She understood finishing that sentence was another thing that, thanks to his position, he couldn’t do, but Lila didn’t need him to finish. She heard him loud and clear. A lawyer on the outside looking in wouldn’t just go after the members of the football team. They would go after the school too.
She was skeptical. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know Julie.”
“I know you.”
“All the more reason for you to turn your back.”
He flinched.
She wondered how she still had the power to wound him. “I can’t afford an outside lawyer.”
“The outside help is just for show. I’ll handle it myself. I just need them there for appearances.”
“A lawyer for show costs money, too.”
“Lila, I know people. It’ll be pro bono.”
“Pro bono.” She had to smile. “Do you even know what those two words mean? Who are you right now?”
He sighed a defeated sigh.
“Pro bono. Put it in a sentence,” she demanded.
“Can you just shut the hell up for once? For two seconds? Please.”
She raised an eyebrow. As always, coming from him, the word please sounded much more like an order than a request. She crossed her arms over her chest.
He watched her from under his eyes. “We got a deal?”
She blinked slowly, knowing there was no way she could turn down his offer.
“We’ve definitely got a deal, Jack Almeida.”
--
The next morning in her office, Lila’s seven-chair circle had dwindled down to three.
“Do you remember any of the events that occurred before you entered the bedroom at the party that night?”
Julie scoffed at the question and rolled her eyes.
Jack held his hands out from where he sat on the edge of his chair, wondering what about the question he’d just asked was eye roll worthy. They were half an hour in, and the pad in his lap was still empty.
Julie cringed across their three-chair circle, held his eyes, and then made a disgusted sound.
Jack blinked slowly, looking bored to death. “I can’t help you if you won’t help me.”
“Look at you,” Julie spat, eyes running along his body, his long limbs. He’d come to Lila’s office a little late that morning, having gotten held up in an early meeting, and Julie hadn’t let up on the lion’s grip she’d had on his balls since. “You look just like them. The pieces of shit that raped me. Some uppity, buttoned-up, pretty boy asshole that thinks he knows better than everybody else. Wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve forced yourself up inside a few girls in your time. I bet you’re just like all the others.”
Jack was unmoved. “As much fun as this is, it’s unfortunately not getting us anywhere.” He said it again. “I can’t help you if you won’t help me.”
“I can’t help you if you won’t help me,” Julie mimicked. “What the fuck does that even mean? You sound like a bad self-help book.”
“Julie.” Lila finally jumped in from where she sat in the third chair of the circle. “Jack is on your side, and trust me, that’s where you want him. He’s a brilliant lawyer. One who’s taking a pretty serious risk being in this office with us, at all.”
Jack’s eyes moved to Lila, and grew softer in moments.
Lila didn’t notice. “You should listen to him,” she said to Julie.
“Like hell he’s on my side. He doesn’t give a fuck. He’s here because he’s trying to figure out a way up your skirt, just like every other dick swinging on this campus. Or maybe he already has. Are you screwing this one, too, Professor James? Good god do you get around!” Julie’s eyes flew to Jack. “You know she’s had your brother too, right?”
Jack licked his lips, smirking down at the files in his lap.
Lila pressed her head into her hands. She really wanted to help Julie. The young girl was struggling tremendously, but she’d just cracked open a shit can that Lila herself hadn’t even figured out how to close, and it stunk.
Julie rolled her eyes. “Fuck this,” she grumbled, snatching up her bag and storming out.
Lila watched her go, looking to Jack in embarrassment when the door slammed closed behind her.
“Found yourself a real ray of sunshine there,” Jack said, sitting up tall.
“She’s hurt. Angry. Probably traumatized.” Lila stood from her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’ll come around.”
Jack began putting away his things. “It’s nice to know Harvard hasn’t changed. Still crawling with self-righteous little shit-bags who think they know everything.”
“Sounds like someone I know,” she smiled his way.
He took the blow. “Yeah? Likewise.”
She looked away from him, once more, fighting a smile as she crossed the room. Her heels clicked to a stop in front of the window.
He watched her move, slinging his briefcase over his shoulder. “I was actually relieved when she finally stormed out. I knew it was coming. It just took her longer to get there than I’d planned.”
She stared out the window. The cheerleaders were having practice on the field again, but this time, none of them had those disgusting t-shirts on. “She’s improving. It used to be a meltdown every minute. Now we’re down to one a day.”
“She’s a hell of an actress.”
Lila’s eyes snapped to him. “Excuse me?”
“Lila, I’m sorry, but I can’t help her.”
“Why the hell not?”
Jack took in her distressed face, and looked toward the door with a deep breath. When he looked back at her, his eyes were faint with regret. “Because she’s lying.”
“Come again?”
“She’s lying, Lila.”
“How can you say that? Jesus, Jack.”
“Confronting, rebuking, and then deflecting. I’ve seen this movie a hundred times, Lila. I’ll give you three guesses how it ends.”
Lila was hurt, wounded. It showed on her face. “Jack, not you, too.”
“Look, I’m not exactly on a one-man crusade to save every victim of rape in this country, but I’m also not desensitized to the difficulty of going public with something like this. I was willing to help her when I thought she was telling the truth, but she is not. And while she’s out here lying her ass off, playing her part, she’s putting both our jobs on the line.”
“Why the hell would she lie about this, Jack?”
“Why not?” He smiled. “People lie. Accept that truth, and watch how fast the world around you changes. How quick the movie takes an unexpected turn. Not everyone has the energy to be inherently good, or righteous. The real truth is in the bad. Most of the time, people are really, really bad. Not the other way around.”
