Swollen Desires: a New Beginning
Copyright© 2025 by GPT Writer
Chapter 16
Supernatural Sex Story: Chapter 16 - Chris is your average high schooler who just moved into a new home with his divorced mom and twin sister. While talking to his attractive neighbor, a wasp flies up the leg of his shorts and stings his dick. So naturally his dick grows to twice its size and his pheromones and testosterone to go into hyper-drive. Despite the cheesy porn-plot, its an immersive, character driven story.
Caution: This Supernatural Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft mt/Fa ft/ft Fa/ft Mult Consensual Reluctant Heterosexual Wife Watching Incest Mother Son Brother Sister Daughter MaleDom Spanking Group Sex Orgy Anal Sex Facial Masturbation Oral Sex Tit-Fucking Big Breasts Size Transformation AI Generated
The world is a smear of light and shadow.
Blood runs warm over my lips, drips off my chin. Tears streak down my face—not from crying, not really, just my body’s automatic response to getting the absolute shit kicked out of it. My left eye is swelling shut so fast I can feel the skin tightening, and my ears ring with this high, constant tone that drowns everything out. The bass from the pep rally speakers is just a dull thud somewhere far away, like hearing your heartbeat underwater.
Buddy’s fist is knotted in the front of my shirt, holding me up like I weigh nothing. My feet barely touch the ground. His other hand is cocked back behind his ear, and his fist is the size of a cantaloupe, and I can see every tendon in his forearm standing out like cable wire. This is it. This is the one that rearranges my face permanently. I brace for it, squeeze my one good eye shut, and wait.
And wait.
Nothing happens.
I crack my eye open. Buddy’s still holding me. His fist is still cocked. But he’s not looking at me anymore. His head is turned, his attention pulled to something off to my left, somewhere deeper under the bleacher scaffolding. The other jocks have gone quiet too—I can feel it more than hear it, the shift in energy, the way the air changes when people who were enjoying themselves suddenly aren’t.
Through the ringing, a voice cuts in. A man’s voice, sharp and alarmed, getting louder.
“—the hell is going on back here? Hey! Hey!”
Buddy sets me down. Not gently—just opens his hand and lets gravity do the work. My knees buckle and I stumble sideways, catching myself on one of the metal support beams. The steel is cold against my palm. I turn my head, slow, and everything swims.
My history teacher is picking his way through the bleacher framework toward us, ducking under cross-beams, his worn-out suit jacket catching on a bolt as he squeezes through. His face goes from annoyed to genuinely alarmed the second he gets close enough to see me clearly.
“Jesus—son, are you okay?” He stops a few feet away, eyes sweeping from my swollen face to the blood on my shirt to the five guys standing around me like they were just hanging out. His hand goes to my shoulder. “What happened to you?”
I hesitate.
The calculation takes about half a second. If I tell him the truth, he reports it. Buddy gets suspended. Maybe expelled. And then Buddy finds me. Not at school—somewhere else. Somewhere without teachers walking by. Somewhere without witnesses. And what Buddy does to me then will make this look like a warm-up.
I know this the way I know gravity works. It’s not a guess. It’s physics.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. My voice comes out thick, nasally—my nose is probably broken. I try to smile and immediately regret it. “I just tripped. I’m, uh—” I gesture vaguely at my own legs. “I’m really clumsy. Buddy was actually helping me up.”
My history teacher looks at me. Looks at Buddy. Looks at Biff, whose knuckles are red. Looks at the quarterback, who’s flexing his non-throwing hand. Looks back at me.
He doesn’t believe a single word I just said. I can see it in his eyes. But there’s something else there too—a tired kind of recognition, the look of a man who’s been teaching long enough to know exactly what he’s seeing and exactly how little he can do about it if the kid won’t talk.
“You can’t be back here,” he says finally, his voice flat. “None of you. This area is off-limits during assemblies. Get out. Now.”
Nobody argues. We file out from under the bleachers in a ragged line, ducking under the metal framework, stepping over support struts. My history teacher walks behind us, watching. Making sure.
The gym noise hits me like a wall when we emerge—music thumping, two thousand students screaming, the cheerleaders’ routine in full swing out on the polished court floor. Nobody even looks our way. Nobody noticed a thing.
As we merge into the crowd along the edge of the bleachers, Buddy drifts close. His shoulder brushes mine—a small, deliberate bump that sends a bolt of pain through my bruised stomach—and he leans down to my ear.
