Twelve Truths and a Lie (16 page)

I
t was still
dark outside my window, and I was pressed against a warm and firm body. Cameron had fallen asleep with me in my bed. I had cried on his shoulder and snotted all over myself.

God, what a wreck I had been. But I had never felt so vulnerable.

I might’ve had some risky near-misses out in the community, but I was merely a social worker trying to get a job done. Not a cop, for Christ’s sake. But I wasn’t exactly trained to protect myself going into people’s homes. There had never been any incidents that I’d heard of involving service professionals, but still, we placed ourselves in jeopardy when dealing with tough family issues.

And this family had big ones.

I found out that the older brother who had greeted me at the door the other night had been released on bond for a sex crime. The family had been nervous that I would find out the truth and would report him for staying there, which is why they had skirted my visit.

But my loyalty remained to my young client who lived in that home. When his mother had called me to report the horrific news, she was extremely remorseful. She had chosen one child’s trust over another and that had been one hell of decision to make. By doing so, she had placed everybody in danger—including me, had I chosen to step foot inside the home that night, given the suspect’s state of mind.

But now child services would be involved, and the case would be out of my hands. I just hoped that no one else had fallen victim as well. Shivering against the thought, wanting desperately to banish it from my head, I nestled in further against Cameron’s warmth.

I could feel his hot breath against my hair and his hardness bumping my thigh. My body responded in waves, like a wildfire spreading through me. The desperate need to lose myself in his firm lips and skin overtook my senses, and I couldn’t help scraping my nails down his muscled stomach.

His arms tightened around me and a quiet moan emitted from his throat, as if he was attempting to hold it back or was still in the twilight of sleep.

My lips found the area between his neck and collarbone and I licked a line across his skin, so turned on in that instant, my nipples had stiffened into peaks.

His hand swung up to land on my hip and his throaty groan deepened. His fingers traveled beneath the hem of my shirt, his thumb skimming across my bare belly button. I whimpered and thrust my hips against his, seeking friction.

Soft sweats met coarse material, and I realized he was still wearing his jeans.

I unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and pushed them down his legs with some effort. With his eyes still shut, Cameron kicked his feet out of his jeans.

He tugged me forward by the elbows and then dragged my shirt upward and over my shoulders.

I gasped as he encircled my bare breasts; his thumbs generated a raw wave of sensation over my nipples.

We made quick work of removing the rest of our clothes until finally we were skin to skin. Feeling the entire landscape of his smooth body against mine for the first time was electrifying. His stiff cock rested against my abdomen, and my tight nipples prodded against his hard chest.

“Aurora.” His voice was rough and guttural as his fingers gathered my hair in a makeshift tie at the back of my neck. His gaze was so penetrating that my breath caught in my throat. He was laid bare to me in that moment. His intense longing and raw affection was palpable in his eyes, and I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to.

It was completely silent in the room, save for our heavy breaths, as he lined up our lips, still intently watching me. We stayed that way, our mouths resting in the space between us, the space we had been avoiding. The space filled with hopes and needs and fears—and quiet desperation.

Cameron’s gaze softened and the corner of his lip tilted upward and I had never seen him look more stunning.

His thumb grazed the slope of my throat and with his eyes still latched to mine, he whispered, “You’re beautiful.”

Something in the very center of my chest cracked open, creating a shallow cavern, reserved only for him. I crashed my lips down on his, and his tongue met mine in small unwavering flicks.

In one smooth move, he flipped me over, pinned my arms above my head, and licked fully inside my mouth. Over teeth and gums and palate, I felt like he was so deep, living and breathing inside me, in that narrow hollow I had created.

We settled against each other simply kissing, breathing the same air, feeling skin on top of skin, until finally, he broke away from my mouth. “Oh hell, give me a minute.”

Cameron scooted toward the headboard, as if he needed to gather himself together, his hands shaking, his cock flushed and leaking, and his entire body vibrating with need.

And in that moment I didn’t give two shits about completing my year of self-awareness. I knew what I wanted and it was unequivocally him. Any way I could have him.

“Cameron…” I entangled his fingers with my own, as his labored breaths became shallow bursts. “I…”

His eyes snagged on my dresser on the opposite side of my room and suddenly his lip quirked up. “Is that the infamous
Richard?
”

My mouth fell open in shock because I had never put the damn dildo away in a drawer after I attempted to get myself off unsuccessfully the other night.

“Oh God, I…” I jackknifed into a sitting position, my gaze on the offending object.

“Shhh…” he said, his hand gliding over my hair, as he nudged me back down on the bed. “It’s sexy as hell, Aurora.”

