Dirty Seduction

Just because girls are young doesn’t mean they are innocent. Some are. Some aren’t. I wasn’t.” I paused. “So, maybe you should speak to some of the girls who Julian preyed on and find out how they really feel about the whole thing? I think you might be surprised by their answers.”

He didn’t speak.

I didn’t move.

“Has Grace spoken to any of them?” I asked.

“No, she hasn’t. She doesn’t want to dig the disgusting pit any deeper than has already been dug.”

“So, you don’t know, do you? Not for sure.”

“We don’t NEED to!”

“Please, just talk to them,” I continued. “Some of them. Maisie was the first girl he was with. She was messaging him for three months solid behind Grace’s back, begging him to see her when Grace wasn’t around. Then it was Serena from gym class. She used to make sure he could see exactly the right parts of her in her leotard.”

“Stop,” Michael said, but I couldn’t.

“I know it was Madeline that called him out in the end. She did that because he told her he wasn’t going to see her anymore. She wanted more than he was prepared to give, and he didn’t want to hold her back from university. He’s got plenty of messages to back that up.”

“He’s not on fucking trial!” Michael said.

“He is though, isn’t he? He’s on trial by you, and you’ve already reached your verdict without hearing the evidence.”

I saw how he wavered, just a touch, his hand gripping the handrail tightly.

“Speak to them. Please,” I said. “And then make your verdict. And please don’t think he’s done badly to me. He hasn’t. You can ask my mum, if you like. She’s just down there, in apartment four. She had the same opinion you did, before she realised the truth.”

“The truth? She must be as delusional as you are.”

“Ask her. She’s right there.” I gestured to the floor below.

“I don’t need to ask her, and I don’t need you to sing my brother’s praises. He needs therapy, and he needs us. If you really believe your truth, and you love him, then tell him to come back to us, and leave him alone. Live your life. You’ll be glad you did when you’re older.”

He eased past me, walking away, and this time I didn’t dash forward to stop him. His words had struck a chord. Hypocritical.

“Since you’re judging him for being so manipulative, why are you being so manipulative yourself?”

He turned back to me.

“Me being manipulative? Please. I’m looking out for you, and for him.”Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“You’re being manipulative, making him choose, and trying to make me choose for him.”

“Believe that if you want.” He shook his head again. “Poor girl. I feel sorry for you, I really do.”

I had to choke back my own tears, trying to stay calm.

“If you feel so sorry for me, then please listen to what I have to say. Knock on my mum’s door and speak to her, and call some of the girls Julian preyed on. Please, give him that. Give him a fair trial before you sentence him.” Michael carried on walking.

“Please!” I called after him. “Please, just speak to them! Any of them! Even Madeline!”

I followed him far enough down to watch him march past Mum’s door, and that broke me. I collapsed down onto the stairs, putting my hands over my face as the tears fell. I’d tried. I’d truly tried.

It was through streaming sobs that I saw him pause at the end of the corridor, long enough to stare back at me, and he was weighing me up. I could feel it. Sense it. Even through the tears.

“Please!” I managed to whimper. “Please give him a fair trial. Please!”

Julian’s brother didn’t answer my final request, he just walked away. I knew he’d be crying all the way downstairs.

I heard the bottom door slam closed behind him, and got myself together enough to hold back the tears as I raced upstairs. I opened the door to our apartment, and found Julian on the chesterfield with his head in his hands. I flew to him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders as tightly as I could. My mouth was by his ear, my words so choked up I could hardly speak.

“Go with him,” I said. “Go with him, Julian, and go now. They’re waiting for you. He’s still out there… you can go home!”

But my boyfriend took my face in his hands, despite his tears. He shook his head before pressing his forehead to mine.

“You are my home now, Rosie,” he said. “And I’m not leaving you.”

“You can go!” I cried. “Julian! You can go!”

“Tell me this,” he said, his eyes right on mine. “Would you have ever left me to go back downstairs? Back to your mother? Would you have left me behind and walked away?”

“No,” I said. “Never.”

