Secret Obsession: Chapter 9

“It’s done.” The girl drops into the seat next to me. She sets the envelope on the table in front of me. “I’m not sure why—”

“Please shut up,” I mutter, sliding her the cash. I check the contents of the envelope, then tuck it into my bag at my feet. “That seat’s taken.”

She looks around the room, no doubt confused—there’s a whole bunch of empty seats around us. “It is?”

“Yep. Move.”

She pockets the cash and rises slowly, her puffy lips turning down into a frown. Or a pout. I can’t fucking tell—and I don’t want to either. Something in me has fundamentally shifted. I used to be happy. At the very least, happy adjacent. But now all I feel is this pressing darkness that drives me toward my prey.

Willow strides into the library and stops short. She finds me automatically, and I smirk at her. I lift my hand, showing her the keys that dangle from my fingers. After our little rooftop conversation, I went to class. Minded my business. But I’m sure Willow tried other alternatives to get back into her apartment.

Too bad her landlord’s number was temporarily blocked from her phone.

And so was Violet’s.

So with no one to turn to, she was left to hunt me down.

And hunt me, she has.

I followed the blue dot on the map as she crisscrossed all over campus, no doubt enduring whatever torture the dance team had planned for her. It isn’t often that girls are kicked off the team for misconduct, but somehow, I convinced Amanda to consider her breakup with Knox as such.

And if Amanda wanted to spin it a certain way, I wasn’t going to stop her. Girl’s crazy.

Neither was Knox, who’s now free game. He’s basically considering this whole thing advertising. Just what the puck bunnies want, and Amanda’s the head bunny. Even graduated, she still hangs around like a thundercloud. Assisting with the dance team and whatever other jobs she’d picked up to stay in Crown Point. Rumor has it, it’s either this or go home to the backwaters of Ohio or Indiana. Wherever the fuck she’s from.

Willow walks toward me, her lips pressed in a thin line. She eyes the girl who just left my table, then refocuses on me. She stops on the other side of the table and holds her hand out.

It’s remarkable, her just being in my vicinity is drawing stares.

I sit up straighter, my eyebrow raising. “Can I help you?”

“My keys, asshole,” she demands through her teeth.

“Oh, these?” I hold them up again, then close my fingers around the cool metal. “Sit. Pull out a book.”

“You’re trying to control my study habits?” Her tone is… disbelieving.

I drop the keys back in my bag, sighing. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you’d actually do it.”

“And what have you learned?”

My jaw tics. “That you’re stubborn.”

She crosses her arms. All it does is press her breasts together and up, and I find my gaze dipping to that sweet swell before I can stop myself. She’s got a great body—always has.

“Let’s trade,” I say suddenly. “I’ll give you your keys…”

“For what?”

“For your schedule.” I’d have found it out either way, but there’s something refreshing about forcing her to give it to me.

She drops her arms and grips the back of the chair in front of her. “You want my class sched—”

“No, no.” I lean forward, keeping my attention locked on her face. Not on her breasts, or the way she’s white-knuckling the chair, or her heaving breath. “I want your whole schedule. Where you plan to be, every second of every day.”

It’s not on her phone.

What sort of psychopath doesn’t keep a calendar on her phone?

And as far as I could tell from clearing her apartment, and then her bag, she doesn’t keep a written schedule either. Her laptop was password protected. So maybe there are notes there, but nowadays everything is synced together. What’s on her phone should be on her laptop, and vice versa.

I sense the moment she wavers. She doesn’t really have another choice, does she? Unless she wants to camp out on her front stoop and wait for her landlord to come home.

“Here.” I flip my notebook to an empty page and set a pen on top of it. “Write.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” she says under her breath. But then she drags out the chair and drops into it, her bag thunking to the floor beside her. She picks up the pen and clicks it, then taps the top against her lower lip. “What if I lie?”

“I’ll find out,” I promise her.

She exhales.

And then she starts writing.

And writing.

And writing.

It’s actually a little impressive how she has it all in her head.

