Page 17

Alina:

“Stupid, cocky bitch ,” I mutter to myself as I slam Bash’s car door and rip into the bag on my lap. I open one of the gummy packages, proceeding to shove a couple into my mouth before throwing everything at my feet and buckling my seatbelt in a dramatic huff.

Yes, I know it’s fucking stupid to get so upset about that woman flirting with him. But I don’t care. No one will ever understand Bash like I do. They don’t even have the capability of doing so anymore. His father is dead. I read his obituary in the paper years ago. The moments that forged our relationship aren’t possible to be had by anyone else. So logically, I know it’s incredibly shortsighted to be so upset.

But Bash Cox is fucking mine . And I don’t belong to anyone else but him. I’ve just decided that. I’m not Luke’s property. I belong to myself and to Bash and I will fight like hell to make sure that’s the reality we live in one day.

He slides into the car a few minutes after me. I see his hard-on first, his smirk joining him afterwards.

“That for your fucking bud tender?” I bark as he laughs wholeheartedly at me, grabbing at my chin gently with his perfect fingertips.

“This dick belongs to one fucking girl and one fucking girl only; Lina Girl .” His eyes hold no amount of humor as he stares intensely into my own. “I have no interest in that woman, baby. I know you know that.”

“And yet, I want to claw her fucking eyes out,” I confess with a heavy sigh as Bash starts the car.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. You know your dramatic ass always gets me going,” he teases. It’s obvious he isn’t lying as his dick stands tented between us.

“It’s just… I haven’t had a say in who I get to be with for so long… I just don’t want anyone or anything to get in the way of us anymore,” I mumble as I feel the warmth of Bash’s palm sliding over my thigh.

“That’s not our reality anymore. From now on, you choose, Lina Girl.” He pulls out of the parking lot, directing the car onto the road. “We need to talk about something else while we’re on this subject,” he says carefully, avoiding my eyes as he drives.

“What?” I ask anxiously. His hand tightens protectively on my thigh.

“We have to kill Luke, Alina.” He says it quietly, knowing I’m a flight risk. What he isn’t expecting is my full support and cooperation.

“I know.” It’s all I can muster. The fact that Bash is on my side and wants to embark upon this adventure with me is enough to have me emotional, unable to complete a coherent thought. I’ve been alone for so long, I’ve just been doing my best to hold on for something better, hoping it would come eventually.

I want this. I want this with everything I am.

And having him by my side while we burn down Luke’s world together is nothing short of a happily ever after for me.

“I expected a little more push back to be honest,” he admits as he side-eyes me from the driver’s seat. I can feel the anxiety rising off of him.

“I’m sure you did,” I agree, smiling to myself in the dark. “But what you didn’t see after that woman flirted with you was my decision to take my life and my choices back. And my first choice is you, Sebastian Cox. It always has been. My next choice is freeing myself of my dickhead overlord and taking the rest of his victims with me on the way out.”

Sebastian:

She’s choosing me .

Well, she’s choosing herself first and foremost, despite what she’s just said. She has to pick herself to even choose me. Her will to live has been re-ignited and it’s the most gorgeous look she’s ever worn, especially beneath the sea of bruises Luke left upon her delicate face.

But I’m included in that decision, and it makes my heart beat erratically with anxious hope. I’ve been wanting and wishing to hear those fucking words for years and here they finally are. I let them wash over me for a few minutes, unable to say anything. Alina begins to stir next to me, her leg starting to shake beneath my palm. I can tell she thinks I’m rejecting her.

“Lina Girl,” I whisper and her face jerks to mine instantly, desperation mixed into her look of need. “I want you too. Forever and always, you’re my girl. My ride or die. The one who’s always been there for me. Healed every fucking wound, physical or unseen. Baby, it’s always been fucking you.” Her weight crashes into my right arm as she plummets into my body. I scoop her face into the crook of my elbow. I can hear her crying as she squeezes my bicep, clinging to me. “You’re safe, baby. He’s never fucking touching you again, ok?”

“I wish I believed you, but I’m terrified, Bash,” she sobs out truthfully.

“I know, baby. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to prevent this all from happening. But we’re going to end this shit together. I promise you, Lina Girl.” She nods as she cuddles me closer. She’s squeezing the fuck out of my arm, but I’m ok with that. It’s never close enough when I’m holding this woman.

“How can you be so happy to help me when I just abandoned you back in high school?” she asks quietly. I can feel the weight of her question. She’s wondering if she’s being set up. What’s in it for me versus what she has to give to achieve the outcome she’s hoping for.

