Never Enough(45)

I come up for air, still feeling adrift and tossed, and Gavin's got his face in my neck as he hammers himself into me, so I squeeze him between my legs as hard as I can.

"Fuck, Marisol," he shouts, and then he comes, his cock throbbing and pulsing as he spends himself inside me, saying my name over and over like he's chanting it.

We stop moving slowly, our hands and bodies still locked together as an insane, possessive feeling steals over me.

It's the feeling that right now, no matter what, he's mine and this is mine, and it can't be undone. That I'll always have this, and it's beautiful and perfect and pure, and only the two of us will ever know or understand.

It's almost overwhelming. Almost.

Gavin murmurs something into my neck that I can't hear. He lowers our hands, still locked together, to our sides. 

"What?" I murmur.

He kisses my neck, then my lips, but he doesn't say it again.





39





Gavin





I don't tell her again. The moment I said it I knew it was too soon, that it was better to let that moment be perfect and whole and beautiful the way it was.

So I stay quiet, and I kiss her again, and I feel like time has stopped and the world has slowed and there's nothing else but the two of us.

As we drift off, Marisol nestled against my shoulder with my arm around her, she reaches across me and runs her fingers down the inside of my other forearm. She plants her fingertips and then circles them around a few spots, slower and slower until she stops, finally asleep.

Track marks. Very old ones, from before I blew out those veins and had to move on. I see her looking sometimes, and when she thinks I'm asleep she sometimes runs her fingers over the scars like she's reminding herself of them, but she's never asked. I've told her she can, but she hasn't.

I fall asleep slowly, like I'm being washed out to sea.



I come awake all at once, my eyes snapping open and my body going rigid before I even know why I've woken up but I lay there, tense and listening, every hair on my body standing.

Then I hear it: the door opening. The beep of someone punching a code into my alarm system, muttering curses, punching the code in again.

Please be a burglar, I think, but I fucking know better and I slide out of bed as quietly as I can.

Marisol stirs, her eyes opening just a sliver.

"It's nothing," I whisper, pulling on my jeans.

She seems to accept this. Her eyes drift closed again, and I steal for my bedroom door, closing it firmly behind me.

Liam doesn't even look up at the sound of the door shutting. He's leaning with his forearm on the wall, head planted on that, and just from the way he's sagging I know he's wasted again.

I feel like I've been punched in the gut, the air out of me. Not now. Please, God, not now, not while Marisol's here. Anything but that.

"Fucking cock-arsed fuck numbers," he mutters, the glow of the panel lighting his face as it beeps again.

I race downstairs, heart pounding, every beat saying not now, not now.

"I forgot the bleeding code," he says as I come downstairs. Instead of answering I push him out of the way and punch it in myself, the panel turning green and blinking the time, 5:18am.

"You can't be here," I say, keeping my voice low.

He leans against the wall again, moving like his joints are all a little loose. There's still a bandage wrapped around the arm that he used to break the window, though the bandage is dirty and looks like he's been scratching at it.

In the back of my mind, an alarm starts going off.

"Fuck I can't," he says much too loudly, as if this is a joke. "I am, aren't I?"

"You said you'd gone back to rehab."

Liam just laughs, and the sound is somewhere between a hoot and a high-pitched giggle, unhinged, and unnerving.

"I thought you'd have a laugh at that," he says, pushing himself off the wall as he scratches absent-mindedly at his arm. "You know, like we used to? Rehab's for quitters, mate."

I recognize this mood of Liam's. It's Liam's come-down mood, after he's been high for a while - cocaine, booze, maybe pills, God knows what - and it starts to wear off, when he gets ugly and vindictive, sets things on fire, goes out and crashes cars.




       
         
       
        
"Get out," I say, forcing my voice to stay low and calm because I know from long experience that anger will just fuel him.

"I'm sorry I came in past curfew," he says, a nasty edge in his voice.

"Get the fuck out, Liam."

Liam just laughs, then turns, stumbling, and starts walking for the kitchen.

"Leave the palace," he says to no one, his voice a high-pitched mockery of mine.