When she’s done, she shoves it across the table. I catch it and flip it around, scanning her messy handwriting. She probably wrote like this on purpose—it’s half print, half cursive, and all the letters are practically on top of the previous one. She’s given me her classes, when she studies. She started to write dance practice, but that’s crossed out. In its place, she wrote exercise. Then there’s more studying on the weekends, huge blocks of it.

“I don’t think you study enough.” My tone is dry.

She sighs. “Well, I’ve actually got a future besides getting my teeth knocked out to look forward to.”

“You were enamored with hockey when you were dating my brother.”

She tsks. “Now who’s bringing him up?”

I grimace. “I told you not to bring up his—”

“Yeah.” She rises and holds out her hand again. “Keys.”

I hold them out.

She lifts them from my fingers and pockets them, wasting no time to snatch her bag and hook it around her shoulder. And then she’s gone, moving swiftly away from me. I watch the sway of her ass until she rounds the corner, out of sight.

I smile to myself and open the app on my phone. I watch her cross campus, exiting onto a side street to head for home. She arrives there and puts music on her phone. I put my headphones in and turn on her mic, just so I can hear her sing along to the melody.

To my utter surprise, her voice is good. She harmonizes with the singer, a name and sound I don’t recognize. I press a button to turn her camera on, but all I get is a shot of her ceiling.

Huffing slightly, I focus back on the song.

And her voice.

Eventually, she stops. I don’t know what to make of it. Or her. I turn my attention away from my phone and back to the text at hand. This English class was recommended by Knox. Apparently, it used to be taught by Jacob’s professor. But she up and quit, and the job was taken over by an old-timer last spring. He’s a journalist who doesn’t want to write anymore, so now we just analyze old stories.

Whatever.

Knox said it wasn’t too hard, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s just a fuckton of reading… which is why Jacob was failing it so spectacularly, if the syllabus was anything similar.

I stay until midnight, then grudgingly head home.

Or, I should head home.

But part of me wants to test that the copies of the keys that girl made for me actually work. And a quick phone check tells me that Willow’s been off it for the last hour. When I turn her mic on, all it gives me is deep breathing.

She’s sleeping.

Anticipation licks through me.

How many times have I wanted to know what she looks like sleeping peacefully? How many times have I wished that she chose me to wake up next to, instead of Knox? How many times have I watched her toss and turn in my brother’s bed, knowing the consequences of getting caught?

Too many times. Lingering on the fringes of my brother’s room after he’s had his way with her, burning with anger that she was sleeping with his cum between her legs or on her lips. The noises she made while he fucked her, filtering through the wall separating our rooms, torment me even now.

But she’s not off-limits anymore.

She’s mine for the taking—and I don’t want the noises embedded in my head. I want to make her scream, or I want her silent. I want more than my brother ever asked of her.

So I change direction and head to her apartment instead of the hockey house. I unlock the first door and trot up the steps. I stop outside of Willow’s apartment and listen, but there’s no sounds. Just as I heard on her phone.

The key slides easily into the lock, and the deadbolt turns. I enter slowly, setting my bag just inside the door. It smells fresher in here. One of her windows in the living room is open a crack, letting in the crisp winter wind. The curtains in front of it flutter out, brushing the plants.

She must’ve hated the scent of bleach. There’s a candle on her stove, not lit, but the smell of fresh apples emanates from it. The wax is still warm and soft. She cares about how her apartment looks and feels, even if it’s a carbon copy of some interior designer’s Pinterest board.

I brush past it, rolling the bit of wax off my finger, and head for her bedroom. The door is open, and I automatically stop at the threshold.

She’s asleep, under the covers, with one hand curled under her chin. Her mouth is open slightly, her short hair fanned out on the pillow. There’s an empty glass on her nightstand.

This isn’t like before, I assure myself.

But it doesn’t help that I’m practically sucker-punched with a memory. One sharper than I’d like. And I have no choice but to relive it.

She’s crying.

Her mascara is streaked down her face, her eyes closed and her breathing heavy. Too many tears shed over my brother. She cries over him too much, and every time I’m left… watching.

