The Heart Wants Ch. 14-17

When I broke off the kiss she gave me a big grin, shaking her head.

"What?" I asked, curious to know what was going through that beautiful, complicated head of hers...

She tilted her head and ground her teeth a little bit as she held up a finger, "Just a second, I'll tell you in a minute..."

I tilted my head, wondering what the hell she was talking about.

She suddenly pushed me backwards, her hands landing aggressively on my chest, driving me backwards until I came up short against the kitchen island. Her mouth exploded against mine and this time it was her that pushed her tongue aggressively into my mouth. Like that, I felt her hands on the button of my pants...

I wanted her very badly right then...

As soon as she got my pants unbuttoned, she leaned out of our kiss, her eyes bright, shining with mischief, "Anything you'd like to ask me to do?"

My head nodded stupidly... I had a few things I was tempted to ask her for...

She pushed back against me aggressively, "Anything you'd like to beg me for?"

I ground my teeth as I realized what she was doing... "Oh. You little bitch..."

She smiled, putting a finger on her chin, "Yeah. I think I like being the aggressive one better with you too!"

Stepping forward, I pulled her into my arms, laughing as I rocked her, hugging her while we both shared a moment...

Chapter 17

Laurel was putting the dishes away in the sink as I asked her, "So, what do you want to do tonight?"

Her back to me, she tilted her head, obviously thinking.

Suddenly, she spun around, visibly trembling with excitement, "Video games?"

Just seeing her childlike glee filled me with wonder, making me smile, "Don't you play video games for a living? I would think you'd be tired of them."

She danced back and forth like an eager kid on Christmas, "Oh, come on! I know you like video games and Rachel will never play with me!"

I shook my head at her, "I don't know... I was kind of hoping for some sexy time..."

She ran at me, grabbing my hand as she passed, "Yeah, yeah, I'll fuck your brains out all night but first, games!"

Dragging me behind her we ended up in the living room. She pushed me down into the couch and threw a PS4 controller into my lap, "Can we play GTA Online?"

I smiled at her, "We can play whatever you want, but uh... GTA Online doesn't do split screen..."

She smiled at me, "Not a problem!"

The truth was, I was just happy to be doing something with her and if it was something that was going to make her this fucking happy, more the better!

She started fiddling with the table below the television mounted on the wall and I was shocked to see another, equally large television come out of the top of it on some kind of roller system.

She picked up a controller and I could hear the little beep as she used the button on the controller to turn the system on, "Neat, huh?"

I nodded dumbly, "You have two TVs in your living room?"

She nodded, obviously proud, "And two Playstations!"

She opened one of the doors on the console and pulled out two headsets and then dove onto the couch next to me, sitting cross-legged and close to me.

"Rachel likes to watch Netflix while I play sometimes and this kept us from fighting over TV time!" she explained, answering my obvious question...

"Am I on the top or bottom?" I asked her.

She gave me a wicked grin, "You'll be on top..."

Realizing her double entendre, I gave her a cheesy grin. She smiled back at me and gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

I smiled at her, just enjoying her enjoyment, "Go easy on me. It's been a while since I played GTA..."

"I will, you'll have to play as Rachel's character, it's really low level, she doesn't play much, but I'll protect you!"

I shook my head, "If you don't mind, I'll load my own profile. I play GTA V too..."

She practically shook with glee, "Yes! Yes, yes yes! What level are you? No wait, don't tell me!"

I loaded my profile and joined her game. She had a very fashionable little character that was a spot on likeness for herself. I was impressed at just that. It was not easy to make a character in GTA V and to get it to look exactly right took a ton of effort. My own character was just random white guy, pretty much the stock character you started out with...

We teamed up and she took us into a few missions. I had played before but in a very casual fashion. She was obviously not a casual player...

Her level was well over two hundred and fifty, more than three times my own. The equipment she had access to was pretty much the entire stock of anything one could have...

It made the missions pretty much a cinch.

