“Every time I’m interested in a guy, it turns out he’s gay. I don’t do it on purpose, it just happens. So, I figured when I started feeling all these things for you, you had to be gay. And then Alex…well, you know what happened with Alex.”
All I hear is her saying she has all these feelings for me. My heart does a fist pump inside my chest. She’s biting her lush bottom lip again and my cock is beginning to revive itself.
“The last time it happened was with Sean.” Her voice is still a whisper, almost like it pains her to say this guy’s name.
“The bad relationship.” I try to help her because I need to know what the fucker did to hurt a girl as much as Trace seems to be hurting. She nods.
“He was the captain of the football team. He had all the right moves, said all the right things when we first met.”
“Fucking football players,” I snarl.
“We started dating and were together for a year. We were in love. At least I thought we were. He kept throwing around the L word and saying things like forever, promising after graduation it was him and me. We even made plans for where we were going to live.”
Her breath hitches in a sob. I want to take her in my arms and promise her everything will be okay. No one will ever hurt her again. But would it make me the same kind of dick this Sean douche was? It’s a promise which has nothing to do with me. Somewhere in the future some other dickweed may hurt her and I won’t be there to do anything about it. My chest tightens at the thought.
“One night…after a game where Sean threw the winning touchdown to one of the running backs, I showed up at his house,” she says after catching her breath. “We had plans to go out for a big celebration with a bunch of people, but I couldn’t wait to see him. I didn’t wait for him to come and pick me up. I headed over to his house early. When I walked into his room he…he…” She’s restraining her breath so much in an effort to hold back tears her body begins to compensate for the lack of oxygen with little hiccups.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to go on,” I reassure her without touching her. She’s breaking my heart, but if I touch her I know I won’t be able to stop, and the last thing she needs is another guy messing with her feelings.
“No. I want to tell you. I never told anyone the whole story, not even my parents or sister. I couldn’t tell them the gritty details of all the stupid things I had done. But I want to tell you. I want you to know.”
Christ. She’s opening her heart to me. If she only knew how I failed Abbey, would she want me to be the one she opens up to about this?
“He was in bed with Kyle Morgan, the running back who had scored the touchdown. I…I couldn’t even move. I couldn’t process what I was seeing.” She rubs the back of her hand across her face, under her runny nose. I don’t get up to get her a tissue because I don’t want to leave her alone even for a second.
“After what was only a minute, but seemed like an eternity, Sean saw me standing there watching them. He says, ‘What are you doing here?’ in an annoyed tone of voice. I ran out of his house and jumped in my car. I don’t even remember driving back to the dorm.”
She stares past me into the air like she can see something out there I can’t.
“He didn’t follow me. Until the next day. Saturday.”
She isn’t sobbing anymore. Her voice is still only whisper, but it’s flat now, trancelike. Her eyes, though, are liquid pools of fury. I don’t say a word and she continues the story, causing the heaviness of lead to ball in my stomach and my fists to clench.
“He shows up at my dorm all apologetic, telling me he’s tried to stop these new feelings he’s having for guys.” She does air quotes around the word new. “But he can’t fight them anymore. He says he loves me and needs my help. If I spend the night with him and his football buddy, I could help him overcome his urges.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know. That’s not the most ludicrous part. No. The best part is, I believed him. Or I wanted to believe him. I thought we were in love. I thought I had to do whatever it took to save our relationship, and if this could save it, if he needed my help, I’d do anything. So I did.”
I want to stop her. Tell her I can’t hear the rest of this, but I can’t be a coward again. Another girl I care about needs me, and I can’t let this one down too. I listen as she purges her soul.
“I went back to his house with him. Kyle was there. No one else was home. His roommates were gone for the night, still carrying on the celebration. I already knew Kyle. I’d seen him at Sean’s house a hundred times with all the other football players, although he wasn’t as friendly as usual. In fact, he was cold, standoffish. Sean brings out this bottle of tequila and says we should do shots to loosen things up and get in the partying mood.”
