by Hattie Jude
I’m grasping for straws here, anything to see Raf put in his place. I put a little bit of mascara and lipstick on, but it has nothing to do with Raf.
It doesn’t.
But he still smirks when he sees me like he’s sure that I put it on just to make him happy. I should’ve left my face clean just to spite him, but I’d feel naked if I went to school without any makeup and I’d rather feel better about myself than worry about what he’s assuming.
Ashton is waiting by my locker when I walk in and he holds his arms out wide when he sees me.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he says. “You should’ve let me come visit,” he whispers in my ear. “Everything okay at Raf’s? How long are you there?”
Raf slams his locker and I can feel his eyes on us, but I’m determined to pretend he doesn’t exist until he doesn’t faze me anymore.
“I’ve missed you too.” I get what I need and shut my locker. “I’m so ready to go home.” This I say loud enough that I know Raf hears me, and by the way he hits the lockers as he walks by, I know it’s worked.
I grin at Ashton and let out a long breath when Raf is gone.
“Fiery. I like it.” Ashton laughs. He stares after Raf. “Raf acted like he wanted to put me in the hospital. What’s been going on over there?”
“Ah…just Raf trying to be in control. Not gonna happen.” I feel my cheeks getting pink and try to subtly fan myself, but it doesn’t work.
“Gabi? What are you not saying?”
Luci walks up then and her smile is wide. “You totally missed Raf handing Heidi her ass yesterday at lunch. It was perfect.” She glances at Ashton and they laugh.
“What happened?”
“She tried to sit on his lap and he stood up and let her fall.” She checks to see if anyone is listening. “He’d told her to get up and she ignored him.” She shrugs and starts laughing again. “Her fault.”
If it were anyone but Heidi and her friends I’d think it was the meanest thing ever, especially if he did sleep with her the night before…but I file it away. Nothing about Raf makes any sense.
We go to class and I make sure I’m not missing any assignments. At lunch, there’s a commotion near the drinks when I walk in and I try to peer around the crowd. I get the salad, my appetite still a little weird since the craziness with my mom and my attack, and when I get closer to the drink station, a group of guys laugh around a phone. When one of them sees me, he nudges the guy next to him and they all turn to stare at me.
“What?” I look behind me to see who has their attention but it appears to be me. They shuffle until they’re out of my way.
I get a drink and feel like I’m being studied inside out. My hands shake when I walk past them and my insides are jittery when I hear them erupt into another long run of laughter. I keep walking and sit down at the first table, just so I don’t feel so conspicuous.
Luci finds me and sits down. “Weird table choice, but okay. Hey…what’s happening with those guys?”
“Are they looking over here right now?”
“No, but Raf just hit one.”
I turn around and see Raf holding a guy up by the neck before slamming him into the wall. Another guy is on the floor. The lunchroom erupts shortly after that with Ashton jumping in and hitting a guy that tries to hit Raf. Mr. Lauger and Mr. Soren get in the fray and stop the madness, dragging Raf and Ashton, along with two of the other guys, to the office.
“What the hell just happened?”
I text Ashton but he doesn’t answer me. They don’t come back during lunch and before I get to my next class, I’m still watching my phone every few seconds. Heidi and Amber walk by and they’re laughing at something on their phone. Heidi has her head down and nearly runs right into me. When I hold out my hand to stop her, she looks up at me, her expression pure evil.
“The lady of the hour,” she says before busting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
I’ve never even heard her laugh sound anything but fake before, but it’s real now, so I’m curious about what has her so entertained. I hear moaning and she laughs harder, wiping her eyes.
Someone moans, “Yes,” and then a guy says, “You like that, baby?”
I push the phone out of her hand and it falls to the ground, the screen shattering. Heidi starts yelling at me, shoving me back, but I barely hear her. I move around her and bend down, my focus lasered on the video playing on her phone.
I pick it up and start running and she doesn’t stop me. Her laugh echoes down the hall and I can still hear her when I’m out the door. When the video is over, I play it from the beginning, and when it ends the second time, I throw up in the parking lot.
Luci finds me out there and I ask her to take me home. She doesn’t ask questions. When I have her pull into my driveway, she doesn’t hesitate.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “What’s going on, Gabi?”
I feel cold inside.
Dead.
Hollowed out.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I say it so softly, she leans closer to hear me and I turn to her then, barely seeing her. “Thank you for bringing me home. I appreciate it.”
“You’re scaring me,” she says. “I’m coming in, okay?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m just not feeling well. Thank you.”
I get out of the car and run into my house, slamming the door and running up the stairs to my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Only then do I collapse on my bed and let out the grief of the horror that is my life.
