by Linda Kage
Just as I reached the exit, unlocked it as quietly as possible, and began to creep it open, I looked back just as Beckett’s eyes came open languidly, and he focused on me over Melody’s shoulder.
His hand lifted limply about a foot above the mattress before he pointed at me, very clearly seeing me.
My heart pounded in triple time as I froze in my tracks. Then I did the craziest thing in the world. I set my pointer finger against my lips, begging him to stay quiet.
Shocking the shit out of me, he repeated the action, pressing his finger to his own lips. The glazed expression on his face told me just how much he was out of it. I rolled my eyes—stupid boy—and hurried from the room, silently shutting the door and hurrying away.
I rushed all the way down the hallway and back into the main part of the frat house. The blast of music and people shocked my senses. I gaped at the blur of activity, feeling too off balance to return to this after seeing what I’d just seen. Then I shook my head, and stumbled through bodies until I found an exit to the outside.
The cool breeze against my chest reminded me my shirt was still wet from the beer Beckett had spilled on me. It felt so surreal that it hadn’t even dried yet, while an entire universe of things had seemed to happen since the moment I’d been soaked. Time was so weird. Just like this moment. It was peculiar and bizarre and weird. Even my hands looked weird when I looked down at them to find them shaking.
I didn’t know how to deal with this. So I ran to my car, three blocks away through the freezing cold night, and I didn’t stop until I was home and in my bed with the covers tucked way up to my chin as I huddled into myself and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling of my room.
But my heart didn’t stop pounding. It kept thumping fast through most of the night as I lay wide-awake, wondering what the heck had just happened to me.
More importantly, what had I just become?
Chapter 3
BECKETT
Regret tasted like regurgitated alcohol. In fact, I think everything I’d drunk tonight was about to revisit the outside world for real. I’m not sure which cheapskate had ordered the keg for the party, but this shit was rank. And okay, maybe I’d had too much of it as well.
My stomach roiled and nausea rose. I tried to sit up, roll off the bed and stumble toward the bathroom, but a weight on top of me kept me pinned to the mattress.
“Mmph. What?” I cracked open bleary eyes to find a face full of dark hair.
Melody.
Jesus, I’d forgotten about her, which was fairly awful since I think I was still inside her.
Oh damn, here came more regret. I’d just slept with Melody. Melody Fairfield. I’d never even liked Melody, which made the need to get my cock out of her even more urgent.
Fumbling until I found her shoulders, I gripped her gently trying to get her attention or pry her off me or something. “I need to…”
“Hmm?” She lifted her face to smile blissfully at me. “What’s wrong, baby?”
Oh, God, she was calling me baby. I was two point five seconds from upchucking all over her. “Bathroom,” was all I could mumble.
“Oh.” I must’ve looked green enough to get my point across because her eyes flew open wide. She sat up and shimmied off me so I could roll over onto my stomach and crawl to the edge of the bed. I hit the floor on both feet but by the time I made it to the bathroom, I was on my hands and knees crawling. I slumped to the toilet and pushed up the lid with just enough time to hang my head miserably and puke.
My stomach seized and lungs burned by the time I was finished. At some point, Melody must’ve come to the doorway to check on me because I heard an, “Eww, gross,” before her shadow disappeared again.
Limp and drained with the room spinning around me, I rested my cheek on the porcelain rim until I felt enough energy to claw my way up the side of the sink and turn the water on. After splashing two handfuls onto my face, I cupped more in my palms and drank what I could capture. After that, I groaned pathetically and propped my forehead against the mirrored cabinet above the sink before opening the door and checking for painkillers inside.
I found two Tylenol capsules and swallowed them dry. Then I turned to escape the bathroom because it smelled like bile in here, but my pants sagged around my knees tripping me up. I grasped the doorway just in time to keep from tumbling face first to the floor.
Glancing down, I found I was still wearing a condom. Classy.