Fuck. I gave her tequila to warm things up. Fuckfuckfuck. But she doesn’t mention it. She just keeps on venting her toxic memories.
“He got you drunk and then he forced you to…”
“No. He didn’t force me to do anything. I kept drinking the shots. I knew what was coming, what we were going to do.”
She hesitates for a second and I realize I’m holding my breath, afraid to hear where this is going.
“I knew it was wrong for me,” she continues in shuddered breaths. “I knew I wasn’t into doing what we were about to do, but I didn’t want to lose Sean and he kept telling me this would fix everything. Fix us. We moved upstairs to his bedroom and drank the last couple of shots there.” The shadows of the flames sway over her somber face and darken it even more.
“After that, things get blurry. Before I knew it we were all naked. I don’t even remember how. The next thing I know we’re on the bed, Sean’s on top of me. Then he’s inside me. Kyle is kneeling behind Sean. I can feel us moving together. Sean’s pushing into me hard and Kyle is behind him, his thrusts into Sean just as aggressive. My head is swimming. Sean’s hurting me because I wasn’t ready for him. I tell him I need him to stop, but he keeps whispering, ‘It’ll be fine. It’s so good. You feel so good. It’s just you and me, babe. I love you.’ When I thought about those words a million times afterward I wondered if he was talking to me or Kyle. From what I can remember, Kyle never touched me. He didn’t even look at me except to throw ice daggers at me every once in a while.”
The food in my stomach is churning. How could the bastard treat her like that? How could he hurt her? All she wanted to do was love him and he used her. I think I’m going to be sick. I swallow and take a few deep breaths to keep the food from coming back up. Other than when playing hockey, I consider myself a fairly mellow guy, but at this moment I want to fucking kill those motherfuckers.
Trace keeps talking in a non-stop robotic rhythm, like she’s in a trance. “I must’ve passed out at some point, because when I woke up it was morning. I was in Sean’s bed, but they were both gone. I showered and tried to scrub away the feeling of my skin crawling. I got dressed and texted Sean. He didn’t answer. I called for an Uber back to the dorm. I sent him like thirty texts, and he never responded. I kept telling myself everything was going to be fine. He must’ve had practice or something. Then he shows up at the dorm at about five-thirty. He tells me in a matter-of-fact tone he can’t see me anymore, that Kyle doesn’t like sharing him. Sean informs me the thing with the star running back isn’t new. It was going on even before we started dating. He only needed me as a cover to make sure no one found out he was gay. Kyle gave him an ultimatum after our night together—him or me—and he didn’t want to lose him.
“What he’s telling me doesn’t fully register. I beg Sean to let me try again to see if we can make it work. I beg him, even though he told me he used me and cheated on me the whole time, pretending he loved me. He sniggers and says there’s no way it can work and turns to leave. He stops when he gets to the door and turns to tell me like an afterthought, ‘Me and Kyle aren’t ready to come out, so you better not say anything to anyone or we’ll tell everyone it was your idea to fuck both of us at t
he same time.’
“I was stunned. Everything he did, every word he said, was like another dagger in my heart. The final statement felt like he was twisting the daggers deeper. But I couldn’t turn off all the feelings for him at the flip of a switch. I still cared about him. I would never do anything to hurt him, even though I was so humiliated and devastated. I couldn’t wrap my head around what he told me or understand why he’d put me through the whole thing the night before. It was like he kicked my world off its axis. I couldn’t breathe. And then he walked out. After a year, he threw me away like yesterday’s garbage.”
“Fuck. Trace.” I’m not sure what to say. I want to apologize for all the asshole men in this world who could treat a woman with such complete insensitivity and lack of respect. I also want to cut the balls off those two motherfuckers and shove them down their throats.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Tracey
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
I can’t believe I told a guy I’ve known for a couple of weeks as much as I did. Even though I’m not ready to tell him the worst part, I’m not sorry I told him this much. It’s incredible how cleansing opening up to someone on a personal level can be. For the first time in a year I can breathe a little easier. Keeping everything locked inside, never talking to anyone about it, is a heavier burden than I realized.
