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“What?” I ask, dazed and distracted by the six-foot-six hockey player still nine inches deep inside me. “You can have the ring back.”
“What?” he shouts, his voice too shrill and loud. Toren takes my legs in his hands then, kissing my ankle before he wraps them around his waist and pulls me up into his arms. Sinking me down.
Standing up and carrying me while he’s still entirely inside of me.
He grabs the phone off my stomach before it can fall to the ground, flipping it up to his ear as he takes it off speakerphone.
“I think you heard her,” Toren says. “Engagement is off—not that it was ever really on.” He grins brightly, eyes blazing, intense and set only on me. “Besides, she’s really busy right now.”
“You fucking asshole—”
Toren hangs up then, tossing my phone on the bed, before pressing me entirely into the space between the paintings on one of my walls, before thrusting up into me. Again and again.
It feels deep, so deep I swear I could look down and see him through my stomach.
“More, please.”
“My needy baby,” he says, a little mockingly as he jostles my whole body with his next thrust. “Come again for me, doll, and when you’re dripping on me, I’ll give you more.”
• • •
Afterward, we lie in a heap, snuggled close together. I’m floating on a cloud, blissful beyond my imagination. It’s almost like I’m high. “I wish you’d never left,” I mumble into his chest, fingers skating and swirling over patterns.
Toren grunts. “Yeah. Didn’t leave me much of a choice, Lil.”
The words sound like they should be bitter, but they’re not.
“You could’ve just told me,” he says, breath heavy, eyes closing as he sinks back down into my mattress. “I would’ve left you alone, you know? I just don’t understand—”
“What are you . . . what are you talking about?”
“The night in the hospital, when you told me that our scars matched? I didn’t think . . . If I’d known I scared you, I would have left you alone. You always told me everything . . . I didn’t understand.”
“You didn’t scare me.”
That makes him pause.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . you didn’t scare me. You didn’t . . .” I trail off in confusion. It suddenly feels like Toren’s crowding into my space. I press off his chest, scoot back, and kneel between his now spread legs. My thigh is pressed into his, always touching, always some form of contact. “Dad said you were mad at me.”
His expression darkens, but he stays calm and quiet, at least outwardly. “Keep going, Lil.”
“He told me that you were mad at me. Because I’d gotten hurt, that meant the police had to know and you were in trouble. You and your brothers—”
His jaw clenches. “Not— They’re not my brothers. You know that.”
I nod. There’s only one person he’s ever called his brother. Henry.
“Go on, please. I need to hear it.”
“He said the only way I could make sure you weren’t in more trouble, the only way he could help you is if I signed the papers saying nothing happened. So I did. I was still in the hospital and confused, but I did it.” I swallow past the strange lump forming in my throat. I don’t like talking about that night. “I would’ve done whatever he said if it meant protecting you, you know?”
Toren moves then, abruptly, my bed shifting with his weight. It makes me seasick, rocking me backward, but he catches my arms, lifting me as if I weigh nothing to move his leg underneath me. Planting his feet on the ground, he runs his hands through his hair.
Desperately, I grab his arm, eyes round and probably terrified. Why did I do that? Still, I can’t talk myself into letting him go. This isn’t like before. If I could sink myself into his skin, I would. I’m not scared anymore—of my dad, of being on my own.
I know it might hurt. I know that happiness is relative, but . . .
