Page 151 of Stutter

“Ray, look at me. What’s going on?”

She turns to face me, her head on her pillow and mine on mine. “I just really miss my dad sometimes. I just… I think if maybe I’d been there. He’d have given up drinking. My mom is so… hard to please. I know he drank a lot to forget the things she’d say to him, the things she called him and treated him and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it had just been us…” She shakes her head as I wipe the tears from her face.

Those hurt me more. Her silent tears, I mean. Because it means she’s hurting in a place I can’t reach. Like when she was doing ballet. She wasn’t crying silently then because her feet hurt. She was crying because she was miserable and her mom still made her do it. She cried silently when her dad died, too. Cried silently when she was denied going to his funeral.

Silent tears… her silent tears hurt me more because it means I can’t help. All I want to do is reach into her body and cradle her heart in my hands.

“I love you, cookie. I’ll never leave you.”

This makes her cry harder.

So I hold her tighter.

________

“I applied to Berklee.” She says, leaning on my door frame, arms crossed over her chest, one ankle over the other. Her hair is up in a ponytail that rests on her shoulder, cascading down like a dark chocolate waterfall. “And Julliard.”

We're eighteen now. About to graduate. My dreams have been crushed, but hers haven’t. She doesn’t know. I want to keep it that way. Except I can’t imagine being away from her for too long. I… I still need her. I want her. She’s still mine.

I sit back in my desk chair, twirling my pencil between my fingers, watching as she enters my room slowly, one step at a time like a black cat prowling closer. She’s still in her school uniform, her black socks up to her knees, plaid blue and black skirt barely hitting the middle of her thighs. The light blue button down is tucked in to the skirt, but I know what’s under the uniform.

I’ve seen her in bikinis and her underwear enough to have a lifetime of material for my spank bank. But her, like this, in her uniform… it will always do things to me. I know I’ll be in the shower later imagining her bent over, that little skirt shoved up to her back, tits hanging out and swaying, knocking together while I spread her ass apart and fuck so deep into her she can’t keep quiet. It’s a thought that usually gets me to blow my load quickly.

I drop the pencil and spin in my chair to face her as she sits on the edge of my bed. “I thought you wanted to go to Rayne-Moore with me. Their music program is better than Julliard.”

She sighs and leans back on her hands, if she let her knees relax, I’d be able to see what I’m dying to see. “I’m not sure.”

“You loved their campus.”

She nods. “I did. It was creepy.”

“Come here.” She gets up and sits in my lap, arms going over my shoulders while mine go around her waist. I’ve had years of being able to control my hard-ons around her. “What’s got you so pensive?”

“You don’t think it’s weird neither of us applied and we still got in?”

I shrug. “Not really. Dad went there. He's a legacy.” In more ways than one.

“That’s just it, little brother. I… I think I want to be out on my own. I know you’ll be playing football and you’ll be happy there. But I want to be away from…” she gestures to, well, everything. “All of this.”

“And me?”

“Never you.”

“Hmm.” I scoot down lower, so she sits better on my lap and let my hands fall to her hip and thigh. I love that crease where they meet. “Feels like it.”

She hugs me, putting her breasts in my face. It’s innocent to her but for me, it’s always been different.More. “I just feel like it’s time for me to break away.”

I stay silent when she pulls away, her scent in my nostrils, her ass in my lap, her breasts under my chin, my hands on her squishy parts to look up at her caramel eyes. They make me dizzy. “If you go to RMU, I promise I’ll stay away. I’ll let you have your own life. Just promise you won’t stop going to my games and I promise to go to your recitals.”

“I would still go to your games even if I went to a different school. I’d still be close enough to make them.”

“But who's gonna protect you when it storms and there’s lightning?”

“Hopefully whomever I’m dating.” She grins.

I hold in my growl. But I do take it one step further and do the thing she can never resist. I clutch her tighter, furrow my brows and pout, lowering my voice to a whine. I’ve noticed she can never tell me no when I become a fucking puppy for her. “Please, Ray? Please don’t leave me yet. Just do a year with me there and if you hate it after that, then you can transfer out. I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

“Fuck, Axel.” She groans, frustrated, rolling her eyes, and I know I’ve won.“Fiiiiinnne.One.Year.”

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