Underneath (2 page)

"Just a girl from school," he told his mother, to satisfy her irritating smile. He hoped that would be enough to send her back to the kitchen, but she remained in the doorway, her smile widening, a look of
there's my little man, all grown up on her face
.

"Did you tell your father?"

He shrugged and turned away from her. Frowned at the phone. "Didn't know I had to."

She said nothing more, but a contented sigh carried her back to her baking and he shook his head as he picked up the phone. They were always in his business, to the point where every decision he made had to be screened by his own imagined versions of them before he did anything. It angered him, made him sometimes wish he could go live with his Uncle Rodney in Pensacola at least until he went to college and was free of their reign. But Rodney was a drunk, albeit a cheerful one and Dean doubted that situation would leave him any better off than he was now. Overbearing parents was one thing; waking up to a drunk uncle mistaking you for the toilet was another.

Shuddering, he jabbed out the number he'd written down on a scrap of paper after using Stephanie's address (he knew the street, not the exact location, but that had been enough) to locate
Julie & Chris Watts
in the phonebook.

Perspiration beading his brow, he cleared his throat, listened to the robotic pulse of the dial tone and prayed she didn't answer.

"Hello?"

Damn it
.

"H-Hi, Stephanie?"

"No, this is her mother. Who's speaking, please?"

The woman's voice sounded stiff, unfriendly and he almost hung up there and then while there was still a chance. After all, she didn't know his name, so he couldn't be…

Caller I.D.

Damn it
, he thought again and told her who he was.

"Oh yes. Hang on a moment, please."

Oh yes
. Recognition? Had Stephanie mentioned him to her mother?

A clunk, a rattle, a distant call and the muffled sounds of footsteps. Then static and a breathless voice.

"Hi. I wasn't sure you'd call."

Me neither
, he thought, but said, "I said I would, didn't I?"

"So we're still on for tomorrow night?"

There was a challenge in her voice that he didn't like. It was almost as if she was daring him to back out, to compose some two-bit excuse and join the ranks of all the cowards her imperfection had summoned.

"Sure," he told her and cursed silently. His intention had been to do the very thing she'd expected, to back out, to blame a family illness on his inability to take her out. He'd already come to agree with Les's assessment of the situation, and figured it really was a case of
damned if you do, damned if you don't
. Whatever happened with the girl, Fuckface Freddy had no intention of stopping his persecution of Dean. That would be too much fun to abandon just because he'd shown some balls in asking out the school freak. Now, not only would he suffer the regular beatings, he'd also have school rumor to contend with. Rumors about what he'd done with the scarred girl.

"You still there?"

"Yeah." He closed his eyes. "So when should I pick you up?"

* * *

The night was good to her.

As she emerged from the warm amber porch light, Dean almost smiled. In the gloom, with just the starlight and the faint glow from the fingernail moon, she looked flawless. And beautiful. So much so, that he was almost able to convince himself that she was not marred at all, that the scars were latex makeup she wore as protection against the advances of undesirables.

But when she opened the door of his father's Ford Capri, the dome light cast ragged shadows across her cheek, highlighting the peaks and ridges, dips and hollows, and his smile faded, a brief shudder of revulsion rippling through him. He felt shame that he could be so narrow-minded and unfair. After all, she hadn't asked for the scars and he should be mature enough to look past them to what was most likely a very nice girl.

Christ, I sound like my mother
, he thought and watched as Stephanie lowered herself into the seat, her denim skirt riding up just a little, enough to expose a portion of her thigh. To Dean's horror, he felt a rush of excitement and hastily quelled it.

You're being an asshole
, he told himself, but it was not a revelation. He knew what he was being, and how he was feeling. He'd become a display case, his shelves filled with all the traits he would have frowned upon had someone else been displaying them. But it was different, and he realized it always was, when you were an outsider looking in. Here, in the car with Stephanie, he was helpless to stop how angry and disgusted he felt. It was just another event in his life engineered by someone other than himself and that impotence made him want to scream, to shove this ugly, ruined girl from the car and just drive until the gas ran out or he hit a wall, whichever happened first.

"Hi," she said and he offered her a weak smile. Her hair was shiny and clean, her eyes sparkling, dark red lipstick making her lips scream for a long wet kiss.

Dean wanted to be sick, but figured instead to drive, to seek distractions and end this goddamn night as soon as possible. He could live with the whispers, the speculation, and the gossip forever, but he needed to end the subject of them sooner rather than later.

"So where are we going?" she asked when he gunned the engine to life and set the car rolling.

He kept his eyes on the street. Dogs were fleeting shadows beneath streetlights; a plastic bag fluttered like a trapped dove on a rusted railing. A basketball smacked the pavement beyond a fenced in court. Voices rose, their echoes fleeing. The breeze rustled the dark leaves, whispering to the moon.

Dean's palms were oily on the wheel.

"The movies, I guess. That okay?"

In the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. "I guess."

"We don't have to, if you have something else in mind."

The smell of her filled the car, a scent of lavender and something else, something that filled his nostrils and sent a shiver through him that was, alarmingly, not unpleasant.

"Maybe we could go down to the pier."

"What's down there?"

