Sorry it's been so long! RL is extremely busy right now!
Thank you to all those who've reviewed! I loved getting each and every one of them and I promise to get back to you all very soon.
This is unbeta'd and not pre-read by anyone. All mistakes are my own.
MA: This story has explicit and lemony scenes. If boy x boy relations offend you please don't read any further.
Characters belong to S. Meyer.
*****umlm*****
[year: 2004 – Jasper age 17]
Summer passed at an incredibly fast rate and I was once again ambling through the Northbrook halls, this time as a senior. It wasn't nice to be back, and even though it was my final year I really wished I could skip having to spend another year in this fucking institution they called high school.
Every summer since I'd graduated middle school I'd spent working on my Uncle Louis' ranch which was located several hours away from Houston. Momma felt it was good for me to keep busy, get some fresh country air, and learn a good work ethic. I think she was afraid if I stayed in Houston I'd spend the summer moping around and playing games on my computer. She was probably right – I would.
Louis was Momma's older brother and her favorite family member. He hadn't gotten married until his mid-thirties, so my four cousins were all much younger and tended to follow me around with a kind of hero worship. It was good for my ego considering all the insults and crap I had to wade through on a daily basis in high school and I liked being included in a bigger family.
Before I'd left for Houston James had stopped by the apartment. I hated leaving him but when it came to say goodbye I couldn't muster up an emotion beyond numb. It felt like our relationship was ending and even though he claimed a summer apart wouldn't change things between us I couldn't quite believe it. It quickly became a hot and heavy send-off but it lacked the emotional connection I'd come to expect.
Since neither of us had ever wanted our relationship to become public knowledge we'd never communicated by phone or email, and even though I knew I'd miss him over the summer I continued to put trust in my gut instinct and refused to ask him for his number. Right from the beginning I'd always considered leaving tangible proof of our relationship too big a risk. How many fucking scandals nowadays are broken open when cell phones or email are used as evidence? We had to be smarter than that. We were fucking smarter than that.
Early in the summer I discovered it was a special kind of hell to never be able to contact James and hear his voice when I was at my lowest. However, all I had to do was picture what my life would be like if our relationship was revealed and I knew a few moments of hearing his voice wasn't worth it. I was already an outsider in the high school social circles and being known as the guy who had sex with the most popular male teacher on staff would only bring me more grief and embarrassment. It probably would have been assumed that I had seduced him and then I'd be crucified and reviled for bringing James down. Sometimes I felt selfish because I clearly worried more about the damage our relationship would bring to my life than his.
Now that I was older and bigger, my uncle had put me to work with more demanding physical labor. I had been so busy busting my butt every day I couldn't wait to crash each night. When the summer started I'd often think about James and wonder what he might be doing, missing the feel of his arms around me and his lips on mine, but as the summer progressed I began to think of him less and less, until one day I'd realized it had been a week since I'd thought of him.
It was then that I wondered if I'd fallen out of love with him.
In fact I began to question if I'd ever loved him.
Walking into Northbrook for my final year I was feeling a little nauseous with the knowledge that I would once again be seeing him. I didn't have the greatest confidence in my backbone to avoid getting sucked back in. James was gorgeous and a real charmer and it took being away from him for the summer to gain some perspective. When I thought I was in love with him the emotions that flowed between us made it seem as if age shouldn't matter, but now that the shine had faded I had a hard time reconciling the fact that James was an adult and he was involving himself with a teenager. As much as I hated to admit it, it wasn't like he could have overlooked my age because I'd acted fucking mature for my age or anything.
*****umlm*****
"What's the matter with ya?"
I slid down to the ground and leaned back against one of the beams that held the bleachers up. Tori didn't look up or answer my question. Her long red hair hung down and blocked my view of her face, but I could still tell she'd been crying.
"Tor, I know we don't hang like we used to, but I'm that same ol' guy. You can trust me. What's wrong?"
"Go away Whitlock. I don't want or need your help."
"I'm not goin' anywhere. I can sit here all freakin' day if I hafta."
"You guys are all the same," she muttered.
"Whoa, hold it right there darlin', did you just lump me in with other men? You'd be the first in a long time," I answered with a smile.
I was trying to joke around and earn a smile, but whatever it was that was bothering Tori my humor wasn't cutting through it.
So I sat in silence and waited. For what I didn't know. Maybe I thought she might give up and spill her guts. I was sure I didn't want to hear whatever was wrong with Tori, but this, being a good listener or simply supporting her in silence, this is what I'd been missing when I abandoned all my friends.
If I were in a situation, was there anyone who would offer to listen to me?
Maybe Rose?
Bored out of my skull I began to pluck grass out of the ground, trying like fuck to appear patient.
Eventually she gave a couple of big sniffles – the kind where a whole lot of liquid snot is about to be swallowed, and then she twisted her face toward me.
Her eyes looked hollow and it was like looking in a mirror. I wondered what else could have gone wrong in her life. She'd never had a 'good' life to begin with, but fuck at least she always had a fire in her eye.
"Can you give me a ride somewhere? You have a bike, right?"
"Uh, yeah," I hesitated. It was the middle of a school day and I knew somehow James was going to find out I'd skipped out. "Is it important?"
"Yeah," she sniffled again but refused to look at me. "It's a pretty fuckin' big deal. I have an appointment for two o'clock that I can't fucking miss."
"How far do you need to go?"
I had a Suzuki GSX-R750, I'd bought it used but the bike handled like a fucking dream. At the end of my junior year Robert had sent me a little bonus money when he heard from Mom that I'd made the fucking honor roll for the first time. I saved up the money he'd sent and the money I'd made at the ranch and by the end of the summer I had enough for the bike, insurance for the year, and even a few extra accessories.
