If I let it get that far, which I won’t.
I never do.
She’s mine.
Even if she never looks at me or speaks to me again, she’s mine.
Even if I’ve been a horrible asshole to her for two years and she pales every time I pull into the parking lot on my motorcycle, she is mine.
Feeling choked, I stride down the aisle toward my usual seat, directly behind Allie, and slam my textbook down onto the desk, shooting Allie’s shoulders up to her perfect, little ears. Startled, the basketball player looks up at me, backing away so quickly, he knocks into a desk across the aisle. “H-hey, Moore. What’s up?”
He’s not the first to try and make a move on Allie.
He knew this was coming, it’s there in his darting eyes. Yet he tried anyway.
Because she’s worth the risk of an ass kicking. She’s worth a lifetime of them.
“Do you have a class this period?” I ask him.
The guy nods, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “Yeah…”
My smile is murderous. “Well get the fuck to it, then.”
He almost trips over himself to get out of the classroom and I resume my daily routine. Staring at the back of Allie’s head, tracing the curve of her shoulders, my cock getting hard over her expensive lavender scent. “So that’s what you like.” I say, leaning forward to speak an inch from the back of her neck. “You like them with spiffy crew cuts and letterman jackets. Prospects for college. A trust fund. Don’t you? A spoiled rich girl like you needs someone who can keep her in the lap of luxury. I bet you’d introduce him to daddy, wouldn’t you?”
She doesn’t respond. She never does.
Her eyes stay resolutely on the front of the class where the teacher has started writing today’s lesson outline on the board. My fingers dig into my palms, a trapped bellow creating pressure on the inside of my throat.
Talk to me.
Look at me.
“Too bad, Allie. I’ll scare every single one of those limp dicks off. You’re going to sit alone in your house on prom night crying into your designer sheets like a baby. And I’m going to laugh.”
The only sign that she hears me at all is the quickening rise and fall of her shoulders. Even that small display that I’ve upset her is agonizing, floods me with self-loathing, but I can never stop. She ripped out my fucking heart and I can’t deal with the consequences of that alone. I can’t let her go. I’ll never let her go.
My hands shake with the need to settle on her shoulders, to stop the trembling I caused. From there, I’d slide my fingers up into the soft, brown hair that reaches the middle of her graceful neck. I don’t have a lot of money, most of the cash I earn as a handyman goes to food and renting my plot of land, but I’d give every last cent for her to turn and lock those aquamarine eyes on me, just one last time. Sometimes when I jerk off, all it takes is fantasizing about Allie looking at me, giving me her attention again, and I lose it. One stroke. Maybe two. Done.
What the hell am I going to do when she’s in college next year?
Even my aunt, the school guidance counselor, doesn’t know where Allie plans to attend. The uncertainty has me shaken. I need to know where she’ll be so I can start looking for work in the same town. If she thinks college is going to keep me away, she’s wrong. I won’t have the benefit of sitting behind her in class, but I’ll find ways in nonetheless. I have to. I can’t breathe without having her close. And I can’t breathe with her close. It’s a strange condition, this obsession, but she’s an addiction I’m never giving up.
“Do you actually think that dumb jock would be a good choice for your first time, Allie?” I grip my desk so tight it nearly snaps, just thinking about her being touched by someone else. “At least that’s one thing us poor motherfuckers have going for us. We know how to fuck. If you went out with that punk for a while, you’d eventually give in and come slumming it one night, wouldn’t you? Knock on my trailer door, begging me to ride you right.”
Pink is starting to climb her neck.
I have to bite down on my tongue to keep from licking the rise of color.
But I think if I actually got to touch her skin, my wall of bullshit would crumble. I don’t know how to fuck. In theory I do, but not in practice. Since seeing Allie for the first time freshman year, there’s been no one but her. No one before that, either, or I was too young to be sexually active. She gave me my first hard-on when we were fourteen and she showed up to gym class in a white T-shirt and no bra, her tits jiggling around during volleyball—and my dick has never gotten stiff for anyone else. She owns my cock as sure as she owns my heart.