BAD WICKED TWISTED: A Briarcrest Academy Box Set (74 page)

He clutched me to him and I clung, limp, coasting down from my high.

“You said you love me,” I said, my voice trembling, full of wonder.

He pulled me into the crook of his shoulder and rubbed my back. “Did I?”

I slapped him playfully on the chest, and he pretended to be hurt.

“Don’t beat me up. I just gave you a necklace and the best orgasm you ever had,” he teased.

“Cocky much?”

He grinned.

“I could gaze at you for the rest of my life,” I said, my fingertips traversing the thorns and roses up his arms, my lips kissing each one tenderly.

“You can, you know.”

“What?” I said, forgetting the conversation in the wake of his magnificent body.

“Be with me forever.”

My heart stuttered. And I felt…I don’t know…altered. And in the middle of that thought, I decided nothing would come between us again. Not my nagging sense of doom or my jealousy. Because I could see I was the one holding us back. Me and my insecurities.

He loved me. He’d said so.

I had to let go and just trust.

Love is hard to define; it just IS. And, I don’t know why we fell for each other, two people from opposite worlds, but I knew I had to hold on to it, fight for it.

Just like dance. Yes. Like that.

His phone pinged again, and after staring at it for a few seconds, he turned it off.

Coming back to me, he kissed me more, his hands on my shoulders, moving me against his hardness, whispering in my ear that he loved me and how he couldn’t wait to be inside me.

“Make love to me,” I said against his lips, making his fingers dig into my ass. “I don’t need a bed of roses. I just need you. All of you.”

“Are you afraid?” he rasped out, searching my eyes. “I’ve never been with a virgin.”

“I’m not afraid of anything except losing you,” I admitted huskily.

He groaned as I pushed the rest of my inhibitions away and stroked his hard length. I sat up and eased him inside me, inch by inch. He helped me, his hand splayed out across my hip, guiding me. Our eyes connected as he worked inside of me, tentatively at first, but never wavering. He stroked up and stopped, gauging my reactions.

He eased out and came back in, and I waited for pain that never came. I’ve put my body through vigorous training for years, pushing it beyond normal limits, so it was no surprise my hymen was nonexistent.

“Okay?” he gasped.

I nodded, not able to speak.

He arched his back and I relaxed my body, letting the heat and sensation build up again. He shifted himself to get a better angle, pushing deeper inside, filling me up and making me utterly his.

Gazing down at my body pressed against his, he groaned. “You look good on me, Dovey. So perfect.”

Holding my dandelion pendant with one hand, I put the other on the roof of the car, my body not my own, feeling like it was there for him. He took my hips and plummeted me to the edge of the universe and then slowed and brought me back to earth, but then sent me reeling again to the top of the heavens until I crashed back down, feeling undone.

He broke apart, and I watched him lose his sense of where he ended and I began. And I could listen to a million heart wrenching love poems, and none would come close to expressing what I felt for him in that moment.

Not a single one.

“I love you,” I told him as we held each other later. He pushed the hair out of my eyes. “Dovey, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Never forget that.”

My heart sang.

Time crept by, and we must have fallen asleep, and the tap, tap, tap of the rain against his windshield woke me. I watched him sleep and thought about what we’d done. I’d given my innocence to him, the one thing I’d held on to. I waited for the heaviness to come, the worry that I’d made a mistake but it didn’t. Yeah, we hadn’t used a condom, but we could talk about his sexual history later. The thought of pregnancy didn’t scare me. I was on the Pill already because it helped keep my periods more manageable when it came to performances.

He woke up in gradual phases, stretching out as much as he could in the Porsche and then giving me a tight hug. We embraced without talking, until he checked his watch and then sat straight up.

“Midnight!” he exclaimed, reaching back and grabbing his clothes. “Fuck, I need to get home.” He jerked his shirt on and snapped his pants.

“What’s wrong?” I pulled my dress over my head.

He barely looked at me, his fingers scouring around for his phone. He tapped out some digits, but no one answered. He rubbed his forehead, and then tried again, dialing the number and getting nothing. He kept doing it.

“Your mom?” I asked, but he didn’t respond.

He cranked the car and started backing out of the parking lot.

“Cuba, wait,” I called out. “Let me out. I need my car.”

He came to a stop. “Sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” He brushed his lips across mine absently.

And fear began to grow. Was he done with me now that I’d slept with him?

No, I couldn’t believe that.

But here’s the thing, he didn’t call the next day. Nor did he call on Sunday.

I WENT TO school on Monday, angry and ready to confront him, but as soon as I got to my locker I caught snatches of the buzz.

Details were sketchy, but Cuba’s mother had died sometime over the weekend. Some said on Saturday and some said Sunday. It was hard to tell truth from fiction, and I wouldn’t piece it all together until later that day when I saw Spider at lunch.

Worried, I tried to call him, then text him, and then call again. But his phone was off. I kept picturing his face, the dread on it as he dialed his mom from the Porsche on Friday. And even though it wasn’t about me, I felt a load of guilt settle on my shoulders.