I lurch forward, grab his good arm and yank him back. He stumbles again, tripping into the table behind him where my junk mail's sitting.

"It's not a fucking joke," I say, anger flaring inside me, my grip tight on Liam's arm as he tries to turn away. "Now get-"

Behind him, the mirror balanced on top of the table wobbles, then begins rolling.

Before I can even move it rolls off and crashes to the floor, shattering into a million pieces.

We both stare at it, mouths open, for a moment. Then I take Liam and haul him toward the front door as he starts laughing again, stumbling along.

"That's seven years, mate," he says, giggling. "Maybe now you'll get all the shit-"

I step on a shard of glass and it slices into my toe. I unhand Liam and stop, grinding my teeth together so I don't shout.

"It's started," he says. "Bloody hell, that was fast."

Then he stops talking for one blessed second as I try to get the glass out of my foot in the dark, dripping blood onto the floor.

"Hello," Liam says suddenly.

My head snaps up.

Marisol's standing at the bottom of the stairs, barefoot with her dress on again, staring at Liam open-mouthed.

No.

"That's why you didn't want me coming home," he says, the nasty edge back in his voice. "You should have said something, mate."

"Liam, just go," I say, still standing on one foot, my toe bleeding.

"Liam?" Marisol says.

"Meant to sneak in past curfew but forgot the bleeding security code," he says. "I did remember my key this time, though, got in through the front door."

"He's drunk and he broke in."

"You have a key?"

"Course I've got a key, I live here," Liam says, then looks over at me. "Did Gavvy fail to fucking mention that?"

"He needed a place to stay," I say desperately, as if that can possibly explain.

Marisol's staring at Liam's bandaged arm. I feel as if a piano's hanging above me, ready to fall.

"You broke the window," Marisol says, her voice quiet and strangled, still staring at Liam. 

Then she looks at me, tears in her eyes.

"When you got that call you knew it was him," she says. Her voice is shaking, and she squeezes her eyes shut. "In the hotel room. After we... God."

"You're the fake girlfriend," Liam says. "Is he actually sticking it to you?"

"I'm sorry," I say, and step gingerly on the floor. There's a sea of broken glass between me and her and I start navigating it, leaving smears of blood where I've been.

"This is why you didn't want me at your house," she says, watching me, her eyes filled with tears. "Because he was here and you didn't want me to know."

"Yeah, I'm a dirty fucking secret," Liam says. "But someone's got to give Gavvy here a bit of fun and it's certainly not you, is it?"

"Shut the fuck up," I growl.

I step on another piece of glass and swear.

"It's a dirty fucking secret that we got shitfaced last week and you went on about and on about how much you miss your ex," Liam says, starting to laugh again.

"What?" I say.

That never happened. He's just lying, the ugly, jealous, vindictive look in his eye practically a gleam.

"Yeah, you were saying how you ought to give her a call and see what she's up to, maybe you could write another song about her," he goes on, turning toward Marisol. "He'd probably have done it if he hadn't lost his phone after snorting a mountain of coke."

"He's lying," I tell Marisol.

"What's that saying? Tigers don't change their spots?" Liam says, laughing. "He can tell you whatever fancy fucking words he wants, love, but Gavvy belongs in the gutter and we all fucking know it."

"Shut the fuck up," I say, pulling glass from a deep cut in my foot, gritting my teeth together.

"He's been asking me where he can score smack, you know," Liam says to Marisol, his tone almost conversational. "D'you know what that is? It's heroin, and I keep telling him I don't think it's a very good idea but-"

I lurch across broken glass for Liam, but he's wearing shoes and he manages to move out of the way, laughing his head off.

"He's only not back on it because he's not found it in Los Angeles yet," Liam goes on, backing away, glass crunching beneath his feet. "He may like you but he's only got one true love. Any junkie who says otherwise is a fucking liar."

She hasn't said anything in a long time, but she's crying silently, looking from me to Liam.

"None of it's true," I say desperately. My feet are screaming, bloody footprints across my floor.

"He's not living here?" she asks, her voice strange and detached and quiet.