Page 67 of Brenna, Brat

I didn’t, not right away. I lay listening to the noises of people talking, and I definitely heard some giggling and deeper, male laughter. Some of the women must have brought home friends. I wondered what they were doing together and my imaginationmade me feel a little restless. Like, I felt a little…excited. It was hard to be in this bed, cuddled against Campbell, without thinking exactly the kinds of thoughts that he wasn’t having about me. I moved my hips. He couldn’t have—

“Go to sleep, Brenna.”

I thought about other things, like mortgage-backed securities. That worked every time.

Chapter 14

That was my breast. What?

“Mmm,” Campbell said. His lips were near my ear, close enough that I could feel the vibration of the sound. And that wasn’t all. Lower, like pressed against my butt, I also felt something large and steely hard that I was almost sure—

I gasped with a quick, sharp sound as surprise and pleasure spiked. Yes, that was a hand on my breast, a hand gently massaging. It was Campbell’s hand. He thrust his hips and squeezed with his fingers and I moaned, unable to stop myself.

He was asleep. I knew he was asleep, and he wasn’t aware when he put his leg over my hips and drew me even closer. He wasn’t aware when his hand slid beneath the tank top I’d made, so that now I could feel the callused skin on his palm rubbing against my nipple. I moaned again. It was exactly what I’d been dreaming about—except, in my dreams, he had been awake and not in some half-unconscious state so that he was unaware of what he was doing.

It felt so good that I arched my back, pushing my breast more firmly into his hand and pushing my butt more firmly against his erection. It was only there because it was morning and it was some type of animal-brain response. I knew that, but I still wanted to believe that in some way, I’d been a part of it. I also knew that this had to stop and I needed to remove myself from the situation. It was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t. I breathed harder and my hips jerked, and I stayed where I was.

And just then, noise started up again, like that cacophony of screaming from the night before. But this time, I also heard a male voice yelling, a voice that sounded familiar and was loud enough that he could have been in the room with us.

“You’re not fit to wipe her ass!” it bellowed. “Fuck off!”

“What?” Campbell asked. I turned my head to look up at him just as his eyes flew open in shock. “Brenna—holy shit!” He yanked his hand out from under my shirt and wrenched his body away from mine. Shame swept over me.

We looked at each other in horror and then, almost simultaneously, we both spoke: “I’m sorry!” No, I didn’t believe in apologies, but this had been dreadful and I did feel incredibly apologetic for letting it happen, for participating by not waking him.

We looked at each other for another moment and then both of us rolled out of the bed. Campbell grabbed a pillow and held it in front of himself, and we stared more. I felt a new wave of humiliation start in my face and wash down, making my heartthud. He had only been interested in me when he was imagining someone else, and now? Look at his reaction!

The voices rose again from somewhere in the house. “Shut the hell up, you bitch!”

I threw open the bedroom door and ran out, both away from him and to find the source of the problem. The argument was happening downstairs, and the sounds had been echoing up the stairwell. All the people here, besides me and Campbell, seemed to have gathered in the living room.

“I don’t want to hear another word out of your rude mouth,” Dion told one of the women. He had his arm around Carrington. “Jealous wench.”

But that girl laughed. I saw that most of the friend group was giggling, holding their hands over their mouths and totally amused. A few were also capturing the moment on their phones.

Campbell’s voice, louder and deeper than their sounds of delight, cut through. “What’s going on in here?”

“These women are nasty!” Dion told him. “They’re insulting your sister.”

“About what?” I asked.

“About Carrington’s choices,” someone volunteered, and they giggled again. I had a flashback to one of those terrible moments in school when I’d known that everyone was laughing at me, maybe because of the weird hat I’d sewn and proudly put on despite my big sister warning me against it. In this case, I wasn’t at the center of the circle of derision, but I knew the feeling.

“What choices are you talking about?” Campbell asked the group, and the hilarity increased.

“Me,” Dion said. “They mean me. That’s why they’re laughing, because they don’t think I’m shit. And fuck all of you,” he told the women.

“He didn’t even go to college,” I heard someone murmur, and another voice stage-whispered, “Ask him what he drives!”

“What I’m going to drive is my foot up your ass,” he told that girl.

Carrington hadn’t spoken yet, but she was bright red. Her hair stuck up, too, in weird ways, like she’d been rubbing it hard into her pillow. Was that Dion’s t-shirt she had on? Oh…

“Get out,” Campbell said. He pointed a finger around at the group. “Get out, all of you.”

“We’re leaving tonight,” one of the women told him.

“You’re leaving now. Do you want me to pack your shit? I’ll put it out the windows.”

---