“Stop.” She tries to shove me to the side, but the size difference is to my benefit.
“No.” I snap at her, snatching her arms up and pulling her into me, close, to fucking close for my comfort. “Fucking listen to me, Ella. You have way too much fucking potential to blow your life up before you even have a slight chance of starting it.” She looks up at me, her eyes softening for a second. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but last time I saw you, you had taken a fucking Xanax bar and now you’re doing coke in the bathroom?”
“I’m just trying it out.” She shrugs.
“Bullshit.” I snap at her.
“What?”
“No one just tries it out, in a bathroom, alone, by themselves. Tell me what the fuck is going on? Do I need to go beat your fuck boy’s ass?” She smirks up at me, shaking her head.
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.” But I have a feeling that I’m to blame for all of this… probably not all, but some. “This is just a lot, and I didn’t really want to be in it all.” She shrugs.
“Okay, I can understand that.”
“And he’s pissed at me right now.” She rolls her eyes.
“Why?”
“Do you really have to ask?” She nearly laughs as she looks at me again. But I’m still not sure what she’s meaning, so I just continue to look down at her, confused. Sighing, she shakes her head. “You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, after you walked out of the house, he got all ‘what the fuck is going on there?’ I told him nothing, but he didn’t believe me. Kept accusing me of…” she trails.
“Accusing you of what?”
“Everything.” She pauses. “He asked me if I had fucked you.” Is it fucked up that just her saying those words causes my dick to betray me and I become uncomfortable, extremely conflicted? Because as fucked up as the whole situation is and as much as I have tried to talk myself out of any sort of thoughts, they still taunt me in my dreams. Imagining what she looks like completely naked underneath me as I fuck her and the sounds as they come out of her mouth, play continuously when I’m asleep. “I told him, I hadn’t.” She swallows, and I have to take a step back, but the bathroom is small, and I have nowhere to go. Nowhere for me to find the distance from her that I desperately need. “That’s when he snapped, and you walked in.” I just nod my head. “He saw me as you asked me if I was okay and then got pissed off even more. So,” she shrugs, “he told me if I hadn’t, I wanted to. As if he was begging me to tell him he was wrong. Then he got pissed when I said nothing and said we were leaving.”
“Where is he now?” I’m not sure what else to ask her as I push the thought of her wanting to fuck me out of my mind. Keeping it stuffed away in the box of things that I cannot let myself think about.
“Outside, I told him I needed to use the bathroom and I would be right there.” She whispers as she looks up at me and I nod.
“You’re sure you feel safe riding back with him. I know the drive is long.”
“Yeah, he’s harmless.” She shrugs. “Plus, he would be an idiot to do anything, especially after seeing everyone.” It makes me smirk as I continue to look down at her.
“Okay.” I nod as I move around her, leaning against the sink, and she walks to the door. Reaching out, I spin her around to look at her before I even realize what I’m doing. Pulling her to me, I feel my face lowering to her before I have to stop myself. “El, I understand you want to experience life, which includes drugs and shit, but just please be smart about them. Coke is some addictive shit, and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Isn’t it too late for that, Axe? The ‘seeing me hurt’part.” She looks up at me and our eyes lock.
“I hadn’t intended on you seeing that.” I whisper to her.
“But didn’t you?” She looks up at me again. “You knew I would figure out a way to sneak back down. If you didn’t want me to see, you should have taken her up to your room.” She’s right. I had intended for her to see it. I just thought that it would be easier if she left hurt. That if she left hurt, it would be easier to put distance between us. “You needed to push me away enough, to hurt me, so that I would stay away. Well congratulations Carter, you fucking did it.” For some reason, when she calls me Carter, it fucking hurts. “Tell me I’m wrong.” She whispers, but I can’t. She knows I can’t. “That’s what I thought.” She nods her head again before she turns around and opens the door. She quickly pushes out of it. When she’s finally clear of the opening, I see Caroline looking at me with a goddamn smirk on her face and I roll my eyes.
“Fuck off.” I mutter, causing her to laugh as I swipe away the rest of the coke from the counter.
“Aw, man. That would have definitely made today a little more tolerable.” Rolling my eyes, I start to leave the house again when I hear her. “What was that about?”
“I figured out a way to hurt her enough to push her away.” Instantly, her face falls.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing that I will ever be proud of.” I shake my head as I start to leave again.
