“I want you to remember this moment,” he said in a controlled tone while I struggled against him for air. “How I am now, how you are now.” He took his cock out of my mouth and shoved me back. “I want you to remember that there is nothing good about me and there never will be.”

I believed him. God help me, I believed him.

“You really enjoyed that didn’t you?” he snickered. “You thought you were pleasing me? Controlling me even?”

He was playing me the whole time. “Why are you doing this?” I could hear the bitterness in my own voice. He ignored my question and fixed his jeans. I swallowed nervously and tasted the remnants of him and felt a moment of disgust, keeping my gaze rooted to the floor. “You wanted this so why are you so angry?” I asked again.

“I’m not angry.  That would mean I cared.” He moved for the door, intending to leave me tied apparently, but he turned back and asked, “Did you really think you could manipulate me?”

“No.”

“No?”

“That’s not why you’re angry.” My gaze lifted to meet his dead-on. “You’re angry because it was working and I did please you.”

“Well then that would be stupid of you.”

“Why?” I asked curiously.

“Because then I would be forced to keep you. And you don’t want that,” he replied, ominously. A loud crash and the sound of running footsteps and screams filtered through the door and then a guy’s voice could be heard on the other side.

“Keiran man, get out here. Dash and Keenan are fighting some guys who crashed the party. Shit is trashed.”

He stalked toward the door, shirtless and left as quietly as he came. To someone who didn’t recognize the signs he seemed calm but I glimpsed the rage simmering in his eyes. I was left on the floor still bound by his belt and helpless. Moments later the loud noise and screaming ended and the house grew eerily quiet and then all at once I could hear the sound of running footsteps again followed by screeching tires and cars departing.

I pushed myself up until I was standing. My legs were sleep from being stuck in one position. I licked my lips and immediately recognized the taste of him lingering on my lips and curious, I licked them again, before I realized what I was doing.

Some sick part of me liked the taste of him despite being manipulated. I tried to tell myself that I had no choice, that I didn’t enjoy being violated by him. But I didn’t fight him either. If I fought Keiran, I would lose one way or the other.

Chapter Ten

I thought about my journal. I needed my journal. It was where I kept all my pain and told all my secrets and it spoke of only two things—my parents and him.

I haven’t thought about that journal since last year when he went away and I no longer had anything to write about. The journal was old and something I kept to deal with the pain of losing my parents. I started it a year after they disappeared and Keiran’s bullying got worse.

The first entry about him was in the fourth grade after he got some girls to stick used gum in my hair and had everyone call me spit head at lunch. I locked myself inside the bathroom and immediately pulled out my journal to write. It was mistake but it soon became my salvation and way of coping.

Starting out, whenever a memory of my parents surfaced I would write that memory down and how I felt about them. It was something my aunt suggested I do when she couldn’t get me to talk about it. She said she would rather I tell a piece a paper than no one at all. I think that was the writer in her speaking.

Keiran had given me a new pain to focus on. So when I begin to write only about Keiran, the journal became a vessel and now holds every thought and emotion that I ever had for Keiran inside of it. It even expressed the confusion I often would feel from being attracted to him as we got older. I finally admitted to my journal of having a crush on him a couple of days before I turned sixteen.

The school year had just begun and I saw him for the first time in three months. He’d gone to some basketball camp that was sponsored by the NBA and NCAA for the best talent. The look he gave me as he swaggered down the hallway toward me was hot. I remember his grey eyes trailing slowly up and down my body as we grew closer from opposite ends of the hallway. Our gazes were locked the entire time and I couldn’t help but to admire the light stubble he’d grown. It made him look older and sexier, if that was even possible and just as I was passing by him, thinking he would spare me his normal dose of public humiliation, he knocked my books out of my hand and sent them flying along with the few sheets of paper I had laying on top. I didn’t react. I never did. I picked up my books and continued to my first class with my head held high and the anguish my heart felt buried in secret.

Keiran’s torments came more frequently and grew crueler that year. For whatever reason he seemed to despise me even more. I remember always being confused about the strange looks he would give me followed by a vicious, verbal attack. But we were on an entirely different playing field now. Keiran was menacing enough when unprovoked but now he actually has a reason to hate me.

I tried to look at it from his point of view. He lost a year of his life to the system. It was a year he would never get back, while the drug conviction threatened his future because nothing stayed completely buried. Add in the humiliation of a public arrest it would be enough to piss off a nun. I understood why he wanted revenge, but threatening the life of my aunt was unforgivable. She was innocent in all this.

When his car stopped, it snapped me out of my thoughts and I realized that we were in my driveway. He didn’t shut off the engine and I was relieved. I couldn’t handle anymore of Keiran today. After his party came to a screeching, violent halt, he had come back upstairs and untied me. He then ordered me to “get the fuck out” and I would have went running for the door but I had to remind him that he drove me here and I couldn’t call Willow because he sabotaged our friendship. So here we were.

I touched the door handle to get out but stopped and stared out the windshield instead. I took a deep breath and made a decision.

“It was wrong,” I began. He turned to face me, with his eyebrows raised.  “You had a good thing going. You just made captain of the basketball team – rumor was that scouts were already looking at you pretty heavy. It was the end of junior year, and you were supposed to graduate last year. You should be in college now surrounded by an endless supply of hot girls. You wanted a future. You hoped for a future.”

I looked at him finally – he looked like he was contemplating something as he rubbed his bottom lip with his finger. I couldn’t help but to track the motion, watching his finger sweep across. His lips were plump and kissable and I was suddenly jealous of his finger.

“You were innocent. I know that but not because you believe I framed you, but because if you had done it, then this –,” I gestured between the two of us, “wouldn't be happening. You would have accepted the consequences even if someone did tip the police.”

I felt the weight of his stare as silence filled the air in the close confines of the car. It became almost unbearable after a few minutes of waiting for him to say something so I gave up and reached for the door handle again, having said my piece.

“What makes you so sure?”

I turned back to him confused. “Sure about what?” Was he trying to say he was guilty?

“That we wouldn't have happened.”

His question immediately pissed me off. I knew it was just another tactic to get into my head. “Are you suggesting otherwise, because the past ten years says different.”

            “You aren't as blind as you pretend to be, Monroe so cut the bullshit. You come apart when I touch you without hesitation…naturally…as if the past ten years says different.” He emphasized the last part and I flushed thinking about the classroom and the memory of his mouth devouring me.