“How do you know his name?” she finally asked. I didn’t tell her I’d wrung it from Mike along with her address. Dude did know everything.
“I heard that he hurt you.”
“Do you think that Clay raped me?” Her voice sounded far away, and I snuck a quick glance in her direction. AM’s face was averted, looking out the passenger side window.
My muscles tensed at the word and the image it evoked of AM helpless under some guy’s power. “Did he?” I asked through clenched teeth. At the thought of it, I wanted to crush his head between my hands until it popped off.
AM’s reply was a short humorless laugh. She said nothing else the entire drive, preferring to look out the window. The smallness of the car’s interior placed her close to me, but it felt like we were yards apart. Despite the heated interior, a chill hung in the air—much like the tiny crystals of ice formed on the window by the condensation from her breath. I swung into her apartment complex and parked the car in the farthest back corner, where the lights couldn’t reach us. I wanted to hear the truth from AM’s mouth because until we had it out, she was never going to let me in.
I didn’t turn off the engine and AM didn’t jump out like I thought she would. I’d been prepared to chase after her.
“No.” The reply was succinct.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Why are you scratching at this?” She was upset, her brow furrowed and her mouth pressed in a thin, tight line.
“Because I want to know you,” I said.
“What do you think is going to happen if you know the truth? You going to punch everyone at Central who says one bad word about me?”
I’d like to, I thought, but that wasn’t the right answer. I struggled for a better one. “You aren’t going to give me a chance if I don’t know it all.”
She knew I was right, but the question was whether she wanted to give me a chance. I was asking her to do more than reveal a painful memory. I was essentially asking her for something more than a random one-night hookup. I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to be more than just a lab partner, more than just another warm body between the sheets. I wanted to matter to her. These were foreign desires to me, but sometimes my gut was entirely right. Trusting in my instincts had saved my life more than once in Afghanistan.
As the silence hung in the car, my breath seemed to stall in my chest. I feared any movement might startle her into bolting from the car. The quiet became oppressive, and I was afraid it would topple down like a boulder of snow and suffocate us. Maybe the weight of it was too much for AM as well, because she took a deep breath and began to talk.
“I don’t remember much about the night. I was invited to the Delta Sig rush party by one of the Thetas. I was thinking of rushing with them. I drank. A lot. I remember taking some guy home with me to my dorm room. I told him it was my first time. We had sex. I don’t really remember it. The next morning I was sore. He was gone. There was a tiny bit of blood on the sheets. It wasn’t what I’d thought it would be.
“I was so drunk, I didn’t know who he was. Only that he was on the lacrosse team. I don’t understand why I don’t remember him. Maybe I just intentionally blocked it out.”
I tried to regulate my breathing, promising myself I would beat the shit out of someone or something later. Getting angry now was only going to scare her.
“I just figured nothing would come of it. It was a drunken party event, and I chalked it up to college. You know?”
She was crying now. I don’t think she noticed, but there were tears leaking out of the sides of her eyes, running down her face. The silent but tangible proof of her pain made my heart clench.
“Yeah, I’ve done my share of stupid things while drunk.” My voice was hoarse and raspy. She didn’t notice, wrapped up in the torment of her memories. And I’d led her down this path. I couldn’t tell her to stop now, that it was too painful to listen to.
“Right.” She absently swiped at her tears, dashing them away as if they were nothing more than a pesky mosquito that had landed on her cheek.
“A month or so later, I was walking home alone from a Greek Street party. Ellie had wanted to stay longer, and I was tired. I told her another girl on our floor was going to walk me home. I didn’t think, you know, that anything could happen. I got near the Health Center. It’s dark there. Clay was coming from the opposite direction with a couple other guys. He stopped me and the other guys went on.
“I didn’t know him very well. He backed me up to the brick wall of the Health Center. I can still feel it. The brick was rough against my fingers.” She clenched and unclenched her hands. I had to touch her, to pretend like I was providing some kind of comfort. I placed my hand gently over hers, and she collapsed into me.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief, unhooked her seatbelt and tossed it aside, and dragged her over the console and onto my lap. Releasing my seat so it moved as far back as possible, I tucked her face against my chest and wrapped my arms around her. I wished I could enfold her entirely into me and absorb her pain.
