Brawler (15 page)

“Don’t be stupid,” she told me lightly. “You drove all the way down here. Sit down. Have a cookie.”

“What kind are they? Chocolate chip?”

She sighed heavily. “You don’t like chocolate chip.”

I snorted. “Everyone likes chocolate chip.”

“Everyone but you. You think they’re too sweet. Here, have a peanut butter crisscross.”

I stepped farther into the room, careful to keep the island between us, and bit down on a cookie. It tasted like peanut butter and was probably the best damn cookie I’d ever had in my life.

She shifted her stance, reaching for a cookie for herself, and I saw black lines on her chest that disappeared into her tank top. It looked like a tattoo.

“What is that?” I asked slowly.

“A cookie,” she answered with a smug, satisfied smile. “You like it, don’t you? You’re welcome, although you’ll forget you like it by tomorrow and think chocolate chip is the only cookie on the planet.” She bit into a cookie as well, talking around the sugary sweetness in her mouth in a way that would have made Karen cringe. “You have a terrible food memory.”

“Food memory isn’t a real thing and that’s not what I’m talking about.” Staring at the lines intently, I came around the island to get a closer look. “Did you get a tattoo?”

Her face registered surprise as I reached forward and tugged gently down on her shirt to expose the drawing on her skin. It was a simple compass rose. It was a little rough around the edges, but it was so Jenna that it made me wonder if it hadn’t always been there. It looked like she was born with it.

“It’s just a drawing,” she answered quietly, her voice near my ear making me realize how close my face was to her body. “It was practice for the one I want to get.”

“I didn’t know you wanted one,” I said softly, tracing the lines of the black pen ink with my fingertip. It was really good work and I wondered if she was the one who’d done it. It seemed like a hard thing to do yourself.

She nodded in my peripheral. “I’m surprised you don’t have any.”

“I’ve never had the money lying around to get one.”
None I felt very comfortable touching.
“Every extra penny has always been spent on boxing. Why a compass?”

“So I remember to trust myself. That no one knows me better than me.”

“So you remember to follow your own path.”

“Yeah.”

That was so very Jenna. She was the only person I knew who was a hundred and ten percent sure who the hell she was and what she was doing in this world.

“You’re an old soul, Jenna,” I told her, taking a step back and grinning at her. “You’re too together for your age. You’ve got too much figured out already.”

She chuckled, sounding oddly nervous. “Tell that to my mom.”

“I’m guessing they don’t know about this.”

“No. Or about college.”

My heart sunk in dread. “You’re not thinking about skipping out on college, are you?”

“No, I’m going,” she said wearily, “but they don’t know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to study. Mom thinks I’m going to be a business major.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Art. I want to study art.”

She left the room and returned with her sketch pad. She flipped it open with purpose, then laid it out in front of me.

It was a series of basic tattoo designs that looked like one was mimicking the other, as though someone was teaching her.

“This is what I want to do,” she said with breathless excitement, her face lit up like summertime. “I got a job at a tattoo parlor in Bakersfield. I’m going to work there on weekends this year then hopefully he’ll give me an apprenticeship while I go to college. Then I’ll get certified and I’ll do it on my own. Maybe I’ll work there or somewhere else. Someday I want my own shop, but for now this is what I have to do.”

“This is what you want to do,” I corrected.

She grinned wildly. “Same thing.”

I smiled at her before turning back to the drawings. I flipped through the pages slowly, always ready for her to tell me to stop or pull it away. Her drawings were sacred to her. Personal. Her handing the sketchpad over and letting me flip through it, that was like opening her diary and letting me read pages at random. It took a lot of trust, a lot of faith.

“What do you think?” she prodded quietly.

“What do I think about you becoming an artist?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s what you were meant to do,” I told her honestly. “I’ve always said you’re talented, Jen. I’m glad you’re going to do something great with it.”

“You think me becoming a tattoo artist is great?”

“If that’s what you want, then hell yes.” I pointed to the compass on her chest. “This is something you designed, isn’t it?”

She touched it almost protectively. “Yeah. Bryce, the guy at the shop, he helped me fix it but yeah, I designed it.”