“What?” I mumbled, covering my eyes, completely mortified.

His arm stretched to reach for it, and I prayed for a seismic earthquake or a heavenly intervention to act as a diversion of epic proportions right then.

“Show me,” he said, thrusting the rubber cock into my hand. “I want to see you.”

His eyes were glittering with desire and I was struck dumb, never having any lover request that of me before. I remained motionless, confused over how to even begin.

“Please, I’m so hard right now,” he groaned bearing down on his erection with the heel of his hand. “Hard for
you
.”

He shifted his body to lie across from me on the opposite pillow. “Fuck, look how hot you are, Aurora.”

And all at once, my embarrassment simply sloughed away. His face was so serious, his gaze so hungry, and I was dripping wet from his erotic request.

My fingers grasped the dildo, and I rubbed the bulbous head around my nipples. Cameron inhaled harshly as his gaze drifted eagerly over my body and landed between my legs.

When I slid the dildo over my stomach to the top of my pubic hair, he groaned. “Show me how you fuck yourself.”

I lay back in a more comfortable position on the pillow and glided the rubbery cock around my clit before prodding the tip inside.

“Damn,” he said in a husky voice. “Tell me what you think about when you touch yourself like that.”

My gaze rose to meet his as I drove the rubber dick further inside my body, tensing around its girth. “I think about
you
.”

His groan arose from deep in his throat and his fingers clutched firmly onto his cock. “I don’t know if you even realize what you’re doing to me right now.”

He pumped his fist up and down his hardness as his breath released in heavy grunts. A bead of pre-come had formed on the tip, and I licked my lips as if in anticipation of getting a taste.

“Show me how you make yourself come,” I said without hesitation, manipulating the dildo inside me as I squirmed on the sheets. Just watching him that stimulated over me screwing myself with a dildo was doing a number on my own libido.

He moaned, his eyes fixed between my legs and began thrusting into his own hand. He was so sexy and beautiful when he was aroused.

A flush had traveled across his chest and neck and I knew he was close.

“Fuck,” he panted out and his entire body stiffened. His head lunged back against the pillow.

“Aurora,” he ground out as he came all over his hand and stomach.

Cameron slid down the sheets and lay gasping for air. I placed
Richard
on my nightstand and reached for my shirt on the floor. I straddled his knees and began cleaning him up. His hands pressed against my hips as he smiled beneath lidded eyes.

“Come here,” he said, dragging my thighs forward.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he continued to prod me toward his stomach.

“I need to taste your pussy,” he murmured. “Right now.”

“Oh, God,” I moaned as my skin caught on fire all over again.

I was sitting on his chest and my pelvis was resting against his chin, and I felt even more exposed this way than even the other night in the hotel room.

The first flick of his tongue back to front was jarring. “Cameron,” I moaned, bracing my thighs against his shoulders.

His fingers clasped onto my hips, and he began performing all kinds of clever tricks with his tongue. Licking, circling, and thrusting it inside me and I began writhing unabashedly against him, desperate for release. I felt no shame as eager and needy noises tumbled from my lips and my fingers dug into his scalp.

He hummed against my clit, creating a vibration that tore up my spine, making my knees quiver against his neck.

Cameron’s teeth were nibbling and his tongue was lashing. His mouth was holding steady after long licks, and I had never been so thoroughly pleased by anybody this way before.

His hands transferred from my thighs to my ass and as he yanked me more solidly against his mouth, I felt the tips of his fingers graze along my crease.

I gasped and nearly convulsed in sheer eroticism, it felt so electric. But my legs stiffened involuntarily, the sensation so foreign, making me feel tentative and uncomfortable.

“Do you like that?” he whispered, as his fingers found my crease again. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

I became immobile, refusing to admit that I enjoyed how it felt.

“Has anybody ever touched you here?” he said, moving his fingers in a pattern up and down my crack while he simultaneously licked a stripe around my clit.

“No, I…” I groaned and bowed my back, I was so close to flying apart.

“You can tell me to stop,” he said as his fingers and mouth continued working their magic. “Or you can let yourself go.”

I whimpered, my body and mind warring with each other.

“Because I can tell you, Aurora,” he continued, his piercing gaze finding mine. “Plenty of things I’ve done with you have been firsts for me, too.”

And his words were all I needed to hear as my body stirred back to life and completely took over. All I felt from that point on were the sensations of his tongue and lips and teeth and hands. When I came, it was as if I was in the center of a lightning storm and my core was the main conductor.

I had never felt so completely uninhibited or aroused in my entire life.

My limbs were boneless, my words a jumbled mess, as I felt him tucking us back into the sheets, his unyielding chest becoming my safe harbor.

