He groans in my ear at the pressure of my body against his erection, and it’s still strange to me to want to do this. To want to be touched. To want more. And after last night, and tonight, and where I was, to want to do this right now is bizarre to me. As if my life is built into separate rooms, and I’ve left one and entered another. And here, now, in this room I am only a girl of the moment, of flesh and blood and want, and I am aching all over for him. He’s drunk, I know he’s drunk, I know if he were sober, he wouldn’t be doing this, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t care.

“It sounds like she liked it when you touched her,” I whisper, and I’m silently praying that he’ll slide his hand down my pants, that he’ll touch me again, taste me, do something, anything to alleviate the throbbing between my legs. This is so rare for me, so unusual to feel this way. To be wet. To be wanting. To be turned on. But he does this to me. He lets me experience my body in a new way.

“I loved touching her,” he says, and with one strong hand on my hip, he shifts me 180 degrees so I’m facing him. His eyes are barely open, he’s in such a twilight state right now, but he bends his mouth to my neck, and begins kissing me there, and in seconds, I am asking for more.

“Trey,” I whisper as if his name has ten syllables and I have to say them all, feel them all, taste them all as his soft lips explore my neck. He tugs me closer, hooking a hand around my thigh, moving my leg on top of his, and then yanking me closer so I’m practically straddling his thigh in this position. More kisses rain down on my skin, and I can’t help it. I start rubbing myself against his thigh, and I whimper at the contact that’s both relief and a wish for more.

“Do that, Harley,” he says in a rough, ragged voice. “Fucking do that and don’t stop. I want to get you off.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I loved doing that to you. I love everything about making you come. I want to make you come in every way. With my mouth, with my fingers, with you just riding me like this right now,” he says, before he dives back to my neck, layering hot, desperate kisses on me as I move against him. I should be embarrassed, I’m dry humping his leg, after all. But I want to do this, and maybe that’s why I’m not ashamed. Because I am wound full of desire and this dark craving for him. My breathing grows stilted and erratic as the feelings build inside me, like lightning crackling through my veins, hot and wild and electric. Soon his hands are in my hair, and his mouth returns to mine. He kisses me with the kind of deep, furious kiss of a man who has to have his woman, and that woman happens to be dangerously close to coming.

He doesn’t even have to touch me, though I wouldn’t mind if his fingers were down my pants, or his tongue again, but right now I am close, so close, just from the friction of my body against his. He shifts one more time, so he’s on his back, and I’m on top, totally clothed, but my legs are spread, and he’s under me.

“I want you to fuck me like that, Harley. I want you to ride me, and I want you to come while you’re doing it,” he says, grabbing at my hair, and pulling me back down to his mouth.

His tongue swirls wildly with mine, his lips crushing mine with such intensity, as if he would fall off the earth if he stopped, that I start to lose control.

The thing I value most, that I quest after. That I seek.

Control.

I try all day and night, all my fucking life, to find it and then hold onto like it’s a precious treasure. But right now, it falls through my fingers as I give in to my body, with my thighs spread, his fantastically hard erection thick and heavy and doing its job between my legs, even with all this denim between us, as his mouth searches mine like I’m the answer to every and any question he’s ever had. He roams a hand down my back, cupping my ass to keep me close as I bite my lip, because I don’t know how to let go and shout and scream even though I want to. Instead I shudder several times and pant heavily as I come.

“Oh,” I gasp, keeping my voice low. I don’t want anyone to hear me, even though we’re the only ones here.

Without wasting a moment, he pulls me closer, wrapping his arms so tightly around me that it feels as if he’ll never let go, and I can’t say I want him to. His legs are tangled with mine, his arms hold me close, and I don’t know where I end and he begins. He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my hair, and I feel cared for in a way I never have. I also feel pretty fucking amazing, like my whole body has taken a bath in golden sunlight and is shining. Is radiant. Is beautiful, and new, and pure again.

Maybe that’s weird to feel pure. But I do. With him.

“You’re beautiful Harley, so beautiful,” he murmurs and his voice is fading again, sleep threatening to overtake him as I roll off of him and return to lying side by side. He pulls at the sleeve of my teeshirt and kisses my tattoo.

