Page 88 of Rebellious

He dodges the heel easily and continues coasting next to me. “Get in the car, Aspen.”

“My feet will be blistered before I get back in that car with you.”

His voice is calm and not nearly as angry as mine. “I imagine that won’t take long now that you’re down to one shoe.”

“I hate you!” I scream.

“No, you don’t.”

I stop and slip off my other shoe.

“If you throw another shoe at me, you will not like what happens.” His lips flatten. “I’m tired of chasing you tonight.”

“And I’m tired of talking to you!”

It wasn’t my best comeback, but my heart has been crushed into a million tiny pieces.

“Get in the car, Aspen.”

“Go to hell, Bennett.”

The only warning I get is the crunching of gravel as he slams the car in park. I take off running, but with no shoes and gravel digging into my feet, I don’t get very far before he scoops me up and tosses me over his shoulder. “Let me go.” I beat on his back.

“No.” He tosses me into the passenger seat like I’m some kind of ragdoll. “Do not make me tie you down,” he threatens when I lunge for the door. I’m almost willing to test him, but when he squats down, his tux getting dusty as he hauls me up to meet his gaze, I decide I’ll wait it out. “Is this what you wanted?” he grits, his nose pressing to mine.

I try to shove him but at sixteen years old, he doesn’t move. “No,” I lie. “I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

It’s a lie of epic proportions. Truth is, senior prom is a total let down when you go with your BFF who refuses to dance without a foot of space between your hips. And heaven forbid, you drink a couple glasses of spiked punch and throw yourself at him.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he says, his voice lower than it was earlier.

“I don’t even care anymore, Bennett,” I say bitterly. “I’m leaving for college in a couple of months. I’m sure some drunken frat boy would love to pop my cherry.”

It was a shitty thing to say. Especially when Bennett stands, giving me his back and yelling, “Fuck!”

“What do you want me to do, Aspen?” He’s in my face in a hurry, his jaw twitching in barely controlled rage. “Fuck you and send you off to college alone?”

I shrug. That’s not exactly how I’d prefer my first time to go down, but I’ll never tell him that. “At least I wouldn’t be a college freshman who’d never been kissed.”

Some things you just have to do before you get to college. And I thought if I wore a pretty dress and dragged Bennett out to some boring high school dance, he’d be happy to leave. Maybe I just wanted him to get jealous of the several stares I openly received. I was counting on him getting angry and doing something rash. What I wasn’t counting on, was him turning me down as I leaned in for a kiss on a dance floor full of my classmates.

“No one will know you’ve never been kissed,” he argues, his damn jaw still rocking that twitch.

“Well, it’s a good thing you showed me, huh?” I narrow my gaze. “At least now I will know what it’ll feel like when they laugh once they find out.”

My comment seems to deflate him. “That wasn’t my intent. You know I would have kissed you if I could.”

“Right.” I scoff. “The rules.”

At first, I didn’t mind his rules. They gave me Bennett and honestly, the rules kept our relationship interesting. But now, I’d like for him to take those rules and shove them up his ass.

“The rules protect our fathers,” he defends. “Come on, Asp. You know I love you.”

I feel like a scolded child and not a high school senior. “This doesn’t feel like love, Bennett. This feels like anguish.”

He squats back down. “Aspen,” he whispers, brushing a hair from my face. “Don’t you think this kills me too? Don’t you think I wake up every day, hoping my father has a breakthrough with his therapist? That maybe, just for once, we could live normal lives and be actual neighbors?”

I sniffle, wiping under my eyes. “We’re never going to be normal.”

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