Spectacularly Broken (7 page)

Eventually I tipped over the baking powder. It was a complete accident—I wasn’t stupid enough to deliberately prolong the kitchen torture—but Cai reacted as though I’d just tried to cut off his finger.

“Fucking jackass,” he snapped and tried to clean his sleeve with angry hand motions. “What the fuck?”

“Get over it,” I advised him, which was apparently the wrong thing to say, because it caused him to react by grabbing two fistfuls of my T-shirt and tossing me into a wall. It hurt. And I was not about to let him get away with it.

“Fuck off!” I spat. He’d moved far enough away for me to get a running start and slam my body into his, sending him crashing into a drying rack full of pots and pans. A bunch of them clattered to the floor in a cacophony of ringing metal. I tried to pull away, but he had an iron grip on my arm and unveiled hatred in his dark eyes.

And then…well.

In my defense, I’d been in withdrawal from all sorts of things for a couple of days now. I was so desperate for a high that I was shaking, I was craving touch, and for some unfathomable reason, Cai’s arrogant-jerk shtick totally did it for me.

I kissed him.

I spent about half a second coming to the obvious realization that I was about to get my ass kicked, but then Cai’s strong fingers came up to clutch my skull, and he kissed me back with harsh, demanding flicks of his tongue and a throaty moan so sensual that I got hard instantly. His lip ring bit into my skin. He tasted of cigarettes and the iced tea they served with dinner—a combination that, right at that moment, I found completely intoxicating. I fisted one hand in his hair and took savage satisfaction in messing up his styling even as he pushed closer, the bulge in his jeans rock hard against my own, both of us rubbing, thrusting, clumsy and desperate for each other.

Cai pressed against me, and my ass collided with something—a table…no, a counter. We were in a kitchen. Right. I pulled back and opened my mouth to point that out, but Cai used the opportunity to grab my shirt and drag me along into the pantry. He kicked the door shut, I slammed him against it, and we were lost in another dizzying kiss.

My hands had unbuckled his belt before I even realized I was doing it. I was so desperate for contact, so, so very starved to feel, and my body knew what it needed, while my brain had effectively shut off. I shoved my hand into the front of his pants.

He moaned loudly when I found hard, hot skin and wrapped my fingers around it. I needed so badly, and it got even worse when I found metal in a place I hadn’t expected any. His hands slid back and downward, caressed the curve of my ass, and squeezed before he undid my pants as well. Our kiss never stopped, and we released our sounds into each other’s mouths as we pushed together again and again. I fisted his shaft, which felt like silk in my hand, making him hiss and groan when I tightened my grip and my fingertips explored his piercings.

“God, yes,” he breathed. Finally he found his way to my erection and took it skillfully in hand. My knees nearly buckled. He ripped his lips from mine and threw his head back against the door, eyes closed, cheeks flushed. My hand pumped his cock at the same speed his did mine, like we were mirror images of each other. It was hot as all hell. My lips found the skin of his throat, and I sucked passionately, which made him moan again and caused me to throb hard in his hand. Then he pushed my head to the side, and it was his mouth at my throat, his teeth scraping roughly and tongue soothing the sting.

“Fuck, you’re hot,” he panted against my skin. “Why do you have to be such an ass?”

“You bring out the best in me,” I assured him and dropped to my knees.

In a single motion, I tore his pants farther down and greedily caught him with my mouth. He moaned again, throaty and desperate, as I licked a path up the veiny shaft decorated by a ladder of four barbells on the underside, before wrapping my lips around him and sucking him deep. When I started rocking back and forth while my mouth kept a tight seal around him, I felt his entire body shudder. And the fact that it was me who was making him lose it like that turned me the hell on. I wrapped one hand around my own cock, stroking myself in the same rhythm in which my lips were sliding up and down his shaft.

“Fuck,” he gasped, rocking his hips. “Fuck.”

I relaxed my throat so he could go deeper, my hand on his hip encouraging him to move, my other hand flying on my cock. I was thrilled when he took the invitation. A current shot up and down my spine and spots danced before my eyes as Cai thrust deep, and God, I loved it. I loved every bit of it. I felt like I was floating, then free-falling, barely aware of the needy sounds I made as my entire body tightened painfully.

