Authors: Olivia Lynde
I wince.
"That's not how it was."
All I perceive
is a blurry streak of movement, then he's beside me, gripping my arms
forcefully and towering above me like an angry god of war who's about to
unleash destruction.
"If you
thought," he growls, "even for one fucking moment that I would let
you leave me again in this lifetime—then you have no fucking clue who I am!"
"Seth..."
He brings his
faces mere inches from mine and glowers at me with furious, wounded eyes.
"You're fucking mine, Sunny, and I'm never letting you go!"
"But I
don't want you to let me go!" I cry in frustration. I lay my hands gently
on his taut stomach; I need to touch him right now, both for him and for myself.
"I'm sorry I packed that bag, but it happened in a moment of insanity. I'm
not leaving you, Seth."
He blinks, and
confusion seems to add itself to the combustible mix of his current emotions.
"Where were you going, then?"
I sigh. I didn't
want him to find out about this until I came back—if I made it back, God
willing—but it's not as if I have a choice now. "I was planning to drop by
the Andersons' for a short visit."
"After
fucking midnight?" Full-blown disbelief coming my way. Okay, let's give
him something that will
really
make him think that he's hearing me
wrong.
"Thanks to
the veritable fountain of information that Andrea seems to have been, Jessica
was in attendance at your match Friday night. And caught it all on video."
His hands fall
down from my arms. "That's impossible. Everyone who comes to see the
fights is checked for recording devices at the entrance. If any are found,
they're confiscated until after the fights."
"Well
clearly, Jessica found a way to smuggle her camera phone inside. Today she sent
me a message to meet her and she showed me a recording of your fight. She
threatened to make it public and get you expelled and get you to lose your
scholarship. Oh, and get you arrested too."
"Are you
fucking kidding me?"
"Unfortunately
not."
The disbelief
melts into blinding fury. "Why did she show you the video? What did she
want from you?"
"For me to
disappear from your life forever."
His hands coil swiftly
around my arms again, almost as if he thinks I'm about to vanish in a puff of
smoke and he's hell-bent not to let that happen. "So that's what this is all
about?" he asks me hoarsely. "The packed bag and..."
"It was at
first. Seth, I couldn't let her ruin your life."
His body
trembles as if under the strain of some inconceivably powerful emotion.
"Sunny, the only way my life could be destroyed was if I lost you."
An almost
debilitating wave of love rushes over me at his poignant words. "I considered
giving you up for the sake of your future..."
"No way in
hell th—"
"But then I
realized that Jessica wasn't just playing me dirty—she was being completely
filthy. You see, Seth, she was dead-certain that you and I would break up over
the thing with Andrea. So why then would she have also made that recording of
you?"
His brow furrows
in thought. "Maybe as insurance?"
"No, I
truly believe she's too arrogant to consider that her plans could fail. Seth, I
think she wanted to destroy our relationship with the Andrea-setup. And then
she wanted to finish destroying you with the video."
His jaw turns to
granite.
"I think
she's determined that if she can't have you, then no one should—and that you
should pay for not wanting her by losing everything that's important to
you."
"To hell
with what she wants!" he explodes. "I won't lose anything more
because of that bitch! I've started something today, and by tomorrow night,
she's the one who'll be finished."
I'm dying to
know what he means, but there's no time to ask him right now.
"Seth, the
recording she has of you has to be destroyed before it's too late."
"How?"
"She has
the original video of you on her phone and a backup on her laptop. I still have
a house key and the alarm code of her house—God willing, Greg hasn't changed
it. I'm going there tonight and stealing the videos of you."
He leans closer
and glowers into my face. "And you don't think you should've told me before
what you were planning to do?"
"If I'm
caught, I don't want you to be with me."
"Jesus Christ,
Sunny, you should've just told me your plan! I've learned stealth as a matter
of survival and if
I
go there, there's no way I'll be caught."
Okay, that
sounds logical. "All right, but I'm coming with you."
"No, you're
not! You're giving me the key and the code, and you're staying here."
"Seth, we don't
have time to argue about this all night. I'm not staying here twiddling my
thumbs while you break and enter into someone's house!"
"Then you
can wait for me in the car," he growls in utter frustration.
"That
sounds fair to me." I smile, and he growls again and takes me over in a
kiss that burns so hot it almost turns me to cinders.
*
* *
He's been gone
too long.
He parked the
car three houses down from the Anderson residence and left me to wait
inside—and steam in worry—more than ten minutes ago. Which, in
nighttime-sneaking-into-other-people's-houses-speech, may as well be an
eternity as far as I'm concerned.
Oh God, please
don't let him get caught breaking and entering!
Well, Summer,
technically he isn't breaking in—he does have a key, after all
.
Because
obviously, that would fly really well with the police: yes, Mr. Police Officer,
I realize that I've been caught sneaking at night inside a house that is not my
own, and yes, I did in fact have thievery on my mind—but it was all for a good
cause, really. And I didn't actually force my way inside, I had a key; doesn't
really matter that it wasn't my key and that my girlfriend (who gave me the
key) shouldn't have had it anymore in the first place. Right?
Oh God, he's
doomed!
Come on, Summer,
he's not going to get caught! So far everything seems perfect: the alarm hasn't
been triggered—your code must've still been good—there's been no one shrieking
"intruder" from inside, and no lights have gone on.
Yet. But surely he
should have been back already, and while he's still there, it's still possible
that he might get caught. Like, what if he stumbles and crashes into something
and wakes everyone up?
