Yet, I honestly have no idea why.
I still cannot believe I do… It’s confusing chaos inside my head and heart, but the more I analyze my reactions to him and look back over things that trigger me, the harder it is to deny. I have always been so easy to erupt when he pushes my buttons and overly concerned with his life and how he lives it. I’m pretty pathetic to have never seen it for what it was.
Caring about how much of a mess his grades are and how reckless his life is. Caring about when he drinks or gets into trouble or fights. Worrying when he is late after curfew and covering for him when I have no reason to.; I cook the food he likes rather than what I want when we have to find our own dinner and always let him coerce me at school into helping him even though it does nothing for me. No benefit at all. I have lied for him so many times to my mom. I have put up with so much shit over the years. I shielded him and even cared about whether he would get suspended recently. All for what? Him to bring home the girl I loathe and wave her in my face as his girlfriend while he thinks I might have feelings for him.
Who does that?
Dane does.
An asshole unworthy of my heart does that.
I boil the noodles in water as I quickly fry my vegetables and beef, adding the sauce and ignoring the low murmur of conversation constantly at my back. Trying so hard to keep myself and my rambling thoughts blank on the surface.
Thankfully, the spitting noise and hum of the extractor fan are making it so I cannot make out the actual words, and as long as I stay focused and calm, I can forget they are here. Just cook and leave.
I don’t get this need to be in the same room as me, though, as they ordered take-out and could easily go to the sitting room nearer the front door. I feel like he’s trying to rub salt into a wound he exposed in the kitchen that day.
I pick up the pot of hot water and noodles and turn to walk to the sink, seeing Charmaine standing idly near it and doing her best to push out her bust and ass while Dane is leaning at the open refrigerator again and pulling out an assortment of drinks. I tip my chin down to avoid looking her way and turn left to get to the sink, but Charmaine seems to back up, and butt bangs my hip. Sending the water sloshing up the side and over the edge.
I gasp and squeal as I am hit with a cupful of scolding, burning pain over my left hand. I automatically drop the pot in the sink, and it crashes down, spraying the contents up the back wall and splashing at me. I jump back, grasping my scolded hand, and start waving it furiously in shock. Intense ripping, burning pain through my skin startles me into an inability to react.
“Kayla!” Dane’s voice hits me right in the ear as I'm grabbed from behind, an arm slides around my waist, and a solid wall of body heat catapults me forward. It’s like I'm backed against a hard surface that slides me into the counter with it. My left wrist is held from behind in his strong embrace as I am ushered back to the sink.
He thrusts my hand under the tap, letting go only to flip it onto cool full power, and then pulls my hand back under so both his and mine are submerged in a painful icy stream that makes me squirm. It’s like being slapped after being burned, and I make whimpering noises and flinch in an effort to recoil.
“It’s too cold. It hurts. It doesn’t need to be so cold.” I try to yank it out, but he keeps me firm and holds it steady with a harder grip. His body fully pushed up my rear so he has me pinned to the sink edge and his other arm around me so I cannot escape. I can barely move at all, let alone fight to be free.
I can barely breathe.
Between the biting pain of him numbing my arm off and the way he has me bodily slammed between a sink and him while suffocating me with his embrace, I get way too hot and flustered. I can’t focus on which is worse. Being slowly crushed while he leans over me or being delimbed by freezing water that I am sure is killing all my nerve endings.
His face is over my left shoulder, so we’re cheek to cheek, and he is focused on the running water. Yet all I can hear is his breath next to my ear, and all I can feel is every inch of his body heat pouring over mine.
“Stop fighting. The burn has to cool down, or it will get worse.” He chastises me with a cold snap. Using his feet on each side of mine to clamp them together and immobilize me more.
I’m not a moron. I know this. I know it will spread through the epidermis layer if he doesn’t stop by cooling it, but it doesn’t have to be cold glacier water. This is causing frostbite. Just lukewarm would have sufficed.
I study biology and help in a medical animal shelter every month. I can handle a burn by myself.
“Let me go. I can do it.” I try for another wriggle, aware Charmaine is standing only feet away, glaring at this very intimate position, but I can’t get out. “I said I can do it.” I try butt-shoving into his groin to have him let go, but he's always been about ten times stronger than me, and as a guy, he’s pretty solid. He edges in instead of away and pins my pelvis to the cupboard almost painfully. It pinches like hell, ensuring I have no wiggle room to shove him back.
“Stay still and be quiet. If you want it to blister and hurt, then fine… if you don’t shut up and let me help.” His arms around me have me caged, and I admit defeat and stop fighting him.
“Dane?” Charmaine's whiny voice breaks in, and it’s obvious she does not like how he’s pandering over me. I wouldn’t want to see my boyfriend this way over another girl. “I’m sure she can manage fine. Our food is coming. Let’s go upstairs.”
