Page 11 of Tears and Other Fears

“To find Nathaniel and fuck him,” I replied, wishing it were true. Who knew? Stranger things had happened—like William dying and taking a bit of my fire with him. Now I was nothing but cold.

Chapter 6

I didnotfuckNathaniel Youngblood. We went home early. My job was done.

Young looked at my smeared lipstick and wrinkled dress as we drove home. He was white-knuckling the steering wheel like it held all the answers to sexual tension.

Even though Renon didn’t outright agree to help me, I knew it would only be a matter of time. Narcissistic people liked to know everything. They liked to dip their greedy little fingers into everyone else’s frosting and swipe a taste. He wanted me. He wanted his money. He wanted to fuck with Samuel as much as I did. I gave it two days.

“I take it you saw Renon?” Young finally asked through clenched teeth. He resembled the murderer I once accused him of being. Pursed lips. Dipped brow. He looked angry enough to fuck. For a moment, I almost forgot that I couldn’t have him.

“Saw him. Felt him. Kissed him. Your dick is bigger, by the way. Not by much. Maybe a millimeter. Does that make you feel good?”

He went from murderous to deadly. One more tick on his anger meter, and I’d be sitting next to the devil. “No. Why the fuck do you know how big his dick was?” Young asked. It was rare that I got to see this side of him. I’d placed him in that little box of helpless widower, and he punched holes through the cardboard. Once a calm steady presence of confidence and grief, Young looked like the rose growing in concrete he once so fondly described me as.

“I had to get his attention somehow,” I replied with a wave of my hand. “I bet he calls. He’s gonna help me prove it to you.”

Young let out a sigh, a bit of the tension in his shoulders fading. “I hate to break it to you, but I doubt his word means much.”

“Is there something else I don’t know? Why don’t you like him? I happen to think he’sincrediblylikable.” Or at least his body was.

“I don’t like that he was friends with William. He had a piece of my boyfriend I knew nothing about, and it’s bugging the shit out of me,” Young replied in an ominous tone worthy of a soap opera. What was with all the theatrics? Why couldn’t people just spit out whatever the fuck they needed to say? Young needed to air out his wounds and show the world he survived.

“I have pieces of William you know nothing about, and yet you seem attached to me. Maybe you could learn.”

“I don’t want to learn, Octavia. I’m starting to want to move on.”

No. No. No.

There wasn’t movingon.There was moving forward. There was moving away. Moving towards. Moving on meant forgetting, and I wasn’t willing to forget William ever, and neither should Young. I hated that phrase; it was something Noah used to discuss during his drunken therapy sessions. Moving on was out of the question, and fuck Nathaniel Youngblood for even suggesting it.

“For someone who wants to move on, you have a shitty way of showing it,” I said before biting my lip. I was trying to push him, anger him. “You and I both know that you’ll be stuck on William till the day you die; it’s why you and I won’t ever happen.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

Young grunted. “I thought you were chronically honest, Tav. You and I both know that this thing between us is inevitable.” This conversation wasn’t going the way I thought it would, and I wasn’t sure if I liked that or not.

“Yeah, well, we also both know that the only reason I’m here is because you want William back so badly that you’d put up with his insane sister. Noah thinks that you’re addicted to me, but I know the truth. You’re addicted to William. Or at least the idea of him.”

We kept driving through the night, weaving in and out of the late night traffic of New York with a vengeance. He drove as if he could work through how pissed off he was on the pavement. “Did you fuck him?” Young finally asked out of the blue.

“Who? Renon? Would you care if I did? And don’t feed me some line about how you feel responsible for me because I’m William’s sister. Tell me the truth, and I might reward you for it,” I said just as he pulled down a dark alley and kicked the car into park. I didn’t even have a second to orient myself before he was unbuckling me and yanking me over the center console onto his lap. I whimpered as my dress got caught on the gear shift, but Young’s determination wasn’t deterred.

I had no idea how the fuck I went from taunting Young to straddling him in the front seat of his BMW. I pushed up on my knees to give us space, and he quickly unzipped his pants and pulled out his hard cock, the only thing between us was my thin black thong.

And his sense of right and wrong.

And my loyalty to William.

And the whole goddamn world.

Within seconds, I had my thong shifted to the side and he was sliding into me with a loud grunt. The concrete jungle surrounded us, my heel was caught on the steering wheel, and every time I lifted up to slide right back down, my head bumped on the roof of the car. It was an uncoordinated clusterfuck that I couldn’t really feel because orgasms were for girls not on antidepressants and mood stabilizers. But sometimes sex wasn’t about getting off. Sometimes it was about proving to yourself that something other than loss and hate could fill you up.

“Did you fuck him?” Young asked as he palmed my breast, squeezing so tightly that it hurt. I looked in his dark eyes and observed the shadows on his sharp face. I arched my back, hitting the horn on the steering wheel while reaching for the radio to turn up the music so I wouldn’t have to hear about how he didn’t want me, he wanted somethingRenonwanted. All these fucked up men in my life with their fucked up baggage. Young turned it back down.

“Are you fucking me so you can brag about it to Renon later?” I asked with a gasp. He was bumping that special spot and jerking his hips up to meet each of my strides. I wrapped my hands around the headrest, caging him in and forcing him to look into my haunted eyes. ’Cause if he was going to use me, he would be regretting it later.

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