Cherry Pie

…Except, that man is him. I want to believe it’s statistically impossible, but here we are. And we both know it. He’s seen the tattoo on my bikini line, and I wonder for a moment if part of me knew the second his face darkened seeing it outside. But now, face to face, both of us eyeing each other’s tattoos and knowing the truth, there’s no hiding from it any longer.

Slowly, Marshall shakes his head.

“What the fuck, Kendall!” He hisses, his jaw tightening as a shadow crosses darkly across his face.

“I—Mr. Bane—”

“What the fuck were you doing on that website?!” He spits. It’s not anger in his eyes. It’s more like… shock. A touch of fear. A dash of concern, and a whole cup of lust.

I shiver, heat teasing through me. But I focus, glaring at him right back.

“Me? What were you doing on that website?!” I spit right back.

Marshall glares back, his jaw tight.

“You know damn well,” he growls lowly.

“And so you’re angry at me?”.

“I’m an adult, Kendall!” he roars.

“So am I!”

“Barely!” his voice booms across the small divide between us, and I panic, worrying that Amy might hear us.

“She’s inside.” He growls lowly as he answers my fears as if reading my freaking mind. “And you are barely an adult.”

Marshall’s shoulders heave, his muscles clenching and rippling before my eyes as I stand there trembling, unsure if I’m terrified, mortified, or very turned on. Or maybe all three.

“And are you fucking insane?” he hisses, his eyes narrowing at me. “The fuck are you doing selling yourself?!”

I wince, and he shakes his head, his shoulder loosening slightly.

“Jesus Christ, Kendall. You parents have loads of money.”

And here we are, to the crux of the whole problem. See, my parents had money. Had—past tense. My dad died when I was young, when we still lived in Manhattan. But when he was alive, he was this high-powered Wall Street wiz, putting away a fortune before a bad heart took him when I was five. That’s when we moved out here to wealthy, snobby Greenwich. A few years later, my mom hooked up with Tony, my stepdad. And that big fortune my dad basically died for?

Well, it’s been bleeding ever since.

Because aside from being an asshole and kind of a creep, Tony does one other thing really well: lose money on bad investments. Tony fancies himself an “entrepreneur,” and his specially is bars and nightclubs. And since he and my mom got married, he’s opened, spent a fortune on, and then lost five of them. I knew it was bad. I knew things were just… different around the house. No new cars. No new clothes for my mom. The twice weekly flower deliveries stopped. But I kept my head down, applied to Stanford, and got in.

And then, I found out we were broke. No, not broke. Broke would be better than what we really were, which was in a bottomless pit of debt.

“You don’t know what you’re taking about,” I say quietly.

Marshall scowls, turning and looking away. “Does Amy know?”

I blink. “Know what?”

He turns back, his eyes narrowing at me. “About your little stunt online. About selling your—”

“No!” I blanche, shaking my head. “God no!”

No, my best friend doesn’t know that I went on a weird, private website for wealthy, powerful men in order to sell my virginity to one of them to pay for college. There are some things you don’t even share with your best friend.

I swallow, shivering as I force myself to meet his steely gaze.

God is he hot. It’s making this even harder. As if it wasn’t already a nightmare that I put my v-card for sale online, only for it to be bought by my best friend’s dad. It has to be my best friend’s dad who is insanely good looking, who I’ve crushed on for as long as I was even remotely aware of what a crush was.

“What…” I trail off, biting my lip. “What now?” I whisper.

Marshall frowns.

“Now? Now you go to your fucking room, and we never speak about this again.”

Something clicks inside of me. I know I should just leave it. I know he’s right, and that the best, or only way out of this is to just pretend it never happened, somehow get through this summer without dying of embarrassment, and then go off to college.

…Somehow. Which might be tough without money.

But there’s something in his tone that digs into me. Something “send me to my room” that almost insinuates that this is my fault. Like somehow this is all on me, and it has nothing to do with him being on a website like that, belonging to a club like that, spending and insane amount of money on a young girl’s virginity. And when I think of it like that, something snaps.

“No,” I snap, folding my arms over my chest.