Victor: Her Ruthless Crush Read online

  “It did hurt,” I admitted, still signing. “But it feels better now.”

  Totally true. A combination of him taking a beat to check in with me and the memories of the first time we kissed had me feeling a lot more comfortable. My core tightened around his staff, like a hug.

  A hug that wanted more.

  He pulled me in close. And somehow, no words were needed after that. We instinctively started moving together. Finding a natural rhythm.

  Before that moment, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to do anything but lie on my back like I’d seen in most movie depictions of first sex. But being on top was so much more comfortable. I loved the scrape of his skin against mine as we moved together. The way his invasion seemed to lay claim to my most secret place, filling me up.

  A weird sensation began to rise inside of me. A bloom of beautiful color filling in a black and white sketch. I’d wanted to do this silently. It had seemed right somehow to match him in his muteness. But the unexpected burst of pleasure pulled his name from my mouth.

  “Victor! Victor!” I cried out, my voice full of helpless wonder as I orgasmed for the first time ever with another person.

  His pace had stayed slow and steady during the duration of our sex. I didn’t realize he’d been holding himself back until he began pumping so much faster inside me when I started to come. He gripped me tightly, his mouth in my neck as he frantically thrusted.

  Then, without warning, I felt a strange vibration in my neck, accompanied by a loud bellow. “Awnnnn! Awnnn! Ahovoo! Ahovoo”

  It sounded like an animal, but it was Victor, I realized.

  Victor using the voice I’d never heard before to call out my name. Victor speaking my language to tell me he loved me as he released into the condom.

  “I love you, too!” I murmured into his ear, over and over again, until he was done.

  So no izakaya for us.

  Victor lifted me off of him as easy as if I was one of the lighter weights in his gym. And I sank bonelessly down to his pillow as he rolled to the side of the mattress to dispose of the condom.

  He slid the covers over us a few moments later.

  “Are you O-K?” he signed.

  “I’m great!” I signed back, putting all the emphasis I could on my “great.” Then because I needed him to know he was the most amazing boyfriend ever, I added, “Sex with you was great!”

  I’d hated how direct I had to be before. But the way he grinned back at me made me happy that sign language forces you to name some things exactly that you’d keep vague if you were just speaking.

  A moment passed between us, the warm aftermath of what we did buzzing in the background.

  Then he furrowed his brow and signed, “Did you truly think I didn’t want to have sex with you? Are you crazy?”

  I laughed at his teasing question. “I have self-esteem issues. You know that.”

  “Why?” he asked, looking utterly baffled. “You’re pretty and smart and talented. You agreeing to be my girlfriend was my luckiest day.”

  His sincere confusion gave me all the gooey feelings. Could he be more romantic?

  I found myself matching his truth. “You’re beautiful and smart and talented too. You asking me to be your girlfriend was my luckiest day.”

  He grinned, and he pulled me into his arms. “We agree.”

  I nodded against his chest with a giggle. “Yup.”

  No more talking after that. We silently agreed to bask in the glory of what we’d just done.

  And all I wanted in the world was to stay that way forever.

  15

  We basked in the afterglow of our lovemaking a little too long. Actually, a lot too long. When I woke up, it was dark outside. Not good, considering that sunset these days wasn't until after six.

  Cursing, I rolled out of bed and scrabbled around for my clothes. It was too dark to see, even with Tokyo lit up beyond the picture windows in Victor’s bedroom. And I couldn’t figure out where the closest lamp was.

  A small click sounded underneath all my shuffling, followed by enough light for me to spy my uniform lying on the floor at the bottom of Victor's low bed.

  Also, Victor himself. He sat up, the soft white sheet slipping down to his waist. My face heated with memories of how I’d stared at what was hidden by the covers earlier.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. He looked worried.

  “I'm late!” I couldn’t sign because my hands were too busy putting back on my school uniform. “I'm late getting home from ‘art club.’ Late for dinner with my family. Late for everything. My parents are going to kill me!”

  A sympathetic look replaced the worried one. “I have my meeting tonight. But I'll have Donny drive you home.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that earlier,” I answered, picking up my backpack. “What kind of high schooler has meetings at night, anyway—you know what, I don't have time to hear that answer. Main point, showing up in a Bentley would only make things worse.”

  He frowned. “Donny can drive you to your station then. I don't like the idea of you walking alone at night.”

  “This is Tokyo, not New Jersey,” I answered. “Plus, it’s rush hour. The train is probably faster. Sorry, I don't have time to argue with you about this. I’ve got to go!”

  I think he was signing something else to me, but I was in such a rush, I didn’t see it.

  I ran out of the room, past Donny standing outside the front door, and all the way to the station.

  I suspected from the way the other passengers were openly staring at me that I must have looked a mess. As a black foreigner in a city composed of like, 80% people who looked fully Japanese, I get a lot of looks in general. But usually, they tried to hide it. Not this time. In fact, a few people openly stared at me as I found my way to an empty pole.

  As soon we got into the tunnel part of this trip, and the windows were nice enough to provide a reflection, I could see why. Victor must've taken my hair out of its braid and ponytail holder while he was kissing me. It was now a messy bush of curls around my head. Also, my uniform shirt was buttoned the wrong way, and one of my socks was bunched up around my ankle.

