SWNOVELS Bad Intentions: Chapter 32
The house was quiet when I let myself in a little later. I’d gone over what I’d say to my parents a hundred times, and it hadn’t made me feel any better. No magical answer had appeared inside my head, so I was at a loss as to what to do. No, that wasn’t true. I knew what to do. I was just afraid.
I’d spent so much of my young life afraid, and I’d never even realized it until I met Cayden. Now, I had nowhere to hide. He was forcing me out into the open, and I’d never been more terrified. I’d been scared of disappointing my parents and my teachers, damaging my father’s reputation at school, and failing to meet the expectations of those who had pinned all their hopes on me. I didn’t feel ready to confront that boatload of issues, and yet, thanks to Cayden fucking West, I had no choice.
“Lily? We’re in here.” My father’s voice drifted to me from the kitchen.
I slipped my shoes off at the door and padded along the hall, toward judgment.
Inside the kitchen, the light was on over the table, and my parents were both sitting there. As soon as I met my mother’s hurt gaze, I felt like crying. Damn Cayden to hell for forcing this on me. It had to happen sometime. I ignored the voice of reason in my head and pushed my hatred toward the only figure I had to blame. Fucking Cayden.
“So, a lot happened this week, and I think we need to talk about it,” my dad said carefully.
“That whole journal thing was just a prank,” I began, but my mother didn’t let me get far.
“Did you really apply to college in California? Couldn’t you get farther away? Doesn’t Hawaii have a good epidemiology program?”
Ouch, her opening shot was fiery. This conversation wasn’t going to be easy.
“Honey, let Lily talk and explain herself.” My dad’s tone was full of the false confidence of someone who was convinced there was a reasonable explanation for everything.
“What’s all this about?” he continued. “Did you really apply for school in California?”
My mouth too dry to speak, I slowly nodded.
My mother gasped out a tiny, pained exclamation.
“Okay, it’s okay.” My dad patted her hand. “Why did you, honey? Can you tell us?”
I stared at them, words crowding my head, rising and falling, every single one inadequate.
“Lily? Why aren’t you speaking?” my mother burst out.
“What are you waiting for? It’ll only get harder. Does it feel good to lie to them every day?” Cayden’s annoying voice played in my head.
“I-I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “I could pretend that I just love the idea of the sun and Cali living, or that the college is my dream school and the program is better than the one here, but it would be a lie.”
My parents were shocked at my words. Whatever they’d been expecting, my outburst hadn’t been it. But Cayden’s words had shaken something loose inside me that had been tight for so long. When are you going to stop being such a fucking coward? Today, I finally replied to him in my head. I’m stopping today, come what may.
“Lily,” my dad started.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to upset you. My whole life, upsetting you has been the thing I was most scared of.” I let out a tense laugh, trying to shift the fear strumming through me. “Not bad grades or being unpopular or getting made fun of… disappointing you was my nightmare. I only cared about my grades, because you cared. You both cared so damn much.”
My parents stared at me aghast, like I was a person they didn’t know. I forged on.
“I’m not blaming you or saying that it was a bad thing. It was an amazing thing. It pushed me to work so much harder than everyone else and to achieve so much more. I have my pick of colleges to go to and I can study something I really love, and that’s because of you guys. You always believed in me, and it helped me to believe in myself.”
My dad cleared his throat after a moment. “But?”
“But…” I blew out a long breath and braced myself. “But I know the librarian better than my classmates, and I have a million facts in my head, but very little in the way of memories of school that will make me smile and laugh. Silly moments, parties, friends, first kisses…”
Both my parents blanched at that.
“Yes, before you say anything, it’s normal for an eighteen-year-old to date and kiss a few guys. It doesn’t mean I’ll get pregnant and drop out of college.”
“Lily, believe me, these things happen before you can even realize, and then your whole life changes.” My mother’s voice was so painfully sad.
I reached out and touched her curled fist on the table. “Mom, I know, believe me, you’ve told me enough times, but sometimes, when you do…what you don’t realize is that it sounds like my existence ruined your life.” My voice broke on the last few words.