“I used to think that. But you didn’t exactly have an option. Your priority was your family, which was falling apart at the time. I did need you, Lina Girl. But you needed you too. And sometimes we have to realize we can’t be everything that someone else needs us to be. We have to find a little bit of that strength within when others aren’t available to us like we’d expect or hope for,” I tell her. “I was angry for a long time. Especially with the lack of explanation on your end. But… I went on to perform like I had always dreamed of. So, who’s to say you didn’t help me exactly as I needed you to? Besides, Alina. You had already saved my life. Who was I to ask for more from you?”

“What are you even talking about, Bash?” She pushes herself off of me to watch my face as she waits for an explanation.

“Look, I want to have this conversation with you. I’ll tell you everything. I just don’t want to be driving,” I respond. She nods softly.

“Ok. Where are we going anyway?” she questions, looking through the darkness around us. “Oh, my god. Are you driving to the high school?” Her face is dreamy as she looks at me from the shadows.

“Yeah,” I answer as she squeals a little bit. The sound makes my dick throb with need. “I need to get us a blunt wrap though.” She grins excitedly.

“You artists are always the nostalgic types,” she teases me as I laugh.

“We feel deeply. That’s why we’re the ones crying on stage for ugly amounts of money,” I joke.

“No one does it like you, baby,” she gushes as she looks at me with adoration. So many fans over the years have looked at me with similar expressions, but none ever punched me straight in the heart like Alina. Her gorgeous green eyes are sparkling with true love and affection. Love for the boy she knew back then and the man who’s recently re-entered her life now. Nothing but genuine energy exudes from her body. Not like the other bitches and groupies. There was always something they wanted from me. An introduction. Studio sessions. Face time with my manager, Keith. A listen to their demo. My fucking cock.

Alina wants me . Every fucked up part.

Nothing more.

Well, maybe a few renditions of our favorite songs from when we were kids. Something I’m happily willing to give her anytime.

“I love you, Lina Girl,” I whisper to her as she melts into me further.

“I’m so in love with you, Sebastian Cox,” she replies breathlessly. We enter the parking lot of a gas station. It takes me a few minutes to run inside to buy the blunt wrap for us. I hand it to Alina when I get back inside the car, who grins while snatching it from my fingers. I shake my head with a soft laugh, then set off towards the school.

Alina:

The night is quiet, calm and cool as we exit Bash’s car. He walks to my side and opens the door for me, brushing his lips against my temple and sending my stomach fluttering. Every time he touches me, I feel the same sensation form in my lower belly that I felt all those years ago. Bash makes me feel again. Before he came back, that same feeling was only driven by anxiety due to Luke. Something I dealt with constantly, dreading every moment of my shitty life. Now I get to spend those same moments with Sebastian, making it absolutely worth it to see my life through. Not just for him, but for me as well.

I curl up into his side, his warmth like a blanket. “What do you say, Lina Girl? Should we find the old detention room and see if it’s changed at all?”

“I think it’s only right that we do,” I answer back as we interlace our fingers together and set off towards the portable building that used to hold detention. It was located in the older part of the school that felt about as accepted as the students who used to frequent it. Kids like Bash, who were outcasts and didn’t fit the pretty high school narrative. He spent most of his time in that section of the campus.

There aren’t as many lights as we head further back towards the other end of the school by the baseball fields. We spy the building where we met, making me crack a genuine smile. I can’t help but feel one of those zings that I did on that day when I first talked to Bash. The unfamiliar and exciting new feeling that kept flinging itself through my stomach. How I couldn’t stop squeezing my legs together as he strummed his guitar and easily smirked at me.

“Wow. They didn’t even bother to lock it,” Bash mutters as he twists the handle on the door, cracking it open to look inside. “Watch your step, Lina Girl. It seems to be more of a storage room now than a classroom.” He’s not wrong as I enter, stacks upon stacks of plastic chairs and discarded, broken desks littering the floor. It knocks the wind out of me. How useless this room now seems when it had been everything to me before. It was where we met. And now it’s nothing more than a holding tank for junk.

“Is it sad that I feel like this is symbolic of our lives now?” I ask disheartened. Bash sucks his teeth before he answers me.

“We are not just sitting around, waiting for people to use or fix us, Lina Girl. We’re loaded with potential, whether we understand that now or not.” His words make me feel a little better as he grabs my hand and leads us further into the room. There’s still a larger desk at the head of the classroom that we choose to sit at. Bash uses the big chair, looking like an out of place music teacher as I curl up on the top of the desk, off to his left, legs crossed. I watch him place all the utensils for our blunt upon the old, unpolished wood.