“It’s perfect.” I stepped closer and took her face in my hands so she couldn’t ignore me. So she’d hear me and hopefully my words would mean something to her when she faced her mom with this news and her dreams were shredded in front of her. “
You’re
perfect, Nonpareil.”

Her eyes welled with tears, then she smiled with relief and shoved my hands away so she could hug me tightly.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered as she buried her face in my shoulder.

I squeezed her tighter. “Me too.”

I closed my eyes as I held her and I breathed her deeply. The way she smelled, the way she felt, the way she held me as much held onto me – it was new for us but it was familiar too. It reminded me of the first time she’d hugged me in this same kitchen on Thanksgiving years ago. It was Jenna. My Jenna. The only girl I’d let anywhere near the real me with all the flaws and fault lines. She didn’t see all the cracks because I didn’t let her, but I knew it wasn’t because I didn’t trust her. It was because I wanted her to stay. Forever.

And holy shit, I’d missed her. I missed her in ways I shouldn’t. In ways I’d never known her, but the longing had been enough; strong enough to create its own memory of nothing but my imagination and desire.

Enough to make me feel like I’d lost something I’d never had.

Eventually I noticed that her breathing shifted. It became low and long, a pattern I recognized. One I knew very well. It was a precursor to other things. Things Jenna and I had never been before and I noticed my hand on the skin of her back, warm and solid.

I pulled my face back slowly to look into her eyes and see what she was feeling because I knew she’d tell me. Jenna always told me everything with pure, open honesty.

She was looking at me with longing. With want. With so many things I’d never seen in her eyes before but now I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t let her go, and I had never wanted to be whole more than with her looking at me like that.

I dipped my head down to hers, my hands on her back pulling her to me tightly. I kissed her once, just barely. Just to test it and see if she wanted it. To see if I could handle it.

I immediately wanted more.

She stood up taller and took my mouth with hers, taking control and telling me without a doubt that I wasn’t alone in this.

I detonated with the sugary sweet taste of her, the impossible soft feel of her. The very essence of her. Of Jenna. Of everything.

She was everything I wasn’t. Everything I wanted. Everything I needed.

My tongue glided across her lips, making her sigh. Making her open. Making her mine. I took hold of her hips, pulling her body away from mine, lifting her onto the kitchen island, and then yanking her back to me.

Hard.

Hot.

I trailed my lips across her mouth to her chin, to her long, graceful neck. I licked her skin lightly, tasting her, wanting to devour her. To take her in. To let her fill the empty corners inside of me the way I knew only Jenna could.

Her pulse beat wild in her neck against my lips, against my tongue, and her hands drove into my hair, pulling. Aching.

I traced my fingers up insider her shirt, making her shudder. The flat surface, the tight warm skin of her stomach - it quivered under my fingers and made me weak. I hesitated, scared. Worried. Too afraid to touch her,
really
touch her. Afraid to make her gasp, make her moan. To taste a drug that could ruin me.

One that could heal me.

Impatiently, she forced my face up, taking my breath as hers, my mouth with her tongue, taking hold of my body and clenching it hard against hers.

I raised my hands higher. I ran my thumbs whisper soft over her breasts and she shivered and whimpered and it was almost too much. Her nipples peaked instantly and I took her in my hands, moldering her body to my palms as she pressed into me, encouraging me. Guiding me. I pulled her hips to me harder, grinding her warmth against me until she moaned, the sound like heroin hitting my veins.

I’d never know anything like it again and I’d want it for the rest of my life.

She bit my lip and sucked it softly, licking it inside her mouth.

I was so hard it hurt.

I was desperate for her and afraid of her. I was still with her in a way I never was with anyone else. I wasn’t slipping down in the darkness, hiding from her and relegating my movements to instinct, primal and vacant. I was with her. I was feeling her in ways I never had before and it felt so fucking good, but I was terrified that it would turn.

Could we cross this bridge I’d been on so many times before that always ended nowhere? That landed me exactly where I started, like some recurring nightmare set to repeat.

I hoped I could stay with her. I knew I had to try.

Because she loved me.

Because I loved her.

Because we were always meant to be like this.

But

then

she

touched

me.

