September 8th, 2009 (Tuesday)
Tyler watched Blair walk toward the new guy, Stefan Salvatore. He saw her move through the crowd the way she always did, like the whole world was her personal runway and every pair of eyes fixed on her was exactly where they belonged.
The black leather outfit she wore left almost nothing to the imagination—fishnet over lace, a skirt so tight it looked painted on, those thigh-high stockings that made her legs go on forever. Tyler's mouth went dry and his cock stirred in his jeans despite Vicki pressed against his side. He had a lot of memories of his times with Blair and no matter how many months passed, they remained as vivid as ever. After being with Blair for almost a year, suddenly going without her was the kind of torture that he imagined a drug addict would experience without their usual fix, no matter how many times he fucked Vicki to get her out of his head.
She approached Stefan the same way she'd approached Tyler at the Lockwood mansion little more than one year ago—at his parents' annual Fourth of July party, the summer before sophomore year. He'd been standing in the garden, pretending to listen to Aimee Bradley going on about something, when she'd materialized beside him in a short, green dress that showed off her long, toned legs. She'd handed him a glass of champagne, smiled that devastating smile of hers and said, "You look bored. Want to be less bored?" Tyler hadn't even thought twice about leaving Aimee where she was and following Blair inside. Not even half an hour later, she was riding him on the leather couch in his dad's office while fireworks exploded outside.
And now Stefan Salvatore was receiving the same treatment. Vicki, hanging off his arm, could have spontaneously combusted and Tyler wouldn't have noticed, because Blair leaned into Stefan Salvatore, bit her lower lip, tilted her head and looked up at him through her lashes with those green eyes that could make a man forget his own name and Tyler's entire body tightened with a jealousy so sharp it felt like swallowing broken glass. And then he watched her walk away with him, toward the keg first, then past it. Deeper into the tree line, away from the party. Away from where anyone could see them.
Tyler knew exactly what Blair was going to do: she was going to fuck Stefan Salvatore in the woods. Because Blair Gilbert didn't walk into the woods with a man for a nature hike. He'd been that man once too, after all.
Tyler wanted to follow them. He wanted to walk into those woods and drag Salvatore away from her by the throat and beat the shit out of him until his pretty face wasn't so pretty anymore.
Instead he dragged Vicki away from the party and pulled her toward the same woods that had just swallowed Blair, but on the opposite direction she'd gone. Vicki stumbled behind him, her cheap heels catching on roots, her protests a string of half-formed words he wasn't listening to.
He found a spot—a thick oak with a wide trunk—and turned to face her.
Vicki looked up at him, her eyeliner smudged at the corners, her pupils wide in the dark. She was pretty enough, he supposed. But she just couldn't compare, especially with the memory of Blair still so fresh.
He pulled her against him and pressed his mouth to her neck. Vicki tilted her head to give him access, her fingers curling into his shirt. Tyler walked her backward until her shoulder blades hit the oak.
"Ty—"
He kissed her to shut her up, his hand sliding down her side to the hem of the ridiculously short skirt she was wearing—the skirt he'd picked out for her. It was more a belt than a skirt, a tiny scrap of denim that barely covered her ass. She'd protested, had wanted to wear jeans because it was cold. But Tyler had told her that Blair would never wear jeans to a party, that Blair would always show off her legs, and that had been the end of the conversation. Because that was all it took. The magic word. Blair. All he had to do—all he ever had to do—was name-drop Blair, tell Vicki that Blair would have done it, that Blair never complained, that Blair was always up for it and Vicki would agree. Every single time, without fail. Because Vicki Donovan's entire relationship with Tyler was built on the desperate, humiliating foundation of wanting to prove she could be everything Blair Gilbert had been to him. That she could fill the Blair-shaped hole in his life, measure up to the ghost that lived in his bed and in his head and in every comparison Tyler made, spoken or unspoken. That if she just tried hard enough, agreed to enough, gave enough, Tyler would eventually stop comparing. Would eventually see her. Would eventually choose her for real, not as a consolation prize, not as a warm body that happened to be available the night his heart got ripped out of his chest.
She couldn't. She never would. But she kept trying, and Tyler kept letting her, and the whole thing was so pathetic it made his stomach turn.
