Chapter 12: Evan
EVAN
For some reason, I saw that encounter going better in my head. I thought it’d be charming, in our kind of demented way. At the very least, make her laugh. Because as much as she’d given me a hard time back in the day, she always ate that stuff up, getting me jealous and riled until I snapped and stormed in to throw her over my shoulder. Then we’d fuck it out and be cool again.
This time, not so much.
I rake both hands through my hair and stare out at the dark water beyond the long pier. After Gen stormed out of the restaurant and her dipshit date gave me some unconvincing advice to leave her alone, I walked out here to get some air, get my head on straight. But so far, all I’ve succeeded in doing is wallowing over how much I miss Gen.
With a tired exhalation, I shove my hands in my pockets and leave the pier. Coming up the steps to the boardwalk, where my bike is parked along the curb, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at until I hear Gen’s voice across the street telling a cop with his flashlight pointed at her to suck her dick.
My eyebrows soar in confusion, then knit in displeasure. The cop’s got her on the street behind a car, with her arms spread, touching her finger to her nose. Meanwhile, her
dweeb date is there doing nothing while she begrudgingly walks a straight line and recites the alphabet, muttering obscenities along the way. Even from a distance I can feel the humiliation in Gen’s expression. The way her eyes stare into the distance.
I’m halfway to running over there before I stop myself. Damn it. The last thing I need right now is to go to jail for bouncing a cop’s face off the pavement. I wouldn’t make it out of a cell alive. Besides, Cooper’s already up my ass about fighting—getting locked up would give him a lifetime
I told you so
account that I’m not about to pay into. So I stand there, hugging the railing, fists clenched.
I recognize Rusty Randall, though I don’t know him well. Just that he’s got a reputation as a creep with a not-so-secret drinking problem of his own. To her credit, however, Gen takes it like a champ, never the type to let anyone see her rattled.
Still, it turns my stomach to watch this degrading episode. Dozens of people stare at her as they pass. She was stone-cold sober when I saw her an hour ago. And by how easily she’s navigating the test, I’d say it’s clear she didn’t pop into a bar to pound a bunch of shots after she left the restaurant. Which means Randall is only being a dick because he can.
Finally, after a brief conversation, she’s allowed to get in her car. I’m gratified to note she barely glances at her polo-clad date as she leaves.
I quickly get on my bike to follow her, making sure to keep my distance. I just want to make sure she gets home okay. After a while, though, I realize we aren’t headed to her house. We leave the lights of town behind, headed north along the coast where the population thins out and the stars appear overhead. Soon we’re winding down a two-lane road through the black wooded landscape where the moon over the bay appears in brief glimpses through the trees.
Eventually, she pulls onto the dirt
shoulder near a narrow footpath you can only find if you know it’s there, even in daylight. She gets out of her car, grabs a blanket from the trunk, and proceeds through the trees. I wait a few minutes before following her. At the end of the path, where the trees give way to the sandy beach, I find her sitting on a driftwood log.
Her head lifts when she hears me approach. “You suck at tailing people,” she says.
I take that as an invitation to sit. “I stopped trying to be sly about it after I realized where you were headed.”
“I didn’t come here to meet you.” With the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she buries her toes in the cool sand. “This is just where I come to think. Or it was.”
That she chose this place hits me right in the chest. Because it’s our spot. Always has been. It was our emergency rendezvous after running from the cops, the make-out spot when we were grounded and sneaking out of the house. Our secret hideout. Not even Cooper knows I come here.
“I saw what happened back there,” I tell her. She’s not much more than a black outline against the night. It’s so dark out here, moonlight gets swallowed before it hits the ground. The stars, though, are really something. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing. Just some asshole giving me a hard time.”
“That was Randall, right? Didn’t you used to babysit for him?” He wasn’t a super nice guy or anything, but I remember once or twice he let her slide on this or that in high school when other cops had it in for us pretty bad. It was sort of a transactional understanding.
“Yeah, well, things change.” Her voice is tight and sour.