“You’re not as dumb as you look,” he says. His voice is calm. Almost friendly. “Just remember to keep your mouth shut and you’ll be okay.”
He straightens up, then leans back down.
“But so help me God, I hear you told someone about this—I don’t care if you’re standing in the police department—I will fucking beat the fuck out of you.”
I don’t doubt him. Not for one second.
I just nod.
Buddy peels off into the crowd without another word. Biff follows. The quarterback. Brad. The other one. They scatter in different directions, absorbed into the mass of students like nothing happened. Like I imagined the whole thing.
I stand there at the edge of the bleachers, swaying slightly. My tongue finds the copper taste of blood inside my cheek. My left eye is a slit now, the swelling hot and tight. Somewhere out on the gym floor, the music changes and the crowd surges and someone screams with pure, uncomplicated joy.
I need to find Regina.
I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to tell her.
I glance back over my shoulder, just once. My history teacher is still standing where we left him, arms crossed, watching me from across the gym with that tired, knowing expression. This man just saved my life, and I can’t even remember his name.
I turn away and push into the crowd.
The gym floor stretches in front of me like a minefield. Every step sends a jolt from my ribs straight up through my skull, and I have to focus on keeping my breathing shallow because anything deeper than a sip of air makes my stomach muscles scream. But I keep moving, weaving between clusters of students who are still buzzing from the pep rally, still laughing and shoving each other like the world didn’t just tilt sideways behind the bleachers.
I spot Regina’s reddish-brown hair near the far wall, her head tipped toward Gretchen like they’re strategizing something. Typical. Even at a pep rally, those two are running the numbers on some operation or another.
I’m maybe ten feet away when Regina glances up.
The color drains from her face so fast it’s like watching someone pull a plug. Her lips part, and for just a flicker—half a second—I see something I’ve never seen on Regina George before: genuine fear.
“Christopher.” She says my name like it’s a wound. Then she’s closing the distance between us with long, purposeful strides, Gretchen half a step behind, brown eyes blown wide.
“What happened to you?” Regina’s hands hover near my face without touching it, cataloging the damage. “Who did this?”
“I’m fine,” I say. My voice comes out thick. Something in my nose shifts when I talk and I have to swallow hard against the taste of copper.
“You are not fine.” Gretchen’s voice pitches up. “Oh my God, your eye—”
That’s all it takes. The people nearest to us turn, and then the ones behind them, and suddenly I’m at the center of a tightening circle of bodies. Mostly girls. Faces I recognize from class, from the hallways, from dance. Hands reaching for my arm, my shoulder.
“Chris, are you okay?”
“What happened?”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, louder this time, trying to project the kind of calm that’ll make everyone stop looking at me like I’m dying. “Seriously, I just—”
A scream cuts through the noise. Not a scream exactly, more like a strangled gasp that becomes my name.
“Chris!”
Jess shoves through the crowd like a wrecking ball, elbowing people aside without apology. When she breaks through to the front and actually sees my face up close, her whole expression crumbles. Her green eyes fill instantly, tears spilling down her cheeks before she can even get a word out.
“What, who—” She can barely breathe. Her hands are shaking as they reach for me, hovering the same way Regina’s did, afraid to touch. “What happened to you?”
“Jess. Hey. Look at me.” I try to smile, which is a mistake because it pulls at something raw on my cheek and I have to clench my jaw to keep from wincing. “I’m fine. I tripped, that’s all. Went down hard.”
“You didn’t trip,” she hisses, tears still streaming. “Your nose is, Chris, your eye—”
“I tripped.” I hold her gaze. Steady. Firm. The way you hold a gaze when you’re telling a lie that absolutely has to land. “Clumsy, right? You’ve always said I’m clumsy.”
She doesn’t believe me. I can see it in the way her mouth twists. But there are fifty people listening right now, and even Jess, impulsive, bratty, says-whatever-she’s-thinking Jess, understands that this isn’t the place.
The gym lights overhead are starting to pulse. Not actually pulsing, that’s my vision doing something it shouldn’t. The floor tilts about fifteen degrees to the left, and I think maybe I should sit down.
“I’m just gonna—” I gesture vaguely toward the bleachers. “Sit for a sec.”
