanted to bury my troubles away in. A place I hungered to breathe from. When the sun in my eyes stopped being a simple annoyance, but a plot of the universe to keep me from gazing at you. When seeing you do what you love stopped only being an inspiration of pride, but also an inspiration for my attraction.”

I’d spent that week falling into his arms, put to sleep by his kisses, and waking in his arms, revived by his kisses, too.

Clint reached into the nightstand drawer, returning with lube and a foil packet. “We don’t need that,” I said stubbornly. “I haven’t waited all this time to have your dick in me only to have a rubber cock-block.”

“Don’t think so hard, Clint. The answer is yes, always. Even when it sounds like no. Now fuck me.”

“I hate that others have been here,” I said. “That out there, right now, someone’s remembering you were the best fuck of their life.” Raven’s eyes softened, the translucent blue blanketing me in their love. “Never has it been this way,” he whispered, picking up on my need for reassurance. “Never before has it mattered.”

I loved him when I thought he was perfect, but I preferred the flawed version of him even more.

I’d never given Clint the impression he couldn’t have a social life, just that I preferred if he didn’t have one.

“If you want my forgiveness, Clint, you’ll need to beg for it.” “Please forgive—” “On your knees. Between my thighs.” I sent him there with a palm to his head. His hand and mouth circled my dick like a leash, tugging on my orgasm like one, too. I came within minutes. “Eat it,” I whispered, holding his face to my short nest of pubes, circling my hips and spurting my cum into his gut.

“I said no. Are you going to fuck me anyway, Clint?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because it’s been too long since I took something without a care for what anyone else wanted. Because I can’t un-remember how much I love it now. And because I want to.”

“You sleep with me, or you don’t sleep at all.”

“First, I’m gonna fuck you until I say it’s time to stop,” he said, one hand at my throat while the other held me by the ass. The light switch bit into my back, but I didn’t have enough air to breathe, let alone speak. “Then you’re gonna tell me where the fuck you’ve been and why you weren’t answering my calls tonight.”

Well oookay then

Clint’s version of gentle was rough, his rough downright punishing, and his concept of punishing crossed too many lines and broke too many pieces of furniture to keep track of.

We fucked way too much, but not nearly enough. We enabled each other. We were our own referees, and our judgment on what constituted a foul was biased at best. At worst, we simply didn’t care. The more flags, white or red, the merrier.

I’d choose her regretting me over never having my new family any day.

Raven hid to be found. He ran to be caught. When I stepped into his dark place that night, it solidified for him that he was worth the effort it took to chase him.

We complemented each other, because I wanted to take selfishly, and he wanted to be selfishly taken.

I equated Raven to a drug, and one hit was never enough. He had a way of loving me that forced the background noise to melt away. Of making me feel like nothing else mattered but us, like we were running out of time—in a good way—and we needed to take all our bits of happiness right now.

“Stop trying to convince me we aren’t obsessed with each other. I don’t like it.” “Never,” he promised intensely. “I’d never try to convince you of that.”

I should’ve kissed him longer, harder. I should’ve made love to him properly. I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed at all. I should’ve treated that moment like it would be our last. Because after that morning, everything changed.

“I love you both. That has never been a lie. But I’m in love with you.”

“I asked him to-to trust me.” Trust was, coincidently, the same thing I’d asked Clint for the first night we’d made love.

“You’re fucking sacrificing me? Giving me to him like I’m some whore to pass around?” “Aren’t you?”

Fucking oof.

“Bad things happen to me sometimes, and good things are taken away because of it. I just don’t know if you’re the good thing taken, or the bad-wrong-thing that’s happened to me.”

Life would’ve been easier had I loved him in that way, if he’d found and saved me first.

I don’t want to love you anymore, and I’m trying not to hate you for it.”

I wanted him to remember how wild and out-of-body his love for me made him. What it drove him to do. I wanted him to remember each piece of us he dismembered when he tore into this place in a scotch-induced wrath. He’d have to remember that through it all, he still loved me. Because only love could make someone hate that big.

I wanted to wreck something with my bare hands but there was nothing left to break. Clint had already broken everything worth having and scattered it about in pieces. Even my heart.

His body had never been sacred to him. It got him around, it got him off, but it’d been handed out indiscriminately, waiting for me to claim it, for me to own him.

Un-loving him wasn’t an option not only because I was incapable of it, but because outside of our affair, we were family. I didn’t want to lose that.

Raven didn’t only ensure that I fell for him, he’d made breathing impossible without him.