Belonging to Lust

In 40 minutes, Heath and Zaiyia were back in their neighborhood driving up the driveway in front of the house. The majority of the ride there was spent in silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Heath was still stewing over the fact that he couldn’t interfere in her battles in a violent way without going to jail for it while Zaiyia was debating on whether or not she should tell him about the fight that almost happened in the cafeteria on her first day back in school. How mad would he be exactly?

The uncertainty was killing her, and so when Heath cut the engine of his truck and opened his door, Zaiyia reached out to grab ahold of his massive bulging bicep and tugged on it in hopes he’d close the door and stay in the truck with her. “Wait a minute, Heath, there’s…there’s something I have to tell you. Something I should have told you earlier.”

Heath let out a groan of irritation with one leg stuck out of his truck and the other still inside. “Goddamnit…what is it now?”

Zaiyia gestured for him to come back inside the truck. “Come back in, I…I don’t want the whole neighborhood to call the cops on you for threatening to beat my ass over what I did.”

Heath’s jawline hardened as his eyes narrowed suspiciously on her. Silently, he got back into his truck, slamming the door shut to give them both privacy as he glared across the vehicle at her. “What the hell did you do, Zaiyia, and don’t you dare try to lie to me to get your way out of trouble!”

Looking down at her lap in guilt, Zaiyia nervously fiddled with her fingers as she took a deep breathe, making sure to keep her eyes averted from his face. “Well, I may, or may not have…antagonized those group of girls earlier on today. You know, the ones that taped the word ‘whore’ on my back?”

Praying that she hadn’t jumped someone at school and sent them to the hospital, Heath turned in his seat, stretching out his right arm over the back of the seat. “Excuse me, did you just say ‘antagonized them’? What the hell do you mean by that, Zaiyia!? What did you do to them?”

Zaiyia shot him a glare because he was making those same girls sound like the victims, and began to defend herself as she too turned herself in her seat to face him. “Look, I did nothing that their stupid dumbasses didn’t already fucking deserve to begin with, okay?!”

Heath lowered his eyes to her full mouth for a minute, completely hypnotized by how lush and juice they looked before returning them back up to her beautiful brown eyes. He lifted a single finger and sternly pointed at her mouth. “You really need to do something about that mouth of yours, young lady”

Shrugging his warning off, Zaiyia rolled her eyes and mumbled to herself. “Well too fucking bad, cause it runs in the goddamn family.”

“You never told me exactly what you did, Zaiyia.” Heath reminded her, dismissing the other subject of her potty mouth for another time. “What happened?”

Zaiyia let out a sigh and nervously licked her lips, not noticing that Heath’s eyes had dropped to watch that single action play out since she was now looking out the window towards his house. “There was a whole bunch of stupid rumors going around school while I was temporarily suspended. I heard about all of them at once the moment I got back.” She finally turned her eyes to his, watching his flick quickly back up to hers. “One of them that was heavily spreading like wildfire was about me getting my ass kicked in that fucking locker room fight that no one can’t seem to get over!”

Heath openly rolled his eyes at that rumor, not believing that high schoolers were this stupid and bored with their lives that they spend all their time making up stories about other students. He didn’t make a comment about it though, just let her continue on.

“In all my classes, everyone was pointing fingers at me all day, and laughing when they thought I wasn’t looking.” Zaiyia shook her head at the stress that had quickly built up on her first day. “I just couldn’t take it anymore, Heath. I confronted the group of people that I personally call ‘my haters’ in the cafeteria during lunch and tried to…provoke them to fight me right then and there in front of everyone.”

