Page 66 of Paper Hearts

He knows he crushed me by my expression and continues, just because.

“I can’t be your boyfriend,” he says, as if I’m stupid for even thinking that. “We can be friends, sure, whatever that is, but I can’t be your boyfriend. It would be a fucking disaster.”

“I don’t want a boyfriend,” I tell him, hating the fact that I’m lying.

“Bullshit.” He laughs, brushing past me without another word, taking my heart with it.

* * *

I want to leave.I almost do. I don’t have a car yet and if I could get away with it, I would take Aunt Leslie’s car and leave. But I don’t because I want to be here in case Ender returns.

As the sky turns lighter but still holds onto the night and sleep hasn’t found me yet, Arya knocks on my window. I jump up thinking maybe she heard from Ender. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you say you lost your virginity if you don’t remember it?” she asks, climbing inside, wearing a pair of cutoff jeans shorts and her Alpharetta Raiders T-shirt she stole from Roman.

“How do you not remember it?”

Arya shrugs. “I remember bits and pieces. It burned and it hurt, but I got high with Ender and Walker after their game, and then I woke up with Carter.” Arya frowns. “I really wanted to remember that too. Seemed like he was probably really good in bed.”

I shrug. “He probably was. Did he use a condom?”

She nods. “Yeah… I think he did. The wrapper was on the floor in my room.” Arya sighs, falling against my bed and lying next to me.

“Has he talked to you since?”

“He sent me a text asking if I wanted my panties back.” She rolls her eyes. “I guess that’s talking to me. Roman called me a slut when he found out.” Rolling from her back to her stomach, she looks at the pictures on the wall from last summer. “We need to find boys our own age I think.”

There’s truth to that.

“Should we celebrate? I mean, you did lose your virginity.”

Arya yawns, resting her head on my pillow. “Believe me, it doesn’t seem as exciting as I thought it was. Don’t get high before you do it. I think it ruined it for me.”

Arya falls asleep next to me, but I can’t get my mind off Ender. I slip out onto the screened in porch with my journal and write.

As I’m starring off at the lake and the way the moonlight dances on the water, I spot Ender in the grass by the lake. My heart beats faster and I sneak out the screen door, desperate to sneak back to our world.

Without words, I approach him, thankful for the tree covering to hide us.

When I sit next to him, he sighs when he notices me and looks over. “I’m sorry,” are his first words, and then his hands are on me, my thighs, hips, breasts, everywhere. His lips, hard and desperate, find my skin, demanding my attention. “I’m sorry…,” he repeats, again and again.

And as he pushes me onto my back, hovering above me, I believe him. I let him use me as a distraction from whatever he can’t deal with.

26

WHEN WE WENT WENT A LITTLE FURTHER

“Iwant to kidnap you and run away from this fucking place.”

“I’d follow you anywhere,” I tell him, because screw the consequences, I don’t care. I want all of him. Forever. It’s crazy how desire and young love, the first taste of it, can control you so much that you have no other concern in the world. Nothing means what it used to, and you’d give up everything else to let it devour you.

That’s how I feel in his arms. Powerful, unstoppable, yet held hostage by my own heart.

Rocking into me, slowly Ender kisses my sunburned skin he tells me is sweet and salty, heating it to degrees I’ve never felt. It’s almost domineering the way he captivates my body, and not something an eighteen-year-old boy should know how to do.

“Ender…” I moan, a quiet and throaty whisper he knows.

He knows what I want. What I need.

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