The video is of Luke and me having sex in his bedroom, and it’s on one of the most popular porn sites in the world.
The first time I saw Luke was at the annual Christmas party thrown by my parents. I’d never been allowed to go anywhere near the party, and this time was no exception. Usually, I got dropped off at a bookstore or occasionally went to a friend’s house, but this time, I’d told my parents I was too tired to go anywhere.
I snuck down midway through the party, when the noise level had reached an impossible decibel to think about anything else. I was in my sweats and a skimpy tank, certain I wouldn’t be seen, but on my way down the stairs, I saw a guy walk in the front door. He was late for the party and antsy. I thought he was nervous.
He looked up and saw me creeping down the stairs and smiled. He was the hottest guy I’d ever seen up to that point and a little younger than the other guests I’d seen walking up the driveway earlier.
I smiled back and pointed toward the noise down the hall. “The party’s in there.”
“Why aren’t you in there?”
I smirked, flattered that he thought I was old enough to be there. I sat down on the steps and felt the heat of his stare on my legs, my chest, my face. His teeth were so white when he smiled, and when he moved closer to me, my heart started pounding.
“This looks like where the real party should be,” he said.
And with that, my crush was sealed.
He stayed with me on the stairs for a couple of hours. It was the highlight of my entire life up to that point, having someone’s attention on me for so long. I thought I’d found my soulmate. We talked about everything from the people at the party to life in Vegas and how we both liked penguins. He didn’t leave my side. Until the party started to die down and people began to trickle out. Looking back at that night, I’ve wondered if he purposely left before anyone knew he was there. If he meant to hide out next to me, or if he enjoyed himself so much that he didn’t care who saw us together.
The fact that we began to meet in secret not long after that should’ve been answer enough—I was his dirty little secret.
But, he was never fully mine.
He took my innocence and stomped on it.
After.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I grab a small suitcase from my mom’s closet and haul it back to my room. Since a lot of my nice underwear is in the suitcase she packed for me already at Raf’s house, there isn’t much to pick from, so all t
hat’s left goes in. I throw clothes in as fast as I can, a new toothbrush, and an old mascara and lip gloss. I don’t even fill it all the way before zipping it up. I’ll regret leaving my laptop, but it’s not a big deal. The objective is to stay light and get out of here quickly.
I’m down the stairs and at the back door when I see a note on the kitchen table. I pause next to it, heart thumping with the words torn out from a magazine and pasted on a white sheet of paper.
I know who it’s from, but it would be impossible to prove.
Any promises I made are off now.
I’d recognize it as one of my father’s threats any day. I’m just not sure why now. Stefen and my mom? Me hooking up with Raf? I don’t know. But I feel uneasy as I back out of the room.
I reach the back door and jump out of my skin when I run into Raf. I scream and he holds his hand over my mouth.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, the fury in his eyes scaring me almost as much as him startling me.
“Let me go.”
He doesn’t listen, his grip on my arm tightening instead. “I can’t. You can’t be here, Gabi. It isn’t safe.” He picks up my suitcase and then in the next second, he hauls me over his shoulder.
“I threw up not even half an hour ago. Put me down.”
“I’d rather you not throw up on me, but I’m not scared of a little mess.” His voice is a deadly calm. He walks to the back of the house and goes out our gate and through his, not even slightly out of breath from the weight of me and the suitcase.
“Set me down,” I yelp.
“I’ll set you down when we’re safely inside.”
“I hate you.” I kick him, hoping to get his balls but not getting so lucky.
“You’re getting awfully repetitive,” he says. “I think we should save those words for when we’ve had sex again. Otherwise, it’s just monotonous.”
He tosses me on the couch like I’m a bag of potatoes and stands over me, arms folded across his chest.
“We’ll never have sex again so I’m saying it until it sinks in.”
“You’ll never be able to act like you don’t want me, Gabi. I know the truth now. I felt it in the way your pussy squeezed me like a vise.”
I flush and hold up my hand. “It had been too long since I’d had sex, that’s all. It meant nothing.” I sit up. “Obviously.”
His eyes flash and his cheeks mottle, like he’s on fire within.
“I don’t want to be here. The walls are closing in and this is the last place that feels safe to me.”
“Okay, where could we go that would help?” he asks through gritted teeth.
I frown at him. “Why would you want to help me?”
“My father will kill me if I let you run away. That’s what you were trying to do, isn’t it?”
“How about you don’t tell him anything and we’ll call it even? I’m not going back to school. Ever.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and there are twelve missed calls from Ashton.
“You don’t strike me as a quitter.”
