Take Me With You (23 page)

I’ve never been so thankful for a text from Kayden Walker in my life. He prevented something even worse from happening.

“No, not the way you’re thinking. We just worked out our issues. He was being a friend even though I’m still not sure what that is.”

“You’re a better friend than you think you are.”

“What were you doing in the hall, Eric? Why weren’t you outside with Belle and Kayden?”

“I told them the truth about us, Amelia. Belle told me to come in and get you. She didn’t have to tell me to do it. It’s what I wanted to do all day anyway. Pretending and ignoring you, it wasn’t working for me.”

Whenever I’m with him and he tells me what he’s thinking and feeling, it always warms me, puts me at ease because he’s never been anything but completely genuine and real. He d
oesn’t know how to deceive like most other people. His words now, it’s no different than any other time.

He means every word. He was coming to get me because he was as tired of us being apart as I was. He wasn’t embarrassed by me after all.

“Will you come inside with me?”

“I’ll go anywhere with you.”

I planned on taking him by the hand and walking back into the school, but now I’m not sure I can get my legs to move. They’re like rubber and I’m afraid the minute I take a step they’re gonna completely turn to liquid. He might not think anything of it, but his words, they’re always so damn perfect. Right.

Him just saying the first thing that comes to mind all the time is easily the thing I love most about him.

“Eric, I—”

No. I can’t tell him this right now. It’s not right. Not when everything I just dropped on him about Tim and me is still fresh. I still think that once he processes everything I’ve told him he’s going to take off. The last thing I need to do is say these words and have him take my heart with him when he goes.

“What? Why did you stop?”

“I want to be alone with you.” I blurt out, saying the first thing that comes to mind that will throw him off what I was really about to say. When his lips lift slightly, a half smile playing across his face, I know it’s worked the way I intended.

“I want to be alone with you too. Away from everyone.” He states evenly but the way his body moves forward, I can tell he means away from Dillon.

Even though he’s got nothing to worry about, he’s still worried that there’s something going on with Dillon and me. Yeah, I definitely need to get him alone because standing out here like this, it’s just going to make that fester and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make him see how wrong he is.

My history, the past I have here and outside of school, it’s always going to haunt me, even with Eric. He may see past everything, know the real me, but it doesn’t do away with everything completely. I’m always going to be the girl that dated two football players, did things for them that my dad taught me way too early. I’m always going to be filled with shame, despite all the work I’ve done to try and distance myself from it.

As much as I want to control my own future, take it back from the man that stole it from me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. If Eric, the boy that knows all of the horrible things about me can’t get past i
t, how am I going to be able to?

Eric

When we finally get in the school and she leads me down the hall, pushing her way into the bathroom, my heart starts hammering out of my chest and no amount of controlled breathing can stop it.  It gets even worse when she locks the door behind her.

I want to see past everything I know about her. What I know about Amy, the things she did before I really got to know her, but it’s impossible when right now it feels like we’re going back in time to last fall and instead of the guys being the ones doing the beating, it’s going to be her.

Any time now, as I watch her lock the door and turn back to me, I expect her to pull out the cigarette and lighter. I’m so choked up by the fear that I can’t even get the words to come out to question what she’s doing, ask her why of all places we had to come in here. I’m at a complete loss.

I’m a weak little victim again.

She moves toward me, reaching out to me and my body freezes the minute her hand makes contact with mine, which just causes her to back up and look at me. Searching for a reason for the way I’m acting.

“Eric, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why—here?” I force out, the words even to me hard to hear.

“It’s private. I wanted a place to be alone with you.”

She moves into me again and this time I let her, even bringing my frigid arms around her robotically, wanting to feel her, but still afraid of what’s going to happen next.

I need to remember that this isn’t the Amy from before. This is Amelia. My girlfriend. My perfect storm. She doesn’t want to hurt me. If she did, she would have had more than enough chances all day since she got back. She’s telling me the truth.

The problem is, even knowing that, accepting it, I’m still afraid.  I’ve been trying to rewrite history for a month now, it should be easy, but it’s not.  I don’t know if it will ever be easier.