  I looked exactly like what I was—a schoolgirl who’d just been thoroughly first sexed.

  I pulled up my sock and rebuttoned my shirt as covertly as possible before tucking it into my uniform skirt. Then, I grabbed my hair in three parts and plaited it into a braid over my shoulder. By the time I made it to Adachi-ku’s above-ground station, I’d lost the window reflection.

  I could only hope I looked halfway decent as I made my way off the train. But I didn’t run from the station to our apartment.

  First of all, it was a lot farther walk than the distance between Victor's place and the Roppongi station. We couldn’t afford to live nearly as close to a station as Victor did. Second of all, I didn’t want to sweat out my tenuous braid job and look sloppy on top of being late when I arrived home.

  I had my excuse about losing track of time at the arcade with the kids from art club ready to go as soon as I walked through our apartment door—as naturally as possible.

  “Hey! I’m home!” I called out. I took off my backpack, and transferred it to my hands, prepared to set it right down. But no one was in the living room.

  Or in the kitchen.

  Though four empty plates sat on the table along with the remains of pork bulgogi. My heart skittered at the sight. Not just because I’d missed out on my favorite dish for dinner. But also, because my mom never left food that could be used for tomorrow's school lunches on the table.

  There could be a tsunami siren blaring outside, and she'd still put everything in a couple of Bento boxes before she made her way to shelter. And absolutely no one but my father got to leave the kitchen without cleaning off their plate in the sink.

  Where was everyone? A new guilty rose to the surface. Were they out looking for me?

  But no…

  A low murmur of voices in the distance let me know they were sti
ll here. And my stomach pooled with dread as I made my way to the back of our apartment.

  My heart sank as soon as I got into the hallway. My door, which I always left closed, was wide open. And my parents and brother were gathered inside my room.

  Byron sat uncomfortably on my bed. Meanwhile, my mother stood behind my father, who was sitting hunched over my desktop computer with his reading glasses pushed up on his nose.

  I guess I really must have been an artist. My first thought was that with my open door acting as a frame, they looked like one of those hyper-realistic portraits. My second thought was that if I had made this hypothetical piece of art, I would label it “High School Girl Totally Found Out.”

  My third thought wasn't nearly so poetic. This was bad. This was really bad. I was in so much trouble.

  “Hi,” I said, nonetheless, coming all the way into the room. “Sorry, I'm late.”

  “Where were you?” My mother demanded, turning on me and signing at the same time as if she’d pre-loaded the question in her hands before I arrived. “We know it wasn't art club! The teacher said you haven’t been there since January.”

  Some sixth teenager sense told me to check in with my brother before answering right away.

  Byron shook his head covertly, which was enough to let me know better than to double down by bringing out my prepared lie.

  “What are you doing in my room?” I demanded instead.

  I might have been some people’s definition of a woman now that I’d had sex, but the bratty teenage spirit was still strong inside of me.

  “Trying to get the password to your Docomo account,” my father answered without any shame whatsoever. “I wanted to see just how long you've been lying to us.”

  He took off his reading glasses and turned around in my desk chair to fully face me for his next reveal. “By the way, that art school you applied to in Rhode Island emailed you about your application…”

  My heart leapt at the same time that my stomach bottomed out. It was such a weird sensation.

  “What?” My mother screeched and signed. “You applied to art school?”

  She signed “art school” with the same expression and emphasis she would use for “strip club.”

  “Who said you could do that? You're going to be a doctor!”

  “I said!” I answer-signed angrily. “I paid for it myself!”

  Dad sprang to his feet. “Don't you speak to your mother like that after what you did! All the lying!”

  “I didn't want to lie!” I yelled back at them, my hands flying over the signs. “I would've loved to have shared with you that I was applying to art school and that I was dating someone who loves me. But you guys are so strict! I couldn't. You don’t care about my interests or my opinions on anything. I had to lie. That was the only way!”

  “You think that Chinese boy loves you?” my father asked, his lip curling with contempt. “Let me tell you about the Chinese. They don't love anybody but money. They use girls like you up, get you hooked on drugs before trafficking you off to countries where men don't care about how young you are. In fact, the younger, the better!”

  “What?” My dad sounded like a total racist. Also, “Victor's not like that!”

  “Yes, he is!” my dad roared, his eyes bulging with anger. “All those Chinese are like that! You have no idea who you're dealing with!”

  Dad…my dad who was always on my side, looked at me like he’d never been so disappointed. “I can't believe you would put yourself in this much danger.”

  “Dad, please. He's a nice guy. I'm not sure about what his father does, but Victor himself couldn't be any nicer. I love him, and he loves me. If you want, we can have him over for dinner or something. And you'll see—”

  Without warning, Dad lunged forward and snatched the backpack out of my hands. He immediately started throwing stuff out of it. Books, drawing supplies, pencils—everything went flying to the floor. “You think I'm ever going to let you see that little boy again? You are grounded!”

  “Dad, what are you doing?” I demanded as he threw all my school things to the ground. “Stop!”

