Tremble

Later that night, Kaden was sitting outside on her front porch swing, waiting for Callum to show up. He would be rounding her block any moment now, and she missed him more and more by the growing minute. Rocking back and forth slowly, she looked up and examined the sky through the break in the tree branches. She always found it so beautiful, so tranquil in a way that words couldn’t grasp nor could they comply or relay.

“Kade, sweetie, what are you doing?” Coleen, her mother, spoke through the screen door, into the cool night. Her mother was a couple inches taller than her and shared the same hazelnut eyes that Kaden possessed.

She smiled over her shoulder at her mother, sitting forward to peer around at her. “I’m just waiting for Cal. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Alright,” her mother dragged the word with a quick smile as she hit the screen door to keep Kaden’s attention, “Not too late, understand?”

Kaden’s reply came out quick as she saw the headlights of Callum’s truck turn onto the road. She smiled brightly, an anticipated gasp moving through her lips, “I know, I know, I know. He won’t stay long. I promise!”

Her mother closed the front door and Kaden stood up with a bright smile. Callum watched her as he parked on the curb beneath the tree, emerging out of the car as Kaden skipped to him. She felt that because she was so petite, that the little cute things she did paid off pretty well in the end. Kaden jumped at Callum, pushing his back into the passenger side door. She looked up at him and he smiled down at her, his hand on her cheek. Pulling her face up until she was on tiptoes, he connected their lips in a growing, loving embrace.

Fingers moving up the skin of his arms until they brushed and connected over the polyester of his work shirt, she gripped it between her fingers as she pushed her lips more to his. He gripped the back of her shirt as he pushed her into him, twisting on his foot so her back fell into the car door instead. Callum’s fingers started to travel up the skin of her side and she inched away from his touch, both tickling and terrifying.

If she was being unbearably honest with herself, Kaden was afraid of mostly everything. Sex happened to be more at the top of her list than she ever expected it would be. It wasn’t that she was overly religious, or that she believed that it was that great of a sin. She didn’t. She was in a close encounter with rape only five months earlier. Kaden and Callum’s relationship was still taking flight back then, growing more in love with each other. She was hanging out with him at his house and his older brother’s dope-head friends were over, getting high in the basement where Kaden and Callum were trying to watch a movie. Callum didn’t see anything wrong with this and decided to blaze up as well.

Kaden, afraid to speak up and ask him to please not to, shrunk back into the couch and pulled one of her legs to her chest with her lip between her teeth. It had been only ten minutes after they finished a whole dime-sac between the four of them, which was a lot since Callum had never tried it before. He kissed Kaden hard and passionate for a minute or two and told her he’d be back in a few minutes and to stay put. Of course, she complied and tried to focus on the movie they were watching.

Her eyes kept glancing at Camden’s friends of whom she’d never learned the names of. Camden stretched and said that he was going to bring down some food and drinks for his friends. When he retreated up the stairs, the two boys found this a perfect time to be intimidating. Their cluttered, smoke-clouded minds saw this as an opportunity to have fun with a pretty girl. They didn’t even try to converse, because in their doped-up minds, she wanted this – she was begging for it.

One of them grabbed her arms and the other grabbed her legs. The one who had her arms had the top-half of her body and the one who gripped her legs had the bottom-half of her body. Together, they tried to pleasure her as the one who held her arms pushed her head into his stomach and wrapped his hand over her mouth and nose. Too pre-occupied with trying to breathe, the other man had worked three fingers inside her intimate part. He took her squirming from lack of breath as a sign that she was enjoying it much more than he thought.

The other man worked his hand inside her shirt, groping and grabbing at her chest with overexcited fingers as the other man tried to work his whole fist inside. She was screaming and gasping into the man’s hand as she tried to rip the hand from her mouth. Her face was streaked with tears and sweat as she thrashed.

The most beautiful sound occurred then: footsteps on hardwood stairs. It was Camden who had come down to her rescue. He looked between the two guys as the girl’s pants were around her ankles and her shirt was pushed up. She was sobbing and that was the only noise that was filling the basement. There was a little bit of blood coating the one man’s fingers and when Camden started to scream for them to get out of his house, he rushed to the girl’s side.

Kaden, with shaky, uncooperative fingers, began to pull her pants up and readjust her shirt back to its original stance prior to the recent engagement. Camden’s arm went around her, pulling her in close as she cried and shook with an overwhelming fear that she didn’t even know she could feel. “Kade, you do know what this means, right?”

She shook her head, her eyelashes thick with tears that steamed trails down her cheeks and dripped onto Camden’s dark shirt. Camden cleared his throat and rubbed her arm soothingly. “We can’t tell Cal. We can’t. He’ll flip. This has to stay our secret, okay? Can we keep this our secret? I’ll help you with whatever you need. I promise.”

Kaden tried to see the reason behind it, she tried to understand why she had to keep it from Callum, but no logic rose to her attention. Now, as Callum moved his fingers against her side and she still shied from his touch, he pulled back and looked down at her with rutted brows.

She shrugged and looked away from him, her voice coming out soft and small, exactly as she felt. “Cal, we just need to slow down. Okay? I’m not ready for this kind of stuff.”

“I’m just touching your side, babe. I’m not trying anything big.” Cal reasoned with a soft voice, compromise hiding deep within his statement. “Just a few soft caresses here and there. I won’t touch anything.”

Kaden smiled small and pulled his hands away from her. She brought his hands to her lips as she kissed his fingers and knuckles a few times before pressing them into his chest. “I have to go in. Mom’s looking through the window.”