She doesn’t elaborate just yet, and I don’t push. Thing I learned a long time ago: Gen will talk when she wants to. She’s a locked box—nothing gets in or out unless she wants it to. A person could spend a lifetime trying to
pick her open.
So I wait, silent, listening. Until minutes pass and she lets out a sigh.
“Not long before I left town, I blew up Randall’s family.”
I slant my head. “How’d you manage that?”
In a voice heavy with fatigue, she explains how he assaulted her in a bar after he failed to coax her to do him in the parking lot. My fists clench so hard my knuckles crack. I want to hit something. Tear it to shreds. But I don’t dare move because I want to hear everything she has to say.
“When I got home after we closed down the bar, that’s all I could think about. Vengeance. I was raging,” Gen continues. “The Randall house was only a few blocks away, so I got it in my head to walk my ass over there at three in the morning. Next thing I know, I’m banging on the door with my hair sweaty and makeup melting off my face. His wife Kayla answered the door all bleary-eyed and confused. I forced my way past her to start shouting in the middle of her living room until Rusty came downstairs.”
I don’t miss the deep crease of shame that digs into her forehead. I have to stop myself from reaching out and taking her hand.
“I told her how her sleazeball husband tried to coerce me into sex then assaulted me in a bar. How everyone in town but her knew he was sleeping around behind her back. He denied it all, of course. Said I’d come on to him. The jilted, jealous girl.” Gen laughs humorlessly. “I was a screaming lunatic who probably looked like I’d just washed in with the tide. Meanwhile, her four kids were peering out from the hallway, terrified. Kayla had no reason to believe me, so she told me to get the hell out of her house.”
I wish I’d known, wish I’d been there for her. I could have stopped this entire ordeal dead in its tracks. Kept her from leaving. Now, I’m not sure what’s worse. Wondering this whole time what made her leave, or understanding now that if I’d just been there, we wouldn’t have lost the last year
of our lives together.
“The next morning, I woke up with a monster hangover and a perfect memory of what I’d done. Every terrible moment of my total meltdown. It would’ve been less mortifying to set his cruiser on fire. At least then I’d still have had my self-respect. I couldn’t bear the shame and regret. Not for that skeezy douchebag, but for storming into that poor woman’s house and traumatizing her kids. Kayla didn’t deserve that. She was a kind woman who’d always been nice to me. Her only fault was being married to an asshole and not knowing any better.”
“I’d have killed him,” I tell her, now seriously regretting I didn’t take my shot when he had her on the boardwalk. “Beat him within an inch of his life and dragged him out to sea behind a boat.”
The urge to hop on my bike and find Randall is almost irresistible. In seconds, a montage of brutal fantasies spin through my head. Knocking every tooth out of his skull. Snapping his fingers like matchsticks. Putting his nut sack under the rear tire of my motorcycle. And that’s all for starters. Because absolutely no one lays a goddamn hand on my Genevieve.
I hate what he’s done to her. Not just that night, or this latest power trip, but the way she’s resigned herself to defeat, the exhaustion in her voice. It rips me up inside and I can’t stand it. Because there’s nothing I can do. Short of kicking his ass and spending the next twenty years in prison, I don’t know how to fix it.
“I wish you’d told me,” I say quietly.
“I—” She stops for a beat. “I didn’t tell anyone,” she finishes.
Yet I have a suspicion she’d been about to say something else.
“It’s a big part of the reason why I left,” she admits. “Not only him, but his wife and those kids. I couldn’t stomach walking around town knowing people would hear about what happened, how I made a first-rate ass of myself and ruined that family.”
“Oh, screw that.” I shake my head emphatically. “
To hell with him. You did his wife a favor. And better those kids find out sooner than later that their dad’s a bastard. Trust me, the prick had it coming.” I’ve got no sympathy for him, and neither should she.
A half-hearted
yeah
is all she mutters in response. And all I want is to make this better for her. Take away the garbage that’s clogging up her head. Help her breathe again. Then it occurs to me, I haven’t been much help tonight. Her evening had gone to hell before Randall even got there, and that’s on me.
