Page 69 of Paper Hearts

Ender tickles my sides, his weight holding me against him and the wooden dock. “Come on, baby, let me see your deepest secrets.”

“No!”

Our wrestling for my journal nearly knocks us off the dock when Ender holds me in place, the journal secured to my chest, my right hand pinned to wood under his. He sweeps his tongue across his bottom lip and then smiles. “Read me one line.”

I close my eyes and breath in slowly, remember the last line I wrote before he approached me. “Reckless, addictive and headstrong, he takes everything I give him and lights my world on fire.”

His breathing catches, his brows furrow again and the sadness returns. Fear knots inside me that he doesn’t like what I said. I want to take the words back and stuff them down deep and erase them. This guy above me, I’m afraid I’ll never be enough for him, and it’s when he stares at me like this it feels true.

He swallows and a pained expression flashes but he’s quick to rearrange his face. “Is that about me?”

I hesitate, but nod, unsure what he’s going to do next.

His grip on my hand loosens and he leans in to kiss me. Just once before he pulls back, keeping his lips inches from mine when he says, “You’re the addictive one.”

I touch his cheek with the hand he lets go of, my other still holding my journal. “And together we burn.”

27

WHEN HE CAME TO SAVANNAH

I’m seventeen. One year away from freedom. I have a job now. Working at Starbucks after school and on the weekends, but it’s not enough to distract me from Ender.

He shows up on my seventeen birthday at two in the morning, breaks my bedroom window, and we precariously balanced on the edge of him taking my virginity, but he never did. He leaves before the sun comes up, and I have to explain to my mom how my window broke.

I lie and say the neighbor boy threw a rock through it.

Ender and I talk daily, and though I think we’re together, I don’t know. He’s working for a local tile company, something he says he isn’t loving, but it pays for a studio apartment my parents refuse to let me go to. Ender moved out of his parents’ house two weeks after he returned home from the lake.

A month before we’re supposed to meet up at the lake, Ender makes the five-hour drive to come see me at work. It’s late and we’re parked underneath a streetlamp, half-dressed and steaming up the windows.

He begs me not to push him too far, but I wonder who he’s having sex with. He’s almost twenty, surely me giving him blow jobs can’t possibly be enough for him. Still, I ignore the obvious and stuff the insecurities aside. I don’t want to think about them, fearing jealousy will drive him away.

I hold his head in my hands as he kisses my chest, neck, anywhere my tank top isn’t covering. I’m straddling him on the bench seat in his truck, begging for more and he keeps holding out.

“I want you,” I moan, grinding into him.

“I don’t have a condom,” he says, trying that excuse again.

I stop, glaring at him. “You drove five hours to see me, on a Tuesday night when you have to work in the morning, but didn’t bring a condom?”

He nods, laughing.

I push his head back and he presses it against the glass of the window. I run my fingers over his scruffy jaw. “Why do you keep saying no? I know you want to fuck me.”

My dirty words darken his expression. “I want you to be eighteen.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll be twenty in October,” he points out, blinking steadily, as if this should be obvious to me.

“I won’t tell anyone.”

He shakes his head. “If your dad finds out, he will. If my dad finds out, he will.” Taking a hold of my waist, he leans forward and then lays me on the bench seat. Splaying his hands over my stomach, he works my shorts off me and tosses them on the floorboard of his truck.

While I hold out hope he’s going to finally do it, he smirks and lowers his head between my legs. Scooting backward toward the door, I prop myself up and stare wide-eyed at him. “What are you doing?”

“Getting you off.” He licks his lips and takes a firm hold on my upper thighs, a predatory expression on his face. “I’m not going to fuck you, but I’m also not leaving here until you know who you belong to.”

---