In Control (The City Series) (23 page)

Porter and I walked in silence, and as I came down from whatever I was on, my list of questions grew.

“Wait. Stop,” I said, grabbing onto Porter’s arm. “Why would you do that? Why would you put something in my drink?”

He faced me, but his expression showed annoyance in my question. “You’ve been so uptight lately. I figured it would be good for us to experiment with a little ecstasy.”

“Good for
us
? What about what’s good for me?” I screamed.

Pedestrians pushed passed us on the sidewalk, some telling us to move our childish argument somewhere else.

“What about what’s good for me?” I repeated, quieter this time.

“You either want this or you don’t. I want to have fun. Experiment. If you want to be boring and childish, then maybe you shouldn’t be with me.”

His words felt like a needle stabbing me in my veins. I wanted to take a breath, but felt like I was suffocating. Porter stood and just stared at me, waiting for me to say something.

The boy I loved so much was going to give up on me, but there was no way I could give him up. Porter was my drug of choice and if that meant changing, then I’d do it. I fell in love with him the moment he smiled at me, and it was that smile that would get me through the rest of my dark days.

So I told Porter that I wanted to have fun, too.

I woke up in Wren’s arms the next day and thought back to the conversation we had the night before, to the secrets we shared. I felt partially exposed and expected Wren to freak out, but he didn’t. In my mind, he was supposed to call me a whore and tell me that it was all my fault that it happened. Some days, I felt like maybe it was. Wren didn’t do any of those things, though. Instead, he held my hand and told me how much I didn’t deserve it.

“You’re awake,” Wren whispered as he reached up and touched my cheek.

“Yeah, I’ve been up for a while. Just thinking.”

“What about?” he asked.

There was concern in his tone. Wren knew me so well he was probably wondering when I was going to burst out of the room and run away. There were parts of me that were tempted, but I needed to show him that I was finally ready for
that
kind of love. The real kind.

“What we talked about last night.”

Wren brought his body closer to mine and squeezed my frame tighter. He didn’t say anything else, because nothing needed to be said.

We heard his mother and father downstairs. I thought I heard laughing, but how could that be after the fight they had last night? If it were Wren and I, it would have taken much more time to go back to normal. Or what we considered normal, anyway.

A few months into our relationship, Wren was standing outside when I left dance rehearsal. We hadn’t made any plans to meet that afternoon, and seeing him there infuriated me.

“What are you doing here?” I’d asked angrily.

“I came to surprise you,” he said, though the smile on his face disappeared when he saw that I didn’t look so surprised.

“I hate surprises. You can’t just show up!” I screamed at him in front of Juilliard, making my independence known to all of New York City.

“You’re fucking lunatic! What? I can’t come and surprise you when I have the urge to?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. No, you can’t!” I walked back to the door, enraged at myself. I should have been happy he showed up, happy that he even cared, but I was furious. It felt like I was losing the control I had built up over the years.

Wren told me not to call him again until I stopped being such a bitch. The name calling pissed me off even more. I waited four days for him to call, and when I realized he was being serious, that he wasn’t going to call me, I caved and called him.

He was the first guy to
ever
make me cave.

“Your parents seem back on track,” I commented.

“Their fights only tend to last a few hours...unlike ours,” he said, bending down to kiss me.

Our kissing grew deeper, and I was ready to take my clothes off until Wren slightly pushed me away.

“We should probably head downstairs for breakfast...or lunch, since it’s almost noon. We have a long day ahead of us.”

All I cared to do was have sex with my boyfriend. It was the only way I could forget what I revealed last night. It was the only way I’d forget that fate, if that sort of thing even existed, hated my guts and brought Porter back into my life for one reason—to shed every bit of happiness I’d miraculously obtained while with Wren.

Just the thought of Porter had my stomach in knots. The look on his face when he discovered Wren and me on the beach made me want to do the things I’d dreamt of doing to him over the last four years. I wanted to show him how strong of a person I was now. I wanted to show him he no longer had control over my emotions and could no longer treat me as if I were his pet. Porter’s smile could have persuaded an onlooker that he thought it was funny to find us in such a compromising position, but his eyes... His eyes told me that underneath all of the fake smiles and the sarcastic comments, he was hurt. Seeing me naked with another guy after all of these years
still
hurt him.

“Ugh, fine.” I rolled out of bed, throwing on my clothes from last night.

We didn’t have sex after our admissions last night. I tried, but Wren told me that with everything we’d just disclosed, we should try something new, comfort each other in a different way. The way he held me, the way he kissed me, it did more than what sex could ever do. I swore I’d never find something better than the feel of a naked man’s body against mine, but last night, he was inside of me in a whole different way.

The kitchen was brightly lit, the oversized windows flooding the room with sunlight. Wren’s parents sat at the kitchen table, Mrs. Kavanagh sipping her coffee while looking at a magazine, Mr. Kavanagh reading the newspaper.

“You two slept late,” Mr. Kavanagh commented, looking down at his watch. “I assume you slept in different rooms?” he asked, quietly laughing under his breath.

Mrs. Kavanagh’s eyes jerked up from her magazine. A scowl spread on her face. “You
did
sleep in separate rooms, correct?”

“Yes, Mother,” Wren lied. He looked back at me and winked, taking a seat at the table.

I sat next to him and since the silence was too awkward to bear, spoke up. “I read that one,” I said, pointing to the magazine in Evelyn’s hand. “Learn to fall in love by just holding his hand...what a huge load of—”

“Kingsley,” Wren warned.

Mrs. Kavanagh’s eyes were wide as she stared at me like I was an elephant that happened to wander into her perfect home. “Lovely,” she said.

