Opulent Obsession: A Dark Secret Society Romance Read online

  They hadn’t bothered with me too much until I ran over and helped him out. The boy didn’t thank me. He just scurried away and then their wrath turned to me.

  I spent the rest of the three months with Trailer Trash Slut painted on the inside of my locker, because they wanted to show they had all the power. Even the power to access my things. I finally stopped leaving things in my locker and just hefted around all my books with me all day long. My back hurt by the end of each day, but at least they couldn’t fuck with my things.

  Not engaging with them didn’t make it better, though. They just found new ways to torture me. One girl especially, Becca, really hated me. Her father was the president of the school’s Board of Governors, their fancy name for a School Board. She could get away with murder at that school and no one would ever say a thing.

  She emptied about twenty pudding cups into my locker and when it all started to smell and drip out, I was the one who got in trouble for it. There were constant comments about my hygiene, as if just because I was poor, I must not know how to shower regularly even though I was always hyper conscious of it.

  The boys would touch me in the hallway as they passed me, sometimes approaching in a giant group I couldn’t escape. One of them was Becca’s boyfriend.

  So, I got further punished by her for her boyfriend’s casual daily assaults.

  Part of me was just like, seriously? Who even had such time for such petty bullshit? Becca Whitley did. She fucking delighted in it.

  “So…” Rafe finally broke into the silence, setting me on my feet. Instantly, I hated the cold. It was fairly balmy for a spring night, and still—

  All I wanted was to be in his arms again.

  “God, Fall. I’ve missed you.”

  My nose stung at his admission. No, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go and be all sweet when my shields were down like this. Because the truth was, they were down. After tonight, after all the emotional energy even just being in this place took out of me, I couldn’t hold them up any longer. Not when I was with Rafe.

  I just nodded in return, swallowing hard. I didn’t trust my voice, and I wasn’t sure I could have admitted that I missed him even if my throat was working.

  “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

  I nodded again. I might survive this evening if only he didn’t require any actual human words from me. He took my hand and pulled me towards the lake. I was too busy reveling in the place where his skin made contact with mine to resist. Even through the paint, I could feel the tingles lighting me up like a sparkler in my hand.

  The water was cold, it felt freezing even though I knew it was far from it. It was mild out, maybe seventy degrees. Rafe was still gentle as he pulled me into the lake after him, walking in first like he always liked to do so he could make sure the ground was steady for me.

  What he didn’t know was that the ground was always unsteady when he was around.

  Especially now, considering that we used to—

  “Remember when we used to do this?” Rafe asked, echoing the same thought I’d been having.

  “Yes,” I managed to squeak out. Did he think I could forget? We’d only gone out to the lake a few times. Not this particular lake, but one just outside Darlington.

  It was secluded, on some land adjacent to the acreage Rafe’s family owned. We had to jump a fence to get to it, but the trespassing only added to the excitement. Every moment with Rafe felt like an adventure, something out of a storybook.

  Especially the night he’d first stripped off his shirt and then run down the dock and dived into the lake. He’d disappeared underneath the water, black in the night with only the moon overhead. He disappeared under so long I’d started to get worried.

  But then he popped back up, his shorts in hand. He tossed them back up on the dock and then swam backwards, taunting me.

  “Dare you,” was all he’d said. He’d grinned at me then, that wicked, rakish grin that was so Rafe.

  The boy from the past and the man from the present blended together in front of me as Rafe waded into the dark water.

  There was enough ambient light out from the stars and moon to see him immediately begin to struggle out of his tux. He didn’t throw the clothes back out, he just pushed them toward shore. I smiled and bit my bottom lip. Mama H would have his head for losing those expensive clothes if they just sunk to the bottom of the lake. Not that she’d chastise Rafe too much. He’d always been one of her favorites. She was a sucker for an outcast, and the secret that few had been able to see was that Rafe was always just as much of an outcast as me, no matter how many friends he had at school.

  Because at the end of every day, he had to go back to that cold, unfriendly place. His house. To that family. Where he might as well have been the haint, for all the attention anyone ever paid him.

  In front of me, he swam closer, water droplets streaming down his now bare chest.

  My stomach clenched at the sight. Jesus, did he have any idea what he did to me? Was this all intentional? Or was he just remembering the good times, too?

  I hesitated, not having ventured far from the shoreline, but then he waved me in. “Come on, we need to get that paint off you.”

  Oh, right. We’d come to the lake for a practical purpose. They probably didn’t want the blue paint going down the drain into their septic system. After all, what if it stained the antique, porcelain clawfoot tub? We couldn’t have that, could we?

  I hurried into the water, feeling silly for hesitating so long at the shore. It was foolish to get lost in the past. I thought I’d put it behind me a long time ago.

  The cold water on my body instantly shocked me all the way awake, out of the last of my orgasmic haze from earlier.

  God, that was dangerous. He could take me so high I didn’t want to come back to earth. But I had to, because I have a plan. A plan that was very important, to get everything that I—

  He swam closer once I was in up to my chest. “Here, I’ll help.”