She put her gentle, elegant hand on my body – on the ugliest, sickest part of me – and it jumped in deranged joy and excitement against her palm.

I was too close to the surface. I wasn’t deep in the dark numbness I usually went to during sex. I was too engaged in her, and her touch slammed me back into reality. The night, the dark, the floor, the cold, the hand, the voice, the pain. It was like a jolt to my system and all joy flooded out of me to be replaced by sheer icy dread.

I remembered who I was.

What
. I.
Am
.

What was
hiding
in the dark corners Jenna had
never seen
. The things I’d never let her see because her eyes were
too beautifu
l
to
look at something so
fucking ugly
.

So
hateful
.

So
painful
.

Angry
.

Filthy
.

Her hand slidover me slowly
.
Patientl
y.
Gentl
y
.

I
felt
dizzy and sick. Like I was going to
vomit
.

My head fell against her, my hands gripping her body so hard I worried I’d hurt her, and I wished I could cry. I wished I was capable of it.

I wished I could mourn what I was about to lose.

I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. That all too familiar feeling of losing something you can't get your hands on. The kind of loss that happens slowly. Deliberately. The kind that makes you watch it as it goes.

I wanted everything from Jenna. With her, for her. I wanted her gasping and moaning. I wanted her happy and smiling. I wanted her full, warm, safe, protected.

protected from a soiled bastard like me

I yanked myself away from her, bile and disgust rising in my throat.

“Jenna,” I moaned shaking my head to try to clear it.

“What?” she whispered, her voice coming from far off.

The dizziness wouldn’t go away. I felt unsteady. “Shit,” I muttered. “We can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Why?”

I sighed, searching my fractured brain for an answer. Any way to get out of this so I could go outside and throw up in the bushes. “You’re only seventeen,” I mumbled, going for the old standby.

“Seriously?” she demanded, instantly pissed off. “That’s why? You’re only twenty-one!”

I blinked, watching her come into focus by degrees. I was getting it under control, throwing the locks on Pandora’s damned box. “Why are you yelling at me? I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

“I’m yelling because you’re being an asshole.”

I glared at her, suddenly just as angry as her. “How am I being an asshole? I put a stop to it. Do you know how hard that was?”

“Yes! Because I couldn’t do it. I wanted it. I still do!” she cried, her gray eyes full and flashing with a flood of emotions that rolled over me and tore me down. It knocked at the doors I was working so hard to lock.

I growled, rubbing my face hard. “You have no idea…”

“No idea what?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the time. To hide my eyes from her. “Nothing. I should go. I’ll head back to my apartment tonight. I shouldn’t have come.”

She shocked me when she snatched my phone from my hands. I stared up at her where she still sat on the island. Her face was resolved.

“No way,” she said decidedly. “You think I don’t know you? You’ll run, this will be some weird thing between us and you’ll avoid talking to me. Then what? We’re not friends anymore because of one kiss? That’s fine for you and your randoms at school, but that shit’s not happening to us.”

“What do you want from me, Jenna?” I snapped.

“I want you to talk to me about this.”

I shook my head in frustration. “I’m not good at that.”

“Not with other girls, but this is me. You’ve always been able to talk to me.”

And there it was – the heart of it. The problem with all of it. The thing that thrilled me and killed me all in one single breath.

“That’s the fucking problem!” I burst angrily. “It’s
you
. How could I do this with you? This isn’t how we are. I don’t have a clue how to be this with you!”

“Be what?”

The anger was rising and rushing out the fear. I had to turn away, to walk the room and get some control as the animal tried to take over. I was all jacked up in the head, my mind flying everywhere trying to find somewhere safe to land.

“Thirteen, Jenna,” I told her as calmly as I could. “You were thirteen when I met you. Just a kid. But you’re not anymore. Now you’re… you’re not anymore and I look at you and I—“

“You what? Kel, look at me!” she shouted, not willing to put up with my shit.

I stopped pacing and tried to look at her.

She stared back patiently, her voice going quiet. “You what?”

Two deep breaths. One… Two…Me. The truth. The secret that I knew but never gave life to. “And I want you. I have for years.”

“Years?” she asked, shocked.