Unable to move toward her or away.

Stuck in some limbo that feels a lot like Hell.

A text lights up my phone screen, on silent, and I cast a quick glance at it. My brother is telling me to meet them at Haven. But my feet don’t move, and I stuff my cell back in my pocket.

Going out drinking now would only result in a fight.

Not with my brother. Never with him. But inevitably, someone would say something stupid, and I’d have had one or five too many drinks, and I’d wake up with bloodied knuckles and a black eye.

Knox just… left her here. Put her to bed like a child and slipped out while she slept.

Willow shifts, rolling onto her back. Her eyes are closed, but the light from the street seems to make the tear tracks on her cheeks glisten. She’s on his pillow, between his sheets, and she’s crying in her sleep.

Maybe she knows he left her to go to a bar, and that’s why she’s upset. Even asleep, she’s aware of his fuck-ups.

Fuck this.

I grit my teeth and cross my arms, then wait until she eventually stills. Her breathing evens out, and she slips deeper into sleep. It’s only then that I move toward the bed. I stop a good five feet away. We’re not going to discuss why I’m watching her like a sick pervert—hell, maybe I am sick in the head. Twisted enough to seek her out when I know I shouldn’t.

She’s gorgeous even when she’s tortured. And lately, it seems like she’s always in pain.

“Knox?” she murmurs, shifting toward me. She reaches out.

And I hate, I hate that I go toward her. It’s like I can’t even help myself. Something about her just drags me in, and that unsurety disappears the moment her fingers close around my wrist.

Her eyes don’t open, but she pulls me down onto the bed. I sit beside her, her hold on me firm enough that I have an excuse to not pull away. The mattress dips under my weight, and her body shifts toward me.

I want to throw off the covers and touch every inch of her.

I’ve never been so far and so close to moving. That limbo feeling intensifies.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I love you.”

My heart stops.

She doesn’t mean that. She hasn’t said that to him—not yet.

But she says it in my direction, and for a second, I forget that she thinks I’m him. I don’t move to touch her, or get up from the spot where I sit, and everything comes crashing back down around me. I stew in the feeling of coming in second. No, not even that. I’m not even on the fucking playing board.

It’s not the first time my brother has beaten me to the punch.

“You don’t yet,” I whisper to her. “But you will.”

I shake my head to clear her words from ringing in my ears—and my promise to her. My parents taught us the worth of a promise. The weight of one.

The closer I get, the headier her scent is. I want to rip off her blankets and cover her with my body. To feel the heat of her.

Impossible wants from a frozen man.

Instead, she does it for me. She rolls onto her back and knocks off the blankets on her own, baring her stomach. Panties. Legs. In the dim light coming in through the window, I don’t know what to focus on first.

My cock jumps to attention, and I grit my teeth. I will it to go away, but it’s like my dick has other ideas. It wants to be inside her.

Fuck, I could get behind that.

But she’s not ready for it, so I turn away and palm my length through my jeans. It doesn’t do much to soothe the ache, and before I know it, I’m fucking fumbling the button and zipper of my pants. I expose myself in her room and jack myself off, cursing my willpower in my head.

I face her and slow my movements. It draws out my agony, until each time my hand comes down, my muscles tremble.

Then I stop altogether. Blue-balling myself.

I swipe my finger over my slit, picking up precum.

I inch closer to the bed and touch her throat. Her skin twitches under my fingertips. I held her throat today. Felt her swallow against my palm. Her hummingbird pulse. Then I lift my finger and trail the wetness from my cock across her lips.

Her tongue flicks out, almost licking the pad of my finger. I let out a low grown at the sight, standing stock-still over her. Debating how to play this.

With iron strength, I step away from her bed. I fasten my jeans back up over my raging hard-on.

Next time I come here, I’ll do exactly what I want. I’ll bury myself so deep inside her, she’ll have no choice but to accept it. Me.

But until then, I want to be on her mind. When she’s awake or asleep or fucking daydreaming, I want it to be my scent she longs for, my smile she craves, my touch she needs.

Until next time.