I take one step and the floor drops out from under me. My legs go liquid, my knee buckles sideways, and I’m halfway to eating hardwood before a dozen hands catch me at once—arms, shoulders, someone’s grip on my belt loop, someone else hooking under my armpit. They hold me upright like a mannequin that lost its stand.
“Stop being stubborn and go to the nurse’s office!” Jess screams it so loud that the conversations around us actually stop. I can feel every eye in a thirty-foot radius locked onto me.
I open my mouth to argue and nothing comes out except a slow exhale that tastes like blood.
“Yeah,” I manage. “Okay.”
Regina takes one side, slipping her arm around my waist with a precision that makes it look almost natural, like she’s done battlefield triage before. Jess takes the other, pressing close, her fingers digging into my shirt. Between the two of them, my feet barely need to work. We move through the gym in a slow, careful procession, and the crowd parts like water in front of us.
The hallway is quieter. Cooler. The fluorescent lights are a special kind of agony against my swollen eye, but at least the roar of two thousand students fades to a dull hum behind us.
The nurse’s office is a small room off the main hall: white walls, a cot with paper lining, a cabinet full of supplies. The nurse is a middle-aged woman with reading glasses perched on her nose, and she’s already on her feet when we come through the door, her face tightening the instant she sees me.
“Sit down,” she orders, steering me to the cot. “Right now.”
I sit. The paper crinkles under me. She tilts my chin up with two fingers and shines a penlight into each eye, then presses gently along the bridge of my nose. I hiss through my teeth.
“Not broken,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me. She checks my nostrils, the bleeding has stopped, at least, then moves to my cheekbone, my brow ridge, the swelling around my left eye. Her touch is clinical and efficient, and every point of contact makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.
She wets a gauze pad and starts cleaning the blood off my face. The gauze comes away pink, then red, then pink again. It takes three pads before she’s satisfied.
“Hold this.” She presses a cold pack wrapped in a thin towel against the left side of my face. I take it from her, the cold so sharp it almost feels like burning for a second before the numbness starts to spread. It’s the best thing I’ve felt in the last twenty minutes.
I sit there, holding the ice pack to my face, trying to breathe in shallow, measured sips while the throbbing behind my eye sets up a rhythm that matches my heartbeat. Jess stands beside the cot with her arms crossed, tear tracks still visible on her cheeks. Regina leans against the wall near the door, arms folded, jaw tight.
A minute passes. Maybe two. Then I hear Regina’s voice, low and sharp, from across the room.
“He needs something stronger than an ice pack.”
“I can offer acetaminophen—”
“Prescription-strength ibuprofen. You have it in that cabinet. I can see the bottle from here.”
The nurse adjusts her glasses. “I cannot dispense prescription-strength medication to a student without parental consent. I would need to contact his mother or—”
“My mom’s at work,” I say, the words slightly muffled by the ice pack. “She’s not going to be near her phone.”
“Then we wait until—”
“No.” The word comes out different. Lower. Harder. The voice I use when I need someone to stop negotiating and start complying. I pull the ice pack away from my face so she can see my eyes, well, the one that’s still fully open. “I need that Advil. Now.”
The nurse’s mouth opens, then closes. Her hand drifts toward the cabinet, then stops. She looks at me like she’s trying to figure out why her body is already moving before her brain gave permission.
“Now,” I repeat.
She turns, unlocks the cabinet, and pulls down the bottle. Two pills rattled into a small paper cup, a larger cup filled with water from the cooler in the corner. She hands both to me without another word.
I throw the pills back and drain the water in one long pull. She refills it. I drain it again. A third time. The water sits heavy in my empty stomach, but already something in my chest is unclenching, some knot of pure tension starting to loosen just from the act of swallowing, of doing something other than bleeding.
The minutes stretch out. I hold the ice pack against my face and let the cold work. The throbbing doesn’t stop, but it starts to dull. The sharp edges round off. The ibuprofen kicks in gradually, spreading through me like a slow tide pulling back from shore. My breathing deepens by degrees, and somewhere around the ten-minute mark I realize I can inhale without my stomach muscles seizing.
“Let me take another look.”
The nurse comes back to the cot and gently removes the ice pack. Her fingers press along my cheekbone again, then the bridge of my nose, then the ridge above my swollen eye. “Tell me if you feel any sharp pain.”
It’s tender. Everything she touches is tender. But sharp? No. The deep, stabbing quality is gone, replaced by a dull ache that I can almost box up and put on a shelf.