Well, at least I’d been safe. Thank God. Though that was the only relief I felt, because I still couldn’t believe I’d just been with Melody. Melody of all people. Fake and conniving, she usually inspired me to become scarce whenever she’d hung out with Jana. I’d have to be pretty damn drunk to ever have sex with her.
Then again, I think I was pretty damn drunk.
The bedroom slanted sideways when I peered into it. A foggy version of Melody rose from the bed and came toward me.
“Beckett, baby. You feeling better yet?”
Again with the baby. I winced, hoping she didn’t touch me, because that might induce more nausea. “I still have my condom on,” I stated the obvious. I have no idea why I said that. It sounded dumb as soon at the words slurred their way from my lips. But I don’t think I could even begin to recover from the trauma of fucking her until I got the foul thing off me, so it’s presence still on me really, really bothered me.
“Want me to take care of it?” She began to reach forward.
Oh, hell, no.
I managed to lift my hand, politely warding her off. But the mere idea of her skin making any more contact with my skin made my stomach revolt. “Nah. I got it. Thanks.”
She nodded and stepped back. When she spotted her panties on the floor, she bent down to pick them up, affording me with a view of her bare ass as she did so.
She had a nice ass. She had a nice everything really—appearance wise. But my stomach heaved again, realizing what I’d just done. Who I’d just done.
This was bad. This was so fucking bad. How was I going to get past this? What if she wanted to, like, date me now? I couldn’t even contemplate the idea of dating Melody Fairfield, and yet I couldn’t have sex with a girl and then avoid her for the rest of my life, which is more what I really wanted to do. Except avoiding someone I’d had sex with wasn’t in my DNA. I couldn’t just hit it and quit it. To me, that was jerkish. And I wasn’t a jerk…typically. But I think I was going to become one after this, which made the good boy in me whine at the whole ugliness of my situation.
I was so fucking fucked right now. Why had I let her do what she’d done?
Melody stepped into her panties and began to draw them up her legs, so I reached down to ease off my condom. Just as I got it fully removed, a knock sounded on the door and it began to open.
“Mel?” a voice asked, just as some dude I’d never met before poked his head inside. “You in here?”
I froze, condom in hand. And Melody lifted her face, her panties halfway up her legs.
The guy blinked. “Melody?”
A beat passed as he stepped fully into the room, took me in from head to toe, pausing at my exposed dick, then shut the door at his back with a thunk. “What the fuck?
She burst into tears and raced to him, flinging herself into his arms. “Radley,” she sobbed, burying her face in his chest as her arms wound around his neck. “Oh, thank God. Thank God! I need you. It was horrible. So horrible.”
Radley seemed to be about as taken aback by her behavior as I was. He stiffened before reluctantly pulling her closer and kissing her hair. “It’s okay, baby? What happened? What’d he do to you?”
I shook my head, baffled. What the hell were those two even talking about? And who was this guy? Most importantly, why had Melody just called sex with me horrible when she’d just toted me the best she’d ever had literally minutes ago?
I was too confused and still too drunk to sort through any of it. So I just stared at them, my junk still hanging out, used condom clutched in one h
and, and mouth falling open stupidly.
Over Melody’s shoulder, Radley pinned his gaze on me just as I decided I should probably zip up now. “What did you do to my girlfriend?” he demanded.
Wait. Did he say...
Girlfriend?
I nearly swallowed my tongue. I had no idea Melody had a boyfriend.
“Um.” Shit. Why hadn’t she told me she had a boyfriend?
I shifted a step back, already lifting my hands in peace, though one hand was still full of the condom I’d just used on his girlfriend, which he immediately zeroed his attention onto.
No.
No, no, no, no.
Melody clutched him harder, clinging dramatically as her weeping rose louder. “He…he made me do it,” she wailed. “I didn’t want to, but he…he f-forced me. I t-tried to stop him, I did. But I couldn’t. Oh my God, I couldn’t stop him. He held me down, and he,” She paused to hiccup pathetically. “He wouldn’t stop.”