“Are you going to tell me why you have a red ribbon on your arm?”

“Yeah, but you go first. You tell me why yours are all in threes. Why do you have the sunbursts and birds and all your abstract patterns in threes. What’s with the threes?”

“Hmmm? Those?”

“Yeah. Those,” I ask. He’s never told me. But I want to know.

He snuggles closer, tucking his face into my neck and breathing me in. He sighs happily, then says, “So I don’t forget my brothers.”

Brothers? Something doesn’t compute. Trey is an only child.

“What do you mean?”

“Will, Jake and Drew. They all died at birth. They’re my three dead brothers.”

My blood stops pumping, and it’s as if someone turned off the music at a dance, and turned the lights all the way up on me.

I push both hands against his shoulders. “What do you mean, Trey?” I ask, hoping, praying he made a mistake, that he will unsay what he just said. “Take that back, please.”

But he falls asleep, the drinking finally taking over, and he is passed out in arms, the marks of his three dead baby brothers permanently inked on his beautiful body.

Chapter Eleven

Harley

The first thing I do after I shower in the morning is locate a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Not for Trey. But for me. To separate myself from how I used to dress, used to look, used to play. I need to feel as comfortable in Converse as I do in Mary Janes.

As I do in evening dresses.

In trenchcoats and leather.

I can’t be like Layla all the time, at least not the Layla I was last night with Cam.

I want to be the person I am with Trey. I want to be that girl. Real and true and honest and scared.

I pull my hair into a tight ponytail and apply only the barest of makeup — gloss and a dab of blush.

But it’s hard, so incredibly, unbearably hard, to resist doing everything I can to look pretty, to be the prettiest girl in the room, as my mom taught me, as my tattoo reminds me.

So I go through the motions.

I linger over the powder, eyeshadow and mascara in my makeup bag, wanting — longing — to put on a perfect face. I pantomime the moves. Foundation dotted on the chin, the cheeks, under the eyes, then the forehead. Makeup brush spreads the foundation smoothly, then the makeup wedge to spread the powder. Blush next brushed onto the cheekbones, then eyeshadow, three to four applications so the eyes stand out. Then eyeliner on the lids. Mascara next, a full five minutes to achieve the right length, the right fullness above and below. Five minutes to make the eyes pop.

Mascara is the most essential of the five makeup vitamins — foundation, blush, eyeshadow, lipstick and mascara. Mascara is the hardest to apply, takes the longest, but reaps the most rewards. It’s the difference between a finished look and one that says I just don’t care.

I care. I care deeply. Painfully.

Too much.

I close my eyes, grit my teeth, hold the pink tube tightly in my fist and then let it go. It drops to the bottom of my makeup bag with a dull clank as it hits the powder case.

I zip the bag shut. I look myself over in the mirror. My face looks naked. It’s jarring and I feel jumpy, jittery. I remind myself what Joanne would say. Change is supposed to feel weird. You don’t get to the other side by feeling the same way you felt before. But knowing what’s coming this afternoon from Miranda to my mom’s house — a black-and-white reminder of who I was and what I did — it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever get to the other side. I want to cover myself up. I want to hide my new self. I want to slather my face with makeup.

I also just want to be me.

But I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who I am. I am two people. Torn and tattered in split halves.

I leave the bathroom and return to the living room. My apartment is quiet and the sun is barely rising. The first pink slivers of dawn peek over the horizon, pulling the night away. It is early, but I want to get ahead on my debt.

Kristen is probably sleeping, and Trey is still here, stretched out and gorgeous on the couch. He sleeps on his stomach, his cheek pressed into a pillow, one arm hanging off the side of the couch. I kneel down and reach for his arm, not quite touching, but tracing the air near his shoulder, outlining the sunbursts.

Did he mean what he said last night?

Does he have three brothers he’s never told me about?

He knows all my secrets. All my terrible truths. I want him to trust me. I want him to tell me about the marks on his body. I want him to feel safe with me. I want to know him as deeply and as truly as I think he knows me.

I need to resist Layla to do that. I bend closer to his arm and brush my lips ever so softly, ever so gently against his shoulder. A wisp of a kiss, a hint of all that I might feel for him.