If I have to be seen with her, Tyler had thought as she'd changed, watching the jeans drop to the floor and the skirt slide up bony hips, at least people will know I'm not with her for her personality. Because that was all Vicki had going for her, really—her legs and what was between them.
He pressed her against the tree and Vicki's eyes widened. "No, Ty. I'm not having sex against a tree."
"Oh, come on, it would be hot."
"For who?"
For me, Tyler thought. "For both of us," he said instead. His hands settled on her hips. The hips were too narrow. Not enough to grab. Not like Blair's, which curved under his palms like they'd been sculpted specifically for his hands.
Vicki crossed her arms. The gesture pushed together what little she had in the chest department. Nothing compared to Blair, whose tits were full and heavy and perfect, spilling out of whatever bra she wore, straining against whatever top she chose, impossible to ignore even when she was wearing a goddamn hoodie. "It's uncomfortable," she whined. "The bark scratches. And there are bugs."
"Blair never had a problem with it," Tyler said. "But I mean, if you're not into it—"
The words landed exactly the way he intended them to. He watched Vicki's expression shift—the defiance crumbling, the insecurity flooding in to replace it. Her arms uncrossed. Her shoulders dropped. Something wounded and desperate flickered behind her eyes before she could hide it.
"I didn't say I wasn't into it."
"—I get it. It's not for everyone."
"Fine, Tyler," Vicki said, quiet and resigned. "Whatever." Not exactly an enthusiastic consent, but Tyler didn't care.
She was pathetic. Genuinely, deeply pathetic. Embarrassing, even. Blair would never have folded like that. Blair would have laughed in his face if he'd tried to manipulate her with another girl's name. She would have told him to go fuck himself—or, more likely, to go fuck the other girl, since he clearly preferred her—and then she would have walked away without looking back, and Tyler would have been the one chasing after her, apologizing, begging, and she'd have made him spend three days, at least, trying to earn his way back into her good graces. Because that was how it worked with Blair: she held the power, always. Tyler'd never won an argument with Blair Gilbert in his life, never got her to do a single thing she didn't want to do. She fucked him when she wanted to fuck him, where she wanted to fuck him, how she wanted to fuck him, and Tyler had been grateful for every second of it, every scrap of her attention.
But Vicki wasn't Blair. That was the entire fucking problem.
He turned her around to face the tree, simply because he didn't want to look at her face. She placed her palms flat against the bark, her fingers splayed. Tyler reached up under the miniskirt and hooked his fingers into her plain cotton underwear. He pulled them down her thighs and she stepped out of them without protest.
Tyler unbuttoned his jeans and lowered his zipper. He freed himself, already hard, his cock straining against his palm, but his erection wasn't for Vicki—it was never for Vicki. There was only one girl in his mind, constantly in his mind. And no matter how much he tried, Tyler couldn't get her out.
He pushed inside Vicki without checking to see if she was ready and she made a soft sound—surprise or discomfort or both. He didn't care. To be perfectly honest, it was better for him that way, when she wasn't ready. Vicki didn't feel the same as Blair, she wasn't as tight as Blair. But at least when Vicki was almost dry her muscles resisted the intrusion, tightening more firmly around him, made it easier to pretend he was with the girl he really wanted.
He gripped Vicki's hips—too narrow and wrong wrong wrong—and began to move.
Vicki was on the pill. Tyler didn't use condoms with her because he'd told her, early on, that he never used condoms with Blair. Which was a lie, mostly. Blair was meticulous about everything in her life, and birth control was no exception. She only allowed Tyler to go without a condom when the chance of getting pregnant was at its lowest, during the safe window of her cycle. The exception was ovulation, when her need for sex became greater than her caution—but even then, she insisted he pull out. He wasn't allowed to come inside her. On her instead. Her stomach, her tits, her ass, wherever, but not inside her.
