Page 36 of Devil's Bargain

“This is how it’s going to work. You’re going to suck my dick like a good little girl, and then I’m going to pay you like we agreed. You’ll bring the money home to your deadbeat mother, which she’ll spend on drugs instead of food and heating. Then you’ll be back here, grappling with my belt.”

I rip my lips away and scramble off the boulder.

Rick heaves his body off too, walking toward me with purpose. “You can’t tell me you didn’t feel that. You kissed me back!”

I felt it. Oh god, how I felt it!

I shake my head. “Rick, we can’t!” I look around for witnesses. If word gets back to Scott, I’ll be in deep shit! I’m his whore and no one else’s. He’s made that perfectly clear.

“We can!”

My back hits the bleachers, and he wastes no time caging me in. His warm breath fans my lips as he whispers, “You felt it!”

“You don’t want me.”

His brows knit together. “What are you talking about?”

The bleachers dig into my back. “You’re a popular jock, Rick. Look at me…”

He sweeps his hazel eyes over my face, lingering on my lips. “Iamlooking at you.”

“I’m nothing like Emily.”

His eyes flit back up to mine. He’s impossibly close. “I know you’re not.”

“I’ve never done cheerleading. I don’t even know how to wave pom-poms in the air.” I’m clutching at straws.

He lets go of the bleacher and traces his fingers over my jaw before cupping it gently. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

“You need to let me go,” I whisper, but my voice is lost in the summer breeze. His nose brushes up against mine. “Please, Rick.” I don’t even know what I’m pleading for anymore.

He squeezes his eyes shut as if in pain. “Why are you fighting it?”

“I’m stuck, Rick!”I’m fucking my math teacher for money because my deadbeat mom spends it on alcohol and drugs. And, if I refuse…

He steps back, interlacing his fingers behind his neck as he looks up at the sky.

I’m trembling. I want his lips back on mine and his hands on my body. I want him to disregard everything I just said and make me his. But I know he won’t.

He leaves without another word, his head hanging low, his shoulders hunched. I stare at the blue number on his letterman jacket.

* * *

I can’t get it out of my mind how defeated Rick looked when he walked away. It haunts me in my dreams and is still with me now as I walk into the kitchen to have a bite to eat.

“I know you felt it too.”

I find a bowl and a spoon before rooting through the cupboards for cereal. We still have no electricity, so I eat the cereal dry while waiting for Nina to pick me up for school. I have my own car, but it sits parked in the driveway. It’s another expense I can’t afford so why waste money on petrol when I can get a lift?

When I go to rinse out the bowl, I pause. More unpaid bills lie on the counter next to the sink. I pick up the letter for the rent with trembling hands and stare at it in disbelief. “I paid for this bill. I know I did!”

I double-check the date. This is a new letter, but I paid the bill….

“Oh my god!” I whisper, pressing a palm over my mouth as panic begins to set in. “It’s paid! I fucking paid it!”

The snores emanating from my mother’s bedroom make me want to scream and break something. If only she would stop being so fucking useless!

I rush to her bedroom and slam the door open. The smell hits me first. Then the sight of her passed out body on the bed.

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