Problem was – I only had one helmet. Texas law states that all motorcyclists under the age of 20 must wear a helmet.
"I'll direct you," she added quickly, brushing away the last tears that had trailed down her face.
"I only have one helmet. I need to know how far we have to go because I'm worried about getting caught," I explained.
"Oh, well don't worry about me. I can go without."
"No, you are fuckin' wearin' it or I'm not drivin' ya. How far are we goin'?"
"About a 10 minute drive?"
She sounded so fucking uncertain I didn't know what to think.
"Okay," I took a deep breath.
I think I can handle not getting myself killed for a ten minute drive.
The place she wanted to go was a place I never dreamed I'd end up.
"You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me!" I exclaimed without thinking.
Tori hopped off the back of my bike and handed me the helmet.
"If you head back right away nobody will even know you were missing."
"How are ya gonna get home?" As much as I wanted to ignore her obvious predicament I knew with a sinking heart I'd stay.
"Don't worry, the getting here was all that fucking mattered," Tori shrugged.
As she walked toward the clinic doors I knew I needed to find a place to park and join her. With the way she was reacting back at the school I knew this wasn't some visit to resupply her stock of condoms.
"Wait Tor! I'll come with you," I yelled.
Her mouth curved slightly upward but it didn't quite measure up to a smile.
*****umlm*****
"Jasper did you hear about Mr. Shulman?"
The tone in my sister's voice caused my stomach to flip. She sounded concerned and slightly distressed. I'd been hearing snippets of some sort of scandal all day and as usual I'd ignored it. I used to be the king of gossip in middle school, but after having been the victim of the rumor mill in my freshman year I'd been a strong advocate for clean living. I hadn't connected the bits and pieces I'd heard with having anything to do with James.
"No," I answered. One word was the most my voice could find. I was terrified of what my sister could be concerned about when it came to Mr. Shulman. It wasn't like she knew about our connection. Like everyone else in this god forsaken school Rose was a Shulman lover all the way.
If she only fuckin' knew.
Rose grabbed me by the arm and fucking dragged me to a quiet corner away from the crowded locker area.
You might wonder what the fuck my sister, my half-sister, was doing at my school. At the end of the summer, only a few weeks before school was about to start for my senior year, Rose showed up once again on our doorstep. Well, not literally our doorstep since we lived in an apartment, so it was more like outside our door in the apartment hallway.
She'd had a huge disagreement with her parents and basically ran away from home, or mansion probably would have been a more accurate description. Over the years since we'd first met, Rose and I had formed a tenuous relationship by keeping in contact through email and the occasional phone call. As odd as it was, neither one of us had ever had a sibling before (that we know of), so we decided since this whole situation was neither of our faults we'd make the most of it.
Even odder still, Momma accepted Rose coming to stay with us quite decently. I think she understood how much I liked having a sister.
I still don't know the details on Rose's need to leave Florida, but I got a general picture of Robert misreading Rose's interest in his race horses as instead an interest in a particular jockey. When Daddy Dearest banished her from the backstretch, and she needed his permission since she was under eighteen, she threw a hissy fit.
I've come to understand since that Rose is obsessed with horse racing and Robert's punishment (or need to protect her) was probably the worst possible idea. They were currently at an impasse so when the new school year started, Rose enrolled at Northbrook High School for her junior year. We were both seventeen, but she was a few months younger than me and with the way our birthdays fell she'd started school a year after I had. It actually worked well that we were in separate years because then we didn't have to explain our dysfunctional family in as great a detail. A half-sister in a different grade was a lot less scandalous than one practically the same age.
It was an interesting transition for her, having always lived the 'pampered, princess lifestyle' to living in an apartment that was a short step up from the trailer park across the road from our high school. Yet, despite where she now lived, her designer clothes, model like looks, and blueblood upbringing was all it took for her to break into the popular crowd while I continued to languish on the sidelines. Several times Rose had valiantly attempted to assimilate me into her group, but since I refused to play the game of kissing anyone's ass I never quite made the transition.
My sister's appearance and subsequent addition to our household both helped my loneliness and brought it on even more sharply. When Robert had cancelled Rose's credit cards in an attempt to force her back to Florida, she decided to acquire a part-time job and was quickly hired at a local clothing shop at the mall. Between her part-time job and her active social life, I was again spending a lot of time alone.
Are you wondering what happened with James? Well, when I returned to Houston I wasn't interested in starting up our relationship again, but there was something about James, maybe some tiny bit of fear that he'd expose us, which seems ridiculous when he had so much to lose, that kept me from being completely honest. So I used Rosalie as an excuse. The first day back to school I made sure to introduce my sister to James and worked it into the introduction that she was now living with me. I knew he'd never drop by the apartment when there was the possibility she'd be there and when she got the job at the mall I never let him in on her schedule.
My plan had worked perfectly and he never stopped by. And even though I truly believed I didn't have feelings for him anymore, I was lonely again and sometimes, even at school, he could be persistent.
Just yesterday he'd cornered me in the men's change room when I was alone after I'd finished up practicing with the cross country team and before I could muster up the courage to tell him I wasn't interested he was sucking me off and I was moaning in pleasure.
He was like a bad habit I couldn't quite get rid of. I wasn't confused about my feelings for him; it was more like I was a horny motherfucker who couldn't give up the free action. My cock apparently missed him more than I did.
It was probably too much to expect that I could learn to abstain - I'm seventeen for fuck's sake.
Whenever it happened I thoroughly enjoyed the physical deed, but I felt like fucking shit for doing it afterward. I knew I should be putting an end to it, but I felt helpless to the way he pulled me in.
"There's a rumor going around that Shulman is involved with a student," Rose finally explained in a whisper.
Oh fuck.
*****umlm*****
Thanks for reading!
Next chapter will be the final chapter of Jasper's back story.