Tyler closed his eyes, a memory already playing in his mind, of the last time he had been with Blair in the woods. The night of her parents' accident—though neither of them had known it at the time. Spring was bleeding into summer and the air had been warm, almost humid, the kind of night where your skin stuck to everything. Blair had been in one of her moods—restless and electric, a live wire looking for a place to ground itself. Tyler recognized the signs because he'd learned to read her like a book. That night she'd been ovulating. Tyler knew because he'd memorized her rhythms and her cycles with an attention that bordered on obsession, the kind he only usually reserved for football plays, marking the days on his phone calendar, because ovulation was his favorite time. Blair was always horny—it was one of the defining features of her personality, as fundamental as her green eyes or her razor tongue—but during ovulation, her already voracious appetite became almost feral. They would fuck in the most random places. The backseat of his truck in the school parking lot during lunch. The bathroom at the Grill during a busy Friday night. The coat closet at a Founders' event while his father—as the mayor—gave a speech in the next room. Blair had a bit of an exhibition kink, too. The risk of getting caught didn't scare her, it excited her. Made everything hotter. Tyler had lived for those moments, for the reckless, uncontrollable version of Blair that emerged when her body's chemistry overrode her famous self-control.
That night in May, she'd grabbed his hand mid-sentence—he'd been talking to Matt about something, he couldn't even remember what—and pulled him into the woods without a word of explanation. No preamble, no flirtation—just her hand on his belt before they'd gone twenty feet past the tree line, her fingers quick and sure on his zipper, her mouth on his neck. And Tyler had simply followed. When Blair wanted him, he went. Period. He would have had sex with Blair whenever and wherever she wanted, even in front of his own parents if she'd asked.
Blair'd had her back against this same species of oak, same rough bark, her dark hair catching on it when she tipped her head back. "Here," she'd said—an order, not a request. Tyler had lifted her skirt—a tiny red thing that barely qualified—and found a g-string whose color matched the skirt.
Blair had wrapped both legs around his waist, her ankles locked behind his back, her arms around his neck, his hand spread flat against the bark for leverage, the sounds of the party a world away. She was already dripping when he moved aside her thong and pushed inside her—hot and tight and clenching around him immediately, her body drawing him deeper with every thrust.
He'd fucked her against that tree with everything he had, and she'd matched him thrust for thrust, her nails raking lines down his back, moaning and gasping and cursing. And when she came, with a sound that lived somewhere between a moan and a scream, her back slammed against the tree hard enough to scrape bark off the trunk, her inner walls clenching around him in rhythmic waves that pushed Tyler over the edge seconds later. He pulled out at the last possible moment—her standing rule—and came on the smooth skin of her inner thigh while she watched with heavy-lidded eyes and a satisfied smile.
"Good boy," she'd murmured, like he was a dog who'd performed a trick.
Tyler groaned at the memory, his hips snapping forward into Vicki with increasing force.
He thrust harder, faster. With Blair's face behind his eyelids. Blair's voice in his ears. Blair's body, Blair's heat, Blair's—
The orgasm hit him like a freight train. His hips slammed forward one final time, burying himself as deep as he could go, and he came with a shudder that started at the base of his spine and ripped through his entire body.
"Blair!"
The name tore out of him before he could stop it, a full-throated shout that echoed through the trees and left no room for ambiguity. He screamed it without restraint or thought. Every other time, he'd held it in, had bitten his tongue. Buried his face in Vicki's neck and swallowed Blair's name like poison, keeping the fantasy contained behind clenched teeth. Every other time, he'd managed to maintain the lie.
Not tonight.
Tonight, some part of him—the part that had watched Blair disappear into the woods with another man, the part that was sick of pretending, sick of settling, sick of Vicki's eager compliance when he wanted Blair's beautiful defiance—had let go on purpose. Had wanted to see what would happen. Had wanted to watch Vicki's face when she heard it, wanted to find out if this would finally be enough. If this would finally break her. If she'd finally have enough self-respect to walk away.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Then Vicki turned around and shoved him back hard. Tyler stumbled, still catching his breath, his jeans half-undone.
"Are you kidding me? You asshole!"
Her voice cracked on the last word. In the dim light filtering through the canopy, Tyler could see the shine of tears she was fighting to suppress, the tremor in her jaw, the flush of humiliation burning across her cheeks.
Tyler pulled up his jeans and buttoned them before running a hand through his hair. The post-orgasm haze was already dissipating, replaced by a familiar cocktail of guilt and disdain—guilt for what he'd done, disdain for how easily Vicki would forgive it.