Her dull tone led me to believe that she wasn’t happy with my comment, and knowing that, I continued.

“And the other article, what was it? How to get over a breakup with a pint of ice cream and your new favorite toy? Garbage.” I shook my head, cracking up on the inside. I had a soft spot for women like Mrs. Kavanagh. They disliked me for being tall, thin, and gorgeous, so they made up reasons to hate me. I knew she was the type the minute she first looked at me.

“I don’t think I’ve read that article yet,” she sneered.

Wren stood up and walked to the refrigerator. “Kingsley, do you want anything to eat? Eggs? Yogurt?” His persistence at trying to change the subject was admirable. He always wanted to smooth over every situation.

“Nothing for me.” I looked outside the bay window, watching the sun beat down onto the water. The scenery was way too beautiful, and I sort of wished it would rain. When a day was too nice, I felt like I had to be as well. When it rained, most people were left in a bad mood, which allowed me to fit in more.

“Kingsley, I’m sorry we didn’t get to speak much last night. It’s nice to have you staying with us.” Wren’s father spoke openly, acting as if his son wasn’t in the room. He seemed friendly, but reserved. “Wren has been telling us just how much time you two have been spending together.”

“Dad!” Wren interjected.

“All I’m saying is that we’re glad to finally meet her,” Mr. Kavanagh explained, giving me a polite smile.

He said
we
, but I knew he was just trying to be nice. Evelyn wasn’t pleased in the least bit that I was sitting at her perfect dining table with her perfect son and her perfect husband. It made her perfect world seem a lot more common, and to women like her,
common
was a bad word.

Wren sat back down with a mouthful of bagel in his mouth.

“Wren, chew with your mouth closed!” his mother exclaimed.

Wren looked at me and we laughed, knowing that if it was just him and I, we’d probably be tossing bites into each other’s mouths. His mother scowled at the two of us, but didn’t say anything else.

“All right, we’re gonna head out. I think Jay might be throwing a party,” Wren said, standing up and offering me his hand.

This was news to me. I had no desire to see Jay or any of Wren’s high school friends. I’d met them all over the first few months of dating Wren. Jay was like me in a lot of ways, always wanting to party and drink. He’d always have a new girl on his arm, and I knew it was because of a past heartbreak he’d been through. The friend I couldn’t handle was Samson. I identified Samson with Porter, but because he was dating Natalia, my roommate from Juilliard, and he was Wren’s best friend, I had to reel in my hatred, and that was something I despised doing.

“You two have fun,” Mr. Kavanagh said, not looking up from his newspaper.

Mrs. Kavanagh stood up and embraced Wren. She whispered something in his ear and then sat back in her seat, ignoring me completely.

“What did your mother say to you?” I asked, entering the guest room with Wren in tow.

He started to laugh and sat down on the bed. It was still made, so I made sure to mess up the blankets a bit to at least look like I’d slept there.

“Tell me!” I demanded.

He pulled me down onto the bed and trapped me with his arms. “She told me that she knew you didn’t sleep in this bed last night because she saw it was still unused when she woke up this morning. Then she told me to ‘be careful.’”

His imitation of his mother made me laugh.

“Ah, and I assumed she gave me an attitude for no reason at all,” I said, placing kisses along his strong jawline.

“Speaking of, what was up with
your
attitude?” He cocked an eyebrow.

“I was just trying to get a laugh out of your mom.”

Wren nodded and rose an eyebrow; I knew he didn’t believe me. He kissed me one more time on the lips and then instructed me to be ready in fifteen minutes.

Thirty minutes later we were on our way to Jay’s. Wren complained at least a dozen times that I’d taken too long and by now all the good alcohol was probably gone.

I rolled my eyes, but kept my mouth shut for good reason. We were headed to a party and the last thing I wanted was for us to be fighting the entire time, because I knew that meant we’d stay away from each other all night, get way too drunk, and try and make each other jealous. The first time it happened, just a month into our relationship, I caught some girl grinding his crotch. Needless to say, she ended up with a bald spot and he had blue balls for a week. Since we were both extremely jealous people, we’d been down so many dark roads throughout our relationship; it was only in the past few months that had things become less volatile.

Jay’s parents’ house was beyond massive. This meant that it would be packed with over-privileged kids whose only desires in life came from two things: the plastic in their wallets and the high-proof liquor that always seemed to be available.

I was looking forward to finding Natalia. I hadn’t seen her since I moved out of the dorms, and we left our goodbye with an awkward, “So, I’ll talk to you
soon.” I was actually looking forward to catching up, which surprised me. Throughout the school year, I’d mostly spent time with Wren, and whenever I was in the dorms, Natalia would rave on and on about Samson, which only made me think of Porter.

Wren opened the door, and if fate was trying to do everything it could to ruin my life, it was succeeding. Porter was standing fifteen feet away, leaning against the living room door frame and talking to a girl that looked way too young for him. He must have heard the door open because the moment I entered, our eyes locked. Wren noticed the exchange and, without a word, walked directly into the kitchen. I couldn’t follow. I couldn’t walk. All I could do was stare at the boy I used to worship.

Five steps. That’s how many it took for Porter to get to me. I should have walked away. I should have slapped him and
then
walked away. I did neither.

“Hey,” he greeted. The even tone in his voice told me that he, for now, had dropped the suave attitude he liked carrying around in his back pocket.

I didn’t respond. I just looked into his blue eyes and froze. Porter had that effect on me.

“Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t,” I cut him off. Hearing his voice made my blood boil. The more I looked at him, the more I wanted to strangle him. I wanted to make him feel helpless, unable to control his own future. I wanted to make him feel like he didn’t have a choice in any matter. The exact way he made me feel.