“Since you were fifteen and that asshole put his hands on you. I kept thinking you were just a kid and I flipped out. Laney said I was being a psycho. She reminded me that you were almost the same age she was when we first fooled around like that and it blew my mind. You were growing up and I had been ignoring it. Then I came and apologized in your room and you knelt in front of me on your bed with your big beautiful eyes begging me and your body right there at my fingertips and I saw it.” I closed my eyes against the memory but it followed me. I folded my arms across my chest tightly to keep my hands from reaching for her. “You were a woman and I’ve been fighting with that ever since.”

“Why?” she asked breathlessly.

“Why what?”

I opened my eyes when I heard her feet hit the floor. I watched her guardedly as she walked forward, coming to stand right in front of me.

“Why are you fighting it?”

I sighed, feeling exhausted. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do,” she insisted, not giving me a break. Not letting up. “You’re not dumb, Kel. You know exactly how you feel and why. Don’t treat me like I’m one of them,” she pleaded as she laid her warm hands on top of my folded arms.

My body was a knot of tension. One large monkey ball that would probably never be uncoiled. It would stay this way forever until it deteriorated and turned to dust. I was pretty sure I was already halfway there.

“One of who?” I asked her roughly.

“One of the girls you look beautiful for. That you let touch you and feel some sick thrill from being with the bad boy. The boxer from the wrong side of town. The ones that love your body and your eyes and your bike but have no idea who you are because you’ll give them everything they want in a hundred different ways, but you’ll never give them you.”

I stared at her in disbelief, floored by how well she saw me, even when I’d tried to hide.

“I don’t want that with you,” I said tightly.

She grinned, but it looked more like a grimace. “I don’t want that either. So don’t do that to me. Talk to me. Tell me why.”

“I just did. I don’t want that with you,” I repeated clearly.

“You don’t want to shut down on me.”

“If we have sex, I will. I can’t do both. I don’t know any other way.”

“It could be different with me.”

I snorted at her optimism. “People don’t change, Jen. I am who I am. I’ll do it. I’ll fuck it up, I always do and I don’t really mind. But not with you.” Her eyes were filling with tears but I pressed on, knowing I couldn’t give in. “I’ll lose you and I can’t do that.”

“You haven’t walked away from Laney.”

I took her hands in mine and let them dangle together at our sides. “Yes, I have. With her it’s all sex.”

“You told her you loved her.”

I flinched, hating myself for so many reasons. Old ones and new. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t feel it.”

“You told me you loved me once,” she whispered doubtfully.

“And I meant that,” I replied earnestly. “I still do. I love you, Jen, but you’ve never needed me to be
in
love with you. It’s different somehow.” I didn’t know how to explain it to her. To make her see that everything Laney and I had was worthless. It was a sham. It looked good on paper but once you physically saw it, when you were living it, it was vapid and meaningless. Jenna was the only thing of any real substance in my life. I couldn’t risk ruining her like that. “Look, you don’t want what Laney and I have. Half the time
I
don’t even want it but it’s the best I can manage. You deserve so much more than that.”

“So do you.”

“No. I don’t deserve anything. Least of all you.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. “I want to try.”

I wished I could tell her that I
had
tried. That tonight I’d made it farther with her than I’d ever gone with any other girl I’d been with without checking out mentally and going to pure, animal instinct, but I couldn’t without explaining the secrets inside me that I’d never tell. There were things I couldn’t talk about or even think about because they would absolutely wreck me. I’d gotten too close to them tonight and I knew I’d pay for it. I’d be shaking for days, cagey and afraid.

I couldn’t tell her any of it because it would give her hope. She’d know the reason I’d hit the brakes wasn’t entirely her age – it was me, and she’d wait for me. She’d try for me, and I wasn’t worth it. I needed her to be able to move on. I didn’t want her waiting on me. Hanging hopes on me, because I’d inevitably let her down.

“I know,” I answered her softly. “And if I thought there was a chance in hell I could do it right with you, I’d have you naked in my arms right now begging you to give me a shot. But I know me. I know I can’t. I’d mess it up eventually.”

