“Ever notice that most of the students who are “so confused” at the end of class are of the male variety?”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying.” She crossed her arms over her chest as he approached her desk. She waited until he was on the other side, his pelvis pressing into the wood, to reach into her bag and produce his laptop. “I just wanted to return this to you.”
“I noticed the video was taken down.” He took it from her hands. “You showed it to Jack?”
“I showed it to legal.”
He smirked, shoving the computer into his bag. “So that’s why you’ve been so distracted.”
“I’m not distracted.”
“You are. You weren’t really here today.”
Her eyes searched his. If she’d been different today in class, he was certainly the one who would notice, since he was the only one of her students who gave her his unwavering attention.
“What are you thinking about?” He reached a long arm across the desk and tangled a piece of her hair between his fingers.
Lila turned away, moving towards the whiteboard. “The student who jumped in Harvard Yard yesterday? Wendy? The note she left behind said she was raped.” She picked up an eraser and went to work on the board, spending more time than necessary wiping away the words she’d written, long after it was clean. “She was put on a three-week wait list at the university’s Health Services Center. Three weeks, just to speak to someone face to face. She made the unbelievably brave decision to seek out help, someone to talk to, and they told her, three weeks.” She finally dropped the eraser and turned back to Chase, eyes moist. “I guess three weeks was three weeks too long.”
A frown had pulled between his eyebrows, green eyes filled with grief and understanding.
Lila fell back against the whiteboard, gripping the edge with one hand and her necklace with the other.
His eyes fell to the necklace, watching as she played it between her fingers.
“On top of that, three more girls came to my office this morning…” She didn’t finish.
Chase’s eyebrows raised, and he took a seat on the edge of her desk, watching her.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and her nails scraped at the whiteboard ledge. “They must have been spooked by what happened to Wendy. To Julie. It spurred them to look for help. They told me their stories about being raped on campus, hurt on campus. Some of them have kept quiet for years. They’ve been silenced, for years…”
Chase moved to her, and this time she didn’t run. He reached out and caught the first tear that fell from her eye with his thumb.
“They don’t want to go to the police, and the Mental Health Center has a waitlist? One girl that came to me said she was thinking of killing herself, and they referred her to a hospital ten miles away. She doesn’t even own a car, how the hell did they expect her to get there?” Lila shook her head against his hand as he cupped her cheek. “These girls can’t even turn to their own university.”
His eyes searched hers. “Lila, do you know the reason I brought Julie to you?”
She looked into his eyes and shook her head.
He released the piece of hair he’d reclaimed from his fingers, before running the back of them slowly along her jawline. “I brought her to you because you’re the only person in the world I know that could make her believe she was worth standing up for. Worth something. I knew that, because that’s exactly what you did for me when I was at the lowest point in my life. I believe that it’s what you’re destined to do. To breathe life into people who feel like there’s no hope left.”
Lila breathed deep. She begged for strength and feared she had none left.
Not when it came to him.
His gentle touch traveled her jaw, under her chin, then moved slowly down the front of her neck, lighting an electrical fire in each new place he touched. He watched those fingers as they traveled. “So maybe these girls don’t want to shout from the rooftops that someone hurt them. Maybe they just need to know that someone is willing to hear them. To know that they’re real. That they exist.”
Lila’s eyes searched his face. “You’re a brilliant, beautiful man; you know that?” Her eyes traveled to his lips.
His did the same to hers. “Why don’t you start something here like what you had back at Dalton? A place for students who’ve been hurt to come and spill their guts out?” he asked. “It’s summer. Most of the kids aren’t even on campus. If three girls have shown up to your office during summer session, in a little under a week, god only knows how many more of them are out there. You should do whatever it takes to be ready to break their fall.” His eyes fell to her lips. “The same way you broke mine.”
Chase had no idea, but with that one sentence, he changed Lila forever.
--
In what felt like a flash, Lila was sitting across the large oak desk of the Vice Provost for Diversity, Dr. Wanda Elyse, bobbing her legs up and down. Dr. Elyse had cocoa skin and a long gray Afro. Her age had begun to show in her brown eyes, but her look remained captivating, almost startling, in its beauty.
Referred to Elyse by Dean Perkins, Lila was surprised to find that the Vice Provost was also a black woman.
For a university forward thinking enough to have so many African American women in positions of power, it was amazing how far they were falling behind when it came to protecting the young women on campus.
Lila cleared her throat after they said their good mornings. “Thank you for seeing me today, Dr. Elyse. I wanted to sit down with you and quickly discuss some student resources I had in mind for the school. Though it might be ambitious, I’m dedicated to this, and if all goes according to plan, I’m hoping to have everything rolling by fall semester.” Lila sat a little taller, going over her planned speech in her head before powering on. “There’s no place for students who’ve experienced abuse on campus to receive help. They are all referred to help off campus, and that really needs to change.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. James. I must be misunderstanding you. The university does have an outlet for victims of abuse.”
