Sophie
the battlefield on Thursday, I’m better prepared and better armed. Last time, Evan caught me unawares, on the backfoot. It took me all of Tuesday night and Wednesday to recover, but I’m not known to let myself be flattened by a defeat.
Thursday afternoon, I arrive at his house with an accordion folder full of textbooks and printouts. If Evan thinks he’s going to be wasting my time for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday until Christmas, he’s going to find out very quickly how wrong he is.
I slam the door knocker, and Evan opens the door in less than ten seconds. His hair is damp, loose curls obscuring one eye. He smells like he’s just showered, the crisp, masculine perfume of cedarwood and frost. He’s wearing a long-sleeved white t-shirt and black sweatpants, a go-to look for him. Even in baggy clothes, his tall, muscular frame stands out.
He greets me with a grin, but before he can say anything I shove the box at his chest.
“What’s this?” he asks with a frown.
“Your work. This is how I’m going to get you to pass the exam.”
“Fucking hell, Sutton,” he says, peering inside the box. “You’re worse than Mr Houghton.”
“Mm,” I say drily. “Should’ve listened to him, then, shouldn’t you?”
“I’m starting to wish I had,” he mutters. “Come on, then, you fucking killjoy.”
We take our usual places on opposing sides of the kitchen island. I pull the books and sheets out of the folder, forming neat piles between us. He watches me, his eyes flicking from my hands to my face as I organise the work.
“Wanna drink?” he asks finally.
“No, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I snap.
He glares at me, “I mean like a hot drink or something. I know how much you Brits love your tea.”
I actually prefer black coffee, and caffeine would certainly not go amiss right now. But accepting Evan’s hospitality would indebt me to him somehow. And that’s the last thing I want.
I glance at his big hands, suddenly remembering the way he pushed my coat off my shoulders last time.
Okay, one of the last things I want.
“I’m alright,” I say quickly. “But thank you.”
“So much for trying to be nice,” he mutters, as if offering one cup of tea was going to redeem him for years’ worth of shit.
I’m tempted to say this out loud, but we’ve already wasted enough time, so I get straight to it.
“Right, so last week we covered the basic plot of Hamlet. Do you remember it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, waving a hand. “Angsty prince, incest, suicide. I remember.”
“Anything else?”
“Dead girlfriend.”
“So succinct.”
“Oh, Sutton,” Evan says, tilting his head and biting his lip. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
“You do?” I lower my voice and lean towards him. “Then let’s get really filthy, Evan.”
He blinks at me in shock for a second. “Really?”
“Yes. Let’s talk about the motif of disease and decay in the play and how Shakespeare uses it to symbolise corruption.”
The only reason I say it is to make him feel stupid; I doubt he has any idea what I’m talking about. But he doesn’t fall for my trap. Instead he sighs and, to my surprise, flips open his tragically underused notebook.
“Go on, then, my dirty little slut,” he says with a wicked grin, clicking his pen open with his thumb. “I’m all ears.”
For a moment, I can do nothing but stare at him, speechless and hot in the face. But he waits patiently, and to my surprise, he even takes notes of what I tell him. He asks relevant questions and follows my annotating instructions to the letter. He picks up on things pretty fast, which is irritating. If he had paid this kind of attention in class, I wouldn’t have to be wasting my time here.
If I think about it, I must be just repeating stuff that Mr Houghton’s already told him, except he chose not to listen then. I banish the thought from my mind, because it does nothing but fill me with a quiet, bubbling rage.
An hour in, Evan tells me we should stand and do stretches. I roll my eyes and stay on my stool. He hops towards the middle of the kitchen, twists his torso, swings his arms, touches his toes. His effortless athleticism, the rolling of his muscles underneath his clothes, is strangely captivating.
“I gotta stay limber,” he explains, probably in response to my stare. “Otherwise my muscles will seize up like crazy.”
“Yes,” I say drily. “I forgot you’re the star athlete of Spearcrest. A champion in the making.”
“Not anymore,” he says, impervious to my sarcasm. “Dad’s made me drop rugby, and it was the only thing I was really good at.”
Although I wouldn’t have been caught dead attending one of his matches, I’m more than aware of his reputation as a rugby player. After every match, the girls would fall over themselves praising his strength, his stamina, his resilience. I’m pretty sure Evan could have slept with any girl in Spearcrest on the strength of his rugby prowess alone.
Well. Almost every girl.
The logical part of me understands why girls might find athleticism attractive. You’d have to be blind not to notice how good Evan’s muscles look under his smooth skin.