Yeah, Summer,
because Seth is so clumsy!
Okay, so he's
the most graceful and agile person I've ever known, but everyone makes mistakes
when they're under stress.
Sure, Summer, because
that look on his face of perfect calm and focus when he went on his mission was
a dead-on clue about his anxious state of mind!
But still, he
could take a wrong turn and end up—
Right, that's surely
totally feasible: that Seth, who lived for many years in that house and has as
good as photographic memory, could suddenly lose his way inside.
But if all went
so well, then why for crying out loud isn't he back yet?
The driver's
door opens, and a cold gust of air comes in. It's instantly followed by a
stealthy shadow who slides nimbly into the seat beside me, settles a small
black backpack on top of my knees, and grabs me for an open-mouthed kiss. I
nearly burst with relief. I bury my hands in his thick hair and kiss him back
in a way that turns the kiss from hot to searing.
Then Seth draws
back and his smile flashes white in the darkness. "Mission accomplished."
I smile back.
"I guessed that already. Did you have any trouble?"
He starts the
car and puts it in motion. "No. You'd already told me what room was hers,
so once I was in the house, I headed straight there. I found her phone on her
bedside table and the Mac buried under a pile of dirty clothes on the
floor."
"She didn't
hear anything while you were in her room?"
He snorts.
"Get real, Sunny. I'm good at this. She slept like a log throughout. Wouldn't
have felt it even if I'd strangled her in her sleep—not until it was too
late." That tiny muscle above his jaw pulses angrily.
"Stop
joking," I whisper.
His full lips
twist into a bitter smile. "Am I?"
"Seth..."
"It's all right,
Sunny. I don't need to lay one finger on that bitch to finish her off. I warned
her to back off, she didn't listen, now she's going to pay the damn
piper."
"What did
you do?"
He smiles in a
way that makes the tiny hairs at my nape rise in warning. "You'll see
tomorrow."
On the other
side of town, he stops the car beside a dumpster.
"Sunny,
hand me the hammer I gave you earlier."
I reach for the
hammer at my feet and hand it to him, along with the black backpack. Then he
heads outside, smashes Jessica's gadgets into tiny little pieces, puts them inside
a garbage bag, and throws them in the dumpster—never to be heard of again.
Then he drives
us home.
*
* *
Later, we're in
bed, lying on our sides. He's pressed all along my back, enclosing me in the
furnace of his rock-hard body. His right arm is wrapped around my waist, his
palm splayed just underneath my breasts. Every once in a while his hand slides
upward and caresses me gently, and each time that happens my heart skips inside
my chest. I'm breathing too hard, and the soreness I feel between my thighs is
joined by a muted thrill: excitement with an edge of pain.
He scatters
kisses—across my cheek, my closed eyelids, my forehead—and nuzzles the back of
my head.
Then I hear his
voice, muffled and tentative.
"Sunny?"
"Hmm?"
"Why did
you let me make love to you tonight?"
My throat
suddenly tight with uncertainty, I ask, "You... didn't enjoy it?"
He curls even tighter
around me. "Sunny, if I'd enjoyed it any more than that, my heart would've
exploded." I shiver at his incredibly sexy, raspy voice. "But you
never wanted to before, so why...?" He trails off into a silence that is
thick with undertones of meaning. "Sunny, you didn't do it as a way of
saying goodbye—because you thought you'd leave me. Did you?"
His chin settles
in the crook of my neck, and his breath falls sweet and tender on my face. I
turn my head slightly and press a loving kiss on his cheek.
Then I draw back
just enough to be able to murmur, "After Jessica threatened your future, I
didn't know what to do. Seth... if it had been the only way to save you, I would
have left. And that's when I saw it clearly: I would do anything for you, you
own my very being. And if I've already given you all the rest of myself—why
withhold my body?"
"But you
wanted to make love and then leave me afterward?" he asks huskily.
"I thought
a lot of crazy things this afternoon. But now that we've made love fully, I really
doubt that I could've left you afterward if that had still been my plan. What
actually happened, though, is you came home, and the moment I saw you,
everything became clear to me. I had the epiphany about Jessica's intentions,
and I could've jumped for joy because I finally had an unselfish reason for
staying with you, besides the thousands of selfish reasons. I had to protect
you, so I couldn't leave."
"No, Sunny,
you can never leave. And you have to let
me
protect you."
"And the
other way around too," I insist, smiling in the darkness.
"Just so
long as you're clear that you can't leave," he grumbles.
"Seth..."
I start to tell him and shiver in fear.
He hugs me
closer, his hand rising from beneath my chest to settle below my neck, and his
arm lying strong and heavy across my torso. "What is it, Sunny?"
"You know
how I told you that I had a lot of crazy thoughts this afternoon?"
"Yes."
"Well, I
did some crazy things too."
His frame tenses
around me. "Like what?"
"Like
calling Ms. Walker."
"Your
social worker?"
"Yes."
My voice trembles slightly. "I wanted her to come pick me up. And Seth...
she's driving down here tomorrow."
*
* *
The next
morning, as Seth is walking me to Honors English, there's an almost electric
quality to the atmosphere at Rockford High. I see the students huddled together
in groups, bent over their tablets and Smartphones and whispering furiously
among themselves. Also, for the first time since Seth and I became a couple,
most kids don't even bother to look up from whatever they're doing, to watch us
as we're passing by. Which I'm really grateful for, of course—I still hate any
and all attention—but it is a sign that something
major
is going on.