Bounty(142)

“She was into you and went for it,” I guessed.

I saw his shadowed head move in an affirmative. “Went for it. I was fifteen, all about pussy. So she offered, I took her up on it.”

“And Daddy found out and didn’t like that,” I said.

“No, Daddy didn’t find out dick. She wanted more. I saw the error of my ways and backed off. She wasn’t used to not getting what she wanted so she told her father I took her virginity. Said I did it without her consent, at first, but when he threatened to call the cops, Ma lost her mind. It wasn’t like she didn’t see what was happening. She didn’t know where it went but she saw how that bitch was panting after me. And she had access to everything, including the girls’ rooms. She got hold of her diary where that cunt laid it all out. So instead of calling the cops, he canned Ma’s ass, kicked us out, did it without notice or severance and made sure she didn’t get a job anywhere else, including agencies, and that was when the garbage that was our lives turned to shit.”

This I wasn’t understanding.

“And you think that’s all on you?” I asked.

“Babe, fucked her,” he answered.

“You were fifteen,” I noted.

“Yeah, a fifteen-year-old kid who probably was a lot more worldly than you were. I knew better and fucked her anyway.”

I shifted both hands to cup his jaw. “Baby, you were only fifteen.”

“And I knew better.”

Cautiously, I asked, “Did your mom blame you?”

“Fuck no,” he answered immediately.

Of course she didn’t.

She’d made Deke.

“She didn’t because there was only one person to blame,” I informed him. “That person being that girl for doing what she did. It should never have gotten that far.”

“Right, and it was me who took it that far.”

“You said she panted after you.”

“She did.”

“You return that?”

“Not until I fucked her.”

“So it wasn’t only you who took it too far. She instigated it.”

“Jussy, I knew better.”

“You know we had live-ins,” I declared suddenly.

Deke said nothing.

I kept going.

“None of them had kids who lived with us but it didn’t matter. We were different people, obviously, than these douchebags. I can’t say we treated them like they were members of the family but this was because we weren’t around often enough to make them that way. But that doesn’t matter. You just know. You know there’s a divide, at least with that,” I said the last quickly so he didn’t get any ideas. “You’re just careful, not for your sake, for theirs. This is a job for them and it puts food on the table. You don’t shit where you live and that goes both ways. But for her, this bitch who did what she did to you, an ending that disastrous, she had the greater responsibility.”

I was speaking and while doing it, I was getting angry.

Really angry.

And I knew Deke was about to say something but I kept on talking.

Except it wasn’t talking.

It had become ranting.

“And I can’t believe she instigated that ending and sat back, watched it play out and didn’t do anything.”

“Jussy, she was sixteen and, like I said, a cunt.”

I slid out from under him, sat up and semi-shouted, “You ended up homeless!”

Deke pushed up to a hand in the bed, reaching out with his other one to take the back of my neck in a firm hold before he replied soothingly, “Gypsy, it was a long time ago.”

“It was whacked!” I snapped. “A, no way she should have gone there. I can imagine you were hot. You were even remotely as hot as you are now, I totally can see her wanting to go there.” I leaned his way. “That doesn’t mean she should.”

“Jus—” he began, his voice trembling with what on that one syllable I knew was humor, but I didn’t find anything funny.

“B, she couldn’t control her base impulses, and obviously, I’m into you so I get that, still, she should have taken her shot and then let it lie. I mean, who accuses someone of fucking rape just because the guy doesn’t want seconds?”

“Ba—”

“And C, she accused you of rape. Let’s discuss that for a moment,” I hissed. “I mean, what she did put you and your mother on the streets. But before she initiated that outrage, she accused an innocent fifteen-year-old boy of rape. What the fuck?”

Now I was definitely shouting.

Then I was moving.

Deke using his hand on my neck to yank me to him so my chest collided with his, he turned, flipping me over him so I was again on my back, but on his side of the bed, and he was again on me, but fully on me so I was taking a lot of his weight.