Page 22 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

DUSTIN

M y body jolts, and I’m awake in a single breath, on my usual edge, despite the journals Dr. Robins suggests.

It’s useless. Nothing stops them but waking up.

Sometimes, not then.

They revolve in my brain, replicating, each encroaching thought spawning seven more in its slaughter.

Flashes of cut knees pinned to muddy rocks. Blonde, sticky tangles fused with fingernail crescents when they clung to me and sobbed as I fought to pull them free.

A cracked skull. A shredded training bra…

And blood.

And blood.

And blood.

And blood.

In places twelve-year olds shouldn’t be touched.

“HEY! STOP!”

My heart thunders in my chest, and all I see is red when I swing my next punch.

Thomas stumbles back, hands still wrapped around the girl’s waist, her skirt at her fucking ankles, and I want to shove him over, fucking kill him.

But he’s got her, and he knows it. I grab the girl’s hand, pulling her forward just as Thomas’ smug stare meets my eyes.

And I shove him over to meet his death.

Only it didn’t happen that way.

He lived.

Thrived.

I think about it often, how I should have pushed him over, his psychotic friends, too…watched those fuckers bleed out every drop of life, gasping as they took their final breaths from the fall. How I would have supplied not a shred of mercy as they atoned for Sarah, Ava, and Tiffany.

For Shana, the only one I was able to save before…

The memories never leave me.

Not for anything but a spinning angel on a dark stage, tangles of hair and cherry lips I want to kiss.

I could kiss them now.

Wake up to her smile.

Block the images in my head with her touch, her taste, and her smell.

My eclipse.

She sleeps, draped across my bed, legs twisted around my sheets, and arms tucked under my pillows.

She looks exactly what she is.

Innocent.

Pure.

Curled in a bed of white and begging me to ink up her waters.

I brush a curl from her face, a conversation we had as kids replaying—one of many where I tried to push her away. I know my reasons were sound, and I’m aware they still very much are . Fuck. Who openly dates the woman they stalk? Who does this? Who watches a woman from her window half her life?

But after last night…

I can’t go back to the way things were with Shana Holiday.

She’s always had my heart.

And she wants me , the accidental hero, falsely glorified and perpetually plagued by the past. The one people point to under hushed whispers. The one you don’t bring home to your parents.

But I can’t find the strength to tell her no anymore.

Not when she’s stretched across my mattress.

Not when she presses her body into mine.

I lie back down, filling the role of big spoon, a position I never thought I’d be in.

She relaxes when she feels me, pressing her backside flush with my semi-hardened cock. Shana Holiday has no idea what she does to me.

I brush my fingers over her shoulder, smiling when she hums in her sleep. I didn’t fuck her last night… for reasons, I’m sure.

Just ones I’m beginning to forget.

“Do you have any waffles?” she mumbles before her lashes flutter open. A grumbling sound comes perfectly timed from her stomach, and we laugh.

“Think I wanna eat something, too.” I kiss her lips, swallowing the whimper she lets out in response.

“You’ve eaten plenty.” She giggles, scrunching her face when her stomach gets louder. “I didn’t have actual dinner with you or Haans last night.”

She sits up, hands moving to her stomach, and my breath catches as the light streams in from the window beside her.

It almost looks like…I can imagine her here forever.

In my bed.

As my wife.

It wouldn’t be the first time I played it in my mind.

“I can still feel wine sloshing in my belly.” She jiggles it, breaking me out of the spell, and I realize how ridiculous the thought even was. That Shana would entertain a relationship with me is one thing, but surely, she realizes how fucked I’d be as a father.

Not in the cards, no matter how you read them.

“I should have taken some of Haans’ French fries when he offered.”

Shana throws her arms above her head, wrapping her hair in an updo.

The sleep shirt I gave her last night rides up her thighs, and glimpses of her bare pussy flash me with each twist of her bun, but something about seeing her perfectly pink slit lined up with the hem of my shirt doesn’t sit right with me when another man’s name is on her tongue.

I stroke her chin with my thumb, lifting her gaze to meet mine.

“I don’t want to hear the name Haans again.”

“Jealous?”

Her smile alone almost caves me.

Virgin! I remind myself.

Her eyes twinkle, a playful streak she’s only just unlocked.

It’s one of my favorite streaks so far, though I hope to discover many.

She reaches for my cock, and I’m inclined to lose my sack the second she does, because nothing in all my fantasies could have prepared me for the way she looks at me, like there’s not a single other option for her.