"Nothing much, but I like it. It's peaceful."

And secluded
, Dean added and remembered Len's theory on what she might be expecting from him.

"Sounds kind of boring to me," he said then, aware that it was hardly the polite thing to say but wary of letting the night slip out of his control.

To his surprise, she smiled. "I used to think that too."

"What changed your mind?"

"I don't know. The fire, maybe."

Oh shit. It was a question he knew everyone in school wanted to know, that he himself wanted to know: How did you get those scars? And now it seemed, she would tell him.

"The fire that…" he ventured and saw her nod.

"My brother started it. Funny."

"What was?"

"That he set it trying to kill me and our parents, but he was the only one who died. Hid himself in the basement thinking the fire wouldn't get him down there, and he was right. But the smoke did. He suffocated. I burned."

"My God."

She turned to look at him then and in the gloom, her eyes looked like cold stones, the light sailing over the windshield drawing the scars into her hair.

"Why did you ask me out?"

He fumbled for an answer she would believe but all responses tasted false.

"Someone dare you?"

"No."

"Threaten you?"

"Haven't we already been through this?"

"That's not an answer."

"I told you: No."

"Then why?"

"Because I wanted to."

"I don't believe you."

He rolled his eyes. "Then why are you here?"

Another shrug and she looked out her window. "I'm hoping some day someone will ask me out for real. Until then, I'll settle for trial runs. When you look like I do, being choosy isn't an option, even if you're almost certain you're going to end up getting hurt."

"Hell of an attitude," he said, but understood completely and both hated himself for being exactly what she suspected and pitied her for having to endure the callousness of people.

People like him.

"Maybe. I figure it'll change when I meet someone who doesn't think of me as a freak."

He knew that was his cue to say something comforting, to tell her
I'm not one of those people
, but he was afraid to. It would mean fully committing himself to her expectations and they would undoubtedly extend far beyond this night. It would mean selling himself to her and that was unthinkable, because in reality, he was everything she feared—just another guy setting her up for heartbreak, and as guilty as that made him feel, it was still preferable to making her think he was really interested in her. Neither were palatable options, but at least there was escape from the former.

"I don't think you're being fair on yourself," he said instead, and silently applauded his tact. "I think you look good."

She snorted a laugh, startling him and he looked at her.

"What?"

"Nothing," she replied, but kept looking at him, even when he turned to watch the road; even when he found himself angling the car toward the pier; even as he felt his own skin redden under her scrutiny. The smell of her was intoxicating, the remembered glimpse of thigh agitating him, a persistent itch somewhere deep beneath the skin.

This is a dare
, he reminded himself when he felt a faint stirring in his groin.
I'm only doing it because I don't want to get my ass kicked through the rest of high school. And never in a million years would I have asked her otherwise and why the fuck is she still staring at me?

He brought the car to a squeaking halt, its nose inches from the low pier wall, the black water beyond speckled with reflected stars, the moon gazing at its shimmering twin. Boats danced on the end of their tethers, bells clanking, announcing every wave. A rickety looking jetty ran out to sea and vanished under the cloak of night.

And still he felt her eyes on him.

After a moment in which he screamed to announce
well here we are!
he turned to ask her why she was staring—he couldn't bear the sensation of those eyes on him any longer—but when he opened his mouth to speak, she leaned close and crushed them with her lips, her tongue lashing away the memory of them.

Dean's eyes widened in horror.

Oh Jesus
.

She shifted her lips, just a little and the side of her cheek grazed him. Hard skin. It was as if her nails had scratched his mouth. He recoiled; she followed, her hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. He moaned a protest but it only spurred her further. Her hands began to slide downward and oh God he was responding—even in the throes of horror he was responding and his hands were sliding over her blouse, feeling the softness there, the small points of hardness beneath his fingers and unbuttoning, tearing, freeing her pale, smooth unblemished skin. She made a low sound in her throat and broke away and for a terrible moment he thought she was going to stop, even though he wanted her to stop because this was a nightmare, but instead she sloughed off her blouse and smiled and now she was wearing just a bra and it was all he could see in a world full of pulsing red stars that throbbed across his eyes. She reached behind her and slowly, teasingly removed her bra and replaced it with his hands. His breath was coming hard and fast, harder and faster, an ache in his crotch as his cock stiffened even as his mind continued to protest
stop it stop it stop it you can't do this you don't
want
to do this
and she was on him again, her hair tickling his face, her mouth crushing, exploring, tearing at his clothes and he moaned, begged her, kneaded her soft, perfect breasts, then released them as she moved lower, lower, her wet lips tasting his nipples, his stomach, her fingers hooking the waistband of his pants and…

…
and then the passenger door was wrenched open and disembodied white hands, large hands, leapt forward and tangled themselves in her hair, wrenching her head back to show a face with surprise-widened eyes and a gaping mouth too stunned to cry out.

Dean could do nothing, the lust that had swelled to bursting within him quickly turning to icewater in his veins.
Oh God, no
. He watched in abject terror as Stephanie was torn screaming from the car, the breasts he had held not moments before crushed beneath her weight as she was thrown to the ground face first. She whimpered and for a moment it was the only sound apart from the steady clanking of the bell.