Chapter 10: Oral Settlement
The blue one-piece was folded in my bag, a crisp, chlorine-scented promise. Or a threat. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. My body felt like a borrowed shell, moving through the motions of a day I couldn’t remember. Lectures were a buzz of white noise. Food was ash. When Jake texted—“Missed you at practice. Everything ok? Wanna talk?”—the letters swam on the screen.
Talk. The word was laughable. What language existed for what was happening to me? There were no words in the neat columns of my sociology textbook. I stared at his message, my thumb hovering. He was an exit. Or was he just a different room in the same house? His loud, easy charm was a reprieve from Liam’s quiet intensity. But his hands, in the jacuzzi, in the dark of his car, had been just as certain.
I typed back. “Can’t. Busy.”
His response was immediate. “Just for a minute. I’ll pick you up outside the library. 7 PM.”
A command disguised as an offer. It was 6:55. I was sitting on the library steps, my bag with the blue suit heavy beside me. In one hour, I was expected at the pool. For a private session. The words echoed with Liam’s quiet precision. I felt split in two, each half claimed by a different keeper.
The sleek black sedan pulled up, purring. The passenger window slid down. Jake’s smile was there, a flash of white in the dusk. “Hey, stranger. Get in.”
The smell of leather and his cologne enveloped me as I slid onto the cool seat. It was a clean, sporty scent, so different from the pine and chlorine of the study room. He was wearing a grey university hoodie, his hair still damp from a shower. He looked normal. Handsome. Safe.
“You look tired,” he said, his voice softening with what sounded like real concern. He reached over, his fingers brushing a strand of hair from my cheek. The touch was gentle. It made my eyes burn. “You haven’t been returning my texts. Did I… do something wrong at the waterpark?”
The question was so perfectly aimed it stole my breath. He was giving me an out, a narrative where he was just an overeager guy who might have moved too fast. A narrative where I could say yes, you did, and we could argue, and it would be normal. It was a trap made of kindness.
“No,” I heard myself say, the lie smooth and automatic. “It’s not you. It’s… school. It’s a lot.”
His posture relaxed. “Okay, good. You had me worried.” He let his hand fall to the gear shift, but didn’t drive. The car was a sealed capsule, parked at the far end of the lot near a line of dense, shadowy bushes. The library was a distant, glowing castle. “I’ve just been thinking about you. A lot.”
He turned in his seat, his arm resting on the steering wheel, his body angled toward me. The intimacy of the space pressed in. “I like you, Willow. I know I come on strong sometimes. It’s just, when I see something I want…” He trailed off, his eyes tracing the line of my neck, down to where my coat was zipped. “I go for it.”
His words should have felt like a compliment. Instead, they felt like a label. Something I want. An object of pursuit.
“Jake, I really can’t stay long,” I said, my voice thin.
“I know, I know.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Just give me five minutes.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I just need to know you’re not avoiding me. That we’re cool.”
“We’re cool.”
“Prove it,” he said, and the smile was back, but it didn’t reach his eyes this time. There was a challenge there.
“What?”
“Kiss me. Then I’ll know it’s all good, and I’ll let you go study or whatever.” He said it like it was a silly, simple game.
My heart was a frantic bird in a cage. This was the currency. This was always the currency. A transaction of flesh for peace. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 7:06. Liam’s session was at eight. The pressure of the two appointments, stacked end-to-end, created a dizzying vacuum in my head. Complying with Jake felt like the path of least resistance, the quickest way to unlock the car door.
I leaned in and pressed my lips to his. It was meant to be brief, a peck. He let it be that for half a second. Then his hand came up to cradle my jaw, holding me in place. His lips parted, his tongue seeking entry. The kiss deepened, turning wet, possessive. He tasted of mint and something darker, metallic. My body went rigid, then limp. I floated outside of it, watching from the ceiling as the girl in the passenger seat let herself be kissed.
When he pulled back, his breathing was slightly ragged. “See? That wasn’t so hard.” His eyes flicked down. His free hand, which had been resting on his thigh, moved to his belt. The click of the buckle was like a gunshot in the quiet car.
“Jake—”
“Shhh,” he murmured, his voice thick. “Just a little more. You can’t get a guy all worked up and just leave.” He said it with a playful grin, as if we were sharing a joke. His zipper slid down. “You know what to do. You’re so good at it.”
The memory of the backseat, of the vinyl seams against my knees, of the choking, filled my mouth with the phantom taste of salt and skin. The humiliation was a cold sweat on my back. But beneath it, a stranger, horrifying thought surfaced: If I do this, he will let me go. I will be on time for Liam.
The logic was insane. It made perfect sense.
He guided my head down with a gentle, inexorable pressure on the back of my neck. “Come on, Willow. For me.”