“What you saw with me and Dillon, it was nothing. I know you don’t believe me, you think there’s more going on, but there isn’t.  I know you saw Tim kissing me too and that you think I wanted it, but I didn’t. The only one I want is you.”

Before I can respond, her lips press to mine and any thought I would have had fades away as the familiar smell and taste of bubble gum completely takes me over and I’m completely lost in the feel of the softness of her lips.

Parting them the way she taught me, a sigh escapes as I press them back down on top of hers, this time stealing her move and running my tongue across her bottom lip, earning a soft moan before grabbing onto it with my teeth and pulling it closer until I’m sucking on it.

The fear is fading fast as I taste her, enjoy her the way I’ve wanted to all day and couldn’t and as her body goes weak in my arms, I push farther, using my hands that are wrapped around her to feel her, slipping my hand down until it’s near the bottom of her shirt, sliding it under and up until all I can feel under my fingers is her bare warm skin.

I’ve never wanted someone so much in my entire life. Her lips are fighting with mine for control and I let her have it, feeling her tongue as it runs across my lips again before making its way into my mouth, meeting mine.

Fueled with the same need as me, I feel her body press into me until my back is completely up against the wall. Releasing my hold on her back, breaking away from the heat under my hands, I bring them up until they’re both resting on her face, our lips, tongues, a mash of heat, desire, need and ache, each of us probing more, but not willing to give up the control.

She pulls away, her pink lips raw and her breath ragged but before I can even question why, the
need to pull her back into me overriding even the pain that’s running through my body at being pushed against the wall, her hands slip down and she’s attempting to undo the button on my pants.

As much as I want her right now, how right it feels connecting to her this way, I don’t want it happening like this. Amelia doing this, it’s a default reaction, I know it. This is how she handles things when it’s all too much for her. For whatever reason, being with me right now is triggering her to do something that I know neither one of us is ready to do.

“Amelia…”

“Eric, I’m so sorry for everything. Please let me make it up to you. Let me please you.”

Her voice, it’s different now. She’s never sounded like this before, even after we’ve been kissing for a while. She’s breathless and I’m used to that, but the tone, the way it sounds, so thick, almost robotic, it’s not right at all. I can’t let her do this.

I feel the button pop and my hand instantly moves down to cover it. Feeling her fingers, I attempt to push them off, so I can do it back up, but then I hear the zipper slide down, the scratching sound making my ears hurt with how loud it sounds inside my head.

Her hands come up and around my waist and she slides them down, her body moving down with it and even though I like the way her hands feel on my skin, nothing else about this feels okay. The minute her hands go for my boxers, I know I’ve got to put an end to this, even if in the end I hurt her.

“Amelia, please stop. Not like this. Not here.”

I lower my hand until it’s resting on her arm and using as much strength as I can, I pull her up, slowly, my body aching from the pressure that the move is putting on my chest until she’s standing in front of me, black streaks on her cheeks, her makeup mixing with the wetness from her eyes and leaving stains behind.

When her eyes
look up at me, searching me the way she did outside when she was telling me about her past with Tim, I force myself to maintain contact so I can get this out. I need to stop her and try not to break her in the process.

I was so damn worried about her breaking my heart and with what I’m about to do, I’m pretty sure I’m the one that’s going to break hers.

“You don’t want me. You’re stopping because I’m really as gross to you as I am to myself.”

Shaking my head so fast that I hope sh
e gets how wrong she is, I place my hand under her chin and pull it up to me again as she tries to let it fall. No way can I make her think I don’t want her.

“I do want you. I really want you. This, touching you even though I’ve never done it—feels so good, but I know why you’re doing this and I need to stop you because I don’t want you that way.”

“You don’t want me that way?”

She’s misunderstanding. I’m screwing this up b
ecause the words are wrong. Crap. I really hate being me right now.

“I don’t want you thinking that you need to get on your knees in a bathroom and please me the way you said. I’m not him, Amelia. I don’t want to take from you.”

Where she was standing close to me when I picked her up from her place on the floor, she’s moving away from me now, completely breaking the connection between us and the emptiness sets in the minute she does it. Whatever this is between us, I can’t be apart from her. It physically hurts me and I need to bring her back to make it better.