“No sharp pain,” I say.
“Lift your shirt.”
I pull up the hem and she runs her hands along my ribs, pressing each one methodically. I grit my teeth at the sore spots, and there are plenty, but nothing grinds, nothing shifts, nothing makes me want to scream.
“Sore,” she says. “But nothing’s broken. You’re lucky.”
She wraps a fresh cold pack and hands it to me. “Fifteen more minutes with this. Keep it on.”
I press it to my face and lean back against the wall behind the cot. The paper crinkles again. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead.
About halfway through the second ice pack, the nurse comes back and tilts my chin to inspect the swelling. She frowns, not a bad frown, more like a confused one.
“You’re recovering remarkably quickly,” she says, almost to herself. She touches the skin below my eye with her thumb. “The swelling has reduced significantly in the last thirty minutes. That’s unusual.”
I don’t have an explanation for her, so I just shrug.
She steps back and straightens her glasses. “I’ll need to call Principal Harper and your parents to come in. It is school policy when a student has been involved in a fight.”
“No need,” I say. “I told you. I tripped.”
“Young man, the nature of these injuries—”
“Are consistent with tripping and landing face-first on a metal bleacher support.” I lower the ice pack and look at her. That voice again. The one that doesn’t ask. “That’s what happened. There’s no fight to report.”
She stares at me. I watch the resistance in her eyes flicker, then dim, then go out entirely.
“I’ll note it as a fall,” she says quietly, turning back to her desk.
Regina pushes off the wall. “I will be taking him home now.”
The nurse glances between us. For a moment I think she’s going to insist I stay, but whatever fight was left in her has already been spent. She sighs and waves a hand toward the door. “Keep icing it tonight. If the swelling returns or you experience any dizziness, nausea, or vision changes, go to an emergency room immediately.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. I swing my legs off the cot and stand. The room stays level. My legs hold.
The hallway outside the nurse’s office is not empty.
Emily is the first one I see, brown hair, those big brown eyes already glossy with worry. Behind her, Gretchen, arms folded, mouth set in a hard line. They’re clustered together in a loose semicircle, and when the door opens and I step out, every single one of them surges forward.
Emily hits me first, wrapping her arms around my midsection and pressing her face into my chest. Gretchen is next, her hug careful but firm, one hand on the back of my neck. They pass me between them like I’m fragile, and each set of arms holds on a beat too long before letting go.
Jess hangs back, watching me with red-rimmed eyes. When the hugging is done, she tilts her head and studies my face like she’s comparing it to a before picture in her head.
“Your face is way less swollen now,” she says. A watery half-smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Almost look like your dorky self again.”
“Thanks, Jess. Really feeling the love.”
She flips me off, but her chin is trembling.
The hallway is empty enough now. No random students. No teachers. Just us, the PURGER crew, standing in a loose circle under buzzing fluorescent lights with the muffled sounds of the pep rally still echoing from the gym.
Regina is the first to speak. “Now tell us what really happened.”
No warmth in it. No question mark. A command.
I lower the ice pack. Six pairs of eyes lock onto me.
“I got jumped,” I say. “A couple of guys pulled me behind the bleachers.”
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I’ve heard all day.
“Who.” Regina’s voice is flat. Not asking. Her blue-grey eyes have gone cold and still, the way a lake looks right before a storm rolls in. “Give me names, Christopher. I will take care of it.”
And I know she means it. That’s the thing about Regina George: when she says she’ll take care of something, she doesn’t mean she’ll file a report or have a conversation. She means she’ll dismantle someone’s life with the same surgical precision we used on Guber. She means scorched earth.
“No.”
Her jaw tightens. “Excuse me?”
“If you go after them, it only gets worse.” I look at each of them in turn: Regina, Gretchen, Karen, Emily, Jess. “These aren’t guys you embarrass and they go away. You hit them, they hit back harder. And next time they won’t do it where a teacher can walk up and interrupt.”
“So what, you just let them get away with it?” Jess’s voice cracks. “You just walk around school waiting for them to do it again?”
“I’m saying that escalation is a losing game and I’m not playing it.”
“That is not a plan,” Regina says tightly. “That is cowardice dressed up as strategy.”
The word lands like a slap. But I don’t flinch.
“Maybe. But I’m the one who was behind those bleachers, and I’m telling you: retaliation makes this worse. Not better. Worse.”
