Rites of Passage

by Catherine Gayle

  Everyone else was already making their way to their own cars, ignoring me like they’d mostly done in there, thank goodness. I wished he’d do the same. But he didn’t. If anything, he was moving closer, slowing down to match his long legs to my pace. I shot him a go-to-hell look, mostly because I was ridiculously attracted to him and his sexy eyes and his jagged scar on his neck, and I didn’t want to be. I didn’t have any business getting mixed up with anyone right now, and especially not with a hot-as-sin hockey player with brown eyes that made me want to do anything for him and biceps that made my toes curl.

  He shrugged. “We could sit and talk for a while.”

  Sit and talk for a while. Yeah, that was what he wanted from me. He wanted me to open up all my ugly wounds again and bleed out all over him. I’d almost done it in there, too, because he’d been looking at me like he actually cared.

  That was bullshit. No one cared.

  “I don’t want to talk.” Talking didn’t help, anyway. It only brought everything back to the forefront. Stifling me. Suffocating me. I was doing all of those things well enough on my own without trying to talk about it.

  The only reason I’d come to this stupid support group was because my doctors said if I didn’t make some sort of effort, they were going to shut me away in the loony bin again. That wouldn’t help anything, so I’d begrudgingly agreed to attend the meetings. Rick had let me keep my space in his shop after the first time I’d had to go to inpatient therapy, but I didn’t have any delusions that he’d hold on to it for me again. He might think of me as a daughter more than an apprentice, but he had to make money, too. And if a space in his tattoo shop was empty, he wasn’t making any money from it.

  So I’d come to this group, hoping I could sit in the back and pretend I was anywhere else, and then have the counselors sign off on my form to prove that I’d attended.

  Until that wiseass counselor had decided to drag me into the conversation, and I’d freaked out. I sure as hell didn’t need this guy trying to pull that shit with me on a one-on-one basis, and that was exactly what he was going for. I could tell from the way he kept staring at me with those deep, concerned eyes.

  I couldn’t deal, so I kept heading for my car.

  Drew walked a bit faster, his long legs making it easy for him to overtake me. Once he was in front of me, he turned around and walked backward so he could face me. Those big brown eyes pierced me. Gutted me. Christ, the way he had looked at me in that meeting had nearly made me tell him everything, and now he was trying that shit on me again.

  I had to get away from him. Now.

  I walked faster, doing my damnedest to ignore how hot he was when he was pretending to be a good guy who just wanted to help me out.

  He had to be pretending. I knew that with complete and utter certainty. Good guys didn’t exist anywhere other than in fiction, and no one could make up the shit I’d been through. If they did, no one would believe it.

  Well, for the most part, they didn’t exist. Rick was an anomaly—the one truly decent man I’d ever encountered. I wouldn’t bother trying to convince myself there could be more like him.

  “Then what do you want?” he asked.

  I shook my head. The man just didn’t get it. He thought that because he was some sexy pro athlete, he could get anything he wanted. That he could make the world a better place just with a snap of his fingers. And maybe that was how it worked in his world.

  I didn’t live in his world, though. In my world, life sucked and then you died. The sooner he came to understand that was how things worked for me, the sooner he would drop the good guy act and leave me the hell alone.

  “I want you out of my way,” I finally said.

  “Come on.” He cocked his head to the side. “Everyone wants something. What do you want?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Life had already proven to me time and again that what I wanted wasn’t important. I couldn’t have what I wanted. Not in any meaningful way. As soon as I got my fingers on it, whatever it might be, the universe ripped it away and stomped on me in the process, making sure to keep me down where I belonged. In the gutters. The sewers. Where all the shit and piss and everything else bad gathered. I was like a magnet for the shitty things in life.

  “Matters to me,” he said.

  “Bullshit. There’s no reason I should matter to you.” I clicked the button on my key fob to unlock my car doors.

  He swiveled his head around at the sound, then turned back to me and came to a stop. If I kept going, I’d run straight into him. I took the path to go around him, but he reached out and put a hand on my elbow—just enough of a touch for me to recognize it, but it stopped me in my tracks.

  I shot my head over to stare at him, those damned tears pricking at my eyes again. I glared in an effort to have my anger burn away the need to have a good sob fest. My chest rose and fell hard and fast from the effort to keep it all inside. That was the only way I felt safe anymore—when it was all bottled up inside me, nothing seeping out for the rest of the world to see. But it was getting more and more difficult to keep a lid on things. I was like a pressure cooker, ready to blow at the slightest provocation, and this guy was giving me more of that than was healthy for either of us. If he was smart, he’d back off.

  He didn’t move, not even with my death glare fully unleashed on him. I took a quick look around the parking lot. Everyone else who’d been in that meeting was already gone. There were still people in the building, though. I could go back in there and tell that London chick he was harassing me or something. She could call the cops for me. That’d probably be enough to get this Drew Nash character and his gorgeous, sexy, compassionate eyes to leave me the fuck alone.

  His eyes were dangerous for me. Mainly because I was falling headfirst into them.

