Song of the Fireflies

“You believe that, don’t you?” I asked calmly, but my heart was slowly breaking every second that went by that my mother was treating me like a criminal, having no faith in me whatsoever.

My dad grabbed the phone from her. I heard her voice fade quickly and then her arguing with him.

“Brayelle, it’s Dad. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you.”

“Why?”

“Because you need to come home and you need to face what you did.”

“Face what I did?” I mocked and bit my bottom lip. “I-I guess I should’ve known that both of you would accuse me.”

“We’re not accusing you,” my dad said sternly. “We just—”

“—not accusing me?” I snapped cutting him off. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. Neither one of you have asked how I am. Neither of you have asked me if it was an accident.”

“Well, if it was an accident, then why did you run?” my dad asked.

“Because I was stupid and I was scared.”

“Brayelle, only the guilty run.”

My heart broke completely when he said that. I felt like I wanted to cry, but I had already cried so much that I had no tears left. I sucked in a sharp breath, rounded my chin, and said, “Dad, I just want you and Mom to know that I love you very much. And I love Rian and please tell her that for me. I know I wasn’t the best kid growing up, and I gave you both a lot of hell and for that I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more like Rian.”

“Honey, why are you saying these things?” My dad’s tone began to change, and maybe he really was starting to worry about where this was heading, but I wasn’t going to fall for it.

“Just tell Mom and Rian that I love them.”

“Brayelle?” He sounded genuinely worried. But it was too late for that.

I hung up.

Elias

I stepped the rest of the way out of the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as Bray set the phone back down.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Who were you talking to?”

“No one,” she said. “Well, I was talking to myself. Rehearsing. I was going to call my mom and dad, a-and maybe my sister, but I changed my mind.”

I nodded and draped the towel over the back of my neck. I had heard everything she said to her parents on the phone, but she didn’t want me to know, and I thought it was better that I just pretended not to know.

Her conversation put a knot in my chest. The things she had said to them sounded like good-bye, the kind of good-bye that always ends badly. I thought about that painting that had been our life together, the black-and-white one that continuously filled with colors as each event unfolded and made us who we were. But that painting had become something so dark that Bosch couldn’t touch it.

“Caleb said he would eat me out on the hood of Tate’s Jeep,” she said.

I didn’t know whether to go outside and beat the shit out of him or just continue to stand there, dumbfounded by her swift change of mood.

Ultimately, I opted for beating for the shit out of Caleb.

I turned on my heel and went for the door, still only dressed in my boxers, but Bray was behind me in a flash and she grabbed me around the waist.

“No,” she whispered onto the shell of my ear as one hand came down and grabbed a handful of me. “Caleb was just being Caleb. He didn’t really mean it.”

I didn’t give a shit. I opened the door anyway, but Bray slammed it shut with the palm of her other hand and I whirled around just as she pushed my back against the door. She stripped off her shirt and took me into a deep kiss, pinning me against the door with her hand still grabbing my cock, rock hard beneath her palm.

She pulled the wet towel from around my neck. I grabbed both sides of her head and pulled her hair, forcing her neck back and pushing the tip of my tongue down the center of her throat.

“What do you want to do to me?” she asked, squeezing and pulling my c**k in her hand as her fingers tightened around it.

A low growl reverberated through my chest. My teeth clamped down on her chin, and then I slid my tongue into her warm mouth.

“I want what you want,” I said breathily and kissed her even harder, wrapping my arms around her body and crushing hers against mine.

Her hand came out of my boxers and she dug all ten of her fingernails into my back. “I want everything,” she said, and it sent a tremor through my cock.

I turned her around, stripped her shorts and panties off, and forced her onto her knees in the center of the bed.

Bray

When you know you’re going to die soon, all bets are off. You feel like the person you always wanted to be, the fearless, uninhibited member of society who doesn’t give a flying f**k what anyone else thinks. You want to do and say all of the things that you were always afraid to do and say. You want to drink and do drugs until you can’t see straight, punch a random stranger in the face just for looking like an ass**le, f**k until you can’t feel your legs anymore.

Elias raised my ass in the air and shoved my face against the mattress before spreading my legs apart with both hands, exposing me to the cool air. He slid a finger between my nether lips and played with my clit, rubbing and teasing and exploring until I couldn’t help but bite down on my bottom lip out of frustration.

“Fuck me,” I moaned. “Please, just f**k me.”

“Not yet,” he said, and I felt the heat from his breath closing around my pu**y. A loud moan moved through my throat as I felt the sensation of my clit being sucked hard between his lips and then tugged on with his teeth.

I tried to reach between my legs to touch his face, to feel the movement of his jaw as he licked me, but he caught my fingers in his mouth and sucked on them before grabbing both of my wrists and pinning them behind my back.

“Be f**king still,” he said.

He spread my legs apart even further and slipped his tongue inside my wetness. I gasped and moaned and whimpered. I wanted to see it, I wanted to watch him lick me, but with my cheek pressed against the mattress, all I could see was my ass raised in the air and Elias’s legs, bent at the knees, behind me. He licked me fast and hard, and I pushed my ass toward him. Then he sucked on my clit again, so hard I tried to pull away, because it was too intense.

“God, please don’t stop,” I begged him.

He flicked the tip of his tongue against my little bead, spreading my lips with the fingers of his free hand. When he let go of my wrists, I found the sheets above my head and grasped them tight. Two fingers slid into my pu**y, and he moved them in and out of me while he licked my clit as I began to crawl upward across the bed.