I knew I was getting very ahead of myself already. I needed to find out if I could even accept Brad Chalmers myself before I worried about his new family accepting me. But that fact didn’t seem to have much influence over my thoughts. I didn’t even know if I could wait until Friday to meet Brad. When I went out to eat dinner with my family I was twitchy. I felt like I was with the wrong people all of a sudden, and that bothered me.
Chapter Fifteen: Tamara
I was nervous heading in to school that morning, but my anticipation of Friday kept my energy levels up…
And then when I opened my locker, a small waterfall of condoms in different colours and styles slid out onto my feet.
I stared at the mess, everyone else who had been close enough to see what happened standing around giggling and waiting to see what I would do next.
The stupid thing was, all I could think at first was, this wasn’t Ashleigh. She would have been able to afford to put on a much bigger show.
This was the sort of thing I would expect from someone on a budget more in line with Steven’s. And given our last fight, I could somehow see how his messed-up mind would have come up with this assault.
I didn’t want any teachers to come by and see, because there was no good way to explain the situation. So I quickly gathered the lot of them up and stuffed them back in my locker.
I fled to my first class, leaving behind shouts of, “Got another big night planned huh, Tamara?” and, “You’re gonna need some lube with that!” I hadn’t minded everyone thinking what they wanted about my sex life before, but now I suspected Steven was no longer on my side I just felt filthy and violated. I wanted nothing more than to run straight to Ms. Miller’s office and tell her about every horrible thing that had happened to me. Make it her problem. That was her job, wasn’t it?
But getting Ms. Miller involved had been the real start of all my problems. I bet she would have heard that I’d slept with Steven, too. I had a funny feeling she would be even less helpful given that detail.
Suddenly Steven was in front of me, shaking me out of my thoughts.
“Hey, babe.” He dropped a light punch on my arm that made me reel. “Get my little present all right?”
I did not want to deal with whatever game he thought he was playing with me. I wriggled past without meeting his eyes.
Of course he easily got ahead of me again with those long legs. He blocked his way with his body… the same body I knew better than anyone else’s, maybe including my own. “Well this is strange, Tamara. First you couldn’t get enough of bothering all of us, and now you’re trying to get away without even some basic politeness.”
The bastard was overwhelming my senses, my resistance, and somehow I could tell he knew it.
Well, if what he wanted was verbal proof of my humiliation, I could give him that. “I got your condoms, Steven. If you were trying to come up with a creative way of expressing ‘fuck you’, then congratulations: you succeeded.”
I heard him chuckle as I walked on.
“That’s hilarious: I never would have thought of that.”
“What do you want, Steven?” He was still following me.
“I want you to understand, really clearly, that you do not have one over me just because you think you know some things. You don’t have the power to screw up my life, Tamara. I’m not going to give you that power.”
When he was the one who’d come after me, scared me, then made me think losing my virginity to him was a good idea! I couldn’t believe I’d been planning to apologise to this arse. “Okay, well, message received, okay? You don’t need to keep hammering it in. I’d just like you to leave me alone.”
He didn’t leave me alone. “If you’d followed that suggestion yourself in the first place, Tamara, you would never have gotten yourself into this trouble.”
This time I was the one who whirled to cut him off. “Are you claiming I somehow made you—you—”
I couldn’t say the words for what he’d done to me. I turned and ran—and again he caught up to me easily. Brought me to a halt with a jerk by grabbing my wrist. I felt fear as he pulled me close and loomed over: a shiver that went through my whole body—and I meant every part. It was so incredibly wrong that he could make me feel that way when he was essentially threatening me.
It caused the first twinge of worry to strike me about my intended meeting with my biological father on Friday, and that pissed me off. I wasn’t going to let Steven ruin this as well.
“For the record, Steven, you don’t have to give me anything at this point. I already possess everything I need to put an end to you… if you push me.”
“Oh, I’m going to push you.” His arm wrapped around my waist and yanked me in close to him. Too close—I could feel that he was turned on by this as well.
I didn’t have to like him to receive pleasure from him. And I now had in my possession a supply of condoms that seemed beyond anything we could get through in the near future…
And I was a fucking idiot to even consider it. I got my hands free and pushed against his chest, achieving nothing but giving myself a good feel of the hard muscles under his shirt. Why was nobody ever around to intervene in these situations?
Steven held me tight against him. With shaking desperation, I pushed at him again. I needed to get away before I got myself into something else that was going to have consequences.