Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye

Chapter 21

A couple of songs,a couple of drinks, and I almost forget my hateful audience. Aurelia tries to take Gunnar’s hands and pull him away, but his eyes never leave the side of my head. Let him watch, I think. I run my fingers through my hair and wind my hips.

He loved watching me dance when I danced like an idiot. He hasn’t seen what I’ve been learning in my near-daily classes. I don’t dance like an idiot anymore. I dance like, well, a dancer.

It’s the only thing that’s been keeping me going since Cole’s death. Dancing is the only time I feel like myself, but at the same time, somehow, it makes me feel like something else. Just a winding expression of shape and color. Not a person, not a victim, not a slut, not a small and sad, grieving little girl. Just a visual representation of sound.

Just like when we were friends, his eyes never leave me while I dance. But nothing at all like when we were friends, there’s so much heat behind his toxic gaze that it only takes a couple of songs before I feel like my skin is burning.

Let him enjoy his front row seat to the latest step in my loving and forgiving myself journey.

Asshole.

But soon I have to pee pretty bad, so by the end of the third song, I let my friends know I’m heading to the bathroom. I throw a look over my shoulder to make sure Gunnar stays put. I don’t want to deal with him alone. The way he was just now with a crowd was awful, sure, but the way he was when it was just the two of us, up against that fence? I can’t deal with that either, for a whole other list of reasons.

I wash my hands and leave the bathroom, but I pause by the ajar bedroom door for a second. This time, when I picture Gunnar with his fingers threaded through that girl’s hair, that look on his face as he leaned his head back, the most prevailing emotion I feel is disgust. That’s progress.

“We can’t,” I hear from inside. “I know. I want you to fuck me too. God. It’s been so long. But not right now, OK? I think my friends are suspicious.” I only stay to listen because I recognize that voice as Larissa’s. “We can’t,” she giggles. “You can’t come here.”

Her friends are suspicious? I wonder what she’s hiding.

This could be interesting.

But then, “Andie Palmer,” I hear behind me, and as I wheel around, Larissa leaves the bedroom with a blush on her cheeks and her phone pressed to her chest. A tall, good-looking guy with blue eyes and a dimple is smiling down at me, beer in hand. “You’ve had a hell of a year, huh?”

I vaguely recognize him as the boy who took Cole’s place as quarterback, though I didn’t go to any games after his death. His name is something stupid. Zap? Bolt?

“Flash,” he enlightens me, holding out his hand. I shake it. He’s looking me up and down in a way I’ve really hated, ever since Dom’s friends trapped me in that room at the Palace and almost didn’t let me leave. “I think you’re being treated too harshly,” he says, then cocks his head as if concerned. “Is that OK to say?”

I know what he’s doing, I can smell it from a mile away, but it still feels good to be spoken to with kindness after what Gunnar said to me downstairs. Did he seriously call me a five? I would never have imagined him speaking to any woman like that. Least of all me.

“It sure is, Flash,” I say, instead of making an excuse and going back downstairs. It’s possible that getting hit on once in a while isn’t the worst thing.

“I’ve been wondering about something, though.” He taps on his lip. “It’s, uh, something I don’t want to talk about where we can be overheard.” He jerks his head towards the bedroom door. I am suddenly invested. After the conversation with Emile, I’m starting to think there might be a lot of stuff about Cole that I didn’t know, so I follow him inside.

“What is it?” I ask, and he leans on the door until it clicks shut, a smirk on his face.

“You’re hot, Andie,” he says, and I realize he’s drunker than I thought. I stare at the door his huge frame is blocking, and I also realize I’m dumb. “You were always cute, in a way, but fuck. You got so hot.”

“I thought you had something to tell me about Cole,” I say, and out loud it’s stupid. He doesn’t respond to that. He strokes his fingers down the side of my face.

“I was wondering,” he says, lingering playfully on the word until his hand reaches my throat and pushes me back into the wall with one powerful stride, “which of your reputations you really live up to in bed.” He leans in and licks my ear and I squirm, but his other hand slams my swatting arm against the wall, and I’m in his hold. “Deep down, are you a Killer? You got some violence in you?” He laughs when I struggle, and glare at him. “Or are you really just Loose ‘n’ Easy?”

He jams his crotch against me and hooks his finger at the hem of my dress, riding it up past my thighs. I don’t have the space Dimitri left me to knee him. I punch with my free hand at his body but it’s like a rock.

