Fall With Me

we are supposed to be together.” His mouth is right there next to my ear. His fingertips trace the curve of my jawbone.
    “You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” He kisses my throat, and his hand moves down the other side of my neck, over my collarbone, under my shirt, onto my breast. I pull back.
    “Sean—stop.”
    “Jill.” He exhales roughly and pulls me back to him. “It’s your birthday. Let me make you feel good on your birthday.”
    “This is not why I agreed to come talk to you in my bedroom. I thought you had something important you wanted to tell me.”
    “I do. My body has an important message to communicate with yours. No words required, though.”
    “Jesus Christ, Sean, stop. I have to get back to the ranch. I’ve had a long day.”
    “I know, I can tell. I can always tell when you’re stressed out. So just think how good you’ll feel if you let me—”
    “For Christ’s sake, Sean, no. Get off of me.”
    I push him off and start to stand, but he yanks on my arm.
    “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
    I stare at him. “Excuse me?”
    “I want you, Jill. You. Do you know I could walk out there and have literally any girl of my choosing? But I want you.”
    I jerk my arm from his grasp. “The only reason you want me is because I broke up with you, and you can’t stand not being in absolute control of everything all the time. And if you’re so certain you can go have whichever girl you want—go! Go out there and do that. Just leave me alone.”
    A grin spreads across his face. “God, do you know how sexy you are when you get heated?” He grabs my arm again and tries to pull me onto his lap.
    “Let go!”
    It happens so fast I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, except suddenly I’m on the bed and he is on top of me, clawing at my shirt.
    “Don’t tell me you don’t want this.” His voice is a growl in my ear, his weight crushing, pressing me down into the mattress.
    I stop struggling. So this is how I’m going to spend the first birthday without Dad. This is how it’s going to go down. Sean’s hands roam the length of my body and he kisses my forehead, bites my earlobe, starts to give me a hickey on my neck. He shifts to one side, moving off of my right leg. I judge the distance and try to position myself accordingly, then I jerk my leg up, my knee smashing into his balls. He screams, maybe it’s fuck or cunt, I can’t really tell, and I push him off. I stand for a moment and watch him writhing on the floor.
    “Thank you, Sean,” I say, straightening my shirt. “Getting to knee you in the balls was actually the best birthday present I could have asked for. I’m going downstairs. You have two minutes to get the fuck out of this house—and don’t even think of going in there and talking to my mom—before I call the cops and have them throw your ass in jail. Thank you for making this birthday all the more memorable.”
     
    I speed down the 1, and consider, briefly, how easy it would be just to yank the wheel to the right and go sailing off the cliff, into oblivion. Not that I would ever do that, but it’s astonishing how easy it would be. And I also realize how easy it would be to make it look like an accident even if it wasn’t.
    It’s still light out when I get back to the ranch, and I can’t bear the thought of going in and being in my tiny little cabin. It’s movie night, so the campers are all in the main lodge, so I take my shoes off and walk down to the beach, sit in the sand, and start to cry.
    Sometimes it really does feel good to cry, especially when you’re alone and the sound of the waves crashing pretty much drowns out any other sound. I lift my head up from my knees and that’s when I see through blurred vision that I am not, in fact, the only person on the beach.
    I stand and turn away, but it’s too late, he’s walking toward me, hurrying toward me, in fact, so quickly that I can’t even wipe the tears and snot from my face before he’s there.
    “Jesus,” he says. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” Except I’m not, because I can’t stop crying and my voice is shaky and my breath catches in my throat and I feel like I’m about to hyperventilate. And I’m so mortified that Griffin is here witnessing this that when he puts his arms around me and pulls me into him, I don’t resist. No, I just stand there and sob and I feel one of his hands go to the back of my head and he strokes my hair and says, Shhh in my ear,