“He backed me up,” she repeated, as if she could barely believe it had happened. “I’m not sure how he even knew who I was. We didn’t have classes together. I don’t think I’d even ever met him before. But he said he’d heard I was loose. He stuck his hand on my leg. I had shorts on. He pushed his hand up.
“I pushed it down. He asked me what was wrong. His breath was sour, yeasty, as if he hadn’t brushed his teeth that day and tried to wash away the stink with a dozen beers. He tried to kiss me, and I turned my face. He laughed at me and said he didn’t know why I was pretending, because his buddy had told him that I was loose. I wasn’t a virgin, he said, because I was too loose.”
Her face burrowed harder against my chest, and her legs curled up. It was like she was trying to crawl inside me. As I rubbed her back, I cursed the sense of helplessness that rode over me.
“Did he hurt you?” What a dumbshit question, I thought. Of course he’d hurt her. But she understood that I meant physically and replied.
“No, his buddies called for him. I don’t know if he expected me to have sex with him against the wall of the Health Center or he was waiting for an invitation to my room, but I said nothing and he left.
“So he didn’t rape me. He didn’t do anything invasive. I actually feel guilty about that,” AM confessed. “Like I didn’t have a reason to be upset or fearful because nothing really happened. But after that, the whispers started. I didn’t realize it at first. I went to class, the library, and parties all fall without realizing that everyone thought I was a slut. It wasn’t until someone wrote ‘lacrosstitute’ on my door in permanent black marker. Someone had pulled the plug in the dam, and after that, I heard it all the time. I couldn’t go to a party without some guy trying to feel me up. I was like, meat, or something. Like a cup that they could just pass around.”
“Christ, AM, why didn’t you leave?”
“I couldn’t tell my mother. What would I say? Everyone thinks I’m a slut at the school where Dad’s entire family went, so I need to transfer?
“It wasn’t the losing my virginity in a drunken stupor. It wasn’t being creeped out by a laxer in the dark. It was the lies. The rumors and lies. And you can’t combat them. Every guy I spoke with thought I was an easy mark. Every girl thought I was a tramp trying to steal their man. I wasn’t good for anything or anybody.”
She was full-on sobbing now. Her words were punctuated by catches in her breath as she struggled to get out her story through her cries. I ground my molars together to stop myself from shouting in anger. I wanted to leave right then and there and go to the D-Sigs where most of the lacrosse players were and beat the ever-loving shit out of them. I’d shove their dicks so far up their assholes that they’d only be able to fuck themselves for the next four years.
My muscles were aching from holding her so carefully that she didn’t know how much I wanted to bend a steel bar in half. But I wouldn’t have let her go f
or anything.
Pressure points. Fuck me. Of course she knew about pressure points. To hide their shame or their own insecurities, those two lacrosse players had pressed on her weak points and everyone else’s and turned the Central campus into a house of horrors for AM.
“Do I win for most embarrassing story ever?” AM’s voice was rough from her storm of tears, but her willingness to joke about this only made her more precious to me.
“No,” I said immediately, wanting to kill any idea that she should feel ashamed about what happened. “You haven’t heard all of mine yet.” And never would, I hoped. Blood pounded in my temples when I thought about some of my high-school exploits that I hoped would never reach AM’s ears.
“Unfair,” she said, nose burrowing into my chest. Her body had lost the stiffness from earlier, and she felt almost pliant in my arms as if she did trust me. I shifted her slightly backward so she wouldn’t feel my inappropriate arousal and that made her sit up. I felt like an ass and tried to draw her back into my arms but she resisted. Looking around the car, she asked, “Tissue?”
We looked in every crevice but only found one forlorn napkin. ”Would you accept one unused but crumpled napkin?” I dabbed her face gently with it. AM allowed it for a second before taking the cloth from me and holding to her nose and sniffing like a kitten.