The orgasm slammed into me like a freight train. I shot once, twice, and continued as my mouth flooded with bitter, salty semen, which I drank down as greedily as I’d taken Cai. We continued to rock into each other through the euphoria until we both ran dry, until I felt sated and spent and was content to allow his softening cock to slip from my mouth.

We remained there as though frozen, catching our breaths in the silence.

I kind of couldn’t believe that had just happened. I had no idea
how
it had happened. But when I glanced up, Cai’s dark eyes met mine in the dimness of the pantry, and I wanted nothing more than to lick the pearls of sweat off his upper lip and then kiss him again.

Shit, I totally had a thing for Cai.

“I like your piercings,” I said, mostly at random to distract myself from that realization.

“Thanks.” Cai’s voice was shaky. He leaned forward and rested his hands on his thighs, still staring at me, still out of breath. “You are really fucking good at that.”

“Thanks,” I echoed. “We should do it again sometime.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. He seemed to think about it for a moment and then asked, “Including the fighting?”

“If that’s what gets you hot.”

This time he really did smile. “You are something else, man.”

“I’ve been told,” I said as I straightened up and went about the process of tucking us both back into our pants. Cai passively let it happen, his eyes searching my face, for what I didn’t know. Then I gave him an appreciative grin and a wink and went to clean up the baking powder.

Chapter Eight

That utterly satisfying encounter had temporarily driven away all thoughts of Finn and his suicide attempt, but they didn’t take long to return. I was determined to find a way to make sure he wouldn’t get to that point again, even though I had no clue how to go about it.

Despite the worries, I slept well that night, floating on the sexual high. Even Jarett’s hyperannoying grunting noises couldn’t stop me.

I even felt up to taking some of the writing exercises seriously during the group meeting. Nothing much had changed since the day before, except the glances Cai and I occasionally sent each other’s way were no longer hostile ones. They weren’t friendly either, just sort of…challenging. I still didn’t know whether the guy was even likable. Granted, I didn’t have to like him to make out with him, but it made things far less awkward. I’d been there, done that, gotten the “spiteful blowjob” T-shirt, and really didn’t care for another one at this point.

I stopped worrying about it and threw myself into the exercise.
Letter to a family member
, Angie had called it, and it was supposed to be composed entirely of questions. I could have taken the easy route and written something like
Dear Lane, why do you insist on being the most assholish asshole that ever assholed?
but I wanted to challenge myself. And since Angie had assured us that the letters would not be read by her or anyone else, but would be placed in sealed envelopes and given back to us toward the end of the retreat, I didn’t have to pretend. I didn’t have to hold back either.

So I wrote to my father, and the words flowed onto the page.

Dear (not really all that dear) Dad,

Why do you even insist on interacting with me? Do I remind you of Mom? Is that it? Or is it guilt?

Are you aware that you’re a lousy father?

Are you aware that I hate you? Or do you tell yourself it’s just teenage moodiness?

What is my favorite color? Who is my best friend?

You have no idea, do you?

Don’t you think it’s time we were honest with each other?

Do you blame me for Mom’s death?

Did you know that I do?

I tossed it aside and tried to forget about it immediately after I’d finished writing. Putting the words down had darkened my mood considerably. Afterward, it was time to draw. Again. As opposed to “sketch in the garden” of the previous day, though, this time the lot of us were spread out on the floor with poster board and all the art supplies on the planet, and we were supposed to create our inner sanctuary.

Whatever the hell that meant.

“That’s just weird,” Nicky repeated, pointing at Jarett’s poster. “Who wants to live in a doghouse, I mean, really?”

“I don’t want to live in a doghouse, moron,” Jarett explained, sounding properly annoyed. “I just like the idea of… You know what, never mind. Just keep painting your…giant water bottle or whatever that is.”

“It’s a lighthouse!”

I smirked and focused my attention on the starfish I’d been working on. For some reason, when I thought about a safe place, what came to my mind was jumping in the pool at home and just never surfacing again, hiding out down there indefinitely. So I was creating a wild, sparkling underwater world on my poster board. The sparkling was literal—I was hogging all the glitter supplies Angie had brought and going a little nuts with them.

