“This tough-girl attitude doesn’t fool me, and I can definitely still hurt you. I can hurt your boyfriend, too. Or do you even care about that? You were always selfish. Selfish and stupid. What did you think you were doing in there, talking to me like that?” His voice was icy, and his eyes cruel and dark.
“Get out of my way, Davis.” I lunged, but I couldn’t get leverage with him so close, our chests touching.
He ignored me, adopting a soft tone one might use with a small child, grazing his finger along my cheek. “You’re not in charge of anything that’s happening here, pretty girl. Just like back there.”
I jerked away. “Don’t call me that, and get out of my fucking way or I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Scream? Everyone’s gone. No one would hear you. Anyway, who would they believe, Naya? They all respect me, and they know you’re just a dumb bitch with an agenda to ruin me.”
Everyone at the retreat did know him. And almost all of them had been around when he began his campaign to discredit me. Even Jill had looked at me like something dirty since seeing Davis touch me in the parking lot. The tears welled, and I struggled to keep them at bay. My heart pounding was a stark contrast to the peaceful, still woods around us.
“You won’t do anything,” he sneered. “And you’ll think twice before trying to make me look stupid again. Do you understand?” He was closer now, too close. I fought the urge to cower and nod. That’s what he wanted.
“You didn’t need any help to look stupid.” I straightened. “And this isn’t about me. I know you were beat out for the position at State by a vastly more qualified woman. This is about that, about your pride and your precious ego, but I’m not your damn punching bag anymore. I’m not your anything.”
His eyes flashed. He gripped my arms and shoved me backward again. Bark dug into my skin, and I stared up at him, my eyes wide and my breath short.
“Shut the fuck up,” he hissed. “You’re nothing. You’re inconsequential.” His grip on my shoulders tightened.
No one would hear me . . . and he knows it.
Jake.
No one can save me.
He touched my face again, a slow, rough drag of his index finger down my jaw before gripping my chin. I froze, my eyes darting around the small clearing—everyone else was at least a mile away. Davis tilted his head and squinted, leering at my chest and then back up.
“Get off me!” I pushed him, panic rising in my voice. I clung to the fact he couldn’t do anything too extreme because of where we were, and that we’d have to join everyone later. He’s too smart for that. Isn’t he?
“Davis, let me go!” I tried to wriggle free, but he was stronger, his pelvis against mine, hands moving down to hold my arms.
“You aren’t in charge here.” His voice was low, and his fingers dug into my skin.
I tried to knee him and failed, only grazing his thigh.
“That shit back there, you don’t get to talk to me like that, ever. You think you know about Caroline Rhodes? You two have one thing in common—both stupid bitches getting by because of what’s between your legs.” His eyes were dark, and his expression crazed. He rarely let go; even when he was hurting me, humiliating me, he was controlled and put together. I worried, for the first time, that he wasn’t weighing out the possibility of getting caught.
“Davis,” I pleaded. “Let go of me.”
His face brightened, and he sneered again, the resulting expression a horrific mask. “You scream, and everyone will know you’re the helpless child I told them you were. Misinterpreting a friendly hug from a colleague, tsk-tsk, Naya . . . Not that they’d hear you, anyway.” He dropped his other hand, yanking at his belt.
I closed my eyes.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
I had no choice but to scream and hope someone could hear me. It would happen just like he said, and I’d be ruined all over again.
Helpless.
A victim.
But he didn’t get to win, not this time.
“Let me go!” I screamed and used my whole body to push him back.
He grabbed a handful of my hair, wrenched my head back, and slapped me hard across the face. Flashes of light dotted my vision as the pain registered. With all he’d done, he’d never hit me in the face. It had always been somewhere that could be hidden. At that, one thought blared in my mind. He’s out of control.
“You think you can fight me? That girl in the picture, the girl who needed to be told what to do, that’s the real you.”
I shook my head, finding no voice. I started to retreat into myself as I had all those years ago, to fold into the smallest possible space where I could block out what he was doing.
I remembered Felicia and Aaron saying, We’d love to see the volume go back up.
Wes’s words from my self-defense class filled my head. If you can’t do anything else, use your voice.
Then there were Jake’s words. I love you.
I wasn’t the same person I’d been three years ago. I’d rediscovered my own strength, and I deserved better than this. I don’t have to fold. I can fight and I can save myself.
I screamed as loud as I could in his ear, and he clamped a hand over my mouth. Fighting my instinct to pull his hand away, instead I wriggled an arm free and jammed the heel of my palm up into his nose like Wes had taught me. The crunch was satisfying, and he grabbed for his face as blood gushed down his chin. Before he could retaliate, I kneed him in the groin with all the strength I could muster and shoved him away from me.
My breath came fast, and a primal rage coursed through me. I knew I should run, but I wanted to go on the offensive, to kick him or punch him again. In that split second of indecision, he grabbed me, his hand viselike around my wrist. He was unhinged, his face contorted in a gruesome snarl, blood running from his nose. “I would have been nice, but you had to push. You always had to fucking push.”