“I need to go inside anyway,” AM said.
Instinctively, I knew that if I let AM out of this car alone, that was it for us. Embarrassment, shame, resentment would all pile up and she’d refuse to do anything not related to our class together. Deciding that I wouldn’t let her say no, I opened the door to let her out but grabbed her purse, which was lying on the floor of the passenger side. She wasn’t going anywhere without that and, therefore I hoped, without me.
Chapter Twelve
AM
I WAS SO EMBARRASSED BY MY breakdown in the car with Bo, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I wanted to go into the apartment and hunker down and hide for about ten years, until everyone here had forgotten who AnnMarie West ever was. I rushed to the apartment complex entrance, but when I got to the locked door, I realized I’d left my purse in Bo’s car. I turned and bumped into his broad, immovable chest. The one I’d just spent the last twenty minutes unleashing a hurricane of tears and snot into.
“Looking for this?” Bo held up my purse. I tugged on it, but he wouldn’t let it go. “I’m seeing you upstairs.” His voice was implacable.
I frowned, but truthfully, I was feeling so bleak that I didn’t want to be in my apartment alone, and I didn’t want to ruin Ellie’s night out either. Bo held the purse in his firm and unrelenting grip while I rummaged in it to find my keys.
Unlocking the door, I led the way up to my second-floor apartment. I was mentally cataloguing the interior. The living room was mostly clean, as was my bedroom. I might have a few things I needed to toss into a closet, but for the most part, there was nothing in there that would make me cringe. It was silly to even contemplate that some random bra left on the floor could make me blush after what I’d just gone through with Bo.
He followed me upstairs without a word. Once inside, he took in the space with a single gaze and turned back to me. “Couch looks comfortable. Uglier than the backside of a steer, but comfortable.”
It was, but I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. At my questioning look, Bo enlightened me. “I’m not leaving you alone tonight. I’ll sleep on your couch until Ellie gets home, whenever that is.”
God, I was going to have to call Ellie and interrupt her night out, because there was no way I was getting any sleep with Bo lying out here on the sofa. My intentions must have been clear on my face because Bo made a tutting noise with his tongue. “No, Sunshine, I’m not going anywhere tonight. I want to be here with you, and the sofa is just fine for me.”
I could see by the set of his jaw that his mind wasn’t going to be changed. Throwing up my hands, I stomped into my bedroom and slammed the door behind me.
I was drained, emotionally. I had no reserves to fight off my own attraction. I couldn’t think of an argument to make Bo leave, mostly because I didn’t want him to leave. The moment he’d shifted in the car and I drew back, I felt a hundred times worse. I opened my mouth and in the darkness, it had all spilled out. It had been embarrassing to cry and to tell him how I’d lost my virginity and how I felt victimized by the toad. But I’d also felt protected and safe, resting my cheek against his marble chest and feeling his arms around me like bands of steel.
I wanted that feeling back right now, but I wasn’t prepared to give anything else tonight. I was wiped out and felt less sexy than I did on the first day of my period. Discomfited, I disrobed and got out my nighttime attire, which consisted of a pair of men’s boxers, small, and a large men’s Central College T-shirt. I pulled out an extra set for Bo and held them up. There was no way he was fitting into the boxers and even the T-shirt might be a stretch for him.
I changed, washed my face, and looked around for a spare toothbrush. I found a travel one my mother had likely stuck in my bag. Setting that out with the T-shirt and shorts for Bo, I opened the bedroom door. He’d shed his shoes and was lying back on the sofa with the TV on. At the sound of the door opening, he sat up and gave me a smile, which, as he took me in, turned to a frown.
I looked down and realized that I had the worst type of sleepwear. He was probably used to satin and lace and other sexy stuff. I plucked at my shirt.
“That’s a guy’s shirt,” he accused.
“No, it’s my shirt,” I corrected.
“Whose shirt was it originally?” he demanded.
“Um, mine? I bought it at the Bookstore.” Immediately his tense shoulders relaxed.