Lila kept her voice level, even as her heart boomed to life. “No. The university has a department for Mental Health Services, and that department handles the entire student body. A department that has a three-week waiting list before these students are even face-to-face with an actual person, a department that will send these students to outside sources in a heartbeat. These students need inside sources.” She shook her head. “And I’m talking specifically about students who have experienced sexual abuse. Assault, harassment, rape. I have a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, and I worked as Associate Director of Counseling at The Dalton School in New York City for five years. I’ve worked directly with troubled kids. Nine times out of ten, they won’t go looking for help from a mental health counselor when they’ve been raped or abused because that would make them “crazy.” ” She put up finger quotes. “Of course, it would make them the farthest thing from crazy, but that’s just the way young kids think. They’ll be more likely to seek out help, and accept help, if there is an outlet streamlined towards what they’re going through. Students who are depressed have a direct outlet. Students who are addicted have a direct outlet. Why not students who are suffering from the residual damage that can result from sexual abuse?”
The provost raised her head, clasping her hands together. “That’s all well and good, Ms. James, but at the end of the day, we’re not running a women’s shelter here. We’re running a school.”
Lila counted to ten, and then decided to let that comment breeze right on by. “I looked into it. There’s an entire wing in The Health Services building that’s going unused. I think it would be the perfect place to open an office dedicated to sexual assault prevention. An office that will also hold bi-weekly meetings for students to come and talk when they’ve been put on a three week waitlist.”
Dr. Elyse shifted.
“It would also house a 24-Hour Emergency Abuse Hotline. I wou
ld want this organization to be announced campus wide, with information available in every common area, in the hands of every resident advisor, and on the bulletin boards of every lecture hall.” She swallowed when she saw the hardness in the provost’s eyes, but charged on. “I would be willing to run and fund the organization myself, but I wanted to run it by you first. I was thinking of calling it The Safe Space.” She took a hold of her necklace between shaky fingers, breathing deep.
“Okay, Lila, let me slow you down a little. Where is all of this coming from?”
“To be honest, it’s been on my mind for quite a while, and with the recent tragedy in Harvard Yard, I can no longer sit quietly. I recently had a girl come to me with her story of being raped. Her name is Julie. It was videotaped and spread all over campus. She’s devastated, and I worked hard to have the video removed.” Jack was the one who’d worked hard to have that video removed, but Lila knew better than to mention that. She was perfectly fine putting her name on the chopping block, but she wouldn’t do that to Jack. No matter how much she hated him. “Word must have gotten around, because more girls came to me, and then even more. In the last week, alone, I’ve had seven girls come to me telling me their stories of abuse on campus. Most of them heard about me through word of mouth, and they said they had nowhere else to go. They said they had nowhere else to go. I find that pretty disturbing, to say the absolute least, and it needs to change as soon as possible.”
“It’s not as easy as one, two, three, Ms. James. There are forms that need to be filled out--”
Lila slapped down the forms she’d been clutching in her hands since the beginning of the meeting. “Signed, sealed, delivered, and notarized. I went through all of the required documentation last night. It’s all there.”
Dr. Elyse didn’t even look at it. “It’s not just the documentation. An official request has to be made to the--”
Lila slammed down another piece of paper. She tapped her finger against the official request that was also signed, sealed and delivered. “I also have letters from several of the girls who’ve come to me. One of them is anonymous, but these are real students, who are really hurting, and they do not have a real outlet.”
“May I ask what it is that makes you so passionate about this?”
Lila let that question simmer. “Let’s just say that I can level with these girls in a way a lot of people can’t.”
Elyse raised her chin, understanding, before leaning forward on her desk. “Lila, you’re aware that the university just kicked off a very large, very public fundraising campaign…”
“Yes, I’m aware of the fundraising campaign.”
“Ten mil--”
“Million in potential funding, the largest any institution of higher learning has ever pursued.” Lila nodded. “I know all about it, but I have no idea what it has to do with any of this.”
“Awaiting this kind of funding puts the university in a fragile position. We can’t ruffle too many feathers. We can’t make too much noise.”
Lila listened with her mouth wide open, shocked when what Elyse was trying to say finally began to sink in.
“Politics are a sensitive subject for anyone, but when millions of dollars are on the line, sensitive can veer into explosive very quickly.”
Lila blinked rapidly. “And helping students who are victims of abuse is going to hurt Harvard’s reputation, how? Expanding on a Mental Health Services Department that is notoriously lacking is going to hurt Harvard’s reputation, how?” She was aware she was veering into a snarky territory, but hadn’t the control to stop herself. “If anything, taking these steps is going to make the university look ten times better. Acknowledging that you’ve failed these victims is not a weakness, it’s a strength.”
“In a perfect world. Yes. Maybe.”
Lila sat back, blown away by this conversation. It was occurring to her that not only was this proposal not going to get approved today, but that she was going to have to fight tooth and nail to get it approved, at all.
Dr. Elyse pressed her hands to her brown cheeks, sighing. “Ms. James, I’m on your side. I want to see you succeed. I want you to have a long, illustrious career here at Harvard. I want you to flourish here, and retire here.”
