Hurt me like you need me novel Chapter 2

en missed calls and a text that reads like a restraining order.

Megan: You’re a psycho. Don’t text me. Don’t call me. Don’t look at me on campus. Lose my number or I’m telling everyone what you did to that guy at the party. I mean it.

I read it twice, then drop my phone on my chest and stare at the ceiling.

I don’t care about Megan. Haven’t cared about Megan since approximately forty-eight hours into dating Megan.

What I care about is the pattern. That’s four — no, five — if I count the girl from senior year who lasted three days before she told her friends I was “weird about sex.”

Five girls in two years and every single one of them left for the same reason: I’m broken from the waist down and violent from the neck up, and eventually those two things stop being ignorable.

My phone buzzes again.

I open Tinder before I can think about why I need to, and start swiping. Blonde, brunette, redhead, brunette, blonde.

They blur together like a deck of cards I’m shuffling for someone else’s game. I swipe right on the ones who look like they won’t ask questions and left on the ones who look like they’ll want breakfast after.

My thumb stops on a photo of a girl in a black bikini with her middle finger up at the camera. Her bio says three words: No strings attached.

I swipe right. We match.

She messages first.

Kaylee: Well you’re hot. What are you into?

Me: You. That bikini. Taking it off.

It comes out easy because it means nothing. I can type this shit all day — it’s performing, same as everything else. The words sit flat on the screen and I feel nothing behind them, but she doesn’t know that.

Nobody ever knows that.

Kaylee: Bold. I like bold. What would you do if I was there right now?

I type what I’m supposed to type. The right words in the right order.

I tell her I’d pin her against the wall and take my time. She tells me that’s hot. I tell her I’d put my mouth between her legs until she forgot her own name.

She sends a photo — lace underwear, hand on her stomach. This picture should make my blood move south. I zoom in because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

I tell her she’s gorgeous. She tells me she wants to sit on my face. I tell her I’d let her.

My dick doesn’t move. Not even a twitch. I’m lying on my back in my childhood bedroom, having a conversation that should make me hard, and my body is doing absolutely nothing.

Except.

My brain flashes and I’m back on that bathroom floor with Cade’s blood on my knuckles and his dick pressed against my leg.

I can still feel the shape of it through the denim — the heat, the way it pulsed against my thigh every time I hit him, like the beating was getting him off.

I can still feel the exact second my own cock started to thicken in response, and I can still feel the bile that rose in my throat right alongside it.

I wanted to kill him. Or was I…

The heat comes back so fast I sit up in bed.

No.

Fuck that.

I shove the memory down like slamming a lid on a box and throw my phone across the mattress. My hands are shaking. That’s just adrenaline. That’s all it was last night and that’s all it is now. Adrenaline, nothing else.

Thirty seconds later, I pick the phone back up.

Kaylee: There’s a Halloween party at Delta Sig in two weeks. Come find me there if you dare.

Me: I’ll be there.

I close the app and open a browser tab. Type “erectile dysfunction pills buy online” and stare at the results. Dosage, timing, side effects, how long before it kicks in, whether you can mix it with alcohol.

I bookmark a pharmacy that doesn’t require a prescription and calculate the delivery window. Two weeks is enough time. I’ll take one before the party, give it an hour, find her, and fuck her until she’s crying into the pillow and begging me to keep going.

I will make this work. I don’t have another option.

Shit.

I watch it pool instead of looking at my mother’s face.

“He’s stuck at work until five.” She exhales through her nose. “Please, Sawyer. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. You know how close our families are.”

Of course I do.

There’s a framed photo of Richard holding me as a baby on the mantelpiece downstairs. My mom put it up last month. Right next to the one of her and Cade’s mom — Aunt Erin — at prom.

Every time I walk past it I imagine putting my fist through the glass and watching Richard’s smiling face cave in under my knuckles.

I imagine the frame splintering and the shards biting into my skin and the satisfaction of seeing that photo in pieces on the floor.

But that would upset my mom, so I simply walk past it. Every single time.

“Fine.” I swing my legs off the bed. “But I’m not staying if he’s an asshole about it.”

“He won’t be.”

“He’s always an asshole, Mom.”

She gives me the smile that means she disagrees but won’t fight about it, and disappears down the hallway.

I pull a hoodie over my head and catch my reflection in the mirror. Split lip from last night, bruise along my jawline, knuckles scabbed over and still swollen.

My mom didn’t even ask what happened. She saw my face when I came home and just pressed her lips together and turned back to the dishes.

She stopped asking about the bruises sometime around sophomore year of high school. Now it’s just part of the scenery. Her son comes home bloody. The sky is blue. Water is wet.

I look just like my father. Same jaw, same dark eyes, same busted knuckles. The only difference is I haven’t started drinking before noon yet.

The thought lands like a fist and I flinch away from my own face.

I grab my keys and walk out before it can settle.