“I’m sorry,” I say roughly. “For crashing your date. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You don’t say.”
“I’m not sure I ever am when it comes to you. Truth is, my head hasn’t been right for about a year now.”
“I can’t be responsible for your happiness, Evan. I can barely account for myself.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. When you left, my whole life changed. It would be like if Cooper suddenly disappeared. A huge piece of me broke off and was just gone.” I scrub a hand over my face. “So much of me was wrapped up in us. And then you came back, and it’s got me all twisted up inside. Because you’re here, but you’re not really back. Not like it was. I don’t know how to fit everything into place the way it was before, so I’m just walking around all out of sorts.”
Agony lodges in my throat. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a goner for this girl. Turning myself inside out to keep her attention. Always terrified that one day she’d realize I was a loser who wasn’t worth her time, figure out she’s always had the option to do better. Last year, I thought she’d reached that conclusion, but it turns out I was the idiot thinking her leaving had anything to do with my dumb ass.
“I’m not trying to hurt
you,” she says softly.
Silence falls over us. Not strained or uncomfortable, because it’s never that way with me and Gen, even when we want to murder each other.
“I remember the first time I knew I wanted to kiss you,” I finally say, not quite sure where the sentiment even came from. But the memory is clearer than day. It was the summer before eighth grade. I’d been making a fool of myself for weeks trying to impress her, make her laugh. I didn’t know yet that’s how crushes start. When the balance tips from friendship to attraction. “A few weeks before we started eighth grade. We were all out there diving off the old pier.”
She gives a quiet laugh. “God, that thing was a death trap.”
It really was, that decrepit wooden pier half sunken into the waves and falling apart. Victim of a hurricane years prior, infested with rusty nails and splinters. At some point, high school kids had hauled a metal ladder out to the part of the pier that was still standing and tied it to a pylon with bungee cords. It was a sort of rite of passage to swim out through the crashing waves, climb the rickety thing, and leap off the top railing. Then all you had to do was not let the waves throw you back against the pylons covered in barnacles that would tear the flesh off your bones.
“There was that ninth-grader—Jared or Jackson or somebody. He’d been flirting with you all afternoon, doing flips off the pier like he was so damn cool. And being all obnoxious about it too. Like,
hey, look at me, I’m such a badass
. So you dared him to jump to one of the pylons from the pier. It was maybe a ten-foot leap to a one-foot target, and right below were all sorts of torn-up, jagged pieces sticking up out of the water. With the waves just absolutely thrashing below us.” I grin. “Suddenly he wasn’t so loud anymore. Starts making excuses and shit. And while everyone’s ragging on him for chickening out, you take a running start and go flying through the air. I was looking at Cooper for the split
second like, oh fuck, we’re gonna have to jump in after you and drag you back to shore when you break your neck or get impaled on something. But then you nailed it. Perfect landing. Coolest thing I’d ever seen.”
She laughs to herself, remembering. “I got stung by a jellyfish after I jumped down. But I had to be chill about it, you know. Didn’t want to look like a dumbass for jumping out there in the first place.”
“Yeah, probably a good idea. You would’ve had ten pervert boys whipping their tiny dicks out to pee on your leg.” We both shudder in disgust at that dodged bullet.
“You didn’t kiss me that day, though,” she points out. “Why not?”
“Because you’re fucking scary.”
“Oh.” She laughs, elbowing my arm good-naturedly.
“I mean, I know we’d been friends for years by then, but when you figure out you have a crush on someone, it’s like you’re starting from scratch. I didn’t know how to approach you.”
“You figured it out.”
She shifts beside me, and I sense the change in the air between us. Something happens. Without her saying a word, I feel her decide to not be mad at me anymore.
“Didn’t have a choice,” I admit. “I was going to claw out of my skin if I didn’t find out what your lips felt like.”
“Maybe you should have.” The blanket drops from around her shoulders. She turns to look at me. “Eaten yourself alive. Spared us both the trouble.”