“I want all that, too,” Lila said. “And I want to be proud of my time at this school, but there’s no way I can hold my head up and be proud knowing this gaping black hole exists. It’s not as if I’m going to take this gaping hole to the Crimson and rip the school apart.” As Lila said those words, and as the reality of the situation slowly swooped down and engulfed her, she wondered if going to the school’s paper, The Harvard Crimson, with this proposal, would be the worst idea. She kept that thought to herself, still hoping she could find a way to sway the provost into her way of seeing things. “All I’m asking for is a place for them to come when they’ve been hurt and feel like they have nowhere else to turn.”
It was as if Dr. Elyse wasn’t hearing her. “Avoid the politics. At all costs. Just something to keep in the back of your mind while you consider all of your options.”
Lila wanted to laugh. What options? From what she’d gathered during this brief meeting, she had only two options. Sit down, and shut up.
She felt like she was in the middle of a bad mafia movie. Would she climb into bed later that night and find a horse’s head lying next to her pillow? At that point, she wouldn’t be surprised.
Lila shook her head in awe.
If Dr. Elyse was aware of Lila’s disapproval, she didn’t show it. Her face remained stoic. “We’re both black women in a highly competitive, highly Caucasian environment.”
In much the way Dean Perkins had, Dr. Elyse was opening up to Lila. Trying to connect with her. This time, it didn’t feel so special.
“Your review is also coming up quickly. You’re an excellent lecturer with a long road ahead of you. This is a fragile fork in that long road, and being a young black woman will only work to make that fork even more unstable than it already is. I’d advise you to tread carefully here, Ms. James.”
When the silence went on, Lila’s eyes finally blinked open.
She was speechless.
--
Chase sat on the edge of her desk after class the next day, his eyes following Lila as she paced in front of the whiteboard. Her heels clicked as she did.
With each moment that passed, his smile grew more.
Lila made claws as she moved back and forth. “I wanted to reach across that desk and slap the shit out of her.”
“That’s fair.”
“I can’t believe she would threaten me like that. God, I almost put in my fucking notice, right then and there. Then I realized, if I left, these poor kids really wouldn’t have a chance in hell. If Dr. Elyse thinks it’ll be that easy to silence Lila James, she’s got another think coming.”
“It’s sexy when you get angry like this,” Chase whispered. “Damn. Keep going.”
Lila continued to pace, barely listening to him. “It just makes you wonder how many girls have gone ignored at Harvard all of these years, too scared to say anything. How many girls have felt completely terrified and alone? With no one to turn to? There have probably been hundreds, Chase. Hundreds of girls who never came forward. At Harvard. Harvard! A place touted as the most forward thinking institution in the country. It’s a fucking outrage. This university is constantly on the verge of acquiring massive amounts of funding. If that’s reason enough for them to turn a blind eye when these students need help, god only knows how many blind eyes they’ve turned, how many shoes they’ve spat on, how many courageous young people they’ve turned away. They charge $60000 a year in tuition, have over 30 billion in endowments—none of which goes towards helping victims of sexual abuse, by the way—and they act like setting up real sexual prevention resources on campus is completely out of the question. What the hell are they waiting for? For another student to jump? It’s completely fucking unacceptable.”
Chase held his hands out. �
�You’re right.”
“I’ll be damned if I sit around and act like Harvard’s dutiful daughter while innocent girls are jumping to their deaths because their cries for help have gone ignored.” Lila slammed her hands on her hips, chest heaving.
His green eyes grew with adoration. “So what do you plan to do about it?”
Lila’s eyes met his, and her mind raced. Before she could respond, her phone rang to life.
Her purse sat on the desk next to Chase, on the opposite side of his body. She moved to him, reaching across his lap to grab the bag.
He took the bag in his hand as well, and didn’t release it. He held her eyes.
Lila froze, her breath catching. The current floating between them was calmer than normal, but she wasn’t fooled. It was the calm before the storm. If she lingered across his body any longer, with his hand over hers, and her tits in full view passed the neckline of her top, it was only a matter of seconds before that calm current blasted to life, when she least expected it.
Their live wire was never to be trusted.
She knew she should pull away before it zapped her, but she couldn’t.
Thankfully, he released her bag, eyes staying on hers even as she took several healthy steps away from him and turned her back. She took her phone from her bag, rushing to answer it before it got sent to voicemail.
““This is Lila James.” She turned toward him just in time to see Chase stand tall and make his way up to her. He ran his hands down his chest as he moved languidly, towering over her. She found herself wondering, for the millionth time it seemed, when he had gotten so tall, so strong.
The voice on the other line was a heaven sent distraction.
“Mom,” Lila cried out, her eyes widening.
Chase’s eyes widened, as well, a smile immediately coming to his face. “Alicia? Tell her I say hi.”
Lila wasn’t listening. “Mom, slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” She looked up and met Chase’s eyes.
Thunder Rolls (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy Book 2) Page 13