I woke in the morning to a note:

A—

I had an early morning.

You looked too peaceful to wake and you needed your sleep.

Wish I could’ve held you even longer.

C—

I
sat
in my classroom after school, staring off into space, when I should’ve been prepping for the following day. Sandy had washed all the boards, wrote the date and word of the week with bright yellow chalk for tomorrow’s lesson and had already gone home.

It was Wednesday, I had Darius’s expulsion hearing tomorrow, and I couldn’t get Aurora out of my head. When was the last time I simply enjoyed somebody else’s body that way, without actual penetration as the end result?

It was always so passionate with her, and I felt like I could say and do anything. Be my complete self whenever I was with her. There was something intoxicating about that. And it made the idea of my moving away an even starker reality.

I had texted Aurora to check on her a couple of days in a row after that night. Especially since the case was also all over the news. They had released the perpetrator’s name but not the victim’s because she was still a minor and the details shared with the public were fucking awful and had hit too close to home.

Aurora was over her initial shock and was working with her agency to establish better safety measures for social workers out in the community, especially if they were dealing with a sensitive situation.

My mom, who inquired about Aurora frequently, had given me the name of a new smart phone app she had installed that could track your location in the case of an emergency.

I had shared the information with Aurora, who said to tell my mom thanks, and she promised to show it to her supervisor, as well as download it immediately.

Fact was, in jobs like ours, life went on, and there were always other kids under our care who needed our help and attention. You never knew when another dangerous situation might present itself.

I stood up to place handouts on each student’s desk, along with a freshly sharpened pencil, which I provided regularly, since most of my kids couldn’t afford school supplies.

My phone buzzed with a text, and when I fished my cell out of my pocket, I saw that it was Aurora.

Aurora:
I am going to be calling you shortly—in a professional manner—if you can fit us in.

Me:
Us?

Aurora:
Darius will be in my office and he’d like to speak with you.

Me:
Okay. Sounds good.

My stomach throbbed wondering what Darius would have to say. I thought about him a lot over the past few days, always hoping for the best-case scenario.

My phone rang a few minutes later.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Miller,” Aurora said in a professional tone. “I have Darius here in my office, and he’d like to say some things to you. I’m going to put you on speakerphone.”

I heard some initial phone static as she pushed some buttons and then maneuvered her phone around. Then I heard her murmuring some encouraging words to Darius, who must’ve been nervous about talking to me.

“Hi, Mr. Miller,” he said in a tentative voice.

“Darius, it’s great to hear your voice,” I said. “The class misses you.”

Shit, I didn’t know if that was the right thing to say. But it was true, so I went with honesty.

I heard Aurora prompting him to speak truthfully, from the heart. Then I heard paper rustling.

“Darius has been recording a lot in his journal since the incident in your classroom,” Aurora said. “And he recently allowed me to read a portion of it…” I heard the wonder in her voice and imagined it must’ve been a huge breakthrough for Darius to share his feelings with her. Every time I had inquired about his well-being, she told me he wouldn’t speak about the incident to anybody.

“I…” she continued. “
We
thought it was important for Darius to tell you a couple of things.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’d love to hear what you have to say.”

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what I did,” Darius said, his voice heavy across the line, and I imagined his pulse pitching as sharply as mine.

“I accept your apology,” I said rather easily, especially since I could hear the sincerity in his voice. “You…really took me by surprise that day.”

Aurora seemed to be whispering to him now. I played with the paperweight on my desk as I waited on them, trying to give my fingers something to do.

“I know I was totally wrong,” he said, clearing his throat. “But I didn’t mean…I didn’t want to punch you. What I’m saying is…darn…when you grabbed me from behind like that…you were…it felt like you were choking me.”

I stood up, my chair clattering back. “Excuse me?”

“My…my hoodie?” he said as if in question form. “You grabbed hold of me to take me back to my seat and the collar, where the drawstring was? It was cutting at my throat and…I couldn’t talk.”

My lungs seized up as I attempted to remember the scenario. I had gone over it so many times in my head, it felt all jumbled up. I did grip him at the shoulder in my haste to resolve the situation before my two students started a fist fight.

“So I was trying to get you to loosen your hold on the jacket,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do. It felt like no words would come out of my throat.”

Thinking back to the situation, his arms had been swinging around wildly. Fuck.

“Oh my God,” I said, the words slipping out. “I had no idea.”

Then Aurora’s voice. “Darius knows he had no right to hit you. He also knows that had you not intervened he would’ve done something stupid to jeopardize his status at school. He might’ve placed himself in this situation anyway.”

