Page 65 of Defiant
So, I did the only thing I could: I stepped into his bedroom.
Chapter Seventeen – Archer
My hands were on a body I knew well, my mouth connected to a pair of lips I’d felt on mine countless of times now. Still, even though I knew I had to do this, I…I didn’t want to. After what happened, after I confronted Brittany about it, she’d acted like nothing at all was wrong.
She was a vile, cruel girl, and I was a pawn in her game like everyone else. I hated her, I did. I wasn’t with Brittany because I liked her, because I was thinking with my dick like some other guys did. No. The sex, the position in Midpark High…nothing was worth this.
We laid on her bed, our legs entwined. Her lithe body curled against mine, and her hands roamed up my shirt, touching my abdomen and my chest as she held me close to her. She kissed me like she always did: greedy, needy, grasping for something real she would never have because she was a manipulative bitch who only got what she wanted because she forced everyone else to bend the knee to her.
I had no idea how she grew up to be like this. She was only eighteen. She shouldn’t be able to play people like a fiddle, but she could. She held power no other person I knew had, and that’s why she had me under her foot.
Until now, I’d played the good boyfriend, even though I really had no interest in her. I tried to push Jaz away after giving into her—after letting my weakness for something new and alluring take me in—but that hadn’t been enough. Brittany had a camera in my room, apparently, because she didn’t trust me. She pretty much found out exactly the moment it happened, and chose to keep quiet for a while, letting me think I had done something secretly.
It was stupid of me. There were no secrets here, none of mine, at least.
Although, it was a Vega secret that got me under her foot to begin with.
The problem now was Jaz, and I knew it was foolish of me, because she’d never forgive me for what I did, for what almost happened to her because of me. But how could I lay here and act like nothing had happened when Brittany almost had her raped?
Twice?
How could I sit and watch the destruction of the light in Jaz’s eyes and not try to stop it?
Of course, I knew what would happen if I tried to. I knew what the fallout would be, and that was exactly why I was still here, still sucking it up.
I must not have been doing it well, though, for within a moment, Brittany pulled herself from me, sitting up as she glared. Her hands left my chest, and I didn’t even feel the loss of their warmth. I felt closed-off inside, almost numb.
But not numb enough. If I was, I wouldn’t care about what I’d stopped from happening to Jaz earlier this week. I wouldn’t think about what she’d told me over the weekend, how she’d been drugged at the party. No, I was numb, but not at the level I should be to carry on like this.
“What is the matter with you?” Brittany asked, jutting her bottom lip out to pout, as if she was some innocent girl, and I was a boyfriend who wasn’t being attentive enough. Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders in waves, her shirt a bit wrinkly from our embrace. Her boots had been kicked off; they rested near the bed with my shoes.
Those amber eyes watched me as I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. Those eyes were not the same hue as Jaz’s. Jaz’s eyes were so much warmer, like chocolate, warm and sweet and inviting. The last time those eyes had been on me, she’d looked at me with hate. All week she’d refused to even glance in my direction, preferring to ignore me in homeroom and first period.
“Don’t tell me this is because of her,” Brittany muttered, frowning. The door to her bedroom was shut; her parents were home, but they never bothered us.
I shook my head. “I just…how could you have done that to her?” Until recently, I never knew how black her soul was—as black as a soul could possibly get. “How could you have told Ryan and his friends it was okay to do that?” Before she could answer me, I added, “Did you slip something into her drink at the party?”
“What I did was try to make sure that bitch got what was coming to her,” she said. “You need to stop worrying about her so much.”
Staring at my hands, they looked like a stranger’s hands, not like mine. These hands had done so much, been complacent for so long…it was getting to the point where I wondered how I was going to live with myself, if this was going to be the rest of my life. I knew Brittany and her obsession with me wouldn’t simply stop when we graduated. She wanted to go to the same college as me—Hillcrest.
And after that…she’d want me to pop the question.
I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like with her. I couldn’t…no, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life like this. I was only doing it for Mom, but it couldn’t last forever.
“I told you to forget about her,” Brittany stated, repeating herself for the thousandth time when it came to Jaz. “I told you I’d handle her.”
Getting off the bed, I shook my head again. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”
Brittany practically leaped off the bed, moving around it to stand before me, defiance in her gaze. “You will keep doing this, otherwise you know what I’ll have to do,” she reminded me, although she didn’t need to. I knew well enough what she’d do, and what would happen as a result.
It’s the only reason I was still here.
She then said something she hadn’t ever said before: “I won’t stop you, though. If you want to tuck that dick between your legs and run to your new girlfriend, go ahead. I doubt she’ll want to be with you when she hears the truth.”
The truth of why I was with Brittany? My eyebrows furrowed, and I must’ve looked confused, for Brittany continued.
“I’ll know for sure at my next appointment,” Brittany spoke with a shrug. “And by then I’ll have dragged your name through the mud anyways, so I guess it won’t matter—”