My mother’s face tightened, shocked, and then crumpled.
“I wish I could change it for you, but I can’t. I’m here, and I’m sorry about that – but I can’t do anything about it.” Tears ran down my face now, and the looks on my parents’ faces broke my heart.
My mother was crying. I’d made my mother cry. I shoved back the chair and stood. I had to be alone. I couldn’t take their sadness. It was all my fault. It was always all my fault.
I fled the room, closing the kitchen door and sticking my feet back in my sneakers. I pushed out the front door, sobs racking my body.
I barely had time to realize I wasn’t alone when I collided with a hard chest. Cayden’s arms went around me and pulled me against him. He smelled like leather. He was wearing his motorcycle jacket, his helmet gripped in one hand. He’d had the bike fixed a few days ago; I could make out the shape of it parked just behind him. He’d come home earlier than I’d expected him to.
“What happened?” he asked soberly.
Despite our words to each other only an hour ago at the diner, his presence suddenly made me feel less alone. I looked up at him, blinking through my tears. My eyes swam; I couldn’t focus. Another huge sob wrenched my chest. His jaw tightened, a ticking muscle showing his emotion, before he stepped back and pulled me toward the bike.
“Here, get on,” he instructed curtly, tugging a helmet over my hot, blotchy face.
The sound of my sobs was deafening inside the helmet.
He got on the front of the bike and guided my arms around him, urging me to hold on tight, and then he was moving, rolling us carefully forward before accelerating. We shot off in a spray of gravel, just as the front door opened and my father appeared. Cayden didn’t slow, he simply rode off, taking me with him.
We hit the winding roads outside town that led toward the Anderson mansion, curving around cliffs that overlooked the sea. I held on and let the excitement of the ride soothe my tears. I took a deep breath, and then another one. It helped a little, but knowing I had to go back home soon and face my parents only set me off again.
We rode for nearly an hour before Cayden turned us off the road and right through Beckett’s fancy gated property. He stopped and took my helmet off and then his own. As soon as the rumble of the bike died, the silence screamed in my head.
“Get cleaned up before you go home looking like you’re at your own funeral,” he said flatly. “Follow me.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
The house looked dark and uninviting. I followed Cayden.
He took me to the pool house. Inside was softly lit, and the blinds were all drawn. As soon as I stepped through the door, the reality of the horrible, ungrateful things I’d said to my parents crashed over me again, and the sobs escaped once more, sounding like they were being ripped from my very soul.
Cayden tensed, whirling around and reaching for me before I could sidestep. He pulled me into his chest in a tight embrace.
“Shh, Freckles. It’s okay.”
His soft murmur only made me cry more. He held me firmly as my emotions raged. There was pain and guilt over hurting my well-meaning parents, and then there was a sickening sense of relief at having finally spoken my mind. All of it stormed inside me, making it hard to breathe.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you…you did it. You were brave, and now, it’ll all get better.” Cayden still held me tightly, one hand running up and down my back, giving me comfort that I didn’t want.
I tensed in his arms. “This is all your fault, don’t you dare comfort me when you did this,” I snarled at him, wriggling to get out of his strong grip. I only managed when he loosened the cage of his arms. I leaned back and slapped him hard. The sound rang out in the small room.
“I don’t want comfort from you, you fucking lunatic. You want to hurt me and then kiss it better? What kind of twisted psycho are you?”
“The very same kind as you, it turns out. The one who tried to destroy my future and then gave me the strength I needed to win the game all in the same few days. We’re the same, Lily; fucked up, twisted liars, cowards through and through.”
“No, I’m not like you,” I ground out and pushed his chest as hard as I could. His hands were still fastened around my hips like pincers, and I couldn’t shift them. “I’ll never be like you – I’ll never shoot first and ask questions later. I’ll never just write people off and refuse to listen to them.” I was crying again and shoving hard at Cayden’s chest. When he failed to budge even an inch, I settled for hitting that huge, muscular chest. I pounded it with my balled-up fists so hard that the reverb shook my arms.
Cayden held me fast, unmoved by my blows. “I’m a monster, a nightmare, I know…tell me how terrible I am, if it makes you feel better.”