“What’s wrong with you?” she screams at me the minute her head lifts back up and her eyes, the soft blue that reminds me of the water at the bluffs, it’s not what I see there now. They’re darker, harder, filled with a look that I haven’t seen in weeks.

I’m not with Amelia anymore. I’m with Amy. My pushing her away, stopping her, not wanting things to happen this way, she’s taking it personally and reverting back to the only thing she knows.

“Amelia…”

“No. stop. Don’t call me that ever again!”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean every word. I can’t believe what a fucking idiot I’ve been. Falling in love with someone like you! Standing here, wanting to give myself to you and you’re so stupid you don’t have the first clue what to do with it. You’re pushing away the only chance you’ll ever have at getting laid.”

She could be standing here
holding a butcher knife and stabbing me repeatedly in the chest and it would hurt a lot less than her words are. She’s definitely not the Amelia I know right now. She’s the monster I’ve been running from all year.

“God, you’re fucking disgusting you know that? Same clothes, dirt all over your neck and the smell that’s coming off you, it’s a nightmare. I obviously lost my mind when Daniels kicked me out. I can’t believe I forgot all of this.”

She turns away from me and runs toward the door and even though I want to reach out and stop her, with the way she left me standing here with my pants down, any movement I make is only going to make me end up flat on my face. Doing even more damage to what Tim already inflicted.

“Amelia,” I call out hoping to stop her before she completely runs away from me, but fighting with myself because I want her gone after everything she just said. “Don’t do this.”

She stops at the door, her hand on the handle but not taking a step at all to open it and for a split second I think I’ve finally broken through. She’ll turn around now, face me and hear what I’ve got to say. Words that despite how broken and hurt I feel, I need her to hear because they’re the truth and they’ll bring the girl I love back to me.

I love her.
I can’t let her change again. I don’t think I’ll survive it.

“Goodbye
Eric.”

Throwing the door open quickly, she runs from the room and as I straighten my clothes, setting myself right again, prepared to go after her, stop what I know is happening, the pain from earlier sets in and stops me in my tracks.

Maybe the pain is trying to tell me something.

What I thought was a per
fect storm is really a hurricane and the only way not to get pulled into it is to stay away.

For good.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Amelia

“I mean every word. I can’t believe what a fucking idiot I’ve been. Falling in love with someone like you! Standing here, wanting to give myself to you and you’re so stupid you don’t have the first clue what to do with it. You’re pushing away the only chance you’ll ever have at getting laid.”

I still can’t believe I said that to him and everything else that came after was even worse. I didn’t mean a word of it but it doesn’t even matter anymore because even if I didn’t mean it, it’s what had to happen.

Eric is better than me and my shit. He’s always been better and I need to realize that and stay the hell away from him even if running from him is killing me inside. He deserves better than this and despite everything Dr. T said and even what Dillon told me outside before, nothing’s ever going to change with me.

I might look like I’m better to everyone else but I’ll always know what a real monster I am. What lives buried deep inside me, ready to come out at any time. Eric definitely deserves a whole lot better than that.

He deserves someone that can do what we just did in the bathroom, connecting, becoming almost like one person with how close we were and not turn it all disgusting and messy the way I did. He deserves someone that doesn’t want their first time to be in a public high school bathroom.

He deserves the complete fucking opposite of me.

I need to get out of here, but I have no idea where to go. There’s nowhere I can run that can get me away from the mess I’ve made and the one I’ve always been. I could end up on the other side of the world and it wouldn’t change a thing.

I’d still be a whore.

A monster.

Stopping outside the office, my throat burning, tired from the distance and speed I used to get me here, I look toward the door, staring at it like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it and with no other option, pull on the handle and go inside.

Ms. Owens, the secretary looks up from her desk and when she sees me, all movement she was making just stops.

“Are you okay honey?”

“N—No.” I stammer, how nicely she asked me getting to me and the tears from before starting to pour from my eyes again, no amount of wiping able to stop them. “I n—need help.”

She stands from the desk and comes out around, pulling me into the crook of her arm and walking me around to the other side, before turning and pulling me down the hall. It’s only when she opens a door in front of her and goes through that I realize what she’s doing.

