Page 44 of Advice from a Sunflower

"Neither am I. We can keep playing this game where you pretend you're in control of everything happening between us, or you can finally acknowledge it for the runaway train that it is. I have no control over it, and neither do you."

The left side of his mouth twitches up in a smile he's clearly fighting. "Is that so, Little Mouse? You don't think I have control over what's going on here?"

Okay, I'll admit that broke down my resolve a little. So does the predatory look in his eyes as he stands and stalks closer toward me. But I don’t let that deter me from my mission. It feels good to speak to him as an equal instead of the weak little girl he’s turned me back into since I ran into him.

“Nope,” I manage to squeak as he grabs me by the waist and carries me through the house toward the stairs to his room.

He slams me onto the bed and when I tug him closer to me, he growls, “This is theonlything I have control over,” into my ear. He wastes no time tugging my shirt over my head and ripping my jeans off.

It's turns out the be the most aggressive hook-up we've had to date. Eli seems to have channeled every ounce of anger he has onto me, manically taking me in any way he deemed fit. We started on the bed where he bit and sucked me until I had the most colorful orgasm I've ever experienced. Now, he's dragging me over to the side of the bed and bending me over, shoving my face into the comforter as he takes me from behind. Despite his selfishly aggressive behavior, he reaches around and touches me in the most perfect way, bringing me over the edge just as he stills inside me and enjoys his own orgasm.

Before I can take a breath, he's swinging me around and slamming me against the wall. He lifts me by my ass like I weigh nothing and lines himself right back to my now-raw center. It makes everything even more painfully pleasurable, adding an extra sensation that overwhelms me even more. Just when I think I'm going to explode from the constant friction, he leads us into ecstasy together.

I feel like a ragdoll. No, scratch that. I feel like his voodoo doll. My entire body is worn down to nothing by the time he lets go of my legs and watches me slide down the wall to stand on my own. I practically fall onto the bed, too exhausted to even lift my feet. If he plans to kick me out after that, he can go to Hell.

Instead, he surprises me by plopping down in the space beside me, his face turned up toward the ceiling. After a few moments of silence while I catch my breath, Eli surprises me even more by telling me about Sadie.

Chapter 23

Eli

Every day that Lyla spends in The Hollow sends me into a deeper spiral. I'm falling behind on work, barely able to focus on any task for very long before my mind trails off to her in whatever position I had her bent into the night before. Marnie is catching on to us and I can tell the fallout is coming sooner than I'm ready to admit. She was on board when she thought I'd pursue her sister in an honorable way. Apparently, meaningless hook-ups with Lyla are not an acceptable way to gain the blessing of my best friend.

On top of it, Ma's mental health is only getting worse. It's starting to affect her physically, too. The other day, she fell while getting out of the shower and twisted her ankle. Two hours later, she had already forgotten about the incident and stood too quickly from the couch. She almost broke a hip but allowed her wrist to take the brunt of the fall instead. Now, she's got a sprained ankle, a broken wrist, and a mind that keeps playing tricks on her.

I know it's time to put her into a facility that can properly care for her around the clock. With my work schedule and the time I've been spending with Lyla, I can't be there for her the way she needs me to be. I still feel like a failure admitting that. It's part of the reason I resent Lyla so much. Every time I think about sending Ma away, I feel like a jackass for wasting the small amount of spare time I have on a woman who would leave me behind in an instant, instead of the one who dedicated her life to me. Ma has always been there to take care of me; most of the time on her own. She dedicated every waking second to making sure my needs were met and later, my family's needs, and I can barely handle a few bad months without her getting hurt.

The fucked up part is that even though I know Lyla will eventually walk away again, I still want my shot with her. I tell myself it's because I want her to pay for what she's done to me. To have my chance to destroy even the tiniest bit of her life. But even that excuse is growing paper thin. Each time I hear her sigh in response to my lips on her skin, or the sexy moans she releases whenever I bring her to the brink of finishing, I fall deeper into the black hole that I was in all those years ago.

I loved her. I tried denying it, knowing she was born with one foot on the outside of the town and hating the idea of being the thing that held her back. I distracted myself with sports and honors classes, taking every avenue I could imagine to grant me a shot at a scholarship for whatever school she chose to go to. If I couldn't have her in The Hollow, I was going to follow her around until she thought I was good enough.

But the sports lead to empty friendships that distracted me from my goal. I ended up having a few random hook-ups before I decided to settle with Emma, pushing Lyla further in the opposite direction and taking our fragile friendship along the way. By the time she was accepted into Cornell, my head was too far up my ass to realize I hadn't even applied anywhere out of state. I thought I'd lost my shot with her, but Marnie convinced me to try one last time.

She was the only one who knew about my feelings for her sister. I still don't know how she figured it out, but in true Marnie fashion, she called me out during our freshman year and never let it go. The night before Lyla was set to leave, Emma and I had gotten into another nasty fight and broke up. Marnie showed up at my house to tell me Lyla was leaving earlier than we thought.

"I know you don't think you deserve her, but she's leaving tomorrow. Once she's gone, I'm not sure we'll ever get her to come back,"she explained through tears. Pregnancy was making her an emotional mess, constantly crying about her mother's reaction and losing Lyla.

It took me an hour to get the courage to go find her. She was lying in the middle of her yard, staring up at the sky without a care in the world. The moment I saw her and realized how close I was to having her slip through my fingers, I was reminded why I put all the effort into following her all those years ago and I hated myself for losing sight of it. She welcomed me easily, the way she always did. Even after years of betraying her, she was nothing but kind.

So, I gave myself over to her that night. Not in the way I wish I could have, or the way she had to me—that ship had sailed years before. But I poured out every part of my being and handed it over to her that night. Nothing had ever felt so right, and I stupidly hoped she felt it too.

Spoiler alert: she didn't.

She left the next morning without bothering to say goodbye. Not to me, not to Marnie. Hell, not even to Denise. And though she'd managed to be the perfect sister to Marnie, she strategically refused to step foot into The Hollow for the next seven years.

After a summer of pure depression and constant nagging from Emma, we got back together, and Sadie came along two years later. The moment Lyla left, I went on autopilot. I stopped experiencing my life. Instead, I'd allowed life to just happen to me. Then, after Sadie passed, I did the same thing.

I told Mouse about what happened that day. I haven't talked about my daughter in years, but I felt like I owed it to her after taking my frustration out on her. Of course, she took all my abuse in stride, too prideful to tell me that I was being an asshole. When we finished, it just fell from my mouth. The whole story. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

I was driving home from work when it happened. There was a feeling all day, deep inside my chest that nagged its way into my head, convincing me to finish up my work twenty minutes early.

To take the long way home instead of my usual shortcut.

To pull over on the side of the bridge and look over the side, discovering the familiar red, two-door sports car my wife had insisted I buy her as a "push present". No one else in town drove that car. No one in their right mind would want to strap a toddler into the backseat of that thing.

No one but Emma.

My feet carried me down the hill, somehow avoiding every rock and hole the entire way down. Sometimes, I think back and convince myself I floated my way down. As if my body disconnected from the earth's gravitational pull long enough to get me to them.

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