I’m not sure if the expression on Dak’s face is concern, pity, or a little of both. I don’t want his pity. I only want him to understand I’m not ready to open my heart to anyone yet, not ready to get involved. I love the way he makes me feel things I was afraid I would never feel again, but I’m also afraid of those feelings and what they can do to me. Chipping away at the stone walls I’ve built between my past and present has drained me. Exhaustion overtakes me.
“I’m so tired,” I say, breaking the long minutes of silence between us.
“I’ll carry you upstairs again and turn down the covers for you. It’s been a long day,” he says in a soft voice, like he’s afraid I’m going to crumble right in front of him.
I sit up so I can see his beautiful ocean blue eyes. “Do you think we could sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace tonight? I don’t want to leave the warmth of the fire. It’s so soothing.” Also, being next to him is so comforting, though I’m not sure where he wants to go from here, or if he even wants to go anywhere with me after everything I told him.
I know he’s not judging me, but it doesn’t mean he wants to be friends with a girl who has all this emotional baggage. I don’t know what I want right now either. I know I’m not ready for a relationship. It’s too soon for me to trust anyone with a full-on commitment. Yet what I’m feeling for Dak is much different now than it was the first day I crashed into him—or rather, when he crashed into me. The realization he’s become someone I’d like to be friends with shocks me. I want to get to know him better and spend time with him. After everything, he’s…well…pretty wonderful.
“You want both of us to sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace? Like together?” he asks in a tentative voice.
I nod. “Well, like next to each other together.” I bite my bottom lip, something I’m famous for when I’m nervous or thinking too hard.
“Okay, Bambi.” He runs his thumb along my lip to stop me from chewing it off. “I didn’t want to leave you alone anyway. I’ll stay right by your side as long as you want me to. Hey. It’s like the lyrics in our skating song. It’s the perfect song for us.”
He stands up, taking me with him, and presses play on my ITunes app. He steps into an open area of the room and with his hands around my waist spins us both in circles as “You Matter to Me” streams through the air. I don’t know how he manages it. After spewing out the events of the most soul-destroying weeks of my life, I’m giggling in his arms.
He slides me back down along his body onto my feet and I can feel the hard ridge through the soft fabric of his pants. He’s devouring me with the kind of seductive bedroom eyes that could make a nun drop her panties, which is both unnerving and provocative. I want to kiss him, but I already stopped him twice. I’m certain any involvement for me right now would be too soon.
Before I get too far into my perplexing thoughts, Dak lets me go and says in an excited voice like a kid planning a camp out sleepover, “I’ll go upstairs and pull the feather mattress off the bed. You get the pillows and blankets. We’ll do a picnic sleepover right here in front of the fire.”
“A picnic? We just ate dinner.”
“I’ll make us dessert after we set up the bed.”
“I thought we already had dessert.” I glance sideways to the tequila bottle on the coffee table. Its crystal liquid shimmers with an innocent sparkle in the firelight, not revealing the volatile effects it contains. Dak follows my gaze.
“No.” He walks over and picks up the bottle from the table. “I’m not talking about this shit. No more tequila, ever.” He leaves the room with the bottle and comes back a second later. “Let’s go get the things for the bed.”
He starts moving toward the steps, doing these massive double Axel jumps across the room, jumping, spinning, and landing like Baryshnikov on steroids.
“Holy shit!” I gasp. “You’re good. A lunatic, but good.”
“Come on. Let’s go get the stuff,” he grunts out while spinning in the air. And can I just say there is something so hot about a gorgeous hockey player doing massive athletic jumps and landing with the graceful precision of a ballet dancer?
“I’m coming. I’m coming.” I smile and shake my head. But I walk, because my name isn’t Dakota Andersen and I’m not crazy enough to do double Axels across a room full of furniture.