My mouth fell open wider as I stared at her, unable to believe what she’d just said, too shocked to even react to it.
But seriously. Had she really just done what it sounded like she’d done?
“You,” Radley, the boyfriend snarled. When he set Melody aside and pointed at me, I stumbled back into the bathroom, shaking my head.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. She’s lying. I would never…”
But he was already slowly advancing on me, trapping me in the bathroom. I tripped in reverse until I bumped into the sink. Then I lifted my hands, already cringing. I tossed down the stupid condom, flinging it out of sight. “I didn’t…didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.”
Dude, Radley was massive, and there were three of him wavering around in my drunk vision. I was able to focus on his hand—er, all three of them—right before he cracked his knuckles and curled the fingers into a fist. “Boyfriend or not, you still never force a woman.”
Yes, exactly. I knew that. I knew that better than anyone. But I’d never forced a girl in my life, and I especially hadn’t forced Melody. I hadn’t even wanted Melody.
This was all wrong.
I shook my head, but Radley swung, anyway.
The impact rattled through my teeth and down to my feet, shuddering through my jaw and reverberating into my spine. Blood filled my mouth. My head felt broken. I tried to shake it off, to clear my vision. Nothing helped. Pain throbbed through my brain.
And Radley swung again.
“I didn’t,” I tried to tell him, but my tongue wasn’t working right, my vision wasn’t working right. My thoughts weren’t working right.
Radley hit me a third time, this one in the ribs. I tried to defend myself, lift my arm to block the next blow, shove him backward. But it all felt useless. My limbs weren’t freaking cooperating.
Everything went gray. Then black. The last thing I remembered was the cold tile floor slamming against my cheek and a shoe ramming into my back before there was nothing.
* * *
I came awake one wheezing breath after another. Everything ached. I wanted to curl into a ball and die. After the slightest movement of drawing my knees up toward my chest, I gasped from the waves of agony that rippled through my chest.
I tried to blink my eyes open but one of them wasn’t working. My head felt like a big swollen ball of ouch.
“What…?”
“Man, you fucked up. You fucked up so bad, Hilliard. I can’t, I mean, I knew you were going on a downward spiral, but this is bad. You went off the deep end this time.”
I knew that voice. It was my best friend from our fraternity. Max.
After an extreme effort of will, I turned my head toward him and tilted my face enough to see a somewhat blurry view of him through my better eye. “What happened?” I rasped, barely able to talk.
It felt as if I’d just been hit by a freight train.
“Dude.” He shook his head and took a step away from me. “You fucked up. You fucked up big time. I mean, Melody Fairfield? Do you know what her brother’s going to do when he finds out about this?”
I groaned and reclosed my eye, beginning to remember fragments. Melody on top of me, riding me, coming with me inside her. Then the puking and the boyfriend and him beating me unconscious. Oh yeah, and her accusing me of rape. Couldn’t forget that part.
Christ on a crutch. This was fucked up.
“University police is here,” Thomas—the president of my fraternity—announced, appearing in the doorway of the room. He sent me a contemptuous glance that confused me since Thomas and I had always gotten along. Then he returned his attention to Max and added, “Lucky for him since Melody’s brother just showed up too.”
I closed my eyes and groaned.
This was all too much. A girl crying rape against me, her brother and university police showing up, my body feeling like a used battering ram, and the alcohol I still hadn’t completely flushed from my system still wanting to vacate me. Curling onto my side, despite how much it hurt, I hugged my sore ribs and vomited some more.
Chapter 4
BAILEY
I woke up well before my alarm went off, my mind still reeling and the words “Oh my God, what did I watch?” still spinning through my head.
I felt vile and strange for so avidly having observed something so base and primal. I’d never even seen porn before.
Well, I had now, I guess. A real live version, though I hadn’t exactly seen genitals or anything revealing. But I’d known exactly what they’d been doing, and my eyes had been plastered to the crack in that door, because I’d wanted to see what would happen next.