“You bought shirts in sizes that don’t fit you?”
“It’s comfy.” I defended myself.
“As long as it didn’t belong to some other guy,” he muttered.
“Okay,” I said, confused by why the shirt’s origins made any difference. I had washed it a million times. There weren’t any cooties on it, not even mine. “I’ve laid out some things for you in the bathroom.” I extended my hand into my bedroom to point the way. My bathroom was accessible only via my bedroom. As he advanced, I felt unreasonably nervous. I hadn’t ever had a guy other than Brian in my bedroom before, and he really didn’t count. The two other guys I’d hooked up with had taken me to their places.
Unlike when he first came into the apartment, Bo took his time looking around my bedroom. My mother and I’d tricked it out with bright pink and green and white linens. I had several throw pillows that never quite made it on the bed and matching curtains. The bed itself was my childhood bed, a double that was quite big for me, but Bo looked like he’d only be comfortable in a king-sized bed.
He looked at the hastily made bed for what seemed like an eternity, then turned his back on me as he walked to the bathroom. The door closed, and I thought I heard a groan.
I rushed over and gave a little knock, “Um, you okay?”
A heartbeat and then a cough. “Yeah. Just dandy.”
I went out into the living room to give Bo some privacy but I could still hear the faint sounds of water running and cabinet doors opening. I struck my hand against my forehead. Bo might want to shower. He had, after all, fought tonight. He hadn’t smelled sweaty at all, only a musky, manly smell. Delicious and comforting at the same time. I rushed to my closet and pulled out a big bath sheet, thanking my mother silently for splurging on a couple of huge towels.
I knocked again. “Hey, do you want to shower? I have a towel here.”
The door opened immediately, and I stumbled back a minute at the sight of Bo without his shirt on and his jeans unbuttoned and unzipped. What had Sasha said about him? My ovaries weren’t clenching. They were doing a celebration. Every nerve in my body awoke and reached for him. I swayed a little on my feet, and Bo put out a hand on my shoulder to brace me.
“You okay, Sunshine?”
“Just a litt
le lightheaded,” I confessed.
“You get into bed,” Bo ordered. I did as he said. There was no resisting his Nordic power at this point. It was like he’d struck me with the mythical thunderbolt. I climbed into bed and he pulled the covers over me. Bending over, he kissed me on the forehead and murmured, “I’ll be two minutes.”
I lay there dazed and listened to the water of the shower flood on. The shame I’d felt earlier was chased away by the images of Bo flexing and turning in the shower, running his soapy hands over the hills and valleys made by his muscles. I thought of the light hair that dusted his upper chest and the darker trail that arrowed into his jeans. There was a large mark on his back that looked like a tattoo of a winged creature. I wanted to explore it with my fingers and tongue.
I was getting out of bed to get a glass of water to cool me down when Bo came out, shirtless with loose-fitting boxers hanging precariously off his hips. Those weren’t my boxers. The light briefly illuminated his fit body, from the wide shoulders to the tapered waist and his powerful thighs. Even his knees looked manly yet attractive. Who thinks knees are attractive?
We stared at each other, the sexual attraction arcing and rising between us like a living, palpable thing. Bo came over, draping the towel around his shoulders. His hand curled around the back of my neck and tilted my head upward.
“How’d you feel if I just held you tonight? No funny business.”
Oh, the idea of being held all night by Bo filled me with delight. This was the temptation that was too enticing to resist. Zzzzap goes the moth.
“Would that even be fair?” I asked.
He shook his head a couple of times, and I felt tiny drops of water flit across my skin like little fairy kisses. “AM, you don’t owe me anything. I want to be with you, but only so I can hold you. I’m wrung out from tonight.”
“The fight?” I asked, unsure of what had gotten to him.
“Right, the fight,” he said, but I think he meant something else. I wasn’t brave enough to ask. Instead, I ducked under his hand and moved backward on the bed, lifting the sheets in invitation.
Unspoken (The Woodlands) Page 10