Callum looked through his peripherals at her mother, who was letting the shade go as she tried to peek through the window. He sighed and nodded slowly, his lips grazing over hers for a moment. “I won’t be able to wake you up tomorrow. I’ll meet you in first hour.”

She smiled and nodded, her hands rubbing soothing lines into his cheeks as she whispered, “I know. You’ve got early practice tomorrow. I’ll see you at the pep rally and I’ll be sitting first row for your game.”

He chuckled once and kissed her cheek, “As usual, of course. Alright. I love you.”

“I love you too.” She whispered as she went in for one more kiss and sent him on his way. She stayed by the tree and waved as his car sped off down the street and turned the corner.

She slowly walked back up the driveway, glancing at the front room window, only to find that her mother had stopped trying to meddle and pry. Her head shook slowly as she stared at her house with an easy smile. Again, she was admiring the starry sky, her mind flitting back to the perfect sketch she received today from Asher. Her hand climbed to her throat and wrapped around the skin, mimicking that of which happened inside the paper. She tilted her head to the side and parted her lips as her thumb pressed against the side of her neck. She didn’t know what was going through her mind right now, she just knew that he terrified her, and that she couldn’t seem to get him out of her thought process.

One hand wrapped around her wrist and another gripped her neck, the thumb pushing deep into the pressure spot under her jaw. Kaden’s lips parted immediately and her eyes rolled back for half a second. She could feel the tall form pressed against her back as he rolled her head to the side. His eyes were parallel to hers, a few shades above black looking down into the cheery wood brown. Asher whispered slowly as his index finger slipped against her bottom lip. “I’m pretty sure it was more like… this.”

Her body trembled in the cool night, goose bumps rising over her skin with potential. Her eyes closed with force as she tried to level out her mind, which was buzzing all with thoughts that didn’t include going inside nor did it conclude her boyfriend who had just left a few minutes prior. She tried to think of how crazy this was – this infatuation with the new exchange student. It had only been a day and she had a boyfriend that she loved, she had no reason to be seeing him, let alone thinking about him.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she pulled his hand away from her neck and spun around on her foot with the means to look back up into his eyes at a more comfortable distance. The goose bumps hadn’t disappeared back into her skin and the hairs on her neck were standing to attention after she pulled his fingers easily away from her skin. She stared at him. He had changed out of his clothes from school earlier. He was wearing something that resembled pajamas with a black wife beater and black-and-white plaid pajama pants. She watched both of his hands rise to his face, one had pushing through his long, dark locks, and the other holding a cigarette between his lips.

In an attempt to feel like she wasn’t blatantly staring at him, she casted her eyes around her front yard and the tree that Callum’s car had recently rested under. She swallowed back her fear, instead talking with a hint of gawkiness. “How did you know where I lived?”

A sound flowed through the mouth full of smoke, a laugh leaving at exactly the same time the white swirls fell out of his lips with a calm cough. Immediately, his voice filled to the brim with uncanny resentment. “You act as though I’m stalking you.”

She pulled the picture out of her back pocket and held it up, the messily drawn bow facing him as she arched a brow. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

He took an invading step forward, stepping straight into her comfortable distance that she tried so hard to keep between them. His voice fell out in a whisper as he inclined his head towards hers. “And what if I was?”

She took another few steps back, scurrying and scuffing against the concrete of her driveway. She quickly dragged her eyes to look up at the front window. Her mother was nowhere to come to her rescue. “Don’t look away.” He demanded. When she turned her head back, Asher was silently three steps closer than before. She swallowed back a gasp.

“I’d call the cops.” She could feel the new chill in the shadow of her garage where the moonlight could not reach her. She hated to admit the feeling of loss when the light of her porch and the light of the moon didn’t console her.

With the pale complexion of his skin, it was easy for her to see the raven eyebrow push up toward his forehead, and too much easier thereon to see his wicked, curling smile hit his lips as he continued to silently step toward her. “Call the cops? And what would that accomplish?”

“You-You’ll have to stop harassing me, then.” She stammered then and cursed herself for it, mentally slapping herself across the face. She could feel the cold garage door winding closer and closer to her tank top-covered back.

Another laugh flowed through his lips with intimidation and impartial threat. He watched her options of running away from him and maneuvering around him vanish as her back hit the white garage door. Her goose bumps became more profound with the cold steel pressed evenly against her. “Harassing you?”

She watched him take those closing steps forward, his body ultimately pressed against hers with his looming figure. His hand went back to her neck, his thumb in its rightful spot as he angled her head up towards his, their eyes locking in a tangible embrace. “I could show you harassing.”

She closed her eyes rigidly, filled with building tears of fear and uncanny unpredictability of the future. She didn’t doubt that he would be good to his word when he posed the silent threat full of promise. She opened them back up to him. “Does that disinterest you?”

Kade knew the goose bumps conflicted against the tears in her eyes, because the goose bumps were her willingness to succumb to him and her tears were the unwillingness she wished outweighed the other. She gripped his arm and tried to pull it away from her neck, but found her grip going slack and uncooperative. She didn’t understand her actions until she realized she didn’t want to pull his arm away from her, but closer to her body. She wanted to feel his cold flesh hit against her warm skin.

He pulled her into him and then slammed her back against the garage once more, her petite form waving out for a moment before she settled into the same position. With his body nearly pressed fully into hers, his head started to tip down. His lips were just a mere breath away, and she was sad to admit that Callum wasn’t anywhere to be found in her clouded mess of thoughts. Her eyes searched through the near-black abyss his eyes possessed. With her chapped lips nearly touching his, she didn’t know if the flip in her stomach was anticipation or apprehension.

“I didn’t think so.”