"Vick. Come on."
"Don't 'Vick' me. You just screamed her name. While you were inside me."
"I know. I'm sorry. It just—slipped out."
"Slipped out?" Her voice pitched higher. She tugged her skirt down—a futile gesture, given how little fabric there was to work with—and crossed her arms over her chest. "How does something like that slip out, Tyler?"
Tyler sighed. Time for some damage control. "Look, Vick. You knew from the beginning that I wasn't over Blair yet. I told you that. I was upfront about it."
"You said you were working on it."
"And I am. But it doesn't happen overnight. We were together for almost a year. That's not something you just turn off." He stepped closer, close enough to touch but not touching yet. "But I'm here with you. Doesn't that count for something?"
Vicki's arms stayed crossed, but the rigidity in her posture had already begun to soften. Tyler could see it—the capitulation happening in real time. "If you keep trying," Tyler said, pressing the advantage, "I'll get there. I promise. Just... give me time."
The tears didn't fall. Vicki blinked them back with visible effort, her throat working around a swallow. She looked at the ground, then back at him.
"You promise?"
"Yeah." Tyler touched her cheek with his thumb. "I promise."
Vicki nodded. The fight drained out of her leaving behind that desperate compliance that Tyler had come to expect and exploit.
The contempt breathed and lived inside his chest. The more Vicki prostrated herself, the more she debased her own dignity to keep him, the more Tyler felt the urge to push harder. To see how far the compliance went. To find the floor beneath this bottomless well of self-abasement. Because there had to be a bottom, right? There had to be a point where even Vicki Donovan, town slut, doormat extraordinaire, would say enough.
Tyler was starting to think that point didn't exist.
To placate her, to keep her around so he could keep using her as a warm body to forget the girl he actually loved, he decided to mollify her. Vicki hadn't come yet, not that he'd given it a single thought while he was fucking her. He hadn't been thinking about her at all.
"Come here," he said, softening his voice further. He took Vicki's hand and guided her to lean back against the tree. "Let me make it up to you."
He sank to his knees in front of her, his hands sliding up her thighs, pushing the remnants of her skirt higher. She was smooth and bare down there because Tyler had told her that Blair was like that, and that he would never go down on Vicki if she didn't wax so Vicki had shown up hairless two days later, red and irritated from the waxing, without Tyler having to ask twice. Another lie twisted from a truth. Blair was like that but she certainly didn't do it for him. She did it because she liked it that way.
He immediately applied himself to the task at hand. Blair was the one who taught him how to do this properly. Before Blair, Tyler had slept with other girls (two, specifically) and he'd been so sure he knew what he was doing. Blair had disabused him of that notion quickly.
"You're not even close to my clit, Tyler."
"I thought—"
"You thought wrong. Here. Feel that? That little nub right—yes, there. Now use your tongue."
He'd taken every lesson to heart. Every correction, every redirection, every impatient tug of his hair when he drifted off course. He'd become a dedicated student of Blair Gilbert's pleasure, not because he was generous or considerate by nature, but because the alternative was not having her, was Blair getting bored and walking away. Blair finding someone who could do what Tyler couldn't. That was a scenario Tyler's brain refused to process, an eventuality so catastrophic it warranted any amount of effort, any sacrifice of ego, to prevent.
Now he deployed those lessons on Vicki, his tongue moving against her clit, finding the rhythm he knew would work. Not because Vicki had told him what she liked—she never had, she wouldn't know how—but because Blair's instructions were universal enough in their specificity to apply broadly. (Vicki might have the reputation of the town slut but Tyler had figured out early on that the guys Vicki had slept with—and they were a fair number—hadn't cared about her pleasure at all. Tyler wasn't sure Vicki had ever had an orgasm before him.)
He slipped two fingers inside Vicki, curling them forward, pressing against the front wall the way Blair had shown him.
Vicki's hand landed on the back of his head and her hips rocked forward. It took longer than he thought it would for her to come. She clearly hadn't been aroused at all.
Finally, after long minutes, Vicki came with a thin, reedy cry. Her thighs trembled. Tyler stayed where he was until the tremors subsided, then stood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and straightened his shirt.