Nobody says anything for a long moment. Emily’s hand finds mine and squeezes. Gretchen shifts her weight, glaring at the floor like she’s trying to set it on fire with her mind.
“This is bullshit,” Jess whispers.
“Yeah,” I agree. “It is.”
But no one argues again. One by one, I watch the fight drain out of them, not because they agree with me, but because they can see I’m not budging. Regina holds my gaze the longest, those blue-grey eyes searching for a crack, a tell, some opening she can exploit.
She doesn’t find one.
“Fine,” she says at last, the word clipped and cold.
I’ll take it.
Regina tilts her head, studying me the way she does when she’s calculating three moves ahead. “Do you want me to take you home? You should rest.”
“No way.” I press the ice pack against my cheek one more time, then lower it. The hallway lights are still too bright but the throbbing behind my eye has downgraded from jackhammer to dull ache, and I’ll take that trade all day. “Honestly? I feel a lot better. But I’m starving.”
That single word—starving—flips a switch. Suddenly we’re not standing in a grim school hallway anymore; we’re a group of teenagers with a Friday night stretching out in front of us, and the gravity shifts from crisis mode to something almost normal.
“Mall,” Gretchen says, like it’s obvious.
“Mall,” Karen echoes.
“Food first,” I say. “Then whatever.”
“Then shopping,” Jess corrects, and the look she gives me dares me to argue. I don’t. The girls have already decided, and honestly, I’ve had some pretty memorable experiences on Regina’s past shopping excursions. Who am I to disagree?
We split into cars in the school parking lot, which is mostly empty now—the pep rally crowd has scattered, leaving behind crumpled programs and a few lonely sedans under the parking lot lamps. Regina’s white Mercedes gleams like a pearl dropped on asphalt. She clicks the fob and the locks chirp.
“Shotgun,” I say unnecessarily.
Behind us, Karen, Jess, and Emily pile into Gretchen’s black Escalade.
Regina pulls out first, smooth and precise, and I lean back into the leather seat and let the warm evening air hit my face as we roll through the neighborhood streets toward Springs Fashion Mall. She doesn’t say much during the drive. She doesn’t need to. Her hand finds mine on the center console, her thumb tracing a slow circle on my knuckle, and I know it’s her way of saying she’s still furious about what happened but she’s choosing to hold it, for now, because I asked her to.
The mall parking lot is busy for a Friday night. Regina slides the Mercedes into a spot near the entrance with surgical precision and we wait for the Escalade, which rumbles up thirty seconds later and parks across two spaces because Gretchen drives it like a small aircraft carrier.
Inside, the atrium opens up above us—glass dome catching the last blue of the sky, fountain gurgling, the whole place smelling like new leather and cinnamon pretzels. The girls make a beeline for Sweetgreen, already debating kale versus spinach base like it’s a Supreme Court decision.
I raise a hand. “Yeah, no. I’ll be at the burger place.”
Jess wrinkles her nose. “You’re getting a greasy burger after—”
“I got jumped, Jess, not a stomach transplant.”
She rolls her eyes but doesn’t fight me on it, and I peel off toward the food court’s Rocket Burger while the five of them drift toward their salad bar.
I order a Double-Double, with fries and a chocolate shake. Standing at the counter waiting, I test my jaw carefully—open, close, side to side. Still sore from all the slapping that asshole Biff laid on me. But nothing clicks, nothing shifts. No loose teeth, at least. Small blessings.
When my tray comes up, I find a table big enough for all of us near the edge of the food court and drop into a chair. A minute later the girls arrive in a cluster, each carrying a translucent bowl of greens and grains that probably costs twice what my burger did.
We settle in, and between bites I finally give them the full download. Everything. The whole word-for-word exchange, Guber’s face changing three different shades of red, how he didn’t even flinch until the very end. I finish off saying, “in the end it really came down to how convising the photos looked.”
Every pair of eyes drifts to Emily, who’s sitting at the end of the table mid-bite, a crouton halfway to her mouth.
“Emily,” Regina says, and her voice carries a warmth she usually rations like it’s expensive, “you were magnificent.”
“Seriously,” Gretchen adds. “You committed.”
Emily’s cheeks flush pink and she grins so wide her eyes scrunch up. “Thanks, guys.”