My heartbeat thudded in my ears, but Felicia and I had practiced—we’d done the move over and over again in class and out, so clamping down on his hand and twisting until his extended arm was behind his back and under my control was natural. Forcing him to his knees in front of me was almost instinct. My mind whirred at conflicting and crashing thoughts—how much I loved feeling strong, how much I hated being even remotely like him, how he’d hurt me for so long, and what he’d wanted to do to me in that clearing. “You’re damn right, I fucking push.” I sucked in another shallow breath, applying more pressure as he tried to shift away. “I push back now, and you don’t ever get to push me again.”
“We heard screaming—what’s going on here?” Jake’s partner, Carlton, ran up the path flanked by Jill and Davis’s friend, Doug. They stared at me wide-eyed, three mouths agape, and after a moment, I released my hold and Davis scurried from me.
“What the hell happened?” Carlton stepped between us.
Davis held up his bloody hands, palms out. “She’s crazy,” he exclaimed. “She just went nuts and attacked me.”
Still standing in place, the three looked between us, but all I could do was shake my head. I couldn’t get enough breath, and my pulse thrummed, but I stuttered, “He attacked me.”
Davis again gestured to his face. “Doug, you know me, man. I’d never do that. She’s lying.”
Jill continued to look at me, worry and something else etched on her face. Empathy? Judgment? She stepped nearer to me, asking if I was okay, but I could only shake my head. The power that had been surging through me dissipated, and my hands began to tremble, my legs feeling wobbly. The full impact of what he could have done, what he wanted to do, hit me, and tears sprang into my eyes.
She looked from me to Davis, her shoulders squaring. “She’s not lying,” she said to the other two men. “He would . . .” Jill glanced at Davis again. “She’s not lying.”
&
nbsp; Doug and Carlton exchanged a look, and Carlton talked hurriedly into a phone.
My heart thundered, sweat ran down my back, and I was numb, as if I were outside of my body. I pulled at my shirt, trying desperately to put it back in place. Smears of his blood ran down the front, and a button was missing. They all stared at me.
Three more people rushed into the clearing, and everyone was talking at the same time. I shook, unable to still my hands. This isn’t really happening. The sting of my cheek from his slap and the scrapes along the backs of my arms from the tree couldn’t be explained away. He hit me. He was going to . . . Tears pricked behind my eyes, and my breathing was fast, too fast. The ghost of his touch on my body turned my stomach, and my head spun.
People were talking in hushed tones all at once, and the sound was overwhelming, a dissonant clatter in the stillness of the woods. It was blocked out when two solid arms circled me.
I took a gulping breath, inhaling as deeply as I could.
Sandalwood.
Jake’s familiar voice was thick with emotion as he spoke close to my ear, cutting through the chaos. “Are you hurt? What happened? Did he . . .”
“No, I—” I tried to take a breath, but instead I sobbed, unable to finish the sentence. He pulled me tighter against his chest, his chin on my head. Everything seemed to come out at once in a steady stream of tears—the fear of Davis hurting me, of losing everything I’d worked for, of losing Jake. Also, the knowledge that I’d fought back, finally, after all the years of hiding. I’d fought.
“They’re all going to know about us.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough. He ran his hand over the back of my head, stroking my hair. “You’re safe.”
“Really, guys. This is not what you think. Doug, c’mon . . . you know me. She was into it and then just went off.” Davis’s voice crawled up my spine, and I shuddered.
Jake whipped around, and his body seemed to grow taller and wider as every muscle tensed. The hands that had been stroking my back moments before balled into tight fists at his side.
Carlton stepped between the two men, putting a meaty palm against Jake’s shoulder, stopping him from lunging toward Davis, who stood ten feet away near Doug.
I didn’t recognize Jake’s voice. It was menacing. “You should think very carefully about what you say, because if you open your mouth again, I will finish what she started and break your fucking jaw.”
I couldn’t see Jake’s face, but something in his expression wiped the sneer clean off Davis’s, and he slumped against a tree, hand held to his injured face.
Jake wrapped me in his arms again, wordlessly.
“He’s not worth it,” I said into his shirt as he stroked the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair.
“You are.”
Forty-two
Thank you, ma’am.” The officer finished taking my statement, tipped his head, and walked out to the parking lot. They had Davis in the back of a police cruiser, but he would probably have a good enough lawyer that he’d be out in no time and spinning his lies. He’d continued to spout we’d been fooling around and that it had gotten out of hand.
I gingerly skimmed over the cheek that was tender and swollen. I could only imagine what I looked like, my face bruised and arms scraped, tear tracks on my skin. Someone had handed me a clean T-shirt, and I clutched it, anxious to get the bloodstained fabric off my body, but unprepared to be anywhere alone where I could change.
“Need this?” Carlton held out a blue ice pack and sat in a chair across the table from me.
I thanked him, pressing the cold plastic to my face. “I didn’t thank you for, um, for—”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry we didn’t hear you sooner.” Carlton and the others had been on their way back to the cabin to grab something when they heard my screams and ran. I gripped the ice pack as an involuntary tremor ran through me, remembering the moments leading up to their arrival.
“Is Jake still here?” I asked in a shaky voice. When the officer started to take my statement, Jake had stepped out of the kitchen. I wondered why he hadn’t returned.