Vicki looked at him with wide, dazed eyes—grateful and confused, like a dog that had been kicked and then offered a treat. The expression made disgust curdle in Tyler's stomach. "Better?" he asked.
Vicki nodded, still breathing hard. Tyler bent to retrieve her underwear, still on the forest floor, but instead of giving it back to her, he put it inside the back pocket of his jeans, half peeking out so they were clearly visible for anyone who bothered to look. A trophy. Proof. So people had no doubt what they'd been doing in the woods. So people had no doubt why exactly he was with her. What exactly he got out of this relationship.
The story he'd told everyone demanded supporting evidence after all.
"Tyler, my underwear—"
"What about it?"
"I need them back. This skirt is too short to go without underwear. If I bend over or sit down—"
"Then don't sit down or bend over. Unless you want to give the entire party a show." He paused, tilting his head, and added, with a cruelty so casual it might have been mistaken for playfulness, "Though, maybe you'd like that. Maybe you'd be into that."
Vicki released a huff of breath, offended and hurt, but she didn't protest further.
The official story went like this: Tyler Lockwood had cheated on Blair Gilbert with Vicki Donovan—which was absurd if anyone thought about it for too long, like trading a Maserati for a bicycle, but nobody thought about it for too long because Tyler made sure the surface narrative was compelling enough.
The real story was very different. That same night in the woods, right after they had sex against that oak tree, Tyler had finally found the courage to tell Blair that he loved her. And the silence that had followed had been the worst silence of his life.
Blair had looked at him, her eyes flat. "Don't say that."
"I mean it. I love you, B."
She sat up and pulled away, clearly as a way to put distance between them. "Please, stop."
"Why? It's true. I've been wanting to say it for—"
"I don't love you."
"You... what?"
"I don't love you. I… I've had fun, but I—this needs to be over. We need to break up."
He'd argued, pleaded, nearly cried. Blair had remained immovable, her face a blank mask, the same face she wore when someone called her a bitch or a slut or tried to hurt her with words that bounced off her like nothing could touch her. She left the party alone. Tyler had stayed, stunned, gutted, nursing the ragged wound in his chest with cheap beer and cheaper whiskey until the world blurred at the edges.
That same night, Vicki Donovan had found him slumped against a cooler, devastated and wasted, and had offered to "make him feel better." She'd gotten down on her knees right there and sucked his cock while tears were still drying on his cheeks. He'd been too drunk or too broken or too pathetically desperate for any kind of physical comfort to say no.
That was what really happened.
The story Tyler told everyone had certain similarities, lies based on truth. He'd crafted it carefully and spread it strategically. A stupid, drunken mistake. He'd been drunk, Vicki had gotten on her knees and sucked his cock at a party while he was wasted. Even knowing he was with Blair. Because Vicki was a slut and Tyler was just a guy, and what was he supposed to do? Say no? Blair, proud as she was, hadn't forgiven him and had broken up with him. That was the official narrative. That was what people believed. The version where he was a careless jerk rather than a pathetic, lovesick loser who got dumped because the girl he loved couldn't—or wouldn't—love him back.
That was the lie. And the lie required maintenance.
They emerged from the woods together, Tyler's arm draped around Vicki's shoulders, her underwear flagging from his back pocket. Her hair wrecked. Her skirt crooked. Her lips swollen and her skin flushed, every inch of her screaming I just got fucked in the woods.
A few heads turned. A couple of people whistled. One of his teammates caught sight of the underwear and raised his beer with a knowing grin.
Tyler grinned back.
Tyler would often brag about Vicki with his teammates when Matt wasn't present. He told them all the things Vicki let him do to her, how kinky she was, how she did anything he wanted without question or complaint. I mean, she's not Blair Gilbert... obviously. But she lets me do anything I want with her, and I mean... anything. The guys would laugh—some impressed, some disgusted, some both. Tyler didn't care which. The point was the performance. The point was for people to see him and Vicki and understand why he was with her. Because she put out, because she was an easy lay who was at least good for that, because he might be stuck with her now, but at least the sex made it somewhat worthy it.
If that was cruel of him, he didn't care.