  Then, before I could stop him, he’d begun to rub my back, massaging the paint off my skin. Some of it was dry and flaky, but some was still wet. Combined with the water of the lake, it turned into a sort of blue mud. It covered Rafe’s hands as he continued to wash me.

  He moved around from my back to my front, massaging my shoulder as he went.

  I’d just been floating there, kind of stunned and moving my hands in the water as if I was treading it even though I was still firmly on solid ground. The sandy bottom of the lake was only a little bit rocky. I was able to stand with ease.

  Rafe’s hand crept around to the underside of my breast and about a thousand different alarms went off throughout my body. They were good alarms. Spasms and bright light and electricity sparking up and down my body, back and forth from wherever his hand was, straight down to my cunt.

  I squirmed in the water and then finally swam away from him. All that was left was the blue paint covering my chest and my, and my—

  I glanced down into the dark water but couldn’t see much of myself. I couldn’t see my pussy covered with the evidence of their pawing. I did manage to stay strong for the actual Trial, but I could only handle so much.

  As I swam away, I reached down and began to wash myself. When I felt clean—the freezing cold water helped the illusion—I moved on to my breasts.

  A little devil sat on my shoulder, though. Because instead of keeping my back turned to Rafe, I flipped around so that he could see me. Well, see as much as he could in the dark. How well had his eyes adjusted? Could he just make out the outline of me, or not even that? If he could see the outline, could he see the way that I plucked my nipple as I washed the paint away?

  From the way he froze and suddenly dipped downwards in the lake, like he’d forgotten to paddle, I thought that maybe he could see me. Or he had a very good imagination.

  I knew what I ought to do. I knew what a smart woman would do.

  A smart woman would stomp out of this water, grab something t
o cover herself even if it was only his soaked tux jacket floating near the shore of the lake, and get her ass home before she stirred up any trouble.

  Back in high school, it was what I eventually learned. Do the smart thing. Don’t engage. Don’t try to stand up for myself. Don’t go after what I really wanted.

  Just survive.

  My previous record of solid A’s plunged to a C+ because of the mid-semester transfer. Anyone with half a brain would have realized that it was all but impossible to catch up on those classes with so little time left.

  Not my guidance counselor. She just looked at me sideways with this fake empathetic expression in her eyes as she told me she was sorry, there was nothing they could do to accommodate or help me, and I better just work harder because the school was, according to her, just “more academically rigorous” than my previous school and that was why I’d had trouble adjusting.

  She wouldn’t hear a word about how Becca’s best friend Bree had yanked my World History paper and thrown it in the trash after I’d left the classroom after I’d dropped it off so that I’d almost failed the class. Because, of course, the teacher didn’t believe me when I said, no, I had turned it in on time. I started handing my work directly to the teacher after that, but it didn’t always matter. Like I said, Becca’s daddy was the president of the Board, and what Becca wanted, Becca got.

  When Becca didn’t like that I was in her English Class and didn’t always bow or kowtow to her presence, the teacher was aware. She’d cause trouble for me and make sure I was the one who ended up in hot water, and my grade suffered because of it. That teacher played politics, and he knew who to show favoritism to. So, no matter what I turned in that class, be it a multi-faceted reading of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Hundred Years of Solitude that I worked every night straight on for two weeks—it always came back with a big, fat failing grade.

  On that one, the note stated it was obvious I hadn’t written the paper myself, so he’d failed me. When I tried to appeal it to the principal, he’d gotten offended and accused me of trying to “pull one over” on them, and I got detention on top of it.

  “Where’d you go after you left?” Rafe asked, in water only a few feet away from me. “Mom said you’d gotten a great offer to go to some boarding school that would give you an edge up on getting into an Ivy League School like you always wanted. Was it everything you hoped for?”

  I only just stopped myself from scoffing. “That’s what your mom told you?”

  He frowned at me, but I just frowned back at him. “I told you in my emails,” I said, backing a little further away from him in the lake.

  In one particularly cringe-worthy email, I’d poured out my heart about how terrible it was at my new school, how mean everyone was to me, how I missed him so desperately. How I’d do anything to just hear his voice, would he please call me? I put my phone number and then slept with my phone close to me and took it to class with me even though that wasn’t allowed—just on the off chance that finally this email would get through to him and he’d have pity on me and at least call me.

  There was only ever silence. Never any missed calls. Mr. Collins finally saw me staring at my phone and confiscated it one class period. I was devastated, so sure that, the way my life went, that would be the one time Rafe called and I’d miss it because of that mean middle-aged bastard.

  But nope. When I finally got my phone back after yet another detention and fervently turned it back on to check—

  No missed calls. Just like always.

  Did my emails mean so little to Rafe he didn’t even remember them? Had he even read them?

  “What emails?” Rafe asked, and my unshielded heart squeezed in pain.

  He didn’t even remember them. I turned away from him and started to swim away. I didn’t care about the cold. I didn’t care about how exhausted I was. I just needed to get away from him.

  It always hurt so bad. Every single time. His casual indifference.