  He put his hand back down at his side, making a visible show of not touching me without my permission. “You matter to me because I don’t think anyone should be alone when they’re…like this,” he finished, waving a hand to encompass me.

  “When they’re as clearly fucked up as I am, you mean.”

  “I’ve been there, too. And I had friends who wouldn’t stop bugging the shit out of me, even when I threatened to throat-punch them, when I was this messed up. But I get the sense that you don’t have anyone in your life like that right now.”

  “Which is how I want it.” I knew Rick cared, but he’d never been in my face about it.

  “I don’t buy that for a second. Maybe you think it’s better for you to be all alone, but it’s not. And somewhere, deep down, you don’t want to be alone. You want someone to come along and demand to be part of your life even when you do everything in your power to push them away.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know jack shit about me.”

  “Maybe not. Prove me wrong.” And then he stood there, looking all determined and helpful and caring and sexy, with his square jaw and that purple-pink scar on his neck. Despite myself, I wanted to know how he’d gotten that scar.

  “I don’t want to prove you wrong. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.” But the words came out strangled, like I was choking on them.

  “Then tell me what you want. Anything. Anything at all. And if I can make it happen, I will.”

  “You know what I want?” I said, without taking the necessary time to think things through. “For just once, I want to be able to feel good enough that I could forget how unfair life is, even if it’s only for five minutes. That’s what I want. But you can’t make that happen. No one can.”

  I should’ve just kept my mouth shut, because he looked like he wanted to settle in and keep me talking, now that I’d gotten started. “I don’t know.” Drew leaned against the hood of my car, making himself at home. He crossed his arms in front of him, crossed his ankles, totally relaxing. It made him look good enough to eat. “What makes you feel good?”

  You could, I thought to myself. Good thing I didn’t say it out loud. “Nothing,” I said, forcing mysel
f to look anywhere but at him. Because looking at him was getting me into trouble. It was leading me to say all sorts of things that were better left locked up inside me.

  “Nothing?” he repeated. Hell, he even had a sexy voice. It was deep and a bit scratchy, but there was a hint of laughter in it. I never found much to laugh about, so that was a complete turn-on. This guy was really bad news for me. “Not spring rainstorms? Puppies or kittens, maybe baby bunnies? Hot sex?”

  I whipped my head around at his mention of sex, but he immediately looked like he wanted to backtrack.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Sex could make me feel good,” I cut in. Temporarily, at least. For those few moments that it lasted, I could just let myself feel on a physical level and forget everything else that I’d bottled up inside.

  “I don’t— I wasn’t— I’m not trying to get you to do anyth—”

  “Sorry,” I cut in. “I wasn’t thinking.” Well, hell. I didn’t know much of anything about this guy other than the fact that he was doing a number on me just by existing and he’d been at this support group meeting. That wasn’t enough to know that he had HIV, though. Some of the people in there had just been friends and family of people with HIV. I shouldn’t jump to that conclusion. “I just assumed you had HIV, too, since you were in that meeting, but—”

  “I do have HIV,” he said, and I did a double take. “Got it from my ex. She was cheating on me.”

  “Oh.” And now I was back to thinking about sex with him again. And wanting it. I wanted it a hell of a lot more than was good for me.

  “I just don’t want you to think that I’m trying to get into your pants. Because I’m not. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Are you taking sex off the table?” I demanded. “Because think about it. How often will either of us ever be able to think about casual sex again? We don’t have to worry about infecting each other.” I shrugged, trying to convince myself that anything about this was casual, even though everything inside me was going haywire. I hadn’t had sex with anyone since I’d gotten the courage to leave Jax even though I didn’t have anywhere to go, and I definitely hadn’t had sex since I’d gotten the diagnosis.

  There weren’t too many people out there who wanted sex—casual or otherwise—with someone who was HIV-positive, and I wasn’t in any shape emotionally to get involved with someone for more than a fling or a one-night stand.

  The idea that I might be able to have a physical connection with someone, once it had gotten into my head, had quickly taken over all my thoughts. Now it looked like I was bound to be disappointed again. Just one more thing to add to my list of things about life that sucked. “If you’re not down—”

  “I didn’t say that,” Drew cut in. “It’s just… Are you sure? You don’t even know me.”

  And I didn’t intend to know him, either. Not the way he meant. I only wanted to know him for a night. Or an afternoon, I supposed. “You said if you could make it happen, you would. So are you a liar or what?”

  For a long minute, Drew stared at me with that piercing gaze. It went on so long that I rolled my eyes and made for my car door.

  But he put out a hand and grabbed hold of my elbow. Even that small touch was more than I’d had from another human in so long it almost choked me up again, but somehow I swallowed it down.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  If I couldn’t even handle this man taking hold of my elbow without nearly losing it, how the hell was I going to get through the sex I’d all but demanded of him? But now that it was within my grasp, I couldn’t pass it up.

  I nodded. “I’m coming.”

  He moved his hand down to take hold of mine, and I knew, without a doubt, that I was making a massive mistake.

  Damn if I did anything to stop myself, though. One more thing I could add to my list of mistakes I made when I was young and stupid. Of course, I wasn’t sure I’d live to see old and wise.