“Believe me, there’s no version of this”—I gesture between us—“where we don’t get together, Fred. One way or another. I can tell you that for certain.”
“And to hell with the collateral damage.”
“Yes.”
Without hesitation.
“While it all burns around us.”
“I like it that way.” Because nothing else matters when she’s mine. Nothing. She’s everything and all of it.
“There’s something wrong with us,” she murmurs, closing the space between us until I feel her arm brush mine and her hair sweep across my shoulder in the breeze. “It shouldn’t feel like this.”
“How should it feel?” I haven’t the slightest idea what that means, but I wouldn’t change the way I feel about her for anything.
“I don’t know. But not this intense.”
I can’t resist the urge any longer. I reach out to tentatively brush her hair behind her ear, then thread my fingers through the long, soft strands at the back of her neck when she tilts her head into my touch.
“Do you want me to leave?” I ask hoarsely.
“I want you to kiss me.”
“You know what’ll happen if I do, Gen.”
Heat flares in her eyes, those vivid blue depths that never fail to draw me in. “Yeah? What’ll happen?” she asks, the slight curve of her lips telling me she already knows the answer but wants to hear me say it.
“I’ll kiss you.” I drag my thumb along the nape of her neck. “And then … then you’ll ask me to fuck you.”
Her breath hitches. “And then what?” Her voice is shaky.
“You know what.” I gulp through the sudden onslaught of pure, carnal lust. “I can never say no to you.”
“I know the feeling,” she says, and then her lips touch mine and from there I’m no longer in control. We become this autonomous thing with a mind of its own. Like blacking out. She bites my lip with a soft moan, grabbing a fistful of my T-shirt. I’m rock hard and ready to be inside her, but I don’t
want this to end.
“Let me taste you,” I whisper against her mouth.
Lying back on the log, the blanket beneath her, she parts her legs for me, granting me the access I desperately crave. Not even trying to be polite about it, I pull down her lacy panties, shove them in my pocket, and throw her leg over my shoulder.
“I’ve missed this,” I say with a happy groan.
God, and I have. I missed the way she pulls my hair when I suck her clit, arching her back to grind against my face as I drag my tongue over her delicate flesh. I missed her soft sighs of pleasure. Her fingers tangled in my hair.
I push her knees up to her chest, spreading her open, as she trembles against my mouth. She’s quiet, all but holding her breath. At least until I work two fingers inside her. Then she moans uncontrollably, and it’s almost unfair how fast she comes. I want to make it last for her, but I’m also greedy to make her shake for me.
I don’t even expect her to fuck me. I’d be happy to go down on her every day and twice on Sunday just to go home and yank it to the memory. But afterward Gen throws the blanket on the sand and starts unzipping my jeans. She takes my cock in her hand and strokes me, slow and firm. We don’t speak. As if we’re both afraid words will shatter the darkness, the seclusion that makes this all possible. Out here, alone and in secret, is it even real? We can be anyone, do anything. If no one knows, it never happened.
She sits me on the blanket, both of us still clothed. She knows I’ve got a condom in my pocket because I almost always do, so she takes it, rips it open and slides it on me before sliding herself down on my dick. So wet and tight. Her hips rock back and forth, taking me deep, summoning a ragged breath from my lungs. I drag down the zipper of her dress and unhook her bra to grab two handfuls of her breasts. Squeezing. Sucking her nipples while she rides me. Burying my
face in her warm skin.
It’s fucking perfection.
Small noises start to escape her lips. Sighs that become louder, more desperate. Then she loses all control of her voice, moaning against my ear.
“Harder,” she begs me. “Please, Evan. Harder.”
I grab her ass, holding her above me while I thrust into her. She bites my shoulder. I don’t know why that always does it, but seconds later I come, hard, shaking as I hold her tight to my chest. Every time with Gen is the best sex I’ve ever had. Raw and unfiltered, the most honest we know how to be.
If only that feeling could last forever.