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Using his grip, he tugs my body away from the tree, and I land on my back. Wincing, a root pokes from the ground into my hip. Slowed by the pain, I can’t move fast enough. He’s on top of me, and his body presses into mine as I freeze underneath him. His steady breath is on my lips, and childishly, I turn my face away. Elijah grips my hair, twisting it around his hand. He tugs, and my scalp burns with pain. I have to look at him, and he stares into my face as if he hates me.
“Please,” I whisper.
His strong body pins me down firmly. I can’t budge him like when we were smaller. Back then, we were the same height, and he was a lot thinner. Our play fights were evenly matched as we rolled across the floor of the lake house, laughing hysterically until his mother came into the room and screamed for us to shut the fuck up.
A tear slips down my cheek, and his gaze stays on it until it falls and disappears into the ground. Whimpering, I wait underneath him, feeling his strength, his ripped and firm muscles trapping me with no effort.
I try again. “We were friends.”
Elijah smiles coldly as he tugs my hair back, and I have to lift my chin. He lowers his face on my outstretched neck, and he just stays there. He holds me underneath his body, and his muscles relax as his own breathing picks up. His dark spiky hair rubs the skin under my chin, and I remember how he used to timidly lift his hand and touch my hair. It stopped at my waist back then. He would describe how it was soft, like touching a cloud floating by in the air.
I shut my eyes tight and pray for that little boy to come back. He moves slightly again, and his breath heats my collarbone. I realize slowly that my sweatshirt has ridden up, exposing my stomach. I turn my head as his leg presses between mine, forcing my thighs apart. In my head, I pray for the friend I had to return to me before this crazy man harms me.
“Please let me go,” I whisper in his hair. “Don’t rape me.”
Elijah lifts off me as if my words have thrown him back. He stares down on me as if I shouldn’t have had that thought. But what other thought should I have? He moves away slowly. And as I start to cry, he disappears like an apparition into the dark woods.
I walk home alone, careful not to let anyone see me leave the party. My fists squeeze until my short nails dig into my palms. I thought I would fight. That’s what I always told myself. I told myself that I knew exactly what I would do if a man touched me. I’d rip the asshole’s hairy balls off and wear them around town like earrings as a warning to all the other deviant assholes.
But I never thought Elijah Harlow would return to hurt me.
My pace quickens as I hit Brunswick Avenue, and when a strange man cat-calls me, I take off running. He laughs as I scurry away like a terrified rabbit leaping into a hedge. I don’t care. I can’t fake being brave while my body is trembling. Taking silly risks is a luxury now that I know Elijah is in more than just my imagination.
Chapter Four
Elijah
Olivia Rowden’s[3]father hated me, and he’d like me less if he knew what I had done Friday night. He had everything to do with me leaving, and I blame her as much as I blame him.
“You’re late,” says Norris as I walk into work.
“The place is empty,” I answer as I grab a black server apron off the hook by the bar and wrap the ties around my waist. I only stay behind the bar, but sometimes I have to go out on the floor when someone’s acting stupid. Usually, it’s one of those stuck-up college kids. Why can’t they stay on campus when they want to get high?
The Old Town Inn is a dive, and old man Norris who owns it cards everyone that tries to get a drink at the bar. Norris didn’t card me when I came in looking for a job. I look too rough to be only twenty. He eyed me up and down and then asked if I knew how to handle a drunk. I told him I had served time but was clean for years. Morris nodded his head and stepped behind the bar. A fight did break out on my second night, but I tossed that loser out like he was a bag of trash. With a smirk on his face, Norris nodded again, and at the end of the night, I got paid in cash.
“Where were you?” he asks. “At the school?”
Norris knows I don’t like talking about myself, but he will pry. “I might have to cut back on my hours. They might let me in.”
He nods again. “You’re wasting time here. I can teach you everything I know, but it won’t take four years.”
I smirk. “Three years. I plan to be out in three years.”
A blonde comes in, and I stop staring when she turns around. I didn’t expect Olivia to come in here. She sits at the bar with a giggling group of followers, and her gaze bobs down my chest and then back up to my face. She gives me her bestfuck melook and opens her pink lips slowly like she’s about to suck dick.[4]
“I’ll have a frozen margarita,” she giggles like that shit is cute.
“Can I see some I.D.?”
She pouts, but her gaze stays on me as she slips a card out of her tiny purse. She’ll be lucky to leave this neighborhood carrying that tiny bag. The driver’s license has her photo on it, but the rest of it is obviously fake.
I shake my head, toss the plastic on the counter, and come back with a Bud Light.
She scowls at the can and then looks at me like I’m stupid. “I asked for a margarita.”
“We don’t serve that here. And I wouldn’t flash that bag around if you plan to keep it.” I lean in on the bar, and she doesn’t look away. “You might think this is your playground, but bitch, no one’s playing up in here.”
The cute chatter stops instantly as she and her groupies get up in a hurry to leave. “I’m not paying for that.” Like a flock of geese waddling across the road, the blonde and her friends head for the door.