“You saw the video, didn’t you? That’s why you were fighting…” My eyes flit up to his for a moment and it’s enough. The answer is apparent. I bite my lip to keep from losing it again and avoid looking at him. I put my legs on the floor and face straight ahead. “I wish I could figure you out.”
“Pretty simple. My dad wants in your mom’s pants. I keep you safe, your mom is happy…my dad is happy.”
Disgusted, I get up and walk to the window. Their view is even better than ours, a clearer shot of the water behind their house and even closer to the beach. Raf keeps talking, but I tune him out. As much as I hate to admit it, the hurt is deeper than I expected to feel, the way he talks about me like I’m a means to an end.
I can’t think about the pain. There are too many other hurts to knock me down right now, like the fact that what I thought was a private experience between Luke and me is all anyone will see now when they look at me.
My lips tremble and I move to open the screen door. It’s locked, but I quickly figure out how to open it and slip out, while Raf is still talking. Once I’m outside, I run. Across the deck, down the steps, out the gate, and when I hit the sand, I feel like I’m on the homestretch. I vaguely hear Raf behind me, but it doesn’t matter. My first steps in the water are relief. I take step after step until I’m sinking underneath the waves and let the tide pull me out.
Weightless.
The water tugs on me for a little while, but then I feel the urge to swim. It’s as if I’m taken over by superhuman strength that I didn’t know I had. I’m not the best swimmer, my days in Vegas mostly spent sunbathing if I ever went near a pool. We didn’t have a pool, so this shouldn’t feel as good as it does.
Until it doesn’t.
I’m swimming, feeling like I’m owning the world and finding my freedom.
Until my strength is zapped.
I’m fine one moment and flailing the next. I forget every hurt, every wrong done against me, every pain I’ve felt since losing myself to Luke, who never cared about me at all. The struggle to distance myself from the feelings where Raf is concerned. Because I do…I feel so much. I feel everything.
In that moment, none of it matters.
My arms and legs are weak, and I take a huge, gulping breath, swallowing water in the process. I sink underneath the water and feel a sudden surge of peace when everything goes dark. The roar of life underneath the water is comforting and I let it sink, sink, sink with me like an anchor. I close my eyes and don’t fight the lull in my body. I welcome it. I’m tired and this life is too hard. I don’t want to struggle anymore. I don’t want to fight to be heard, to be understood. The peace is a welcome relief and I succumb to it.
I don’t know when I realize that I’m out of the cocoon of the water. If I’d known, I would’ve fought it harder. But it’s too late when I take a deep breath and I’m on dry ground.
I keep my eyes closed, trying to get back to the solitude that is in the deep waters, but I hear an incessant beeping and feel the bright lights on me even though my eyes are tightly shut. This isn’t peaceful. I feel the rush of activity around me, feel the weight that comes with knowing I will have to wake up and function in real life again. When the waves lapping around my mind cause me to drift under again, I welcome them wholeheartedly.
I feel a hand in mine before I ever open my eyes. Solid and strong. I don’t give it much thought because all I want to do is go back to sleep, but the hand squeezes mine when I start to move and I know I’m breaking the surface of reality. I don’t want to wake up. If I’d had my way, I would’ve never woken up again.
“You have to live, Gabriela. This isn’t just up to you.” I hear his voice, just inches next to my face, his breath hot against me. “Open your eyes, dammit.”
My eyes flutter as I try to go back to the dream and yet, I hear his words and everything in me rises against him. I fight him even in my subconscious.
I hear talking in the background. My mother. Her tears. I feel terrible for the pain I’m causing her, but not terrible enough.
“Sweetheart, wake up. Why would you do this?” My mom’s tears fall on my hand and her shudders shake the bed. “Please, let us know that you’re okay.”
I try to sink back into that deep dark place that felt so much better than this, but it isn’t coming back to me. Why couldn’t I have just drowned?
“The doctor says to keep talking to her,” Raf says. “She can most likely hear us and is aware of what’s going on.”
“Do you think she…wanted to die?” My mom’s voice breaks and she sobs, her forehead landing on my hand as she clutches it so tight.
“No,” Raf says. “She was just swimming…trying to get some exercise and forget a little bit…”
Right.
Even in my semi-comatose state, I’m challenging Raf Barron.
I’d laugh if I wasn’t so angry that I’m still alive.
Acknowledgments
Huge than
ks to Christine Estevez for a clean manuscript, Jena Brignola for the amazing cover, and my family for all the love.
About the Author
When Hattie Jude is not reading, she's writing...and when she's not doing either of those things, she wishes she was.
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