“In a second.” He dismisses her with a low tone, still honed in on holding me captive, and I close my eyes and try to regulate my body and breathing. He’s got me hot and panicky, aware of every inch of him around me, and pressed in so tight I can feel what he has in his pants between my butt cheeks.
How he cannot judge how weird and inappropriate this is, is beyond me. I am stiff and afraid to move because I can clearly feel every lump, bump, and muscle. There is only one place his bulge can rest when he insists on pressing into me…my butt indent. I think I might faint.
Do dudes have no self-awareness? They walk around with that on the front of their bodies and lean it against a girl's ass like it's no big deal. Can he not feel it’s wedged somewhere warm and sort of soft? If I move or clench, would he even notice?
Would he be cool with me straddling him when he’s laying face down on his bed, getting my bits all humped over his ass? Why is he unaware of how odd it is to have it jammed against me like it’s nothing?
Maybe it’s because I am a virgin and inexperienced, but all I can fixate on is my stepbrother's manhood molded to my butt and the fact he’s breathing in my left ear while holding me like a captive, and I feel ready to pass out.
“It’s enough… my hand is numb,” I whisper with a slight tremor in my voice. Quickly crumbling from this bizarre experience, my hands tremble. My legs are turning to Jello, and I cannot focus.
Dane lifts my hand to my shoulder height and seems to inspect it, turning it and further pressing up my back so he can look as close as possible for remnants of untouched burn. Despite no longer feeling it, I can see a blotchiness of red spattered over the back of my hand, making the surrounding skin look too pale and white. My entire hand and wrist are almost blue because he has frozen all life out of them, yet I obediently let him control my limb.
“We have burn cream in the first aid. I think it’ll be okay if we use that and keep it covered for the rest of the day.”
“I can do it.” I try to find another way to escape, but he doesn't move at all. He reaches for the nearby towel on the counter with the hand around my waist and then encircles me around the shoulder to dab at my left, dry it up, and still maneuver it to inspect every inch. I stop breathing, overly aware of every movement and unable to fight. At least his movements took his bulge pressure off my ass.
I have resigned myself to doing as he says and standing stock still. Not because I know it’s annoying Charmaine, but because there’s a sad tiny part of me that needs this kind of attention from him to heal the wounds of the beach that day. Of the hurt at him at school today. He has no idea how much he can cause me pain.
“Where is the first aid? I’ll get it and do it. It was partly my fault.” Charmaine grinds out, sounding pissed off and catty, and Dane leans his head back and nods toward the cupboard behind her. He seems oblivious to the seething rage emanating from her, or else he doesn’t care.
That’s more his style.
Dane was never a guy to pander to a girl or weaken at a show of emotion or a bad mood. He’s always been cold and distant and a classic feelingless fuckboy who never apologized for the treat 'em mean attitude. This proves he hasn’t got it in him to go soft and sweet for a girlfriend. Charmaine is a fool if she thinks he will change that for her.
“It was your fault…. and get it for me. I’ll do it. Top of that cupboard on the left in a green box.” He orders her with no hint of softening at her bitchy tone either.
She huffs and snorts before turning on her heel and yanking open the door while Dane finally stops grinding on me and steps back, hauling me with him by my injured hand. He tows me around the center breakfast island, pulls out a stool, and then sits me down by forcefully maneuvering me without letting go. I think he knows the second he does, I will leave.
“Wait, my food is burning.” I panic as the smell of smokey vegetables hits me, and I pop upwards to stand. Realizing on top of a burning, I might start a kitchen fire. I am way too distracted.
Dane yanks me back down, leans back so the cooker is in touch range, and switches it off before coming back to me and using his foot to pull out the stool next to me. He sits down, stretches my arm over the surface before him, and dabs at the last drips of moisture before inspecting it again. His eyes are zoned in on my arm, and he seems oblivious to anything else.
“You're lucky it was just hot water and not oil. Be more careful in the kitchen, Kales. You’re clumsy by nature.” He scolds me gently, with no malice in his tone, and I find myself sighing and watching his expression closely while it’s his side profile. His pretty grey eyes on my fingers, searching out the extent of damage with such a mildly worried expression, and I suddenly feel tearful. Choking up on something so dumb.
Occasionally there are hints of the sweet boy he used to be and the once upon a time when he was less hostile toward me. It wasn’t always like this. Hormones had a lot to do with it when he reached puberty, and it felt like Dane progressively started to hate me more and more. Somewhere along the line, I started retaliating, and we developed this constant bickering and insults. It was not something that happened overnight.
We used to be friends. Best friends.
I’m choked up and sad suddenly, longing for the past when I didn’t always feel so messed up and irritated by him, for the boy who used to wait for me to walk to school and gave me chocolate on my first kindergarten Valentine's day. The boy who made my heart flutter when I was too young to know what it meant.
“Here.” Charmaine slams down a tube of cream she has extracted from our kit and stands back, crossing her arms across her bust and glaring with open hostility. I can feel the sparking tension in the air around her. Thick static with a nasty undercurrent.