Knockout (7 page)

He moved over me again, his fingertips like flint.

Strike. Strike.
Spark
.

When he leaned down and laid a kiss on my exposed chest, I moaned in the back of my throat. I didn’t recognize my own voice. It was too low. Too deep.

I gripped his forearm hard.

He worked me harder.

I mewled and kicked, whimpering as his fingers moved faster. I was dying. I was burning alive from the inside out. My stomach clenched and quivered as I struggled to breathe. This is what it felt like. What all the fuss was about. What the moans and whimpers I’d caught coming from Laney’s room were for. As I crackled and burned, embers turning red to white hot inside me, I got it. I understood. I finally felt like maybe I was no longer a girl. Maybe that hoarse, rough voice moaning deep inside of me was actually me. And she felt
good
.

I started to spiral out. I felt crazy and feint.

Then he slipped a finger inside of me.

I lost my damn mind.

I groaned loudly as my entire body clenched. My legs went stiff, my hands were steel clamps on his arms and I couldn’t open my eyes against the onslaught of fire roaring through me. I’d never felt anything like it. I was moaning and crying out curses as it slowly faded.

Eventually I was able to open my eyes. I looked up at Devon to find him smiling down at me.

“Wow,” I whispered, fully expecting smoke to leak from my lips.

He chuckled as he pulled his hand away. He continued to stare at me, his eyes roaming over my face. I knew I probably looked a mess. My hair had to be crazy and I could feel the heat on my cheeks.

“Jenna,” he said quietly, “you’re really beau—“

The front door slammed open behind him.

“I don’t fucking care, Kellen!” Laney shouted.

“Oh shit,” I muttered as I hastily sat up and pushed myself back into my bra. Devon was quick to yank my shirt down over it.

We both stood to face the entryway where Laney had stormed in. She turned when she saw us, looking us up and down.

“What the hell is this?” she demanded.

“I’m Devon. A friend of—“

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Oh.”

“Laney, calm down,” Kellen said as he slowly walked inside, his hands in his pockets. He looked reluctant. And tired, his eyes dark and distant.

“I will not calm down. You are unbelievable!”

Kellen sighed. “You know why I can’t do it.”

“No, I know why you
won’t
do it. It’s because I’m not important enough to you.”

“No, a high school dance isn’t important enough to me to miss an important test. I need to ace this class if I’m going to get this done in under three years.”

“Is that it? Really? Or is it because you’ve got some college bitch you’re already sleeping with that you don’t want to leave for the night?”

Kellen’s eyes went hard. “I’ve never been unfaithful to you.”

Laney laughed bitterly. “So you say.”

“Laney,” I said sharply, shocked.

“Stay out of it, Jenna,” she spat, casting me an ugly glance. “And get this guy outta here. I know who you are, Devon. You’re the Junior class slut. The next Kellen Coulter in the making. We don’t need any more of those around here so scram.”

Devon looked at me sideways, his face nervous.

I nodded my head. “You better go.”

“I’ll see you later?” he asked. He was already heading for the door, giving Laney and Kellen a wide berth.

I doubted we’d be hanging out again anytime soon thanks to this moment, but I nodded with a wan smile.

“You picked the sane one, man,” Kellen said dryly, offering Devon his hand as he made his dash for the door. “Well done.”

Devon hesitated as he looked down at Kellen’s hand. When I realized why, I panicked as well.

Devon would have to shake with the fingers that were just inside of me.

Finally, with no way out or reasonable excuse as to why he wouldn’t do it, Devon put his hand in Kellen’s.

It was so quick the way it happened. So fast the way the realization dawned on Kellen’s tired face and lit him up like New Years. His black eyes were electric as he clamped down on Devon’s hand and pulled him in closer.

“What the fuck?” he growled.

I don’t know if Kellen felt it on Devon’s hand or smelled it in the air around him, but he knew. And he was mad.

“What’s happening?” Laney asked, perplexed.

“What’s happening is that this little shit has had his about to be broken fingers all up inside Jenna.”

“Seriously?” Laney looked at me with surprise. Then pride. “About time.”

I wanted to slap her.

“I asked her if it was okay,” Devon tried to tell Kellen. “I didn’t do anything she didn’t want me to. I swear.”

“Oh really? She wanted you to put your greedy little hand down her pants? That was all her idea?” Kellen demanded incredulously.

“He’s telling the truth, let him go,” I snapped, feeling embarrassed. My cheeks were flushing again but for different reasons. “I liked it. I wanted it.”

Kellen met my eyes over Devon’s head and I couldn’t look away. He was shocked. Was he disappointed in me? I didn’t know, but a tear fell from my eye and rolled down my cheek as shame washed over me. I couldn’t look at him having him know this about me. Knowing I had been touched like this and that I’d liked it. That I wanted it again.

Kellen released Devon’s hand, his eyes never leaving mine. Devon wisely bolted through the door.

“Jen,”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered shakily.

I ran as well. I shot up the stairs as fast as I could go and slammed my bedroom door closed behind me. I collapsed on my bed, hugging my pillow tightly to me and I cried. I didn’t even know why. I was so embarrassed and scared and happy and sad. I had
thought something good had happened. Devon was so sweet to me and I had felt so good. And now I felt so impossibly wrong and brokenhearted. Like I’d failed someone, but I didn’t know who.

There was a light knock on my door.

“Go away, Laney. I don’t want to swap dirty details,” I shouted.