I bent over the center console. The scent of his musk, familiar and aggressively male, flooded my senses. He was already hard, freed from his briefs. In the dim green light of the dashboard, his erection looked predatory. He gripped himself, guiding the head to my lips.
“Open up,” he coaxed.
I opened my mouth. He pushed in, not waiting, the tip hitting the back of my throat. I gagged, my eyes watering instantly.
“Yeah,” he groaned, his head falling back against the headrest with a soft thud. “Just like that. God, your mouth is perfect.”
His hands found my hair, gathering the blonde strands into a loose fist at the base of my skull. He didn’t yank, not yet. He just held, a anchor point as he began to move his hips, sliding himself deeper into my mouth with each shallow thrust. The rhythm was established quickly, efficiently. He was an athlete. He knew about pacing.
The sloppy, wet sounds were grotesquely loud. The leather seat creaked under his movements. My jaw ached. Tears blurred my vision, dripping onto the dark fabric of his jeans. I concentrated on the clock. 7:11. Each second was a mountain to climb.
“So good,” he muttered, his voice a strained chant. “So fucking good for me. Take it. Just like that.”
His grip in my hair tightened, just a fraction, steering me. His hips began to pump upward with more force, meeting my mouth on the downstroke. The head of his cock bumped the soft palate of my throat repeatedly, a brutal, rhythmic tapping that triggered a relentless need to retch. I breathed raggedly through my nose, the air hot and suffocating. The entire universe narrowed to this: the strain in my neck, the salty-bitter taste, the creak of the car, the glowing green numbers of the clock.
7:14.
A part of me detached, floating up to the roof of the car again. It observed with cold clarity. This was the price. This was always the price. For approval. For safety. For a moment of peace. Liam’s voice slithered through the detachment: “You’ll learn to focus despite distraction.”
Jake’s breathing became sharper, ragged gasps. His thighs tensed. “I’m gonna… yeah, right there, don’t stop…”
He held my head firmly in place, his hips stuttering off the seat. The first pulse hit my throat, hot and sudden. I choked, trying to pull back, but his hand was a vise. He emptied himself with a long, shuddering groan, pushing deep as he did, ensuring I took every drop.
When he finally released my hair, I jerked back, coughing, strings of saliva and semen streaking my chin. I fumbled for the door handle, my chest heaving.
“Hey, hey,” Jake said, his voice sated, soft. He zipped himself up, a picture of composed normality. He reached into the backseat and handed me a half-empty bottle of water. “Here. You okay?”
I took the bottle, rinsing my mouth and spitting into the cupholder, not caring. The acrid taste lingered. I wiped my face with the sleeve of my coat.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I’m okay.”
He smiled, reaching over to tuck my hair behind my ear, his touch tender now. “You’re amazing. You know that?” He looked at the clock. 7:19. “You gotta go?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Alright. I’ll see you soon.” He leaned over and placed a chaste, minty kiss on my temple. “We’re good, right?”
“We’re good,” I whispered, opening the door. The cold night air was a slap.
“Text me later!” he called as I stumbled out.
I walked, my legs unsteady, toward the athletic complex. The pool. My bag with the blue suit bounced against my hip. My mouth felt raw, violated. My body felt like a bus stop, used and abandoned by different drivers. Jake’s release was a sick warmth in my stomach. Liam’s lesson awaited in the chlorine-scented dark.
I pushed through the heavy doors. The hallway to the natatorium was silent, lit by emergency lights. My footsteps echoed. I could already smell the sharp, clean bite of the water.
I stopped outside the women’s locker room. My reflection in the dark glass of a trophy case was a pale smudge. A girl with hollow eyes and a messy ponytail.
I had eleven minutes.
I unzipped my bag and pulled out the one-piece. The blue one. It showed my lines best.
I changed mechanically. The fabric hugged my skin, the same skin Jake and Liam and Owen had mapped with their hands. I was a vessel for their lessons, a territory under dispute. I tied my hair back, securing it tight.
At 7:59, I walked out onto the pool deck. The lights were off, save for the eerie blue glow from the underwater lamps. The water was still, a perfect, black mirror.
He was already there.
Liam stood at the far end, near the diving blocks, a clipboard in hand. He was dressed in his coaching gear: a polo shirt, track pants. He watched me approach, his expression unreadable.
I stopped at the edge, my toes curling over the rough concrete.
He didn’t smile. He simply nodded, a single, slow dip of his chin.
“Willow,” he said. His voice was quiet, but it carried perfectly across the silent water. “Get in. We’ll start with a thousand-meter warm-up. I want you to think about your hip rotation. Nothing else.”
The water looked endless, and dark, and cold. I took a breath, the air catching on the residual ache in my throat.
Then I dove.