After I had gotten back into the swing of the game she joined us up with two of her friends and had us take on some of the more difficult missions, the entire time bouncing with glee. She introduced me to her friends, and I got pretty much instant friend requests from them, which I politely paused and accepted, usually while I rode in some wildly overpowered car that Laurel drove like a fucking maniac. It was hilarious to watch her drive, seeing how angry she got when someone cut her off while she was running us from the police...

Later, after we had finished playing, she went to take a shower, and I found myself sitting on the couch, watching YouTube and just killing time. All the traveling I had done over the past couple of days had left me feeling drained, and more than anything, I was starting to feel exhausted...

The only thing that kept me awake was the thought of a clean, fresh smelling Laurel coming back to me, and the hope that I might be able to get lucky tonight...

She came back into the room with me, her feet slapping quietly on the hardwood floor as she worked her way back across the living room. By that time, I was laying out, my head pillowed on one of the couch cushions, my shoes on the floor. I forced myself to sit up on the couch as I heard her coming, getting ready to get up and head to bed with her...

Walking over she stopped in front of me, wrapping her arms around my head and forcing me back down onto the couch. She pushed me back, and spreading her legs, settled in across my lap, a leg on either side of me...

I looked at her outfit, just wanting to sit there and study her for eternity...

She was wearing a baggy t-shirt and shorts that came to her mid-thigh, nightclothes I suspected...

Looking down at me she smiled, "You look sleepy."

I smiled back at her, "I am sleepy."

"Too sleepy to play with me?" Her voice was playful and full of mirth...

I shook my head, smiling at her, "I'm never too tired for that..."

She leaned in, kissing me and I allowed myself to be kissed. My hands, tricky little devils that they are, managed to worm their way into her shirt, working their way up her back as I pulled her in deeper to me...

Her kiss wasn't urgent, it was just loving, and I reminded myself that there was nothing urgent about our need to tear each other's' clothes off. Mostly, I just enjoyed being with her, just enjoyed the thought of being able to have her, being able to enjoy her. My hands slipped out of her shirt, finding her knees and letting them slide beneath the hem of her shorts, I slid them up her legs...

About mid-way up her thigh the tone of her skin changed...

From smooth and supple to something that felt like little speed bumps laid out across the top of her legs...

It was such an unusual sensation I pulled out of our kiss and looked down at her legs. Instantly, she grabbed the hem of her shorts and started pulling them down, like she was embarrassed...

I only got a quick glance and I wasn't completely sure of what I had seen, but it sent up all kinds of warning bells in my mind.

My eyes found hers and I could instantaneously see the sadness there... the embarrassment.

I, for my part, was furious with her...

"Let me see." My voice was harsh, filled to the brim with anger and authority...

She looked down, taking her hands from the hem of her shorts...

I pulled them up and there they were again. How had I not noticed this the other night? How I had I not seen? Her legs were covered in scars from about two inches above the midpoint of her thigh all the way up to her hips. The entire outside of her legs were covered in thin, evenly spaced scars. Looking at them, I realized the reason I had not noticed them the other night was that they were well away from the inside of her legs, focused instead on the top, muscled part of her legs, and more towards the outside. The even nature of the scars, the ordered reflection of them told me that I most likely knew what they were... knew where they came from...

My eyes went up to hers, "Did you do this to yourself?"

Her eyes filled with tears, not yet running down her cheeks, but very near to. She nodded very quickly, sending the tears dropping down her face.

Self-cutting. My beautiful, amazing, perfect Laurel had taken a knife... no... the marks were too thin, too precise to be a knife, most likely a razor blade, or a maybe even a scalpel, and slowly, methodically cut herself dozens and dozens of times. I looked back at the scars, tempted to count but realized that it would be a futile effort...

"Baby girl... why did you do this to yourself...?"

She tangled her fingers up in my shirt again as she looked into her lap. It was a gesture I was starting to realize she was picking up as a nervous tic. Something that made her feel safer, or if not safer at least better.

I let the silence stretch on, becoming more palatable with each passing second. Finally, she managed to find the strength to break it, "I'm sorry..."

I put my hands on each side of her head and forced her gaze up to meet mine, "Hey..." I managed to bring my anger back to a manageable level, "I'm not angry at you. You don't need to be sorry..."

