Page 12 of Fire Fight

My eyes drift closed, and I see an older image of her, from the day I was dragged awayfor my own good.

Through the window panels in the door, I had watched her sitting outside the principal’s office. She balanced on the plastic chair, knees curled to her chest, dressed in replacement clothes sourced from the school’s lost and found. Shorts billowed around her slender legs, only holding at the waist thanks to a safety pin. Her top—two sizes too small—stretched tightly across her perfect tits, practically obscene.

A vision I stared at, head twisted with longing and confusion and fury, knowing her mother would never arrive to collect her, no matter what the school said when they phoned.

During her fruitless wait, I was stuck with the lawyer my father sent in his stead. The father who had only introduced himself a day before, conveniently ‘not knowing’ about me when it mattered, when we could have used his bloated excess of wealth.

The lawyer paced back and forth, talking the school out of pressing charges. Talking me into three months of pure hell at a boot camp instead.

The fucker really didn’t make a good first impression.

I pick through the ashtray mounted between the front bucket seats, searching for enough dregs to form a new blunt, but the hunt is fruitless. What I should do is sleep but each time I try, she floods my mind. Stirring my muscles into tight, hard knots. Making me so angry I’m close to losing control.

Action is the only cure when my thoughts spiral.

I switch into the driver’s seat and steer my precious car up the hill. I head straight past her new residence, parking in the next available rest area. One with a clear line of sight to the house.

The lights in Cadence’s room go off far sooner than the rest. Either she’s under the covers, checking her phone, or the day exhausted her enough to go to sleep early.

I wait for a full half hour once the entire house is dark, then drive down, parking behind the thick bushes that front the section. There’s an alarm set, the red lights blinking in every room, but I quickly disable it using my phone.

A thrill snakes its way along my spine, spilling adrenaline into my system as I avoid the gravel, stepping on the cushioning grass to reach her window. The curtains aren’t drawn, possibly so anytime she wants, she can sit upright in bed and stare across the sea.

Tonight, it’s hypnotising. The slight breeze chops the waves until the reflected moonlight is cut into a thousand shimmering pieces.

But it’s the sight inside the room I find more entrancing. Cadence lies on her back, face turned towards the window. Her features are so still, it’s only the slow rhythmic rise and fall of her chest that convinces me she’s alive.

The moment I raise the sash window, she’ll be awake and alert, so during this brief calm, I drink my fill of her.

So much pretty in such an evil little package.

My mind returns to the past, replaying my last day at Alabaster when I pushed her against the bank of lockers.

Torn between rage and grief and lust, the touch felt like a hit of electricity. Nine volts straight through my sensitive skin as the whites of her eyes shone, fear buzzing through her. Stiffening her muscles. Stiffening my cock as I stared down her shirt at those gorgeous tits. The ones she took such pains to display on the swimming platform this afternoon, wearing a skimpy costume to parade before the boys.

A tease.

But I’m more than capable of teasing back.

Since last week, when I first got a heads-up she was coming to Ashford Crest, I’ve been planning my revenge, but I forgot what it was like to be near her. My first crush.

Crush is right. It’s what it feels like when she stares straight into me, her beauty a tightening fist around my soul.

My fingers worm under the sash window and lift, wincing at the sharp squeal of wood against wood in the still night air.

She doesn’t even stir.

Emboldened, I throw my leg over the sill and clamber inside. Not the most elegant journey, but I’m not scoring points for presentation. I leave the window up for a quick retreat, then pace around her room.

The canopy over the bed turns her into a fairytale princess. One with a pea underneath her mattress or a fingertip bleeding where the spindle pierced her skin.

Asleep, she could be anything I want her to be.

Taking care not to wake her, I peel the bedclothes from her unconscious form, leaving them just covering her feet before pushing her onto her back. Her chest hitches like a deep instinct warns her, then returns to its steady rise and fall.

The cold wind blowing off the harbour bites deeper by the second. Exactly like it did when my clothes were soaked by icy water, left to shiver in the mountain air, not even a thin tent to protect against the elements. Even in early autumn, it got cold at boot camp altitude. Most mornings the wild grasses would crackle underfoot with frost.

My lips dried, then cracked, then split; the medicine cabinet didn’t stock the niceties of Vaseline. My right upper lip split in the same place so often it left a scar.

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