It’s an office, but an empty one. One that I’ve never been inside of before. Breaking away from me, she pulls a chair away from the wall and brings it over to where I’m standing, my entire body shaking.

“Sit down, dear. I’m going to go get you some water and then you can tell me what I can do to help.”

She leaves the room quickly and feeling the weight inside my pocket, the same familiar one that’s been with me since I started here four years ago, I pull it out and look at it.

How many times did this thing help me when I needed it? How many times did it block out the pain, the agony I felt, remembering things, feeling them as if they were happening in the moment. Sliding my sleeve up and looking at my arm, I start counting, one burn after another until I’ve counted so many I can’t even keep track.

I lost count after fifty and that’s only on the one arm. Adding it to the other, I know how many times this has helped me and right now I need it to help me again.

Feeling around inside my pocket, I pull the square pack out, staring at it the same way I did to the lighter only seconds before and just as I’m about to pull one from the pack and take away the pain once and for all, I hear the door crack.

Ms. Owens walks back in, a water bottle in her hands but before she can say anything she sees the items in my hand and her eyes go wide before dropping again, filled with understanding the minute she catches the other surprise waiting for her with my pulled up sleeve.

“Oh honey, you don’t need to do that. Whatever happened, no matter how bad it is, you do not need to hurt yourself over it.”

She has no idea what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know what doing this does for me, what it takes away. A little pain from the burn is a lot better than what I would deal with if I didn’t do it. She has to let me do this now. It’s the only way.

I lift the cigarette out of the pack and manage to get it up to my lips with my shaky hands before she reaches out and takes it from me, breaking it in half. Reaching forward, she slips the package out of my hand first, tossing it in the garbage bin before sliding the lighter out of the other.

“Amy, I can’t let you do this.”

“I need to make it—stop.”

Coming around until standing in front of me, she kneels down until our eyes are level. Leaning forward, I see her arms come out and before I can react, she wraps them around me and pulls me into her, hugging me, the way a mother would do. The way I wish my mother would do every single time I walk through the door.

What I’ve wanted more than anything for fourteen years and what Eric gave me without asking anything in return
for almost three weeks ago.

God I’ve ruined everything.

“What do you need to make stop, dear?”

“He…he does things to me.”

“Who?”

“My daddy. He puts his hands on me and touches me and I just need to make it stop!”

Her arms, they’re rubbing up and down my back now, my body shaking so much that I can feel them lifting and falling each time it does and it just makes me bury myself into her more, the silent tears now complete with sound as a sob escapes and is followed up by another and another until they’re all bleeding together and my whole body is moving by it.

“It’s over. What he did to you, he’s never going to do again. You’re safe now.”

She doesn’t get it. I’m not safe. I’m going to have to leave the office eventually and when I do, he’s going to be able to get to me again and it won’t ever end. Even if he gets caught, I’m still going to be living with the nightmares for the rest of my life. There is no escape.

Safety is an illusion. It always has been. It only makes you think you’re safe until it’s ready to pull the carpet out from under you and reality sets in.

“I need to get out of here.”

“Amy, I think the best thing right now is for you to stay right where you are.”

“No. I just wanna go home.”

If she wants to argue with me, now would be the time but nothing comes. The next time she speaks, her voice even softer than before, it’s only to ask me a question related to what I want.

“Do you want me to call your mother, dear?”

“No. I’ll sign myself out and t
ake the bus. I need to go. There’s nothing left for me here. I’ve ruined it. I always ruin everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a monster, Ms. Owens and I’ve destroyed the one person in the entire world that thought I could be something more.”

Eric

For the past month, there’s always been one constant. One thing that I can count on that never changes. There’s probably a lot more than just one, but this, it’s the one thing I can depend on.

Amelia meeting me at Dr. Thompson’s office. Her appointment being right after mine, or directly after that. It’s been that way for a month now and it’s the one thing that even though everything else seems to change around me, doesn’t change with it.

Until it does.

I’ve been here for an hour now, showing up early like always, hoping that what happened in the bathroom earlier wasn’t enough to change the routine of things and that I would catch her when she got off the bus like always.