It feels like my eighteenth birthday all over again and for the first time in a really long time, I truly relax and allow my guard to drop. Although he doesn’t look at me, Bash pauses when I feel the energy shift inside myself, as though he does too. “ Good girl , baby,” he mumbles, my heart exploding at his praise. “I’ve got you, Lina Girl.”

And I believe him.

Sebastian:

Her face has finally relaxed for the first time since we’ve reunited. She isn’t carrying the weight of anyone else’s expectations upon her shoulders anymore. She’s physically lighter and when she sighs it out, I feel the tension and fear leaving her as she starts to grasp for hope, instead of despair. And fuck , does it look good. My Lina Girl deserves that. To feel safe for once. To not have to survive every fucking moment, every breath she takes.

I’m gonna fix this for her. I’ll throttle that motherfucker and make him pay. He’s gonna feel pain at my doing and I will savor every fucking scream and ounce of blood we drain from his body. He’s about to answer for every sin he’s committed.

Luke .

Who’s your fucking daddy now?

I reach into the hollow of Alina’s crisscrossed legs, teasing her pussy through her pants. She squirms perfectly for me, as I expected her to. “I wanted to fuck you so badly that day we met in here,” I say with a smirk as she nods in agreement.

“I wanted to fuck you too. As did every other girl we went to school with,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “A lot of them did ,” she adds with an envious glare. She’s obviously still worked up from earlier.

“Fuck those other girls, Alina. They were a means to an end,” I say absentmindedly as I open the jar of weed in front of me.

“Yeah, getting off. I know ,” she bites back with a heavy sigh. I shake my head quietly as she shoots me a puzzled look. “Were you racking up other bitches’ V-cards?” she teases evilly. I pause what I’m doing before looking up at her. Her smiles fades. “What was it, Bash?”

“You know how you stayed with me in that fucking shed? When my dad wouldn’t let me back in the house the night he fucked up my head?” I ask her and she nods. That shed had been the bane of my existence, especially the night I had called Alina to come over out of necessity. She patched me up after my dad took a bat to my face. I remember being so embarrassed of how dirty and gross it was in there. Not at all concerned for my injuries as I should have been. She never complained though. Not once. My mom texted me two nights later to finally ask if I needed stitches. I had, but all Alina could do at the time was bandage my forehead as tightly as she could. I refused the pathetic attempt at help from my mom. I have a decent scar over my brow from it that only added to my stage appeal when I toured. “It got too cold to be out there in the winter. I did my best to try and meet guy friends, but I was always bullied by the fucking popular douche bags. So, I figured if I fucked some girls with rich dads, I had a place to stay that was warm and usually on the other side of the house from their parents,” I finish. “Getting them off helped get me through winter honestly. Before I met you. Then after that, I didn’t really care.”

Meaning, after she abandoned me.

“ Wow ,” she says after a couple of seconds. “We’re more alike than I realized. Fucking to survive.” She sounds pissed and hurt. Fuck , that’s my fault for shaming her. “I guess it makes sense, you stayed with me at my place while we were fucking. Is that the only reason why you were with me back then?”

“ What?! Of course not ,” I answer defensively, feeling vulnerable. “I was with you in high school because I was fucking obsessed with you. I loved you. I didn’t feel shit for any of the other girls I hooked up with. You’re right though. We are alike. I’ve never been better than you, Alina. I’m sorry I’ve been such a douche bag about your circumstances.” I go back to retrieving weed from the jar, my face hot. I’m embarrassed from my confession.

“I knew it was a stupid question. I just needed the extra validation. I obviously know you had the shittiest home life. I guess I just didn’t understand the extent of it all. But it makes sense,” she says gently as I nod my head, grateful she understands the situation better.

“I tried to protect you from what I could. I didn’t want you to know everything. What you were aware of was already fucked up enough. But I really am sorry I judged you so harshly before,” I relay again, needing her to know how sincere I am.

She nods quietly.

“We all fuck up thinking we’re better than others sometimes. I’m no exception,” she says with a sad smile.

“We’re in this together from now on, ok?” I tell her as she nods again.

Her smile doesn’t return though.

“I’m so sorry, Bash. That you had to use your body to get basic necessities. You deserved so much better from your parents, baby.” Her eyes are wet, her cheeks reddening as she grows emotional. I feel myself beginning to lose it too as I look into her beautiful green eyes.

“Lina Girl. Where they lacked in love, you fed me. You saved my life,” I whisper as she shakes her head, confused.

“Why do you keep saying that?” she asks as she reaches towards me. I take a breath, centering myself before answering her question.

“Because the day we met in detention, I’d decided to kill myself.”