The bedside table is beside me, though. I grab the hardback self-help manual and clock him over the head with it. Flash takes a step back and I dart to the door. “I wasn’t gonna do anything, you stupid bitch,” he snaps, holding the heel of his hand to his forehead, but he’s still bigger and faster, and he slams the door shut just as I get it open. “Why does everyone hate you so much? You fuck around, you bring beer, and it’s fun that you seem to piss off Mr. President down there. I just wanna know what makes you so hateable.” He brings his face close to mine. “Maybe you bite.” He clicks his teeth shut right in front of my nose, and then hitches up my dress and wrinkles his nose. “Maybe you stink.”

I bring up my hand and slap him.

He gasps a little and holds his hand to his cheek. “You got spunk,” he cheers. Then his face darkens and he slaps me back. Harder. Hot pain blooms over my cheek and my hair falls in front of my eyes as my neck jerks. “You know, Cole told everyone in the locker room how loose you are. Said the nickname fit in every way. You know what I mean? Saggy tits, loose cunt, easy lay.”

I slap him again, hard enough to echo through the room, and then kick out at him so he stumbles back a step, laughing. He’s definitely drunk. So I give him another hard shove, and he falls on his ass.

“Cole and I never slept together,” I let him know. “No one in this whole damn county knows what it feels like to fuck mebut me.”

Feeling triumphant, I wheel around to open the door, but at some point it already opened.

Gunnar is standing in the doorway, taking up the whole space, his hand still on the doorknob. How much did he see? What did he hear?

“Back the fuck up,” he says to me, and his voice is low and steady. I recognize the calm before the storm when I see it.

* * *

Sophomore year

I rest my head on his lap, reaching up and tracing the sharp lines of Gunnar’s chin. At some point, he grabs my fingers to still them, eyes on the movie, but he doesn’t drop them.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

He nods, stubble brushing my fingertips.

“Have you had a lot of sex?”

His lips twist into a smile but he still doesn’t meet my eyes. “A lot? No, not a lot. Some.” He laughs when I laugh, squeezing my fingers. “Why?”

“Is it ever, like … good?”

Now he looks down at me. He’s frowning. “Um, yeah? What do you mean?”

“But for the girl too?”

“Yeah.” He tilts his head to better meet my eyes, and I avert my gaze. “Did you have sex?”

“I guess I did.” I don’t know why I said it like that. Maybe I just don’t want to feel like that counted.

“Dom?” he asks, his voice lowering. I nod. He’s silent for a long time, and I feel something I haven’t felt around Gunnar before. I don’t feel ashamed, but I do feel strangely exposed. I can usually tell what he’s thinking, but not now. “You didn’t like it?”

I start to shrug, and I’m trying to smile, but a tear slips from the side of my eye and into my hair. I scratch the side of my head to wipe it away, but Gunnar moves my hand and thumbs the tear away himself. He doesn’t say anything for a lot longer. His hand is shaking.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” I finally ask.

“I don’t think you’re stupid. Would you tell me if somebody hurt you?”

I don’t think Dom hurt me. Well, it hurt, but I don’t think it was on purpose. So I don’t know if that counts. “What would you do?”

“I’d go to prison for the rest of my life,” he jokes, and strokes his fingers through my hair, wet from that tear. It’s intimate; everything we do together is intimate, but it has a clear line. It’s always had a clear line. He goes nowhere near it, and neither do I.

“I don’t want that. I’d rather you let someone hurt me than lose you.” I hold up my pinky, and he rolls his eyes and snorts. “Please, I mean it. Don’t be that guy.”

“I’ll promise, in just a second. Did you say no to him?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t say no.” I’m a little embarrassed. We tell each other everything, but we don’t really ever talk about sex. About crushes, dates, hookups. “It was just awkward. I mean, I did say … ‘Wait’.”

“And he didn’t? Wait?”

“No, but we were making out. It was mixed signals.”

His lips thin, and he looks back up. The movie is forgotten. Something in his face looks hollow, and then his brows dip and he just looks furious. I’ve never seen him like this.

“‘Wait’ isn’t a fucking mixed signal.”

I sit up and lay my hand on his shoulder. I’m a little frightened.

“Promise me.”

He turns suddenly and cups both my cheeks in a movement that pulls the breath from my lungs. “I promise I won’t do anything stupid. I’m sticking around whether you like it or not.” But that strange new dark energy rolls off of him in waves, and I feel it like electricity sparking across my skin.

He’s lying.

* * *

Gunnar shovespast me and yanks Flash to his feet. The quarterback laughs, slow and delirious, when Gunnar wraps his strong upper arm around his neck and pulls him backwards. Flash’s knees buckle, and his face reddens as Gunnar squeezes. His fingers scrabble uselessly against the bicep locked against his throat.

