I was also aware it was risky to get close to someone new with the threat of Sawyer always hovering in the background. Regardless, I wanted one thing in my life to seem normal, to be in my control, so I let a boy in one of my classes chat me up and flirt with me while I was at school. I wanted to see how long the friendship would last. I wanted to know how far Sawyer would go to keep me isolated and alone. The answer was horrifying when I let things with the boy from school go a little too far and pushed Sawyer past a point of no return.
I went into the friendship knowing that the guy was bait more than anything else, but still, I couldn’t but feel a little dirty and slightly ruined by the way I used him when it was all said and done. I set him up to see exactly what would happen if I went against the rules and pushed back against the path laid out clearly in front of me. I lost my virginity to a boy I didn’t care about or have any real interest in because I wanted to see what would happen afterward. It wasn’t about me and him. It had nothing to do with pleasure or feeling good and making a connection. My first time was about me and Sawyer and power and control. Not my fondest memory by a long shot, and I still felt bad about ditching the guy whom I hooked up with almost as soon as it was over.
“I still can’t get over the fact that that guy you lived with had hidden cameras in your room. He has to be some kind of sick bastard to spy on you that way.” Mercer sounded as horrified now as she did months ago when I told her how I’d brought that boy home only to find out we were being watched, and that Sawyer never had any intention of sharing me with anyone.
Bringing the stranger home sent Sawyer into a rage no one could have predicted. He flipped out to the point that he threatened me with a hidden video of me and my classmate in a compromising position. He wanted to humiliate me, to bring me to heel. However, his obsession finally gave me a bit of leverage to push back. We lived in a state that was one of the few to adopt laws about revenge porn, so I could finally turn Sawyer’s threats back on him. I told him if he did anything to harm my mother, I was going to press charges against him and would urge my poor, innocent classmate to do the same. I might not have the name and clout to be a threat, but the kid from school did. And his parents were almost as scary as Sawyer’s mom. I felt like I finally had a way to get him to leave me alone, at least for a little while.
His mother was furious when she found out about the cameras and ordered him to stop watching me, but she also warned me what would happen if I bought another boy home and provoked her son. She promised she would find a way to make me pay, and I believed her. Sawyer slipped, and it was finally out in the open just how bizarre and dangerous his obsession with me and controlling everything in my life was. No one knew when he put remote cameras in my room, if it was before or after the accident. But there was no denying he’d been watching me in my most private moments, which was a whole new level of violation.
It was a turning point for me. It showed me I was going to have to do anything to get out of that house and away from Sawyer as soon as I had an opportunity to escape.
Mercer interrupted my unwelcome trip down memory lane. “You deserve to be with someone you have feelings for and with someone who has feelings for you. Even if those feelings are blurry and undefined. Not all your experiences with Huck have to be so combative and complicated. After all, the two of you used to be best friends. That usually takes some of the pressure off of the sex having to be all perfect and romantic. It makes it more real.”
She made it sound so simple, but it was anything other than that—the days when he considered me a friend felt forgotten.
I mean, I’d felt like I was going to pass out when he got close enough to bite the other side of the apple, and I was far from immune from his new habit of wearing as few clothes as possible whenever we happened to bump into one another. I couldn’t deny I was alarmingly attracted to all that Huck had become. How could I not be? He was hot. He was smart. He had a dangerous edge that had only been sharpened and honed over time. There were also hints of the boy who was my whole world that shone through his hard exterior, and those were the bits I liked best about him.
Huck
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t expect Ollie to suddenly jump up from where she’d been kneeling on her hands and knees, peering underneath the couch in the living room. Her rapid burst of action drove the top of her head into the bottom of my chin. My head snapped back as white spots of pain popped in my vision. I swore loudly while Ollie gasped. She reached out a hand as I stumbled backward and lifted one to the crown of her head.
Almost as if we were caught in a pivotal scene in a terrible rom-com, just as Ollie reached for me while I was backing up, my feet somehow got tangled up in her giant tote bag. Her fist tightened on the fabric of my shirt just as I went down. It wasn’t clear if she was dizzy and off-balance, or if I just outweighed her enough that my falling momentum was enough to pull her down with me. Either way, a moment later, we were both sprawled on the living room floor, her body landing fully on top of mine as we both let out sounds of discomfort and surprise. My elbow connected with the hardwood hard enough to make my eyes water, and Ollie must’ve landed on something the wrong way because her yelp of pain was loud enough to have my ears ringing.
Instinctively, I lifted a hand and cupped the back of her head, feeling for a lump or anything amongst the wild tangle of curls. She flinched slightly, but I didn’t notice anything that shouldn’t be there.
“Are you okay? Why were you crawling around on the floor in the first place?”
I was running late for class and thought I was home alone. I didn’t expect her when I walked into the living room. And I really didn’t expect the reaction I had when my eyes inadvertently locked on her ass pointed up in the air while she wiggled around on the ground. It wasn’t seductive or sexual in the slightest, but for some reason, my body hardened, and my heart started beating like I was watching the most triple X-rated porn.
She moaned slightly and shifted on top of me.
“My earring fell out. The back must’ve come loose. I was looking for it, but I’m late, so I was distracted. I didn’t even hear you.” Her brows furrowed, and she wiggled some more. I had to bite my tongue to stop from moaning as her thigh rubbed against the hardness that was pressing painfully against the zipper of my jeans. I knew she wasn’t purposely trying to be sexy or alluring, but she was doing it without any effort. “Don’t you have class right now? Why are you here?”
How was she putting complete sentences together and acting so unaffected? I felt like my skin was on fire and I couldn’t catch my breath. I was supposed to be luring her. I was supposed to be corrupting her and convincing her that I was a terrible person, but all I wanted to do was wrap my arms even more tightly around her and hold on for dear life.
This was not part of the plan.
I was not supposed to be so greatly affected by her nearness.
I was not planning on getting lost in her endlessly dark eyes.
I definitely didn’t account for the fact that she felt both comfortably familiar and achingly new and unknown at the same time.
Holding her close sent a barrage of sensations shooting through me. All of them moved so quickly, I couldn’t latch onto a single one to figure out how I really felt about all of me touching all of her.