Swallowing my pride, I approached Emma in the halls. “Can you tell me anything about Cuba’s mom? I haven’t heard from him.”

She cocked her head and considered me, making me shift self-consciously in my harem pants and Beatles T-shirt. She gave me a patronizing pat. “Just leave him alone, honey. He doesn’t want to see you. He said so.”

“You’re lying. He cares about me.” And we’d just had sex.

She smiled sadly. “I’m not, and I think you know it. Do yourself a favor and forget about him.” She cut her eyes at Matt Dawson, her sometime boyfriend, and blinked rapidly as if she were upset. “Men are users. All of them.”

I slumped against the closest wall. Was it true? And why would he talk to Emma and not me?

At lunch, Spider and one of his randoms had the scoop. Because Emma liked him apparently.

“She shot herself with a gun sometime over the weekend,” Spider told me, taking a bite of his pasta.

I blanched, pushing my food away.

He munched. “He’ll be okay.”

Anger and grief slammed into me. “He lost his mother. I know exactly how he feels, and he’s not okay. He won’t call me!” My hands clenched.

I left there and ran to the library, using my phone to google his father. Sure enough it was all over the internet.

Mary-Carmen Hudson, wife of millionaire Archie Hudson, the Dallas Mavericks part-owner, was found Friday evening at her home, the victim of an apparent suicide with a .38 caliber gun. She was 47.

According to a statement released by the Sheriff's office, she was still breathing by the time paramedics reached her home in Highland Park, but later expired at Dallas General Hospital early Sunday.

Mary-Carmen, a native Brazilian, met and married Archie Hudson while they both attended Baylor University. She worked in marketing for several years and was heavily involved in several charitable organizations in the Dallas area. She served a term on the board of directors for Briarcrest Academy for four years.

Hudson is preceded in death by a daughter, Cara Marie.

Tentative funeral arrangements are for a memorial service in Rio de Janeiro. Her body will later be cremated and distributed over the Gulf of Mexico.

I went through the day like a zombie, praying he’d get in touch with me. God, I just wanted to hold him. I just wanted to be there for him.

But the question was…did he still want me?

TUESDAY ARRIVED AND still no Cuba.

Wednesday came and went.

And then Thursday and Friday.

By the next school week, I was listless, drifting through the hours, constantly checking my phone and Facebook statuses, but Cuba rarely used his account anyway, but I prayed to see him post anything.

By the time Friday morning came, it had been two weeks since I’d seen him.

I was a complete and utter wreck.

I drove up to the school and in the distance saw his car. Elation and dread both collided within me, causing a kaleidoscope of emotions. He hadn’t called. He’d hadn’t emailed. I didn’t know what to expect.

I hurried in the door, my book bag banging against my hip as I walk-ran down the halls toward his locker. I came to a stop, nearly tripping when I saw he wasn’t there. I checked his homeroom class. Nada. Finally, I rounded the corner and found him propped up against the wall outside the library, a gaggle of girls surrounding him while the guys hung back like guys do when they’re not sure what to say.

Emma was on his right, her arm crooked in his, as she gazed at his face. She and Matt had recently broken-up, and I swear I could see right then that she wanted my man.

I couldn’t breathe he was so beautiful and sad at the same time.

“Cuba,” I whispered, but no one heard me except for the underclassman who bumped into me. Students milled around me, but I didn’t notice, my eyes taking him all in, the dark circles under his eyes and the jeans that didn’t quite fit. A vast emptiness flitted across his face, and oh, I recognized it. I did.

He’d lost hope.

And in that moment, my already big love for him grew. It changed and shifted into something as deep as the ocean and bigger than the universe. My soul ached for his; my body yearned for his touch. I didn’t want to exist without him in my world.

And this was no high school crush or first love like ordinary teenagers experience.

Because I was not ordinary and neither was he. We were both survivors who’d managed to find each other amid the chaos.

I wanted to be his bird of hope. I wanted to be the reason he chose to carry on.

He nodded at something Emma said, his body shifting in my direction. Butterflies took flight in my stomach and my nerves were stretched raw. See me, see me, I wanted to yell.

He started in my direction, and as if he read my thoughts, he gazed up at me. His face whitened as he stalked down the hall still followed by his entourage. The closer he got, the colder his eyes grew.

He paused in front of me and time stood still. I waited for him to say something, anything, but he didn’t. Instead, he gave me a short nod, like
Hey, babe, nice to see ya
.

And then he kept walking, his eyes sliding right over me like he didn’t even know me. I screamed inside my head for him to back up and greet the girl he loved.

But he didn’t. He didn’t.

His journey continued past me, and like a fool, I turned and watched.

“He’s a tosser,” Spider bit out next to me as I struggled with my thickened throat.

Later I went to lunch, but Cuba never showed. Needing to see him, I walked the halls until I found him outside on the lawn passing a football with some players.

I came out with a mission to find out the truth.

When he took a water break, I went over to him, pretending like he hadn’t dissed me already.

“Cuba, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for your loss. You must be devastated…” I trailed off at the scathing look he gave me.