“WHAT!?” Heath couldn’t believe this. How could she have tried to instigate them after all that’s happen to her? He was beside himself, shifting in his seat to prevent himself from yelling at her until her ears bled. His fists were clenched into solid rock fists, and he was gritting his teeth so hard he was surprised that they didn’t shatter. He had to give himself a minute before he could scold her. “You shouldn’t have done that, Zaiyia! Jesus Christ, do you not remember what those little bitches did to you!? Do you want to go through that again, because I sure as hell don’t! You could have gotten hurt today, Zaiyia, and I wouldn’t be able to do nothing for you, Zaiyia! No you better look at me right now, young lady because I am fed up with this shit!” Heath reached out to capture her chin a little too roughly and turn it so she was forced to look at him. “Look at me, Zaiyia, and listen up! Do you have any idea how helpless I felt not being able to sock all those little cunts in the face for what they did to you? It fucking sucks! I’m not use to being helpless, Zaiyia! I can help anyone in the world easily but am forbidden to help the one that matters most to me, YOU.”

As touched as she was by his speech, she couldn’t accept the choice of letting those girls get away with what they did to her. “I don’t care, Heath! I don’t care that I could’ve gotten hurt.” She clenched both of her hands into tight fist, lifting them and pounding them against the top of her thighs. “I’m so fucking sick of these bitches asking for a beat down, and me not being able to give them one!”

Heath exhaled sharply through his nose, trying to bring his anger down as he let her chin go to rub his forehead. “Still, Zaiyia, I just…I just want you to be safe, that’s all!”

“This is high school, Heath. I’m always gonna be surrounded by delinquents likes these, except this time it’s half of the whole school if not the majority of them.” Zaiyia explained to him, wanting him to understand the bigger picture and accept it.

“Yeah yeah yeah.” He waved off her response before nodding for her to continue on with her tale. “Go ahead, finish your tale of today’s unfortunate events.”

Zaiyia sighed, knowing full well he wasn’t going to like the next part of her story either. “Fortunately, for you they wouldn’t fight me. But I honestly wasn’t satisfied with that and so I informed them personally that I was going to eventually beat every single one of their asses.”

Heath let out a painful groan and turned to back to face the front of the car, covering his face. “Zaiyia, WHY!?”

“Because! I’m sick of their bullying! I’m sick of their shit!” Zaiyia exclaimed. “I can’t take much more of this, Heath.”

“We can send you to a new school in another county then!” Heath suggested when he pulled his hands away, sounding desperate.

Zaiyia shook her head, refusing to take the easy way out and run. “No, that’s not what Zaiyia Halifax does, she’s not a fucking runner. Put me into another school, Heath and I promise you I’ll come running back right here to beat their asses on the same damn day!” Heath was still refusing to want to see it her way, she could tell. “Look, I don’t want what happened to me to happen again, okay? I truly don’t. But from what I’ve experience before, this shit will continue to happen unless I stop it. No parents, no teachers, no adults. It’s just between us kids. Trust me, this shit always turns out better when you let the kids fix they own shit.”

Heath raised an eyebrow at her as he sarcastically replied. “Right, of course.”

“I’m being serious here, Heath. Let me work this shit out alone.” Zaiyia urged him. “I promise I won’t shoot them, stab them or beat them with a bat like they did with me. It’s gonna be an old fashion ‘get the fuck away from me or I’ll beat your ass’ kind of tango. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Heath couldn’t believe that he was actually sitting there considering allowing her to do such a thing. What kind of man was he becoming? Letting out a heavy sigh, Heath turned his green eyes to look at her, not appearing the least happy with his decision. “I know I shouldn’t be supporting this decision you feel like you have no choice but to choose…but considering what they did to you and what I can’t do to them, and what I’ve seen your mother do and what I assume you can do too…I’ll support it against my better judgement.”

“Seriously!?” Zaiyia exclaimed in surprise, her eyes lighting up with joy. “You’re gonna let me take care of this myself?”

Heath nods, not sure if his clouded mind meant it or not. “Sure, whatever. Can we go inside now?”

Zaiyia’s nodded before suddenly remember that one part about her meeting Alice White for the second time in her life. “Oh no, wait! There’s kind of….something else…”