“And the same is true in reverse. I won’t leave you behind and walk away. Not for anything. I just pray that one day they’ll get the chance to see how much I love you for themselves, just as your mother did.”

I held him and cried with him, and loved the way he loved me, just as I loved him.

And I prayed with everything I had with my heart and soul that they would get the chance to see it.

Julian, my saviour, the man upstairs who’d saved my life from nothing, deserved his family.

Just as they deserved him.

NOBODY TURNED UP IN THE WEEKS AFTER THAT. NO GRACE OR RYAN, OR Katreya. Michael didn’t come back, and there were no calls. Nothing but silence from Oxford as I finished up my exams.

We ate out in Worcester with Lola and Peter in celebration with whoops and cheers, and Mum and Tom came, too. And then, when the summer holidays were upon us, we went to Tenby and built sandcastles, with Julian tossing sand at me as he dug the moat.

We ate ice creams, and paddled in the sea with Lola and Peter, and after dinner, when they were off to bed for a kinky night in their hotel room, Julian and I set back off together, back to the beach.

We sat on the sand, and talked under the stars, and we began to make our plans.

Plans for our new life away from Crenham Drive…

“Where shall we go, then?” Julian asked me. “London? Tenby? Brighton? Manchester? Some tiny little village in the middle of nowhere in Wales?”

Julian had many suggestions, but I had only one answer.

“I want us to move to Oxford.”

“Oxford?!”

“Yes,” I said. “Oxford.”

“No,” Julian said. “Absolutely not. You’ll regret it when we’re there. That’s the last thing I’d want to put you through. Not in a million years.”

I wouldn’t regret it, though. Because just as he’d used the parallel of me not leaving him for the sake of my mother, there were some other parallels I could happily draw upon and had done plenty of times in my mind.

I wouldn’t have left Julian for Mum, no, but I wouldn’t have left Crenham Drive, either. I wouldn’t have left her behind until she got the chance to see the truth for herself. About us. About him. About how great a person he was, and how much he adored me.

In Oxford, maybe, his family would see for themselves. A chance like that was worth taking. It had to be.

“We can’t move to Oxford,” he said, but I shook my head.

“Michael asked me to leave you and send you back home, but I won’t leave you, not for anything. But I will send you home, like your family wanted. I’ll just be coming with you.”

“You’ve no idea what you’d be letting yourself in for.”

“I think I do, don’t you?” I managed to laugh, with the crash of the waves as a beautiful backdrop. “We’ve been through plenty of it in Crenham, haven’t we? And we made it through. We’ll make it through there as well. And if Michael does what I asked him to, what I begged him to… if he asks any of those girls for real, he’ll begin to see the truth. They all will…”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we keep waiting, until one day they see it for themselves. In us.” I nestled into his side as he stared at the waves. “Can we do it, then? Can we move to Oxford? You said you’d take me anywhere in the world I wanted to go.”

He chuckled, just a bit.

“I wasn’t imagining you’d say Oxford.”

“Will you take me there? Please? Can we get you home?”

He sighed and put his arm around me, kissing my head.

“You are my home.”

“Yeah, I know.” I was grinning in the darkness. “I guess we’ll just be living at home in Oxford though, won’t we?”

I soaked in another crash of the waves. I could practically hear his brain churning.

He sighed, and I grinned brighter. I knew him well enough to know the signs.

“Alright, then,” my boyfriend said. “Let’s do it. Let’s move to Oxford.”

I let out a squeal at that, and practically jumped on him, both of us a tumble of limbs on the sand.

I kissed him with sandy lips, and he grabbed me with sandy fingers, wrestling me to the ground underneath him, with my hands pinned over my head.

I bucked up at him as he tugged my dress down in the moonlight, and he paused as he saw my bare tits in the pale glow.

I’d already written it for him, while he was getting his suit on in the hotel room, jagged marker pen over my skin in the bathroom.

Yours.

He could write slut, or whore, or dirty bitch, or whatever he wanted to, right over me, but tonight, that one word said it all.

I was Julian’s just as he was mine, and that wouldn’t ever change, not for anything.

I just hoped that one day his family would see the truth of it… just like mine had.