Tears started to pour down her face freely now and I could feel her head trying to shake beneath my palms, "I'm sorry I made myself ugly..."

I gave her a disapproving look, "Hey, none of that. There's nothing about you that's ugly. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. No stupid scars are going to change that..."

She forced her head back down and this time, for the sake of giving her some peace, I took my hands away and let her look down. Instead of holding her against her will, I let my hands fall down, taking one of her hips in each one of my hands while I waited for her to speak, while I waited for her to tell me what she needed from me to make this a little bit easier for her to handle. The more I thought about it the more of a jerk I felt. I had no right to demand answers of her. I had no right to tell her what she could or could not do. Looking back, I realized that the reason I had reacted as strongly as I had was that I was worried, I was terrified of what this meant for her...

She snuck a look up at me, obviously looking to see if I was still mad at her...

I tried on a weak smile, and attempting to goad her into talking about it, asked, "I shouldn't have made assumptions. Maybe it isn't what it looks like. I just assumed that you had hurt yourself? Did you? Did you do this to yourself?"

She looked back at me, her head again bobbing quickly, telling me that my assumption was correct. That she had done this to herself...

I took a deep a deep, sighing breath, trying to work through in my mind what the best, most appropriate action would be. None of the cuts looked fresh, but some of them still looked relatively new. She hadn't cut herself recently, but it was still a behavior that was relatively recent...

That freaked me out. Thus, the freak out on her...

I rubbed her hips a little, "I'm not judging you... I just want to make sure you're safe..."

She looked at me, her face a mask of pure misery...

"Why did you do it?"

It was an asshole thing of me to ask, but some part of me told me that it was important. That is was a vital piece of the puzzle as to who she was...

She nibbled at her lips, "I don't like to talk about it."

I felt the disapproving look on my face, and as much as I didn't want to let it stay there, nothing I could do mentally would wipe it from my visage.

Her gave flitted back and forth between my eyes and I could see her trying to gauge whether or not she had to tell me. In her mind I could see her asking herself if there was some way to dodge her way out of the question, if there was some way to just outright refuse me in her answer...

I felt like an ass as a new thought occurred to me. It was a very dirty trick, like splits and punch the guy in the balls kind of a dirty trick, but I knew, somewhere deep down that this was important.

So I said, "You know what..." I forced myself to take a deep breath, sighing out, "you're right. I have no right to ask and I haven't earned enough of your trust to tell me. I get it."

I watched that break her heart. I felt like an asshole the entire time...

She squirmed in closer to me, her hands tightening on my shirt, "It's not that!" her face went down and again, she looked at my chest, her tears falling harder now, "I'm sor..." She stopped herself from apologizing again and shook her head before her eyes came back up and met mine, "Why is it important for you to know?"

I pulled her in closer to me, "For one. I want to know you, and this seems like a pretty fucking vital piece of you." I leaned in, kissing her lips in a quick peck, a kiss, I noticed, that she did not return, "And for two, I need to know if I need to worry about you on this. I need to know if you need help and I need to know if I need to watch you carefully to ensure you don't keep hurting yourself."

A though occurred to me then, one that really pissed me off, "In fact. I'm kind of pissed off right now that Rachel didn't talk to me about this. She's out of town and she didn't give me any kind of heads up?"

She shook her head, "Please don't be mad at Rachel. This isn't her fault..."

I let her words calm my mind, bringing my anger down from a solid eight to about a seven point five...

In fact, thinking about the fact that Rachel didn't tell me about the situation helped the situation to diffuse a little bit in my mind. If this was an emergency situation, Laurel being embarrassed or not, Rachel probably would have warned me about it.

That made me realize that I was probably blowing the entire situation out of proportion...

I leaned back in and gave her a deeper kiss, this time, she returned it.

When we broke apart I looked her in the eye, "It's okay. If you need to keep this to yourself, I understand."

She tilted her head at me, this time, instead of the misery she had on her face the first time I had guilt tripped her, she just swallowed.

"Have you ever noticed I don't talk about my family?" her voice was timid, full of pain and doubt.

I nodded, not daring to break the silence for fear that doing so would cause her to clam back up...