“No, it doesn’t make me feel better. You don’t make me feel better. I hate you,” I spat. My tears had felt like a bottomless well, but struggling with Cayden, trying to escape him, was wearing out my strength.
“I know, Bug.”
I landed a particularly striking blow and gasped as my hand throbbed. He yanked me closer then, somehow backing me against the wall at the same time. He trapped my hands between us, and his hard body pressed into mine. His eyes were intense, staring down at me with all the same emotion as the locker a room a week ago, when he’d accused me of breaking his heart.
“If it makes you feel any better, I hate me, too.” He cupped my cheek.
My skin burned where he touched me.
“If it helps at all, know that no one, you included, will ever hate me as much as I hate myself.” He ran his thumb under my eye and wiped away the stinging salt. “Does that make you feel better?”
My head was shaking before I could stop myself. “No. It’s too sad.”
My murmur was faint, but he caught it.
He leaned in, his hot breath blowing over my wet skin. “You are the only person I’ve ever met who’d feel bad for me even after all you know about me, and after all I’ve done.”
“So what? You think that makes me as fucked up as you?” I challenged, but my words had lost their steam because he was looming over me, pressing against me in all the right places, and his eyes were locked on my lips like they were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
No one had ever looked at me like Cayden West did, and I suspected that no one else ever would. Just him.
“Maybe it does, or maybe I just wish it did…because then I could have you.”
I couldn’t puzzle out his meaning right now, not with the way he was staring at me. I was torn up inside, and all of a sudden, I wanted to stop thinking and just feel. I wanted him to hold me, and push me, and fuck me so hard I couldn’t think. This guy, my enemy, and the only one who understood all the little, ugly parts of myself that I tried to hide from.
He saw it all, every single bit, and he was still gazing at me like I was something special. Something rare and precious. His.
I couldn’t tell who reached out first. Did he lean in, or did I reach up? There was no way to tell in our mutual want who crossed the line in the sand that anger had drawn between us…only that we crashed together somewhere in the middle.
He kissed me forcefully, and I met him every inch of the way. His lips on mine after the rough week we’d had felt more comforting than I wanted to admit. I bit his lower lip, and he growled against me, his hands roaming over my body. He pinched my nipples sharply, and I cried out into his open mouth, arching my back into his brutal touch. He wasn’t gentle, and I didn’t want him to be.
He lifted me into his arms with his usual ease, and the ridge of his hard-on nestled against my pussy, only separated from him by our clothes. He spun us, searching for a surface with an urgency we both felt.
The pool table met my back as he laid me on it and reached for his belt. His blue eyes fastened on me as I wriggled my pants and underwear down my legs, kicking them off my feet and leaving my lower half bare. He palmed his cock, spreading the precum welling from the tip around the wide, rounded head of him before advancing toward me.
I opened my legs for him, welcoming him, and he stepped between them, lined himself up, and sank mercilessly inside. It burned where he stretched me, and I liked it. I wanted this. Rough and unforgiving. I wanted everything in my head driven out by his brutal thrusts. I wanted to feel pinned and helpless. I wanted to lose control. I trusted Cayden somehow, enough to let everything else go. How fucked up was that?
He growled when he met his end inside me, my pussy sheathing his entire length, and leaned down to kiss me. The pool table was hard under my back, but I didn’t care. I wanted it to hurt, to feel bare and vulnerable, angry and real.
He moved inside me, pulling out on a long draw and then thrusting sharply back inside. I cried out, the feeling too much, and his fingers worked inside my mouth, quieting me and giving me something to suck on at the same time.
He fucked me ruthlessly, holding my knees apart, spreading me wide the entire time, until I felt like I was going to come. He must have felt it, because he changed his angle, pushing his cock upward in a motion that pressed against the front wall of my pussy and made my knees weak. His fingers found my clit, and he circled it quickly, in time with his thrusts.
“Come for me, Freckles, let me see you fall apart,” he urged.