  Just like the night, a month before he lost his brother, when everything had been… well, when I still hoped for everything like a big idiot. I was still a naive little fool who hoped Cinderella really could have the prince and the happy ending.

  I’d leaned in, and he’d frozen, and we’d stared at each other.

  I’d prayed he’d close the distance between us. That he’d say he didn’t want to be just friends anymore. I wanted him to pour out how passionate he was about me, and how he couldn’t stop thinking about me and wondering what my lips would feel like—the same way I constantly obsessed over him.

  But he’d stayed exactly where he was. He didn’t move in. He didn’t press his lips against mine. He just stared, like a deer caught in headlights. The moment became awkward. He didn’t inch closer.

  And I realized his heart wasn’t beating a million times a minute in his chest like mine was. He wasn’t dreaming of licking his tongue along the seam of my lips like I was his. He wasn’t imagining ripping my clothes off and tossing them to the floor, then pinning me to his childhood twin bed where we had our books spread out, studying.

  Eventually, embarrassed, I’d finally pulled away and said it was time for me to go home.

  No, I wouldn’t feel his lips that night. Not until the night before I was about to leave, when I said fuck it, drove my bike over to his house the second I heard about Tim, and flung myself into his arms.

  He’d held me so close and buried his face in my neck. His whole body shook. I knew without him even saying anything that this was the first time he’d been allowed to even show his real feelings in that cold house of his. That his mother may have been in hysterics over losing her favorite child to such a cruel accident but that Rafe would be the strong, stoic one.

  Until he was in my arms. Still, he didn’t cry. He just shook and blamed it on the rain. It hadn’t been raining hard that night until then, but the whole town figured that was why Timothy had gotten in the accident. Driving too fast on a notoriously slippery curve, his car had plunged over the guard rail and into the ditch below. Timothy hadn’t had a seatbelt on and had ended up thrown ten feet from the car. That was the extent of the town gossip I’d heard before I’d raced over.

  Rafe hadn’t told me any more, he’d just held tight to me like I was a life raft and he’d sink without me.

  And then, for one moment of insanity while the rain poured and the storm thundered overhead, he slammed his lips on mine.

  He’d kissed me. After all that time, he wanted me. I’d thrown my arms around him and kissed him back with everything I had. I wanted to take his pain away, to take it into myself, to kiss him into oblivion so he might just have one second’s relief from the grief that was obviously tearing him apart.

  But he’d only allowed it for about twenty glorious seconds. For twenty seconds, we lost ourselves in another world. One of lips and hands and touch and skin and tongues tangling and the most perfect madness I’d ever tasted.

  And then—

  And then he’d ripped himself away from me, swore loudly, stumbled backwards, and ran back into the house without even a backwards glance at me.

  That was the last I ever saw of Rafe Jackson. He never said another word to me until that cocktail party a month ago.

  When I’d tried to come by to say goodbye before I left for boarding school, his mother had coldly informed me he didn’t want to see me but that he’d said to tell me congratulations on the new school and good luck.

  And the rest, well, now I suppose it was all ancient history.

  Except now, even in the cold of the lake, I could still feel the delightful sting from the way his cock had stretched me during the Trial.

  If he’d been indifferent then, what about now?

  “What emails, Fallon? What are you talking about?”

  He started wading towards me but my heart had had enough. The venture down memory lane plus the blue haint Trial had been enough. My brittle little heart couldn’t take much more. If it broke one more time, I wasn’t sure the
re’d be enough superglue in the world to put it back together again.

  “Nothing,” I said, “it doesn’t matter.” Then I splashed him in the face as he came closer.

  He still looked confused, but another look came over his face, one I was far more familiar with. It was mischievous, full of intent.

  Then he disappeared beneath the water, and just like when we were younger, I felt his arms wrap around my legs. I barely had a second to grab a gulp of air before he pulled me under.

  Oh, now this was war. I came back up, sputtering for air. “Rafe, God, I wasn’t ready. You almost drowned me!” I shouted.

  He backed away and swore. “Sorry, I thought you’d—”

  But I was just fucking with him, trying to get him off-kilter. It worked. He was completely unprepared for when I launched myself at him and dunked him.

  Then I screeched, giggling as he scooped my legs again, this time tossing me over his shoulder.

  “Rafe!” I screeched, laughing hard. “What are you— Put me down!”

  I wriggled my still-bare ass in his face, and he landed a smack on my cheek. Dear Lord, he’d never done that back in the day. I squirmed on his shoulder, but finally managed to dunk him again.

  We kept it up, just like we used to, except now there were more dangerous brushes, touches, pinches.

  My heart had never been so full even as I told myself, see Fallon, maybe things can go back to the way they were.

  Friends. We’d be friends.

  Rafe only wanted to fuck me when it was required by the Trials. The rest of the time we’d be this. Old friends who teased each other.

  Good God, the past really was a long time gone. He didn’t even remember the emails. I was the only one who’d probably made such a big deal of our friendship back then anyway. To him, I’d probably been a fun companion, and like I always thought, a friendly form of rebellion against his too-stifled life.