Page 4 of Tears and Other Fears

Chapter 2

I always thoughtthat people were predictable. That’s why I was so upset about Noah collaborating with the judge and my mother to get me admitted. It wasn’t his betrayal that bothered me. No, it was the fact that I didn’t see it coming. I thought that people made sense. I’d had an ego about my abilities to sniff out a person’s behavior for as long as I could remember.

For some, intimacy was like a valve. They could control the pressure on their hearts, twisting it to fit their needs. They let souls slip through their leaky roofs like raindrops. I didn’t know how to find the middle ground. I was all or nothing, letting intimacy in through a broken dam not worth rebuilding. I was burning for affection. I craved the gift of feeling something so badly that I didn’t care if my house was flooding or that I couldn’t keep my head above water. I was willing to drown just to say I lived. Noah mistook my inability to swim for love, and I had stopped looking for ways he could hurt me. Rookie mistake.

I didn’t see his betrayal coming, because I was too busy keeping my head above water.

“What are you thinking about?” Young asked. I was surprised when he announced that we’d be going back to his penthouse and not to a hotel. He didn’t suggest that I stay somewhere else. He just told the driver of his ostentatious limo to take us home. Home seemed like a funny word to me, but I didn’t comment on it.

I thought that Young would want to keep Samuel and me separate, but maybe he wanted to see the showdown. Maybe he wanted to prove to himself that the little incident at the scholarship event didn’t happen.

Or maybe he wanted me near him. Maybe he didn’t want the hotel because being separate was as hard for him as it was for…

Hah. No. Young had an ulterior motive. And once these meds were out of my system, I’d be cynical enough to sniff it out. Maybe he wanted this thing I had with Samuel to come to a head.

“Drowning,” I replied nonchalantly, egging him on to ask me more. That’s what I was good at, right? Giving little clues to the dark future I still had planned for myself. “When does the murderer come home?” I asked, changing the subject while looking around the apartment. There was a dirty magazine on the ground. Wasn’t this the twenty-first century? Who actually looked at porn magazines? Every modern person I knew used their phone. “And why is this place so messy; don’t you guys have a maid or something?”

Young dropped his suitcase on the tile floor before going to the kitchen and checking for food in the fridge. “Ever since the scholarship event, Samuel’s been staying with his parents. And no, we don’t have a maid. Samuel does all the cleaning. It’s one of his compulsive needs. He finished his finals early and agreed to stay with them until graduation next week.”

The murderer was in hiding. “So did he pass all of his finals? Or did you have to go down on Mrs. Robinson again?” I asked just as Young took a bite of fruit, making him choke.

He answered after coughing up the apple lodged in his throat. “For the record, Mrs. Robinson and I are done.”

“Are you too old for her now?” I asked.

“No,” he replied while gritting his teeth.

I plopped down on the couch and propped my feet up on the coffee table, admiring my worn down sneakers against the pristine wood. “Does she know you’re done, or is this just something you whisper to yourself late at night to feel better about letting her fondle your dick?”

“I’m telling her tonight, actually. I’m done with school. Grades have been recorded. She can’t hold this over me anymore.” He sat down next to me, staring at the apple in his hand. I had to resist the urge to make jokes about forbidden fruit and the serpent in his pants.

“I mean, not to call you on your bullshit, but was she everreallyholding it over your head? I get that you were trying to do Samuel a solid, but you did that solid overand over and over—”

“I get it,” he interrupted with a frown.

“I’m just saying,” I replied while twisting on the couch to look at him. I reached out to grab the apple he was clutching and bit into it, digging my sharp teeth so far that I reached the core, and small seeds spilled into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed my food before responding, taking my time. “You didn’thaveto do anything. I think you’ll feel better if you just admit that you liked it. I think it’s shit that you cheated on William, but what’s shittier is you’re taking a massive dump on his grave by pretending you were forced into this.”

Young let out a slow sigh before responding. Running a hand through his dark hair, he looked like he wanted to run the fuck away from me and the reality I spat, but I wouldn’t let him get that far. “I liked it at first. It was fun and exciting, and the thrill of sneaking around with an older woman got me off. But it turned into more than that…”

“More as in…” I prompted.

“As in she started getting attached. She’s in a terrible marriage. President Robinson is an asshole to her. Her kids hate her. I felt...bad for her.” His beautiful face scrunched up as he spoke, and I knew the words felt as toxic as they sounded.

“You’ve got an addiction, Young,” I said before leaning back and resting my hands behind my head. Staring up at the ceiling, I traced shadows with my gaze before continuing. “You like to save people. You wanted to save her. Save my brother. Save me. Sympathy is a disease far worse than what I’ve got, let me tell you.” Luckily, I didn’t feel the chronic need to save. Mrs. Robinson deserved to be punished.

“So you’re going there tonight?” I asked, a plan already forming in my head.

“Oh no, no, no. You’re not coming,” Young replied while shaking my shoulder, forcing me to look him in the eye.

“It’s not polite to tell a woman she can’t come, Young,” I replied coolly. “You said yourself that she can’t hold anything over you anymore. Maybe you should stop letting other people’s emotions dictate your own happiness. It sounds like she manipulated you into feeling sorry for her. But you don’t seem strong enough to do right by yourself, so consider me personal security for your dick,” I replied with a chuckle.

Young rolled his eyes, then reached over to wrap his arms around my waist, pulling me in for a hug that felt awkward but comforting and destructive all the same. “Are we on a cuddling basis now?” I asked while he stroked my back, tracing lines along my spine with his finger.

“Just let it happen, Tav,” he grumbled in response.

“You’re kidding me,”I snorted while looking around the shady as fuck motel. “You’re richer than God, and you meet up for sex in this dump? It looks like my old apartment.” I artfully avoided thoughts of Mrs. Mulberry, the kind woman I used to live with. And by artfully, I actually meant I stared at Young’s ass until I was thinking about sinking my teeth into those glorious globes instead of crying over her.

“It’s secretive,” he replied before sliding his keycard into the door and letting us inside. It smelled like mold, bleach, and cum. I bet the sheets were crusted by past disappointments and cursed by the ghosts of unsatisfied women and their shitty sex.

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