Freckles. The name reminded me of before everything had gone to shit. That brief and shining moment where I’d allowed myself to feel a whole lot for the enigmatic guy who’d moved into my house and into my heart, pretty much at the same damn time.
I came suddenly, and it felt wetter than ever, worryingly wet. I pushed the thought aside, as Cayden didn’t seem put off at all. Waves of pleasure rolled over me, bulldozing my senses. Cayden grunted, the veins on his neck popping as he ground against me, dragging out my orgasm.
“Fuck, that was hot,” he groaned, rotating his hips and then suddenly going rigid.
Warmth filled me, pulse after pulse of slick heat as he came inside me.
He held himself there, unloading what felt like a bucketful of cum inside me, pressed in to the hilt, like a stopper in a bottle he never wanted to uncork. I was still twitching and pulsing with pleasure, when he pulled out, I groaned low in my throat, disappointed to lose the full feeling of him being inside me. When he was inside me, I couldn’t think about anything else. I was free of everything. It was perfect.
His finger replaced his cock, pumping lazily inside me. It felt damn good all over again.
“What are you doing?” I wondered, leaning up on my elbows to watch as he put three fingers inside me and circled my clit with his cum-smeared thumb. Fuck, it felt good. It felt too good.
“I want to see you lose control again,” he said determinedly. “Do you think you can soak the table again?”
“I soaked the table?” I asked, suddenly worried. If I wasn’t just about to come again, I’d be a lot more concerned about the state of the baize.
Cayden grinned, and it was filthy. “You sure did, and I’ve never seen anything hotter. I want to see it again, but this time, I want your pussy to be full of my cum.”
And so he did see it again. Two more times.
After, he brought a towel from the bathroom and wordlessly cleaned our combined cum from my wet thighs and aching pussy. We silently got dressed and headed out to the bike. I wanted to fuss over the pool table, but he could take care of it. Beckett was his friend, after all.
We rode back home as darkness fell firmly over the countryside. He slowed expectantly, and I knew he was waiting for me to put my arms out and fly, like I’d enjoyed doing before. Whatever was between him and me, it wasn’t easy to understand. It felt bigger than both of us as we rode into the darkness, with only each other to hold on to. I couldn’t explain it, but after talking to my parents, and the pool house, and Cayden’s brand of rough comfort, I felt physically and emotionally spent. I was ready to go home.
We pulled up outside the house, and the door opened immediately. My dad stood there.
“Lily, can you come in and talk?” he asked, not sparing a glance for Cayden.
I nodded and handed my helmet to the boy I was supposed to hate, the one who was always there for me, even when I had no idea what I needed.
I followed my dad into the house and back to the kitchen. My mom was sitting there, in the same place I’d left her. Her eyes were red; she’d clearly been crying. I felt like an asshole all over again. I’d made my mom cry and then run off to process my own emotions. I was selfish to the end.
I sat, and my dad took the seat across from me. It was them on one side of the table and me on the other, alone.
“Lily, I wish I didn’t have to say anything like this, but I don’t think we’ve been fair to you,” he started.
I blinked at him, surprised by his opening words.
“We might have been full of cautionary tales and determined to make sure you understood what to prioritize, but we never wanted to make you feel like that was the only way to be. We never meant to make you feel like you ruined our lives or that now we’re desperately trying to get them back, through you.”
I shifted awkwardly. Hearing the words I’d harbored in the darkest places of my heart for so long was unsettling.
“We had you young, yes, it’s true,” Mom said. “We had to give certain things up, yes, but we got you out of it. You might not believe me, and if you don’t, that’s my fault, but I wouldn’t change that. Our lives worked out, including you, Lily…I’m just always scared because our situation isn’t the norm. It’s rare for people to win, even if they’ve messed up like we did. It’s rare for people to have a daughter like you. My perfect girl.”
I risked a look at my mom.
She was smiling now. She reached out and took my hand. “You’re always brilliant and you always would have been, even without all your accomplishments. Just being you makes you wonderful.”
She took a deep breath. “And if you really want to go to California, we’ll make it work. It’s your life, Lil, and your dream…I’m sorry if you thought we didn’t care about that. We only care about that.”