  WHEN WE PULLED up in front of my house in the Brookside neighborhood of Tulsa, Ravyn was clutching the double-folded strap of her purse so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. She hadn’t said much the whole way back to my house, and now I was starting to think she’d changed her mind about coming back to my place, after all. I probably shouldn’t have gone along with her suggestion so readily, but she’d finally started talking to me a bit and I’d been willing to go along with almost anything if it meant learning more about who she was and why she was so nervous.

  Besides, she had a point about casual sex. I hadn’t dated at all in the two years since my divorce. I’d come a long way in terms of accepting my new lot in life as far as how living with HIV affected me, but I hadn’t made any strides at all in the direction of determining what sort of woman would be willing to risk contracting it in order to have a relationship with me. Most of the other attendees of the support group were either gay or already in relationships, so Ravyn was my best option—at least in the short term.

  So, other than a somewhat protracted moment of hesitation, I hadn’t thought twice about it once she’d thrown the idea out there.

  Probably a bad idea, and I knew it, but I hadn’t listened to my gut. Sex wasn’t the answer for anything. I should know. It hadn’t fixed my marriage. If anything, it had put the final nail in the coffin.

  I put the car in park in the driveway and faced Ravyn. “I’m sorry. This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Are you seriously trying to back out of this again?” she demanded, eyes flashing blue fire. “If you’re not into me, just say so and take me back so I can get in my car and go home, all right? I seriously don’t need this kind of blow to my ego right now, so—”

  “I didn’t say I’m not into you.”

  She scowled and raised a brow. “You didn’t say you are, either. Which is fine. I get it. The tattoos. The purple dreads. We won’t even mention the piercings. I completely understand that I’m not everyone’s—”

  “I’m into you,” I interrupted, my curiosity piqued by her mention of piercings.

  I gave her another once-over. She had a couple of piercings in each ear, but nothing too shocking or surprising. They were all I could see, so I could only imagine she had other piercings hidden in places her clothes kept covered.

  “I am,” I insisted when she didn’t look convinced. I was a hell of a lot more into her than I understood, to be honest, so I could completely understand why she was so skeptical right now. Especially since I had to be coming across as hesitant. But my reluctance was only because I didn’t want to push her into something she didn’t want. “I just— You seem nervous. And why shouldn’t you? I mean, you don’t know me, so—”

  “I know what I want,” she cut in. Her lips were in a thin line, the hot pink of her lipstick seeming even brighter against her porcelain skin than it would on most of the overly tanned women around here. “I’m not having second thoughts or anything. That’s you.”

  If I was having second thoughts, it was only because she was acting like she’d rather be anywhere else. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure I don’t want to keep sitting here in your driveway with all your neighbors looking at me.”

  At that, I blinked in surprise and took a quick glance around. No one was out and about. It was a Tuesday around lunchtime. Almost everyone who lived near me was at work. There weren’t any cars on the street or people walking their dogs on the sidewalk. “No one’s looking,” I pointed out.

  “Not where you can see them, no.” She rolled her eyes. “But I promise, they’ll notice some chick with purple dreads and piercings and tattoos lurking around outside your house. People like me aren’t welcome in neighborhoods like this. So can we go inside or something? Or just take me back to my car, because they’ll probably call the cops soon.”

  “But you’re with me,” I said. It was true, she didn’t exactly look like the upper-middle-class suburban housewives of my neighborhood, who wore designer yoga pants to walk their toy-size
d dogs, but that was no good reason for anyone to call the police.

  My argument fell on deaf ears. Ravyn tightened her grip on her purse and wrapped her arms across her chest.

  Fuck me, this wasn’t going well. I hit the button on my remote to raise the garage door, making sure to close it again once I had the car parked inside. “Come on,” I said, waiting for Ravyn to come around the front of my car to join me. I held out a hand for her, but she kept hugging her purse to her body instead of reaching for me.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. Something told me nothing involving Ravyn would be easy. Maybe that was why I was so intrigued. I’d never been one to pass up a challenge. It wasn’t in my nature.

  I led her inside and headed for the kitchen, making a beeline for the fridge. “You hungry?” I asked. “Or need a drink? I don’t have anything with sugar in it, but I’ve got some cold water in the fridge. Not much of a cook, but I can put together a sandwich easy enough. Or I have some chicken I could toss on the grill…” I took out a couple of bottles of water, popping one open for myself and taking a swig.

  She didn’t answer right away, so I turned around to find her checking out the open kitchen and living room in obvious awe. It was a big house, to be sure, but it wasn’t like I lived in a mansion, so I wasn’t sure what the fascination was. I made a good living from playing hockey, and my lawyer had managed to reduce Chelsea’s alimony award due to the fact that her cheating had brought HIV into our marriage—something she and I would both have to live with for the rest of our lives—so she hadn’t walked away with too much of my earnings. But no matter how nice my house was, it wasn’t anything to gawk at. Or at least I didn’t think it was. Maybe in Ravyn’s world, things were significantly different.