I couldn’t.
Ultimately, I was hungry for a girl just as much as I was hungry for learning. The smart decision was to move ahead, even if it meant leaving her behind. I just didn’t know if I could do it.
Reality plagued me every moment I wanted her. Elise was off-limits, a temptation that cursed my existence with this visceral hunger to have her, possess her, and taste her like she was made for me. I was tormented and on the brink of falling. If I stepped over that boundary, if I gave into my want, I wasn’t sure I could survive the disappointment of my adopted parents. We would all be affected. Our lives wouldn’t be the way it was. That change was irreversible, and the damage would be permanent. It was a scary thought, destroying a foundation and rebuilding it without knowing what it might end up looking like.
But my want for her…it sat in the core of me, growing and growing. And want is a dangerous fucking thing. It clouds your judgment, it makes you weak, and I knew…I knew without a doubt, it was only a matter of time before I cracked.
Obsession was devotion. Obsession was mania and need. It was a compulsive urge to self-gratify by wanting, and wanting, and wanting ‘til it hurt, ‘til you could feel it there in your bones, gnawing its way deeper within you.
Obsession was my craze for Elise. She was my impulse. My…pulse itself.
It wasn’t healthy. I knew that.
I just didn’t seem to care.
5
Aston
The memory of Elise curled up and crying always haunted me.
She was sixteen, sweet and beautiful. Her body had started to develop rapidly over the course of one year. Her legs were long, her hips wide and soft. Her breasts had come out of nowhere, small but perky. It gave me headaches at the dinner table. She’d wear these tiny little tank tops without a bra on, and that brain of mine hammered away, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing.
It was misery. I had cold showers every goddamn day.
I felt sick with guilt. Was I so seedy, I couldn’t look at this damn girl unaffected? Did I have to want her every second of every minute of every hour of every fucking day? Was there never a break to this madness?
To make matters more complicated, her blossomed looks attracted the attention of that many dicks. She went from being the pretty girl next door to a girl they all wanted to fuck. It didn’t help she was a police officer’s daughter, and that this temptation was too enticing for the dicks to pass up.
So when I heard her crying that night, I knew something terrible had happened. She wasn’t one to cry. When it happened, it was far and few. Elise always smiled, always made jokes and lit a room up with laughter.
It was two in the morning when I first heard it. She was meant to be at Cindy’s place on a sleepover. I knew it wasn’t going to be as innocent as Dad thought it was. They wouldn’t have a movie marathon and eat pizza like she’d told him they’d be doing.
Elise was innocent, but she wasn’t the kind of girl that passed up fun. And that girl loved to dance. She loved to socialize and laugh. She was the life of a party. I would know, she’d dragged me to that many of them over the years. Maybe if she didn’t think I was so fucking miserable, she’d have invited me to the one she’d been at tonight.
I left my bedroom and quietly opened her door. The lamp on her night table was on, and her bed was untouched. I scanned the room but I couldn’t find her. I moved to the bathroom in the corner of her room and slowly approached. I could hear the shower on, and I stood outside the door, wondering if I should open it or wait.
I heard her muffled cries, and they cut me to the bone. I couldn’t just stand there. I had to know what was wrong. My need for her did not sit dormant; it raged like an inferno, deciding my next actions before my brain could compute.
On a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped in. I immediately found her in the shower stall, sitting under the spray in a white dress with her knees pulled to her chest. Her blonde hair was pressed against the side of her face, and she was shaking.
A bolt of panic shot through me. I grabbed a towel off the hook and quickly opened the stall door. Cold water hit me when I stepped in. It was fucking freezing. I sucked in a breath and quickly turned it off before I knelt down in front of her and wrapped her lithe body with the towel. Her shaking hands gripped it as she sobbed, sucking in breaths every few moments.
What the fuck happened?
I grabbed the corner of the towel and pressed it against her make-up smeared face, drying it as best I could. She wasn’t startled by my touch. Instead, she sank into it and lifted her face to me. When her red eyes caught mine, I felt a chill run through me.
“What happened?” I asked her tightly.