When the doorknob turned, I nearly tossed my pillow at her. I didn’t want to see her right now because she’d never understand why I was crying. I didn’t even totally understand it, but when it came to our bodies and boys, Laney and I had never understood each other. She was a bombshell. A complete knockout from age twelve while I’d taken a couple of extra years to develop. Even now my breasts were simple Bs compared to her crazy Cs and they were never going to get any bigger. I was 5’11” and my body felt like it was all bone and tissue, none of it very appealing. If anything saved me, it was my face. Tall and too skinny as I was, I knew I had a pretty face. Too bad no one could see it from way up here.

“It’s not Laney,” Kellen said. He stepped into my room and closed the door quickly behind him. “I told her not to come in here.”

I quickly sat up and wiped the tears off my cheeks.

“Why are you here?”

“’Cause I’m an asshole and I need to apologize. I wasn’t going to do it through the door. You deserve better than that.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Yeah, I did. I was way out of line, Jenna. What happened with that guy…” Kellen paused, his lips tightly clamped together. He took a deep breath. “Whatever went on with him, that’s your business, not mine. I had no right to do what I did. As long as he didn’t hurt you or pressure you in any way, I should have stayed out of it.”

I bit my lip as I nodded my head. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to speak because I was pretty sure that sitting there under Kellen’s stare as emotionally raw as I felt, I was about to come apart crying again.

He suddenly came to stand at the foot of my bed. I looked up at him there in my room looking the way he did, me feeling the way I did and I hurt with something. It hit me everywhere. I didn’t know what it was but it felt lonely. Hollow.

“Can I tell you why I did it?” he asked, his voice deep and soft.

“Sure,” I whispered.

“I lost it on him because I keep thinking you’re thirteen. Because I look at you and I see you growing up right in front of me and I know it’s happening but I keep telling myself you’re a kid.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re so damn beautiful,” he said fiercely. “You’re getting more beautiful by the day and there will be more guys like Devon, lots of them, so I have to get it through my head that that’s okay. That a guy can touch you and I don’t have the right to break his face over it anymore.”

I chuckled. “When did you ever have that right?”

He smiled ruefully. “I gave it to myself the day I met you. When I realized you were too much piss for the boys your age.”

“I’m older now.”

“They’re still not ready for you.”

I sighed heavily. “I think it’s more like they aren’t ready for you.”

“That’s why I’m going to back my nosey ass out of your life and let you be.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said quickly, my eyes going wide with worry. “Don’t ever do that, Kellen. Promise me.”

“Jenna, I—“

I sat up on my knees and hurried to the end of the bed. I knelt there before him, my eyes on his, openly pleading. I was only a couple inches away, my neck craned back as I looked almost straight up at him. Up over the bulge of his chest to the straight lines of his jaw. To the familiar crooked break of his nose. To his burning dark eyes that stared down at me.

“Please, Kellen,” I whispered. “You’re my best friend. You’re almost my only friend. Please promise me.”

I watched his chest rise and fall slowly. Then he asked in a rough whisper, “Promise you what?”

“Promise me you’ll never quit on me.”

He closed his eyes briefly. It looked like he was in pain but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what about this promise could hurt him, but I was relieved when he opened his eyes. When he nodded faintly.

“I promise.”

He put his hand on the side of my face, leaned down and kissed me on the top of my head. I felt the heat of his breath on my scalp, tickling through my hair and giving me
goose bumps. Then he turned quickly and without a word he was gone.

“I like your hog,” I told Kellen, glancing at him sideways. “Please, please, please tell me that you’ve started calling Laney your Old Lady.”

Kellen and Laney were back together after a brief break up following the Devon incident. Laney continued to accuse Kellen of cheating and finally he just couldn’t take it. He walked. They’d made up about a month later and things seemed good between them now. It wasn’t their first fight or their first split so it didn’t worry any of us very much. There was something that I couldn’t see that kept pulling them back together. Something that I assumed would always join them.

Kellen laughed, shaking his head. “I’d never live to tell the tale.”

“No, but it’d be funny while it lasted. When are you taking me for a ride on it?”

“Sorry, but no way. Your mom told me the day I got it that I couldn’t ever take either of you girls out on it. I think Laney will get a pass now that she’s eighteen.”

“Old Lady Laney,” I mused, enviously eyeing the back of the shining chrome and black Harley parked in the driveway. “It’s her birthday so I won’t be too jealous, but tomorrow I’ll hate her for it.”

“That’s fair.”

I looked over at Kellen where he stood beside me in the fading light of the sunset. We were waiting for the rest of the family to come outside, dressed and ready for dinner at some fancy restaurant Laney had chosen for her birthday. Kellen’s hair was swept back and tousled slightly instead of hanging on his forehead like it usually was. It made him look older. More like my dad when he was heading off to work. The dark suit he wore probably helped too. I’d never seen him in anything but gym clothes or jeans and a T-shirt before and I’d thought it wouldn’t suit him, but it did. He didn’t look like a nineteen year old boxer then. He looked like a grown man.

“You clean up nice,” I told him.

He smiled over at me. He couldn’t look down at me anymore. I was seventeen and pushing six feet tall, almost eye level with him. I left Laney and my mom in the dust with their curvy 5’6” frames. Dad used to say I was a bean pole. Now I felt like the Jolly Green Giant.

“So do you. Did you get to pick the dress?”

I looked down at the red knee-length dress I was wearing. It was cut in a very 1950’s style with a puffed up skirt full of black tulle, capped sleeves and a big bow on my left hip. My mom had been so excited when I’d picked it, probably because it was so retro and feminine, that she’s insisted we get my hair done to match it. I’d spent the better part of the afternoon at her stylist getting my long, dark hair curled and pinned into a partial up do that was very old Hollywood.