We both groaned.

And that was when my grandma came home, hours and hours earlier than she usually did.

She went into such a rage, and I got into so much trouble that I avoided Dante for a solid week after that, which was not easy.  I had to skip a lot of school to do it.

He finally cornered me at my house, climbing into an unlocked window to get to me where I cowered in my bedroom.

“Listen,” he said, looming over me where I huddled on my bed, “if we went too far, just say so.  I’ll back off.  Whatever we do, all of that sort of stuff, it’s all on you what pace we go, okay?  We won’t do anything you aren’t ready for, not even kissing if you don’t want.”

“I’m okay with the kissing,” I told his feet.  “But the rest was going too fast for me, okay?”  Grandma’s hours of chewing me out had ingrained in me one important fact: I could not give a boy too much or he’d lose interest in me.

He grinned from ear to ear and perched himself on my bed.  “But you liked the kissing, right?

I smiled back.  “Yeah.  But what does it—I mean—are we . . . “ I couldn’t even finish I was so embarrassed.

His entire gorgeous face was flushing in pleasure.  “Yes, Scarlett.  Of course.  We’re together.  We’ve always been together.”

I was bright red and I couldn’t look at him anymore, but I needed more assurances, something concrete.  “S-s-s-so you’re my . . .”

“Ah, Scarlett,” he said softly and fondly.  “I’m your boyfriend.  You’re my girlfriend.  Yes.  Is that what you were getting at?”

I shot him a look.  “Isn’t that something you’re supposed to ask a girl, not tell her?”

He got a real kick out of that, in fact I didn’t think I’d ever seen him happier.  He leaned close, touching our foreheads together.  “Not this.  Not us.  Neither of us have a choice in this.  You and I being together is not a question, Scarlett, it’s a fact of life.”

And he kissed me.  And kissed me.

After that we were making out every day.  Every chance we could get.  We kissed goodbye, we kissed hello, we kissed in the woods on the way home from school.  Anywhere we went where we thought no one was watching, but he was true to his word.  He didn’t take it any further until I was ready.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Go to Heaven for the climate.  Hell for the company.”

~Mark Twain

PRESENT

Dante ripped his lips from mine so abruptly that it felt like a Band-Aid coming off.

He was panting into my face.  “Tell me you don’t miss this,” he said emotionally.

This was what made him such a bastard.  We were over, had been for years, but it didn’t matter.  If he had his way, he’d keep me tied to him in so many ways I could never break loose.  He was cruel like that.

I subjugated every pathetic thing inside of me that jumped to do his bidding.  I would not feel what he was trying to make me feel.

“I don’t miss this,” I managed to get out through my constricted throat.

“Liar,” he breathed at me, madness in his eyes.

I shuddered, my own madness coming out to play.  “No.  No.  No.  I’m not the liar.  You know why I don’t miss this?  Because it’s a lie.”

It was his turn to shudder.

“Because it’s a lie,” I repeated.

He flinched.

“It was always a lie.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It was always a lie,” I repeated.  “Want to know how I know?”

“Stop.”

“I won’t stop.  I’m not finished.  Want to know how I know?”

“Enough.  Stop it.  You’ll say any horrible thing when you’re in a temper.”

“I will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth.  What we had was always a lie.  I know because if it was real it wouldn’t have ended.  It felt like forever, and forever was a lie.”

I’d won the round, I noted numbly as his shaking body withdrew back to his side of the car.

He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, shoulders hunched.

After a few drawn out minutes of silence he started driving again.

“You’re terrible at truces,” I said.  It was an effort to keep my voice from trembling.

He nodded jerkily.  “Ditto, tiger.  Peace was never your strength.  You were born for battle.”

“Look who’s talking?”

His mouth twisted.  “A match made in hell.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

The problem with us was that he and I had become deeply attached in our formative years.  Young me had become essential to young him and vice versa.

We were too precisely built together, each too profoundly shaped by the other. Every part of us had been assembled as one piece.  Of course we did not function well after the construct had been ripped violently apart.

And of course I would despise the one who had done the ripping.

The car was silent as a tomb until we were nearly at the house, both of us trying to regain some composure, trying to reconcile ourselves to the past and come back to the present.

“Is my dress really too tight?” I asked him as he pulled down the long winding road that led to the house.

Grandma always got her digs in, and they always found a place to fester.  I’d known the dress was flattering, provocative even.  But was it trashy?