My appointment is in fifteen minutes and she’s not here. I’ve watched at least fifteen buses go by and none of them stopped at our regular stop. Not one single person got off and the more of them that go by the more it hurts.

A physical pain but not one caused by what Tim did to me earlier. It’s a pain that’s present only because of her and the void that her absence brings.

One month.

Four weeks.

Twenty-eight days.

That’s all it took for this girl to come into my life and completely turn it upside down. Take the depressing darkness I’ve been living with and sprinkle it with her bubble gum flavored pixie dust until all I could see was light. Make my heart feel things I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling. Twisting all five senses into a ball until all I can smell, taste, feel, see and hear is her.

The unique vibration that only Amelia Evans can give off. The vibration that’s only for me. No one else.

My chest aches, my head hurts, there’s this all over pain straight through me and nothing I do can take it away. I’m not even entirely sure I want it to go away because if it does, then I’m gonna be back where I started and not feeling anything at all and I never want to be that way again.

It’s all because of her. If I stop feeling, I stop her and I just can’t do that.

Everything that happened in the bathroom, it’s like a movie in my head that I can’t find the stop button for. I can see every single frame and it’s painstakingly clear, like it’s playing in HD, every pixel loud and bright. I don’t know if I love it or hate it.

Stopping her, it was the right thing to do. I’m not sure about anything that happened after it, but I am sure of that. I meant what I said to her. I want her, the way my body was reacting to her touch, to the feel of her tongue when it was wrapped up in mine, wanting isn’t even a strong enough word for what I felt, but I didn’t want it the way it was being handed to me.

When I’m with someone for the first time, it’s not going to be against the bathroom wall of a place that for the past year has been my own personal version of hell. It’s not going to be on the floor either. It won’t be a girl on her knees in front of me, giving me what she thinks I want and getting nothing in return. It won’t be me taking.

If I’m ever lucky enough to be so consumed by someone that we get to the point where making love is inevitable, there won’t be any taking involved. It will be giving, from the both of us and it will be beautiful, simple, yet the most powerful thing in the world.

Two hearts coming toget
her until it becomes one singular beat.

That’s what I want it to be and that’s not what was happening in that bathroom earlier. It was the opposite of that. Her robotic tone of vo
ice when she said she wanted to please me more than enough to prove it. That was her reacting. She was reacting to my jealousy, what she thought I wanted from her in order for her to prove that nothing was going on.

It’s the way she handles things. It’s what that sick father of hers taught her. Her default setting when things turn bad, is to demean herself. To become what he made her to be.

Anyone else in her life might have taken full advantage of that, but what I want with Amelia has nothing to do with the way she looks, her physical beauty, even if it is heart stopping. I want everything else. I want her openness, her smile, the high tempo sound of her laugh when it’s natural. The way she reacts when I tell her what I think of her, how I see her.

I just can’t make her see that and now, she’s off god knows where, away from me and I’m sitting here, the same empty shell I w
as when she walked away and not having the first clue what to do with everything that keeps going through my head.

She needs to be here. Even if she hates me and never wants to see me again. Her not being here means that she’s in danger, but not from some outside physical force.

From herself.

“Eric, he’s ready for you now.”

Smiling weakly at Rose, thankful for the separation from the road my thoughts are taking, I slink my way down the hall until I’m in his office and I’m throwing the full weight of my body down into the chair across from him, expecting the shocked expression I see on his face the minute he looks at me.

He’s getting a full view of the hell of the last twenty four hours.

“You’re here alone today?”

“Looks like it.”

“Where is Amelia?”

That’s something that’s been happening since the two of us got together. She told him the first time I came in with her that she wanted to be called Amelia and he just adapted to it easily. Hearing him say it now, it makes the stabbing sensation in my chest even worse.

“I—don’t know.” I admit, choking up from the truth and how much I hate it.

“What happened?”

“I think it’s over.”

“What happened to make you think that, Eric?”

“She wanted something with me and I couldn’t do it. I pushed her away because it wasn’t right.”

“Did this take place before or after the reason for the marks on your face?”

“After.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.”

“Eric, I want you to tell me what took place between you and Amelia. It’s obvious that the way you’re feeling right now stems from that. I do believe it will help if you get it out.”