I lean back in my chair, smirking at her. “My favorite part was your little battle cry right as you passed Guber. What was it? Something like—” imitating Emily— “‘We’re going streaking, everyone!’”
Emily nearly chokes on her salad. “Oh my god, shut up.”
“No, no, it was great. Really set the tone.”
She throws a crouton at me.
“I had to summon my inner Will Ferrell, okay?” Emily says, laughing. “The man is a legend.”
Silence.
Five blank faces stare at her.
Emily’s smile melts off her face. She sets her fork down. “No. No, no, no.” She scans the table. “Are you telling me that nobody here—nobody—has seen the movie Old School?”
More silence. Karen tilts her head like a golden retriever hearing a new sound.
“What is Old School?” she asks innocently.
Emily puts both hands on the table. “What is? Karen. It’s only one of the greatest comedies of all time. Will Ferrell runs through the quad screaming ‘we’re going streaking.’ It’s iconic.”
“I think I have heard of it,” Regina says, in a tone that suggests she absolutely has not.
“We’re fixing this,” Emily says, pointing at each of us in turn. “We are having a movie night. All of us. Non-negotiable.”
Jess nods. “I’m in.”
“I will consider it,” Regina says, which from her is basically a blood oath.
I take a long pull of my milkshake and let the sugar hit settle behind my eyes. The ache in my ribs is a low hum now, bearable, almost forgettable. Almost.
Jess swirls her fork through her salad, then looks at Regina. “Hey, so—random question. Are you going to return all the burner phones?”
Regina shakes her head without hesitation. “I bought them all in cash. I know someone who works at Verizon. He sold them to me under the table so they could not be traced back to us.” She dabs the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “But the deal was a one-time transaction. No refunds. I do not have any further plans for them.”
Jess goes very still. I can practically see the gears turning behind her green eyes. “So ... could I maybe ... keep mine?”
Regina shrugs. “Sure.”
Jess’s face lights up like Christmas morning and I watch her practically vibrate in her seat, clutching her purse like it contains the Holy Grail.
“Okay, hold on,” I say, frowning. “Why are you so excited about a burner phone? And, Regina...” I turn to her. “Why did you go through that much trouble? Can’t you just buy prepaid phones at a gas station?”
Jess gives me the look she reserves for moments when my ignorance physically pains her. “You haven’t even seen the phones we’re talking about, have you?”
“No?”
She reaches into her purse and pulls it out, setting it on the table in front of me like a jeweler presenting a diamond.
I know what it is instantly. I’m a bit of a gadget geek, and the titanium frame, the three camera array, the size and weight of it—
“That’s an iPhone 16 Pro,” I say, my voice flat.
“Mm-hm,” Jess says smugly.
My jaw drops. I look at Regina. “You bought four iPhone 16 Pros as burner phones?”
Regina takes a calm, measured bite of her salad. Chews. Swallows. “They have the best cameras,” she says simply. “And I wanted the models with the zoom lens.”
She says it so casually. Like it’s nothing. Like she’s talking about picking up a pack of gum. But those phones retail for over a thousand dollars each. That’s four grand in cash dropped without blinking, just to make sure she got the sharpest possible photos of a moment that lasted maybe ten seconds.
I’m opening and closing my mouth like a fish, trying to form words, when Regina reaches into her own purse and pulls out a second phone. Gold. Pristine. She holds it out to me across the table.
“Here,” she says. “You can have the one I used.”
I stare at it. The gold color isn’t something I’d pick for myself, but I could not possibly care less about that right now. I’m currently rocking an iPhone SE that buffers when I open two apps at once. This is like going from a bicycle to a Porsche.
I take it. Turn it over in my hands. The screen is flawless.
“Best girlfriend ever,” I say, and I mean it from somewhere deep and real. I lean across the table and pull Regina toward me, pressing my lips to hers—
And immediately wince, because my lips are still tender and swollen from the beating.
Regina pulls back, her eyes soft for a fraction of a second before her composure clicks back into place.
At the end of the table, Emily is staring at her empty hands with the most heartbreakingly left-out expression I’ve ever seen.
Karen notices. Of course Karen notices; she reads emotional energy like some people read weather forecasts. She nudges Emily with her elbow. “You can have mine. I already have the 16 Pro.”
Emily’s eyes go enormous. Comically, impossibly round. “Oh my god. Oh my god. I could kiss you right now.”
Karen smiles, slow and easy. “I would not mind.”