I just happen to think rock-hard abs aren’t a substitute for a personality.
Still, it’s sort of weird imagining Evan not doing something he wants to do. He always seems to act on every impulse and caprice, and it’s always been clear how much he loved rugby. Even if his dad wanted him to stop, it’s still a surprise to me that he obeyed.
“Well, now you might get to grow old without any brain damage.”
He laces his fingers together and stretches his arms behind his back. “It’s not healthy for a teenage boy to not have an outlet for his aggression.”
“You seem pretty adept at finding yourself a punching bag when you need one.”
It’s a barbed comment and more than a little unwise. He doesn’t seem fazed though.
“Mm, cute, Sutton. But that’s not the kind of aggression I mean.”
He stops his stretches and prowls over to me. My heart quickens at his sudden approach, the heaviness of his gaze as he speaks.
“I’m talking about the kind of aggression where you want to just grab someone.” His arms shoot out, and he grabs me by the neck, making me jump so hard my pen flies out of my hand. “Slam them into the wall. Pound them into the ground. Overpower them. That kind of aggression, Sutton.”
He’s not holding my neck hard enough to hurt, but his grip is firm, hinting at the strength he could be using, should he wish. He’s trying to intimidate me like he did when he took off my scarf and coat. So I force myself to stay still and serene.
“I wouldn’t know,” I say coldly.
“No, I bet you wouldn’t,” he grins, his fingers digging a little deeper. A pulsing deep between my legs echoes the mad flutter of my heartbeat. “But you’re wound so tight—I bet there’s all sorts of pent up tension inside you. I’m sure I could find a way of bringing that aggression right out of you.”
I look him straight in the eyes, refusing to be cowed.
“If you’re offering yourself up as a punching bag, I’m sure you could.”
“Anywhere, anytime,” he says, low and husky. “Oh, I wouldn’t even fucking hold back with you, Sutton. I’d give you everything I have.”
Even though we’re talking about sports, suddenly it doesn’t feel like we are. My breath is halting, my skin burns under my clothes. Heat pools low in my stomach, trickles between my legs. I remember the first time we touched, the innocence of that moment. But the memory of that hug is consumed like kindling in the fire of whatever is happening right now, it flies away in a flurry of embers.
Because this isn’t sweet and innocent.
This is aggression in a different form. The scarlet of lust disguised as the crimson of violence.
I lick my lips nervously. His gaze drops to my mouth immediately.
“There’s nothing you’ve got to give I couldn’t take, Evan. I know you too well. You’re all talk.”
“I wouldn’t be so fucking sure, Sutton.”
He drags me to him by my neck, forcing me down from the stool, almost closing the distance between us. Sirens scream in my mind, warning me I’m treading too far into dangerous territory.
“If you get an A on the exam,” I say quickly, my voice coming out a little rough, a little panicked. “Then I’ll let you get a free punch in.”
He swallows, his throat shuddering. His voice comes out as rough as mine did. “I’d fucking kill you.”
“I said if you get an A on the exam,” I repeat. “So I’m not going to lose sleep over it.”
I pull away and to my surprise he immediately releases my neck. I back away, resisting the temptation to touch my neck, to erase his touch from my skin.
“In this case,” he says with a wicked glint in his blue eyes, “I’ll have to think of another way of making you lose sleep.”
“You can try,” I say, perching back on the stool and waving a hand at him in a dismissive gesture.
“Be careful what you fucking wish for, Sutton,” he smirks, and saunters off to make coffee.
My pulse is still pounding in my throat as I watch him with narrowed eyes. Evan is as simple as they come, but I’m finding him harder and harder to understand lately.
I almost find myself missing our relationship of the past few years. It was intense only in the way it was unpleasant. Encounters with him and his rich kid buddies always ended in the same way: with cruel comments, childish acts of bullying and smug sneers.
But there was a sort of comforting reliability to that viciousness. After a while, I adapted to it. I became adept at avoiding it and, failing that, at withstanding it.
This, however… This is far from anything I’m used to. I no longer know how to handle it. It’s as though by being in his house, Evan has realised he is on a whole different kind of battlefield.
Instead of trying to defeat me with insults and mockery, he is using a completely different arsenal. An arsenal made of his body, his eyes, his voice. His ambiguous comments and the sensual suggestions within them.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Evan was flirting with me.
But I do know better. I know better than to trust him, to give in to his games.
Because for all his appearance of sincerity, Evan is more duplicitous than anybody else I know. I’m still ashamed that he burned me once.
He won’t burn me twice.