I was such a bad, depraved girl.
Needing to shower and wash the bad off, I hurried into my private bath, but as I stripped, I found myself covering body parts as if someone were watching me.
Then I stepped into the tub and started the water, turning it to scorching.
I tried to reason the guilt away. I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d had a choice in the matter after I’d gotten stuck in the bathroom while they’d been just outside in the bedroom, doing what they’d been doing. Okay, sure, if I hadn’t been a big weenie and hidden from the drunk guy in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have found myself in this mess at all, and I certainly hadn’t needed to watch everything. I could’ve stayed in a back corner and patiently waited until they were done. Or hey, I could’ve announced my presence at any time. That would’ve stopped them. Why the heck hadn’t I just done that? Why had I stayed quiet and watched?
Because I was a filthy little creeper, that’s why.
I stayed under the spray of the water for longer than I needed to, cleaning everything twice. But I still felt vile afterward. I’d made plenty of wrong decisions in my life, but this one kind of felt worse than the others. If I’d been Tess or Paige, I never would’ve been caught in that predicament. Why the hell couldn’t I just be more like Tess or Paige?
Why did I have to be stuck as loser Bailey of all people? Gah, life was no fair. Why did I always have to be so me? It sucked. This entire situation just sucked!
Suddenly mad at the world for making me the way I was so I wouldn’t have to be mad at myself for simply being the way I was, I frowned and turned the water off, then jerked open the curtain. But that only reminded me of another curtain I’d opened less than ten hours ago, and that memory cracked open another: the expression on Beckett’s face when he’d come inside Melody. Which made me throb in the most inappropriate places.
Shuddering, I scrubbed dry and jerked my underwear on before opening the door and finding an outfit to wear in my huge closet. By the time I made my way to the kitchen, it was still early, even too early for anyone else in the apartment to be awake. It was a Sunday morning, so they were probably all going to sleep in anyway, unless they had to work today, the same as I did.
Regardless, I kept the light off as not to wake anyone, though all their room doors had been closed when I’d stepped into the hall. I found the refrigerator by feel and rubbed my eyes again
st the blare of the interior light as I opened the door. Shivering when chilly air wafted out to greet me, I stared inside stupidly, trying to wake my brain enough to decide what I wanted for breakfast. All the while, it felt so surreal that I was going to eat breakfast like everything was normal when nothing felt normal at all.
Every resident of the apartment marked their food with a black sharpie, except for Tess. Being her usual perky self, Tess used a bright green marker to scrawl her name across her things in her bubbly penmanship, and then she dashed a smiley face underneath. Miss Optimism herself.
Why couldn’t I be more like her?
I scanned the items in Jonah’s corner. He always stocked the best munchies. But when I saw a chocolate caramel swirled snack pack, which I would’ve nabbed on any other morning, I didn’t reach for it. Already feeling bad enough today as it was, I just couldn’t add thievery to my list of crimes, though I’d stolen from him plenty in the past and never felt bad about it before.
Yeah, I must really be off my game today.
I settled for bread and made myself some toast with butter. Then I poured a glass of milk and sat at the table to stare blindly at the kitchen cabinets and counters while I ate, tasting nothing.
I still kept seeing flashes form the night before, Melody’s long dark glossy hair swaying as she bounced on Beckett’s lap, Beckett’s groan and that look on his face when he came, the way she’d told him how she knew she’d get him sooner or later and how worth it it’d been after they were done. Every sight, sound, and smell seemed permanently imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. Okay, maybe not the sounds and smells. Not sure how to imprint those on eyelids, but every sense from the night before was firmly stuck in my memory banks forever, that was for damn sure.
“Morning.”
The kitchen light flicked on, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as Logan, Paige’s boyfriend, shuffled into the room rubbing his eyes.
Pressing my hand to my still-racing heart, I gasped, “Hey,” and watched him alertly as he proceeded to fix two cups of coffee.