She nodded in understanding as the tears brimmed in her eyes and spilled over like waves crashing to shore. I watched one run down her cheek, following the contours of her face, and I wished I could trace it. Follow it. Erase it.

I hated that I was doing this to her. I should never have come to that house – that night or years ago when I first met her at the kitchen table. I should have stayed away and never touched Laney. Never known Jenna. Never seen what I could have, never been given this dream that I destroyed before I even woke up from it. Because that’s what I did. I tainted everything with my filthy hands and my cold, vacant body.

“Kellen,” she said softly, “before you walk out that door and we never talk about this again, I need you to know something. I don’t need you to react, I just need you to know.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to know that I l—“

My phone rang sharply on the island behind her where she’d left it. I stared at it blankly. I knew who it was before Jenna looked. I knew because it was poor timing. Always and forever, the bitch in the rafters pulling all the strings. Timing. Fate. Luck. Fortune.

Call her what you wanted, she was a cunt in my book.

“It’s Laney,” Jenna mumbled, not looking away from the flashing screen.

“Shit,” I cursed, but I didn’t make a move for it. I wanted nothing to do with it.

The phone stopped ringing.

I watched Jenna and waited with her as she kept her eyes on the silent phone.

Finally I took a chance. “What were you going—“

It rang again.

“Goddammit,” I muttered as I stepped forward and angrily picked up the phone. “Yeah?” I answered bitingly.

I could hear noise on the other end. Laney shouting over loud music. Laughing.

“Hey, baby!” she cried.

I winced at the nickname.

“Where are you?” she continued. “Are you home?”

“No, I’m in town.”

“Oh thank God!!! Kellen, I need to see you. I miss you. I miss your…” her voice disappeared, then came bursting back at full volume, “miss me?! You have to come see me, okay?”

“Not tonight, Lane.”

“Yes! You have to, please!”

I fought the urge to tell to her piss off. “No, seriously, not tonight. I can’t deal with any of this tonight.”

“Come on, please? Please, please, please with so many rummy red cherries on top.” She burst out giggling. “Yummy, not rummy! Oh my God.”

“Are you drunk?”

“A teeny tiny itty bitty baby bit, maybe, yeah. Will you come get me?”

“Dammit,” I sighed angrily. “Take a cab home”

“I’m at Stacey’s. I think you know the address. Come get me.”

“No, I can’t, I—“

“Yes you do. You know where it is. I’ll wait outside for you. I’m going now.”

“Laney, let it go. It’s not a good time.”

The sound of the party died down. I heard a door click on her end. “Kellen, it’s dark out here and the party is getting so crazy. I’m scared, baby. I need you to come get me. I’m so scared.”

“You’re not scared, you’re drunk”

“I’m scared to go to sleep! I’m so sleepy and there are strangers here!”

I closed my eyes tightly, pissed as hell but a little relieved to be on familiar territory. “Alright,” I agreed gruffly.

“Really?! Please come get me, please!”

“Yes, I said alright,” I snapped. “I’ll be there. Text me the address, I’ll come get you.”

“Are you mad at me?” she asked in a pathetic, whimpering voice.

“Yeah, I am. I’m mad.”

“Why?”

“Because you know what you’re doing right now.”

“I’m not doing anything! I’m trying to be smart and safe and come home. That’s all I want – to come home.”

“Whatever, I said I’d bring you home and I will. Send me the address.”

“Okay, I will. Thank you! I love you!”

“Yeah, bye.”

“Aren’t you going to say it back?”

“No, I’m not going to say it back.” I’d only ever once said it back, and I felt like I’d been tricked into that one to start with. “Goodbye.”

I ended the call and angrily shoved my phone in my pocket. I looked around the room trying to get my bearings, but I was careful to keep my eyes off Jenna’s. One look at her and I’d be blown apart again, and I’d barely survived the first time.

“She’s drunk at a party. She says she wants to talk but I,” I stuttered gracelessly, tripping for the truth through the lies. “I’m going to go pick her up and bring her back here. She said she’s scared but it’s bullshit.”

“She just wanted you to come get her,” Jenna agreed softly.

“Yeah. She’s kind of manipulative like that.”

“But you’ll still go back to her.”