  But he didn't stop, not until he found my NTT Docomo in the inside pocket where I’d hidden it. He looked at it, looked at me. Then he threw it to the ground and stomped it underneath his shoe like Victor did Byron’s camera back on my birthday hike.

  My heart screamed. “Dad, don’t! Please don’t!”

  “You’re grounded until it's time for you to go to Mount Holyoke,” he informed me through clenched teeth. “For the rest of the school year, you come straight home from Tokyo Progressive. You don't talk to that boy. You don't even look at him.”

  I was eighteen now, not to mention totally deflowered by my own choice. But I burst into tears like a little kid. The best day of my life had disintegrated into the worst.

  Dad threw my backpack down over the broken pieces of the Docomo phone Victor gave me and stormed out of the room.

  Mom followed after him, but not before admonishing me.

  “Bad, bad girl. I cannot believe I raised such an ungrateful daughter,” she said. Like I was a dog who’d pooped all over her beautiful carpet dream.

  Byron just grimaced as he left out the door.

  “Sorry,” he murmured with a guilty look, low enough that mom wouldn’t hear him.

  And then they were all gone. Leaving me there with the broken pieces of my phone.

  I sobbed. I sobbed so hard and so long over that phone.

  My father had somehow destroyed the beautiful piece of art I'd made with Victor over the last few months. And I felt that all the way in my soul.

  But eventually, I stopped crying like a little girl. I sniffed and wiped away my tears.

  There was one thing, one beacon of hope that might make this night a little better.

  I sat down at my computer to look at the email my father had opened. The one from the Rhode Island Design School—or RhIDS as all the cool kids who went there called it.

  I braced myself. Then I took a deep breath to see if I got in.

  16

  VICTOR

  “沒有新訊息”

  When Victor checked his phone for what must have been the hundredth time that night, he found the same Chinese characters flashing back at him: No new messages. It made him want to chuck the damn thing at one of the underground garage’s concrete poles.

  But most of all, it made him worry.

  He'd sent Dawn several texts in the hours since she left his bedroom in a rush, but she hadn't returned any of them. And now it was after 10 PM, her bedtime as mandated by her mother. Maybe she had gone straight to bed after getting home so late. That would make sense. But Victor couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  She always wrote him before she went to bed. Always. Even if it was only to say that she looked forward to seeing him the next morning at her train station.

  Would he see her the next morning? Was she okay? Had she gotten in trouble with her parents as she’d feared?

  Maybe after all of this business was done, he would send Donny over to where she lived. Or maybe he would go himself.

  According to his guard, her father hadn't allowed her to come to the door when Donny had dropped off the phone for her. There was little chance he would allow her to do so this late at night. But perhaps Victor could force the issue.

  Jake Nakamura had been an asshole and a bully to her brother, but technically, he’d been right. Dawn’s father was merely a cog in his yakuza boss’s machine. Victor could certainly force his way into the apartment without any repercussions and make sure Dawn was okay…

  But how would she respond to that?

  He knew she was close with her brother and that she loved her parents. She sometimes complained about them, but she often talked about them with admiration. Especially her mother, who had overcome her hearing loss while raising two children in a country foreign to her.

  Also, Victor had gone out of his way to keep his world from
touching hers. If he employed the full extent of his power, she would know all the things he hadn't told her. That he wasn't a nice boyfriend. Or even a decent one. He was a criminal born and bred. The son of a monster being groomed to become an even bigger monster.

  “Are we keeping you from something, son?”

  Victor looked up to find his father, regarding him with a cold, disapproving stare. Han stood on his right side, a de facto assistant, while he earned his snake tattoo under Raymond. And several local Red Diamond members stood behind them in the dark shadows.

  Victor understood his father’s irritation. He should be standing where Han was right now. He would be if he hadn’t asked Raymond to accept his chosen son as a replacement for his real one. There was also the fact that they were all gathered in the dark and dank garage underneath his apartment building, expressly because Victor had requested this chance to prove himself.

  To his father, it must have looked like Victor wasn’t taking this opportunity seriously. Also, his son was embarrassing him in front of their Tokyo-based crew.

  After giving his father a head bow of apology, Victor pocketed his phone and focused on waiting for their guest’s arrival.

  His father came to stand directly behind Victor’s shoulder. It was a position that had become familiar to Victor over the years, for this was how they often had conversations in public. Close enough for Victor to hear every word Raymond said, even if he whispered. And in this position, Raymond could see whatever Victor signed back, as well as blocking the sight of his son’s signing from others in the vicinity.

  “If this is about that girl…” his father started, his voice low and dangerous.

  Fortunately, Victor was saved from hearing the rest of that threat by the arrival of a van pulling into the garage and coming to a stop directly in front of them. All of the vehicle’s windows were tinted. But Victor knew it was Phantom behind the wheel, driving the white conversion van with confidence, even though he learned to drive on the opposite side of the street in America.

  Victor hadn't seen him in a while. Back in April, his father had commanded Phantom to join him in Hong Kong. No reason had been given, and Victor hadn't heard from his cousin since then.