Tears started pouring down her face, "Because they won't talk to me. They won't even see me. Because of what I am..."

I felt my anger ratchet back up to eleven. Blind rage filled every last corner of my mind and the only thing I could do was dig my fingers into her hip and ride it out while I pushed it back into a box in the back of my mind...

"Perfect?" I managed to say, forcing cheerfulness into my voice.

She smiled a little, and I counted it as a victory. "No. A lesbian..."

All I could do was shake my head at that. Well, I could shake my head and wonder how anyone in the fucking world turned their back on their family over who they chose to share their life with...

She looked at me and took a deep breath. I could see her mentally prepare herself to dive in, "I grew up in one of those perfect families that nobody seems to have anymore. My dad was a lawyer, my mom a homemaker. My dad worked a lot, but he did it by getting up at four in the morning so he could be home by six every night. We had game night on Thursdays, and fucking tacos on Tuesdays. We were your stereotypical happy family. Me, my mom, my dad, my big brother Alex. Just your perfect little middle class American family."

That surprised me...

After hearing about them turning their back on their little girl I was kind of expecting to hear about some trailer trash bullshit...

"I remember, I used to come home from school every day and my mom would make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I would sit there at the dining room and do my homework while my mom made dinner. My dad would come home and the four of us would sit down and eat dinner and talk about our day and everything was just perfect.

"That started to change when I turned twelve... right about the time the other girls started to notice the boys, I started noticing them."

She pulled on my shirt a little, playing with it as she talked, "I mean I had always noticed girls. I had always had friends that were girls, but now... now I started to have... urges with them. I didn't do much with them. I just was a little too touchy feely with my friends. A little too clingy." Her eyes pierced into mine, "I knew it wasn't normal. I was smart enough not to reveal myself. For a couple of years, that's how it went. When I turned fourteen, that changed. My feelings and... urges... got a lot stronger. I started... having fantasies... dreams..."

She shook her head, "I kind of fucking panicked..."

I shook her hips a bit, "Why?"

Her eyes widened. "We were the perfect family. Perfect. Church every Sunday. I was young, but I wasn't stupid. Being gay was not going over well in my family." She shook her head, "And I lied to myself. I kept telling myself that it would go away. That if I just kept trying I could make myself be straight. I wasn't allowed to date boys, not until I turned 16 and I was okay with that, boys freaked me out, they were..." her lip curled in disgust, "disgusting..."

Her eyes snapped up as soon as the word left her mouth and I could see the panic on her face. "I'm sorry I didn't mean it that way!"

I just smiled at her and then leaned in and kissed her. To my eternal relief, she kissed me back, her eyes drifting closed as her hands closed tighter in my shirt, pulling me closer. I finally let her out of the kiss when she moaned into my mouth, her body beginning to rub against mine...

Smiling at her, I asked, "You're okay with that?"

She smiled, nodding...

I pinched her chin lightly, "Then you can think I'm disgusting all you want."

Her smile widened, but I caught that she looked back down again, bringing her mind back to the dark place she was trying to shine some light on...

"There was no way I could be..." she shrugged, "like I was."

Her hands tangled back into my shirt, "I started cutting myself at fourteen."

I didn't know a lot about self-cutting, but from what I had heard, it served as a way for the user to address mental pain by causing physical pain. Something about the body releasing endorphins in response to physical pain.

"To make yourself feel better," I tried to helpfully add.

Her eyes locked on mine as she shook her head, "No. To punish myself."

I felt my jaw drop.

"I started with sewing needles. Every time I felt attracted to a girl I'd make a note to myself and that night I'd go home and push a needle as far into my leg as it would go. I made a little ritual of it. Sterilize the needle with a lighter, clean it with alcohol, rub the site with alcohol, shove it in till I could just barely see it and then use a pair of needle nose pliers to pull it out. I had a little kit built and everything. I kept it hidden under my bed."

She gave me a pitiful, sadness filled, sarcastic smile, throwing her hands up, spreading her fingers, "Surprise! It didn't help!"

I shook my head at her pain, imagining pushing a fucking sewing needle into my leg. Imagining the kind of willpower, it would take to do that day in and day out...