Okay, reality check: Tallulah was the teacher.
A woman’s body is a complicated organism until you are taught her secrets. Every ‘Tallulah’ lesson was mouthwatering and one I hoped to fail so I could be ‘instructed’ all over again.
After another ‘lesson’ in the attic, we were putting on our clothes when she told me, “Hey, you know that new girl Julie?”
I didn’t. As far as any girl other than a fellow foster, all I saw was Tallulah.
She picked up a shirt off the floor and tossed it on the unmade bed. “Well, she said…”
Should’ve been listening, but I was very busy watching Tallulah and her G-string squeeze into a pair of jeans I was already wanting her out of again.
“Johnny!”
I looked up from her perfect ass. “Huh?”
“Julie? Finn? All I just said?”
“Ah-huh.” I nodded, pretending to have been listening.
Truth was, Finn was the only foster who I hadn’t bonded with yet. He was pretentious. What else can I say? He had an aura about him that us feel we were below him. He’d become a bit of a baseball star and had colleges chasing him. Not exactly the ‘poor me, life as a foster is hell…’ so I gave not even two fucks what she was saying about him.
However, Tallulah could be very persuasive when she wanted to be. In a bra and unbuckled jeans, she came to me. “I’m being serious.”
My hands took hold of her hips, and I kissed her neck. “About what?”
She sighed, realizing I hadn’t heard shit. “If I take off my jeans again, will you promise to do as I ask?”
Erection begging for another release, I promised to do whatever she demanded and then some. That’s why, when we were done and I had taken her home in the foster community car named Bertha, I had an extra skip in my step when I hollered, “Hey, Finn,” as I pushed the door open to his room, “I’m supposed to relay that a girl named—” I came to an abrupt halt when I saw a razor blade pinched between two of his fingers, hovering slightly above the skin on his forearm.
Shocked, my jaw popped open.
What the fuck!?
As if he weren’t doing something horrible to himself, an annoyed green-eyed glare greeted me. “You didn’t knock.”
No. I didn’t. I’d been too high on Tallulah and forgot the pact that none of us guys entered a room without knocking first. As teenage boys, we seldom found enough ‘alone’ time, and each of us understood the need for it. Gage and Ethan would stick a sock on the doorknob to warn the other since they shared the space. Seb and Caleb would text. Finn didn’t have a roommate right now, so he had the most freedom. If Dale or Harmony knew of our, uh, private time, they never voiced it. I, for one, never jacked off in the shower, because, well, imagination or not, my water friend might get a hell of a shock. I stuck to my room, but with Tallulah, there wasn’t much need for it. She always left me wanting more, yet well sated.
None of that seemed important. Not when I saw my foster brother about to slice into his lightly freckled skin with a goddamned razor blade. “Finn. What are you?—”
“I’m not.” He sighed. “At least, not anymore.”
Anymore?
Tallulah had been trying to tell me she suspected something. That Finn wasn’t getting with any of the girls who chased. Not exactly normal ‘stud’ teenage boy behavior. Now I saw a potential reason why. How long had this been going on?
“Talk to me.” I entered the room and shut the door, not giving him an option to refuse me. I sank beside him on the mattress, staring at the sharp blade. There wasn’t any blood, but Finn said not anymore, meaning he’d done it in the past, possibly the recent past. Even though I wasn’t a fan of his, I couldn’t help feeling like I failed him somehow.
“I’ve been cutting for years,” he admitted, lifting the blade to stare at it.
Years? “Why?” Who made him feel like he had to harm himself? I sucked in a breath. Who knew this was happening? Did Ethan, Gage, Seb, or Caleb? Fuck. Did Dale?
Still gazing at the blade, Finn shrugged. “He knows.” His gaze slid from the blade to me. “Dale’s been helping me work through it.”
I thought back on the last couple of years and how Dale seemed to observe all of us, but how his gaze lingered most on Finn. I didn’t put it together until now. Shit. Dale already lost a foster because of suicide. He must have seen the signs in Finn. “That’s good.” I swallowed the thick saliva clogging my throat. “Finn, I should have?—”
“Johnny, stop. You can’t be a Dale Junior to us all.”
Not sure what that meant, worry for Finn had me struggling to draw breath into my lungs.