“Oh…Christ,” I said, completely flustered, my cheeks enflamed, as I paced around the room.

“I would never intentionally hurt you, Mr. Miller,” Darius said. “I respect you, you’re my favorite teacher.”

And then he broke down in tears, and I felt my own eyes watering. Aurora filled in the silence while we both got ourselves together. “Darius finally told me and his mom this information yesterday. He figured no adults would believe him, so he just clammed up.”

“I loved your class.” Darius’s sniffling voice was heard on the line again. “I was really off that day. My mom didn’t refill my meds—I know that’s no excuse—but my brain was really messed up and my thoughts were racing all over the place.”

It was just as I had suspected about the medication, but he seemed pretty rational right now. I’d never heard Darius say so many words in a row. His therapy with Aurora had been good for him.

“I really appreciate you calling me and telling me all of this,” I said. “I never meant to hurt you. I hope you believe me.”

“I know. You wouldn’t do that,” Darius’s voice was soft now, almost small. “Not like my dad.”

“Never, ever,” I said, with a giant lump in my throat. “You are a great kid. I’m sorry, Darius.”

“Me, too.”

Aurora’s voice. “We’ll see you at the hearing tomorrow.”

I already knew that I would lie awake for weeks thinking about my own actions in this situation. Our district would be following the lead of other school systems across the country in banning hoodies once the policy was written and set in stone.

My principal would use this scenario as an example of how the jacket created a certain persona in the community and had too many pockets for hiding things, even though the kids walked through a metal detector every day.

But in this case my own actions had come into play. And I needed to do something to fix this. To help Darius feel like he could succeed. Somebody needed to elevate marginalized voices, and tomorrow it was going to be me.

I texted Aurora a thank you before falling asleep that night. She was always just a hairsbreadth away from my thoughts.

T
he following morning
, I wore what I called my lucky red tie and felt different teaching, as if I was seeing my role through new eyes. I could tell my assistant was on the same page.

I had met with my principal and Sandy before school to let them both know what my conversation with Darius had been and to come up with a proactive plan for the school board meeting.

“I trust your instincts,” my principal had told me. “And I know you’re wracked with guilt about this, because that’s the kind of person you are. But we can all do better. So let’s make our ideas come to fruition.”

After I walked my kids out the door, I drove over to the administration building a few blocks away.

When I saw Darius standing in the hallway beside Aurora and his mother, my heart lodged firmly in my throat. But then Darius hugged me and his mom smiled.

She could’ve been angry. She could’ve lashed out at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, wearing my heart on my sleeve.

She shook her head. “I messed up, too. Too many times to count.”

“You have the hardest job in the universe,” I said and she grinned.

“That’s about right,” she said, allowing her weariness to show on her face. “But yours isn’t far behind.”

She patted my arm, and it felt like we had met on a bridge and would finally cross over it together.

When the administration called us, we walked into the hearing and jointly faced the board.

They reviewed the case, Darius’s history of fights and suspensions, leading up to his enrollment in my classroom this year. Darius explained what happened, his hands and voice shaking, his mom and Aurora lending their support.

When they gave me an opportunity to speak, I stepped before them and let them know exactly what I was thinking.

“Until the incident, Darius has been a positive influence in the classroom. The kids looked to him as a leader. I’d really like the opportunity to teach him again,” I said, and I heard Darius inhale abruptly behind me. “He was off his meds that day and not exactly in the right frame of mind. I stepped in to handle the situation on pure instinct. We all could have done things differently. We can all improve.”

I looked at the bench over my shoulder and met Darius’s eyes. His mother smiled and nodded in my direction. I didn’t make eye contact with Aurora because I didn’t want to get sidetracked, but her presence in the room was monumental to me.

“With my principal’s blessing, I’ll be heading up a workshop one weekend in May with other intervention specialists across the district to discuss and share ideas with this circumstance in mind,” I said. “So that it’s not just about banning hoodies. It’s about why we, teachers and staff included, had to come to such a decision in the first place.”

One board member nodded at me to continue. Another was taking copious amounts of notes, seeming pleased with my idea.

“In the meantime, I’m positive we can come up with a plan. To increase communication between school and home, and between myself and Darius, when he’s having an off day.”

“Darius?” one of the board members addressed him. “Are you willing to work cooperatively with Mr. Miller?”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “For sure.”

“If we all put in extra effort,” I said, “we can get him through this school year.”

The board agreed unanimously, and as I watched Darius and his mom walk toward the exit, the relief evident on their faces was identical to my own. Aurora turned to me with a wave goodbye and a dazzling smile that lit my insides on fire.