“You want to be a merman?” Cai asked. I hadn’t even realized that he had gotten up and was looking over my shoulder.

“Yeah, that’d be cool.” It wasn’t what I had been going for originally, but it worked for me. “Just jump in the ocean and get away from all the bullshit. No one’s ever gonna find me if I chill with the clown fish.”

He chuckled. I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of his poster, which was very dark.

“What’s yours?”

“I’m not going to explain it, but you can look.” He went over to it, stepping across Lexa in the process, and held it up for my inspection. There was a lot of black, gray, and blue, the colors outlining a cave full of stalactites and stalagmites. I thought it was rather creepy, to be honest. In the middle of it, two shadowed people were huddled closely together, one holding the other.

“Cool,” I said because it was and because I didn’t know what else to say. It wasn’t my idea of safety, but then, I wasn’t Cai. Maybe he was a fan of cave dwelling.

“Whoa, Lexa,” Cai exclaimed. “That’s amazing!”

Lexa’s cheeks reddened a little, but she smiled before she focused on her work again. I scooted over to have a look. She had drawn herself, or a schematic version of herself, inside a log cabin, wrapped in a pile of blankets and sitting in front of a fireplace. Outside the cabin, a snowstorm appeared to rage. It was beautiful and gave me shivers just looking at it. Lexa had some serious talent.

In the end, all of us seemed quite proud of what we had created, and nobody protested when Angie grabbed tape and hung our posters on the wall after everyone was finished.

“You’re totally gay,” Nicky commented as he stared at my underwater landscape in awe.

“Very,” I agreed.

“Cool.”

I laughed and shoved him in the direction of lunch.

In the afternoon, we played with Skittles.

I’m not a fan of Skittles, except for the yellow ones. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to pick our Skittles, and we didn’t receive them for free either. No, the price for Skittles was more freaking soul-searching.

“Purple!” Nicky announced loudly and threw the candy into his mouth.

“Okay.” Angie gave him an encouraging nod. “Tell us something you would change about yourself, if you could.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’d be less hyper. It annoys people; I know it does. But I can’t turn it off.” He shrugged, tapping his foot.

Cai drew a yellow Skittle, which made me jealous. He glanced to the board, where Angie had written the rules for this game. Yellow Skittle meant
Tell us something you learned yesterday
. He looked at the ceiling in thought for a moment.

“I learned that Haze really,
really
hates dishwater.”

I flipped him off while everyone else giggled. Lexa grabbed the next candy out of the bag and held it up for us to see. It was orange.
Something you can’t live without.

She chewed her lip as she contemplated it. She reached for her pencil and scrawled the answer in her notebook, then pushed it over to Cai, who read it aloud.

“My sweater.” He looked at her questioningly. “Why?”

Lexa only shrugged.

I took the bag from Lexa, but Cai held his hand up. “I have a question.”

“What is it?” Angie asked patiently.

He kept looking at Lexa. “Can you talk?” he demanded to know. “I mean, physically?”

Lexa narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, then gave a minute nod.

“So is it just that you don’t want to talk?”

She shook her head. Cai frowned at her.

Angie looked a little nervous. “I think maybe we should—”

“So it’s, like, a mental or emotional issue?”

Lexa nodded again. Cai gave her a smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I was just curious.”

Lexa smiled back, and I realized that she looked very pretty when she did that. She really seemed to be quite a sweet girl, and I hoped she’d manage to get past her talking issue. I wondered what had caused it, but that really wasn’t my business.

“Haze,” Angie called out. I drew red. Damn it. Now I’d have to tell them something about my childhood. I didn’t want to make stuff up, but I also had to remember that my history was currently Finn’s. That didn’t leave me with a whole lot of things to talk about.

“Uh…” I studied the little candy in my hand. “When I was, like, nine, a bird flew against my window and fell to the ground, and when I looked out and saw it move, I thought it was gonna be fine. But then it stopped breathing. I cried over it for, like, a day.”