I’m hers and she’s mine.

The air in the room couldn’t get any thicker as she gets to her knees and wraps her hand around my cock. “I can help with jealous.” She winks.

Just as my fucking phone rings.

“My father,” I groan.

She frowns, but settles back into my comforter, patiently.

“Good girl.” I bite my lip as the blush spreads over her face and exposed breasts.

“We’re not done here, though,” she brings my eyes back up with two fingers. “I’m still mad you didn’t deflower me last night. I asked nicely.” She pouts so prettily, and I laugh at the sight of it. I know what she wants, but I also know what she’s never had: all of it.

There are things she doesn’t even know she likes, entire kinks she may not know exist, and fuck if I’m not the greedy asshole who wants to catalog every single one of them.

“You didn’t seem mad when my tongue was in your pussy last night,” I tease with my finger hovered over the button to accept the call.

Shana gasps, but giggles all the same, the sound, light and peaceful on my heart as she scoots out of the video frame. The blankets cover her body, and I immediately frown.

She smiles when she catches my eyes wandering past the sheets and shimmies them lower, sliding them back up each time she almost reveals her breasts.

It’s torture, and she damn well knows it.

“Covers off,” I command, curving my lips when she bites hers excitedly. “All the way.”

She obeys, and this may be shy, sheltered Shana, but she’s no stranger to performance.

I almost miss the call, accepting it on the very last ring to catch as much of my private dance as possible before it’s tainted with, “ Dad ,” I rasp.

I listen to the cordial hello, the small-talk—something about market rates increasing and the exorbitant price of eggs, but it’s near impossible to focus as the most decorated ballerina in all of Pine Forest makes a show of doing goddamned stretches in my bed.

“Dusty, did you hear me?” He squints at the frame, eyeing my headboard. “Fuck, Son, are you still in the bed? This is the problem with your generation! None of you want to work. You just want the luxury that work provides. In my day…”

Dad’s voice drones on, but I’ve stopped looking at the screen. Even if I did want to hear, which ten out of ten critics will report—I fucking don’t, I certainly couldn’t care less while there’s a naked ballerina in my bed doing poses that seem a lot like my dick could fit there.

“Dad, I’ll call you back. I have…” I lose my thought as Shana rolls onto her back, propped by her elbows as she splits her legs open in the shape of a V. Her eyes alone are enough to tease any man, but her dripping cunt is all I can focus on.

“ Jesus Christ , I have…com- company . Dad, I gotta go.”

“The hell? That stutter’s returned. Are you drinking, Son?”

“Bout to drink something,” I whisper, unable to peel my attention from Shana to look my father in the eyes.

“Okay, you little shit, whatever you’re up to is your own damn nonsense, but what I called you about was Business Elite.

I’ll be in first class of course, but I’ve managed to procure you an economy ticket and a room on the fifth floor.

Might have been able to get you into the elite suites on the eleventh…

casino and all, if you’d attended just a single meeting like I asked and filled out the membership forms you’ve had all year. ”

“I don’t want to be in the Business Fucking Elite ,” I tell him, finding the only bit of strength I have left to drag my eyes from Shana and focus on the conversation at hand.

The one where I tell my father for the thousandth time, that I don’t give a shit about wealth or success.

I just want to build shit.

Is it that hard to comprehend?

And if he leaves me the fuck alone long enough, I can do that.

“Christ, Son, we’ve been over this. Come to the gala, get the damn membership, and you can have Mullins to fuck around with in your spare time while you make actual profits with Campbell Enterprises.

The money is in the land . Hell, you can even work remotely.

Manifest your own fucking destiny or whatever shit your generation is pissin’ these days.

Just do this one thing for me, Dustin. I’m trying to get you ahead.

Help you cover up what you started with all that mess —”

“Does it come back to that every fuckin’ time?” I seethe.

“Yes, Dustin! It does! It comes back to haunt you every fuckin’ time when you have a record. And you should have thought about that before you sought justice at your own fucking hands!” His voice booms, vibrating my fingertips through the phone.

Until it drops lower, a voice from my childhood—a man with a belt and a buckle aimed to punish.

And it’s fucking worse this way, because I see myself in his anger.

I feel his anger in me.

Shana stopped stretching, but my eyes aren’t on her anymore. They’re stuck on a memory of Thomas’s battered face.

I’m fifteen years old and my name becomes synonymous with cold-blooded. Vigilante, they’d whisper.

I didn’t even know the meaning of the word.