I was cool with it. I’d lost my virginity last year to Allison, who, after it happened, declared herself my forever girlfriend. That didn’t last more than a few months and I’d had to work hard to shake her loose.
Which is why when Kaitlin and I hooked up, I was relieved. She was not going to get clingy, and we were not going to get super serious. Both of us knew we ended the day after graduation.
The truth was, I doubted I had it in me to be super serious about anyone. Not now when everything was a countdown of days to my eighteenth birthday. Was I also fucked up because of my mom? Hell yes, I was.
Since the day the cops had come to remove me from my home, I’d known what it meant to have no control. No power over my mother, over my life. No choice in where I got to live or how I got to live.
The state controlled me.
The state allowed me to live with my uncle.
When I turned eighteen that would legally change. I was going to Princeton. I was going to get a job on Wall Street. I was going to have more money than Arthur Landen ever dreamed of having, and no one was going to take anything from me again.
This was not something I shared with people. For five years, I’d been playing a role as the humble, grateful teenager who had been saved from my addicted mother. Good athlete, good student, Home-fucking-coming King.
The only person who actually knew the truth, who could see right through me with her blue eyes, was the only person I needed to avoid. Which I had for the most part.
“Marc?”
I turned at the sound of my name. Ashleigh. She’d been in the shadows near the water fountain next to the boys’ room. When she stepped out so I could see her, I noticed the dress and the way her hair fell straight around her shoulders.
Shit. She looked good. Not like Kaitlin. Kaitlin was sex on a stick and Ashleigh was still only fifteen. But with the makeup and the dress, it was starting to become obvious she wasn’t a kid anymore.
I had this instinct to tell her she looked nice. That she was growing up.
But I didn’t. I wouldn’t let myself be nice to her. Despite her hero worship of me, the fact that we lived on the same estate, and grew up together. Despite knowing she came to every one of my soccer games, which I never let on I knew, I treated her like I always treated her.
Mean. Hard. A lesson in reality when princess had only known life in the castle.
Now, however, I was also under orders from her father to make it clear to her there could be no attachment. Because of my challenging circumstances.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked curtly.
She shrugged. “Wasn’t interested in dancing, I guess.”
“Right. I can’t take you home,” I told her. “I have plans.”
“It’s okay. George is going to pick me up. I guess…your plans… I guess those are with Kaitlin. Is she your girlfriend?”
I winced. I didn’t talk about this kind of stuff with Ash. This world and my world at home had been separate until now. Was this what I’d been dreading? Her seeing these other aspects of my life? It didn’t matter.
“Yes. She’s my girlfriend. What about it?”
“Oh.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t know.”
“Why would I tell you?” I asked impatiently.
Then I saw it. Her eyes got wide; her lower lip wobbled.
She was hurt. Fuck me. Of course, she was. All that hero worship wasn’t just because she was lonely. She was growing up. Thinking about me, no doubt, in different ways. I wasn’t oblivious to her in a bikini, and now all that parading made sense. Why she was always prancing around me asking me how she looked.
Ashleigh Landen was crushing on me. Hard.
“Are you serious right now? Are you that pathetic?”
Her eyes got even wider. She was like fucking Bambi. Suddenly all that anger and rage I felt the first time I saw her, right after George had driven me from the rehab facility where my mother had cried and told me how sorry she was over and over, came raging to the surface.
Ashleigh always wanted to make me feel better. She wanted to be my friend. She wanted me to save her from her pitiful, lonely life, when I had other shit I needed to do. Now she was standing here in her grown-up, sexy little dress, crushed to learn I had a girlfriend. Because I didn’t share this part of my life with her.
I thought about what her father said. About how I needed to discourage her. It wouldn’t take much. Being mean to Ashleigh was something I knew how to do.
Leaning down so I was close up in her face, probably closer to her than anyone had ever been. A breath away from her nose, her lips. Close enough I could close the gap and kiss her.
Something I would never do.
“Did you think I would wait for you to grow up?” I whispered. “Is that the fantasy you had in your head? That I would wait like a good little virgin boy until Princess Ashleigh Landen was old enough for me to finally fuck her?”
I heard her gasp. Smelled the mint on her breath.
“I didn’t. I’ve fucked already. Made girls come. Made girls suck me off. I’m going to be eighteen in a few months, and then, of course, you officially become jailbait. But here’s the thing, Ash. And I want you to understand this clearly. Even if you were eighteen and as hot as Kaitlin, which you’re not, I still wouldn’t touch you. Because you’re nothing but a useless, spoiled princess who doesn’t know shit about anything bad that happens in life.”
I looked at her then. At her eyes that were too damn expressive.
There, I thought. That hurt her. That hurt her good. Not in a way that made her cry, but in a deep-down soul way that would stay with her for a long time.
I gave her credit, though, because when she walked away from me without saying a word, her spine was as straight as an iron rod.
I’d done that. It had taken five years, but I’d given her just enough of a backbone so she could walk away with her head held high.
Then I found Kaitlin and fooled around with her in the backseat of Arthur Landen’s Lexus.
And when she was pulling on my dick, jerking me off hard, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes and thought of Ash’s eyes. Her big, soulful eyes that saw the things I didn’t want her to see.
I thought about Ashleigh watching us. Staring at us from just outside the car, looking in the window and seeing everything. Kaitlin kneeling next to me on the backseat, her tits popped out of her strapless dress, working hard to make me come. It was only fair, since I’d made her come twice. I pictured Ash seeing me like this, wanting me despite how horrible I’d been to her.
Ash’s face. Ash’s eyes. Ash’s hand around my cock…and then I came with a low groan in the back of my throat.
Ash.
5
Same night
Marc
I’d dropped Kaitlin off and was driving to the estate, up the long driveway, when I saw the flashing lights near the house.
The cops? I snorted at that. Maybe it would turn out that Landen was a crook and he was getting arrested. Ash’s precious castle would come burning down around her. What would she do then?
I would have to save her of course.
I rubbed my hand over my face and thought about what I’d said to her earlier. I didn’t know what it was about her but sometimes…she made me lose control. I’d had my shit locked down for years. I barely ever lost my temper with anyone. Not coaches, not teachers, not George.