“He didn’t want to leave you alone, but I made him take a walk before he did something he’d regret and ended up in jail himself.” Carlton was surprisingly soft-spoken, not at all the jovial front man I’d seen in the meetings. “Not that I blame him. If what happened to you happened to the woman I love . . . I don’t know.” He shifted his gaze to his wedding ring. It looked worn, the gold dull from years of wear.
“Oh, we’re not, um, together anymore.”
His eyebrows ticked up, a note of skepticism in the shift of his eyes. “I’m not sure that really matters.”
The president had canceled the rest of the retreat. I’d cringed when I heard, sure my colleagues would be angry that they’d come all this way only to go back home, but no one complained, not in front of me, anyway. The flash of taillights and the crunch of gravel came through the window as one of the vans departed.
I dragged my eyes from the glass to find Carlton eyeing me intently, concern in his gaze. “Jake will take you home in our rental, if you want. I can ride with Flip.”
As if on cue, Jake stepped through the door.
* * *
It took a little over an hour to travel from the retreat site to my apartment. Immediately after we pulled away from the site, he reached across the center console. I wondered if he might try to take my hand, but he froze midair and dropped it to the gear shift. We spent the drive in silence, listening only to the sounds of the road around us and the robotic voice on the GPS. I glanced at his profile; his jaw was firm and his eyes focused on the road. The space between us seemed endless as we drove, parked, and rode the elevator to my floor.
My fingers shook as I tried to unlock my apartment door, and Jake tentatively stepped beside me, taking my keys gently and unlocking the door.
He was so stiff and careful not to touch me, like he didn’t know if it was allowed. After the door was open, he fiddled with his watch and looked away from my face. “Do you want me to call someone for you?”
I shook my head without saying anything.
“Okay, then I’ll . . .” He rested his hand on the knob, then hesitantly stepped out the door and looked down the hall. That shift, that movement of his eyes, tripped something in me. Emotionally frayed and physically exhausted, I took control again, but this time to reach for what I wanted.
“No. Jake, wait.” I stepped forward and touched his arm. “Will you stay?”
He swallowed, and his gaze traveled over my face, pausing on the bruise on my cheek.
His forearm was warm, and the familiar act of touching him gave me more confidence. I reached for his wrist.
“Please?”
It took him a moment, but he slowly laced his fingers with mine and pushed the door closed behind him. His movements were still cautious and deliberate.
I didn’t break eye contact and stepped toward him, but it was Jake who closed the distance between us. He pulled my body to him, wrapping me in his arms again and blocking out the world.
“Naya,” he said in a ragged voice that unfurled from deep within his chest, his breath heavy over my ear. He kissed the side of my head roughly. “I didn’t know . . .” he said into my hair. “I was ready to kill that bastard, to wring his neck.”
Jake kissed my temple again, a peck. Then another. “I wish you’d told me it was him.”
Under my palms, the cotton of his T-shirt was soft over his pectoral muscles, and he held me close. For the first time in hours, I relaxed my muscles, leaning against him. I wanted someone to hold me who I could trust to not let me fall.
“I would have . . . I don’t know, but I would have done something.” Brushing his lips near the top of my ear, he dropped a third kiss, and I molded my fingers along his jaw. Counting the kisses wa
s a way to keep time, to keep myself in the moment. He exhaled heavily as my fingertips grazed his hairline. He touched his forehead to mine and brushed his lips to the tip of my nose.
I turned my head to meet his lips, seeking the familiar pressure. He hedged for a moment, then his mouth opened to mine. The kiss was soft, slow, and sweet. I tried to say everything I hadn’t verbalized with my mouth. That I was sorry, that I needed him more than I could admit, and that I loved him, too. Unable to find any of the words, I sank into him, and he cupped my cheek.
He held my face in both palms. “I—”
I shook my head, reaching to nip at his lower lip. His kisses left me grounded in a way I hadn’t been since Davis attacked me, and I didn’t know how else to show him he was what I needed, who I trusted.
He gently pulled his body from mine, tipping his head away. “Naya, wait.”
I am good with words. Why can’t I find any of the right ones? I let my hands trail back down his chest, my fingers splayed. I didn’t know how to communicate that I didn’t want anything except contact. “Please, don’t leave.”
He exhaled heavily and searched my face. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you.” His fingers flexed at my waist. “I couldn’t even look at you in the meeting. I wasn’t sure I could handle it, but all the while that monster was just a few feet from you. God, it turns my stomach.” His brows pinched and his jaw tensed again. “I accused you of looking away, and I did the same thing. I’m so sorry, Naya. I’m so sorry. I should have paid more attention.”
I clutched the fabric of his T-shirt, taking in his pained expression. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t know.” Desperation rose in me, an almost frantic need to convince him. I don’t want to be alone. “I’ve screwed everything up, Jake. With us. Just let me prove to you I’m worth another shot.”
“Naya.” He shook his head slowly. “You don’t have to prove anything.” He moved from my waist to cup my cheek, avoiding the tender side of my face. “You’re always scared people will be disappointed. What I texted you? I’m so ashamed I said those things. You didn’t deserve that.”
How to Fail at Flirting Page 24