“Why?” I asked curiously.
“Because then I would be forced to keep you. And you don’t want that,” he replied, ominously. A loud crash and the sound of running footsteps and screams filtered through the door and then a guy’s voice could be heard on the other side.
“Keiran man, get out here. Dash and Keenan are fighting some guys who crashed the party. Shit is trashed.”
He stalked toward the door, shirtless and left as quietly as he came. To someone who didn’t recognize the signs he seemed calm but I glimpsed the rage simmering in his eyes. I was left on the floor still bound by his belt and helpless. Moments later the loud noise and screaming ended and the house grew eerily quiet and then all at once I could hear the sound of running footsteps again followed by screeching tires and cars departing.
I pushed myself up until I was standing. My legs were sleep from being stuck in one position. I licked my lips and immediately recognized the taste of him lingering on my lips and curious, I licked them again, before I realized what I was doing.
Some sick part of me liked the taste of him despite being manipulated. I tried to tell myself that I had no choice, that I didn’t enjoy being violated by him. But I didn’t fight him either. If I fought Keiran, I would lose one way or the other.
Chapter Ten
I thought about my journal. I needed my journal. It was where I kept all my pain and told all my secrets and it spoke of only two things—my parents and him.
I haven’t thought about that journal since last year when he went away and I no longer had anything to write about. The journal was old and something I kept to deal with the pain of losing my parents. I started it a year after they disappeared and Keiran’s bullying got worse.
The first entry about him was in the fourth grade after he got some girls to stick used gum in my hair and had everyone call me spit head at lunch. I locked myself inside the bathroom and immediately pulled out my journal to write. It was mistake but it soon became my salvation and way of coping.
Starting out, whenever a memory of my parents surfaced I would write that memory down and how I felt about them. It was something my aunt suggested I do when she couldn’t get me to talk about it. She said she would rather I tell a piece a paper than no one at all. I think that was the writer in her speaking.
Keiran had given me a new pain to focus on. So when I begin to write only about Keiran, the journal became a vessel and now holds every thought and emotion that I ever had for Keiran inside of it. It even expressed the confusion I often would feel from being attracted to him as we got older. I finally admitted to my journal of having a crush on him a couple of days before I turned sixteen.
The school year had just begun and I saw him for the first time in three months. He’d gone to some basketball camp that was sponsored by the NBA and NCAA for the best talent. The look he gave me as he swaggered down the hallway toward me was hot. I remember his grey eyes trailing slowly up and down my body as we grew closer from opposite ends of the hallway. Our gazes were locked the entire time and I couldn’t help but to admire the light stubble he’d grown. It made him look older and sexier, if that was even possible and just as I was passing by him, thinking he would spare me his normal dose of public humiliation, he knocked my books out of my hand and sent them flying along with the few sheets of paper I had laying on top. I didn’t react. I never did. I picked up my books and continued to my first class with my head held high and the anguish my heart felt buried in secret.