***
The mattress fortress Dak builds us in front of the fire is so cozy no one would ever guess there’s a derecho raging outside and a few minutes ago the atmosphere inside was oppressive. I’m discovering it’s impossible for anyone to stay mad or sad when around his slightly immature, fun antics.
I’m sitting on our fluffy, cloudlike bed when he comes back in the room carrying two bowls, a big smile across his face.
“No better comfort food than Ben and Jerry’s Rocky Road,” he announces and plops down crossed-leg onto the bed with two bowls overflowing with whipped cream and fudge sauce atop the ice cream. “Not exactly organic, but even Bernard has to allow for comfort food every once in a while. I did whip up real cream though. No fizzy spraying canned crap they claim is real,” he grimaces in disgust. “Milady.” He passes me one of the monster sundaes.
“My prince,” I tease with an over-animated, rapid blinking of my lashes. “I’m not sure I can finish all this.” I’m sure I could if his presence didn’t make my stomach flutter and flip like its own version of a Cirque Du Soleil routine.
“I’ll finish whatever you can’t, but I bet you’ll lick the bowl clean once you taste it.” He shovels a big scoop of the concoction into his mouth and his eyes roll back into his head. “Mmmph almost as orgasmic as my puttanesca sauce.”
I wonder if he’s aware of the way he turns every comment he makes into a sexual innuendo. It’s possible he doesn’t know he oozes sexiness. He slowly drags his tongue over and around his freaking spoon. Yeah. He knows.
The sight of his tongue working his spoon fills my head with thoughts of him drizzling fudge sauce along my body and licking his way down my tits and stomach to the aching spot between my legs to taste what he’s doing to me. I can’t take my eyes off his mouth, and even before I taste the ice cream, I absently lick my lips.
“What do you think? Good, right?” He takes a big scoop from the bowl and licks off the remnants of gooey chocolate left on his spoon, like he doesn’t want to miss a speck. Watching him has heat pooling between my thighs, but he seems to be completely oblivious to what he’s doing to me
“You didn’t try it yet. Oh shit. You don’t like ice cream. I should’ve asked. I’ll make you something else.”
I guess he wasn’t
trying to be seductive after all, just innocently enjoying the creamy splendor of the ingredients in his bowl and he wanted me to do the same.
“Not like ice cream! Who doesn’t like ice cream?” I take a heaping spoonful and ladle it into my mouth. “Mmm. You’re right. Climatic,” I sigh and take another spoonful.
“I know. Right?” He polishes off his sundae and I continue to savor every spoonful of mine. No problem eating the whole thing after all.
“So, Bambi…” He’s back to his teasing tone. I love the way he can change even the harshest situations to a light and playful mood. “I don’t want to bring up all that garbage again, but I need to know.”
“Need to know what?” I give him a sideways glance, because I don’t want to talk about any of the garbage anymore either. We’re having fun again and I want to keep it this way.
“You remember how you said you thought I was gay because you were attracted to me?” He asks, leaning over to take my bowl and then place both empty bowls on the coffee table. When he stretches to reach the table, his sweatshirt lifts up and his scrumptious eight pack is peeking out at me again in all its glory. Once again, I suck in my bottom lip and worry it with my teeth.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Yes, Dak. Since it was only about fifteen minutes ago, I remember,” I answer, opening my eyes. Thank God his abs are no longer visible. It may seem like a ridiculous thing to be thankful for, but I’m trying to exercise some restraint here. I am.
“You said every guy you’re attracted to turns out to be…um…gay. Is that right?”
“Well, the last few, anyway.” I twirl a strand of hair around a finger. Why are we talking about this again? It’s obvious my bad streak is broken, since I’m sitting here with the most virile straight guy on campus.
“It was more than just Sean then?”
“There were two other guys before Sean,” I say in a more exasperated tone than I intend. Dak’s been nothing but sweet, since I told him about my colossal bad choices in the past. But with everything out in the open—almost everything, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I want us to move beyond this.
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