“Stop, stop,” I beg, making sure the door is shut, and pulling on Gunnar’s other arm. Flash gurgles, and goes limp, and Gunnar lets go of the sleeper hold, letting the quarterback slump to the floor. I shove Gunnar, but he doesn’t even take a step back. “What were you thinking? Why would you do that?” I’m panicking at the sight of the slumped body on the floor.

Gunnar stretches out his arm, affronted. “Going into a bedroom with fucking Flash? What were you thinking?” That’s a great question. “I don’t want you here, yes, but if anybody’s going to push you around it’s not going to be Flash Hensen.”

“You’re an idiot, you could have killed him,” I hiss, but the look on his face is fully impenetrable. His eyes are so dark, his muscles tense, and I’m not even sure Gunnar can hear me as he circles the boy on the floor.

“You lied to him,” he says. He sucks in a couple of calming breaths and then roughly puts Flash into the recovery position. He’s still himself, after all. “You were sleeping with Cole for a year. He told me. Telling a stupid lie isn’t a good way to win an argument. You should have learned that by now.”

I hug myself, feeling suddenly cold. “He actually told you, or he just didn’t correct you?”

“He told me, Andie. We—” He stops himself, standing up and looking right past me. Maybe he’s realizing I’m right. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. “You need to leave,” he says, and I feel myself deflate. He’s still the guy who said those things to me downstairs.

“Are we, you and me … is that really over?” I hear myself ask, voice wavering. Goosebumps prick up over my skin as he looks me up and down.

“Yeah,” he says, but he leans against the wall instead of leaving. He runs his hand down his face before speaking again. “Are you really in love with me?”

“Past tense,” I say. “I’m not in love with whoever you are.”

His jaw tenses and releases a couple of times, something flitting behind his eyes I can’t identify. In a swift movement, he turns me around and holds me around the waist with one arm. His chest is against my back, his other hand trailing up the front of my dress. Flash is lying on the floor, and the door isn’t locked, but I don’t move or speak.

His knee parts my thighs roughly and he pushes me forward so my chest brushes the bedroom wall. He’s strong, and his body seems to have conformed around mine so efficiently and firmly that I don’t think I could move if he didn’t want me to. But I don’t even try, I’m so shocked by his rough touch. He would never do anything like this. He just wouldn’t.

“Liar,” he brushes against my ear. Every inch of bared skin on my body shivers sharply. About what? About being in love with him before?

About not being in love with him now?

His left hand leaves my waist and runs up my back, my neck, and fists my hair. He twirls my hair around his fingers and squeezes until pinpricks of pain run over my scalp. I gasp, but I still don’t move. This isn’t him. This can’t really be him. But I couldn’t speak, couldn’t protest, if I could even think of something to say.

He tilts my head back and his nose dips into the hollow of my neck. He’s not even pretending he’s not breathing me in. My heartbeat skips and stutters as I palm the wall. Dazed.

“You know the best thing about not being friends anymore?” he asks, his voice a rumble I can feel against my back. I feel the catch of his zipper against the skirt of my dress. A bulge against my ass.

Nothing, I want to say, but I just concentrate on staying upright. His hands are all over me, the sweet hot bourbon on his breath warming my skin. Now his dominant hand is cupping my throat. It’s not tight, but it’s there. My pulse jumps out to meet his fingertips.

“There are no rules anymore; no boundaries."

He delicately scrapes his teeth over my skin, then sucks his mark onto my neck as if he doesn't know he already marked me a long, long time ago.

"I don’t have to hold myself back anymore.”

He stays there for a second, his cheek against the side of my head, his cock against my ass, and his hand on my throat. Then his other hand leaves my hair and runs down my front. His fingers hook the bottom of my dress, and run over the edge of my panties. They pause. My next breath comes in a rush, and the sound breaks whatever was holding him there.

“You never should have come back here.”

My back, my skin, is ice cold as soon as his presence is lifted. By the time I turn around, he’s gone, and the door is open. I feel like I just spent the last few seconds in the bubble of some alternate reality, and it takes me a while to straighten my clothes and hair and find my bearings again.

I head back to the party, to the pool outside, and Hero, Ulla, Emile and Barkley are so delighted to see me it brings me back to myself.

The group is here too. Logan has his clothes back, and his usually bored expression is twisted into twitching, humiliated fury.

My brief illusion that things might have changed is broken fast. I’m laughing hard, helpless, at something, and then a broad hand catches me in the middle and shoves me backwards into the unheated swimming pool. In autumn, at nighttime. I just about catch Logan’s look of surprise — as if he hadn’t expected to actually make me fall — before I crash underneath the icy water.

This is so far from over.