“So now Julie is no longer a victim, but a liar, who is inherently bad?”
He sighed, holding his arms out at his sides in surrender. “Aren’t we all?”
Lila rolled her eyes.
“Lila. I know when someone is lying to me.”
His words held many different meanings. So much so that Lila visibly readjusted her stance. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter that you won’t help her. I think she called it a day for us, anyway.” Lila kept her arms crossed over her chest as he moved toward the door. “And Jack?”
He stopped at the door, hand on the handle, and turned to her.
“I believe most people are inherently good. Not the other way around.” She shook her head, taking in his pompous smile, looking like he was in on a secret she never would be. “I’m not giving up. But if you won’t help her, at least keep an ear out for me, would you? Watch my back.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “I wouldn’t know how else to be.”
“Thank you.”
He turned the handle of the door.
“Tell Chase I said hi,” he called, as he opened it.
Lila’s smile vanished. She went to say something, but he’d closed the door behind him before she could.
14
He tugged her bottom lip between his teeth, wet it with his tongue, and then moved to the top lip, giving it the same slow, tender attentions.
Everything outside of that garage, that car, completely faded for Lila. He was the only human being alive that could make the rest of the world wash away.
With a small smile, eyes fluttered shut, she whirled her tongue with his.
He leaned over the gearshift the moment the kiss grew wet, desperate for more. He pushed in deeper, covering her mouth with his, holding the back of her head as he took her.
Lila was the first to pull away.
His eyes remained closed, still holding her head close, still lost in a dream, continuing to place soft kisses on her lips.
Her eyes cut to the clock on the console.
“We’ve officially… Been making out… In this car… For an hour.” She couldn’t finish a full sentence passed his roving lips.
He cupped her jaw in both hands, demanding her full attention as he savored her.
“You make me… Feel… Like I’m sixteen, again.”
At those words, Chase finally pulled away, lips smacking their disagreement in his retreat. His stormy eyes searched hers.
Lila’s eyes fell to his lap. His sweats were so tented with his arousal that it nearly touched the bottom of the steering wheel. She licked her lips at the sight.
He noticed, pushing her hair back from her face. He wanted to see her, seeing him. What she did to him. “I make you feel sixteen, huh?”
“Mmm.... Amongst many other things.”
“Isn’t that when your P.E. teacher bent you over for the first time? When you were sixteen?”
“He was my English teacher.” Her hands traveled his body, from his collarbones to his abs, moving over every hard ridge, while avoiding the hardest of all. “And, yes, I was sixteen when he finally bent me over.”
He laughed with her, pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “I was thinking about that the other day. About you having an affair with your teacher.”
Lila licked her lips, eyes racing back to his lap. Her mouth filled with saliva, yearning to pull the waistband of those sweats down and taste him. Sample his cum. Peel him apart, one lick and suck at a time, until he was screaming out his release.
“Is that why you care so much about fighting for Julie? Why you’re willing to put your promotion on the line? You care enough about that promotion to hide us away in your garage, but not enough to sit quietly while the university brushes Julie off. Maybe you see yourself in her.”
“Josh didn’t rape me,” Lila protested. “Maybe some people would see it that way, but I don’t. I really was in love with him.”
His fingers ran the length of her hair, moved down her neck, and lingered in the deep v of her blouse, fluttering against the dark line her plump breasts made. “Maybe you were afraid not to love him. Afraid of what it would mean, and that’s why what Julie is going through means this much to you.”
A long silence passed, and Lila was surprised when her eyes filled with tears. “Josh never hurt me, but maybe he lived at the end of a different channel of hurt. One that I’d experienced long before him.”
“Tell me,” Chase said.
Her frown moved into a smile as her eyes fell to his lips. “Kiss me.”
“No. Talk to me.”
Her eyes rose back to his, and she reached up and cupped his cheeks.
He zeroed in on the delicate gold necklace around her neck.
They both covered the golden dove at the same time, meeting eyes once more. It was the necklace Lila’s younger sister, Danielle, had given her before she’d committed suicide. She’d been sixteen at the time.
“That girl in Harvard Yard jumped. She jumped the same way Danni jumped. In a public place, in her bra and panties…” Lila said. “I don’t know the reason my baby sister jumped. I just know that she did, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could’ve done to stop it. I didn’t even see it coming.”
Chase nodded. “That’s your trigger. Kids that are hurting, but too scared to say it. That’s always been your trigger. Maybe it’s because there’s still a lot of things you’re still too scared to say.” Chase licked his lips. “Did somebody hurt you, Lila?” He didn’t wait for the answer because he already knew it. Even if she never told him, he already knew. “Were you very young?”
Lila moved her hand to the chest of his t-shirt, watching as it covered his heart. She didn’t answer. “I’m willing to put my promotion on the line to fight for Julie, and not for us, because I know that you’re not going to go leap off the edge of some building, just because you have to wait a little while longer for me.”
“Trust me, if I were going to, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Girls like Julie? They can’t wait.”
“What about you?” he pressed on, even as she continued dodging him, keeping his fingers tinkering the dove as her soft hands returned to massaging his face. “How long are you going to wait?”
“What am I waiting for?”
“You tell me.” His eyes went to her lips. “Call me crazy, but I doubt there were any faculty like you walking the halls of the Remington School for Girls when your English teacher was bending you over his desk. Even if you had convinced yourself it was love.”
Her eyes searched his. “The same way you’ve convinced yourself it’s love?”
His face fell. “That’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You and I?” His voice rose, he became defensive. “No. You and I are not the same as you and Josh.”
“How are we different?”
“How aren’t we?”
She noticed he was deflecting, but she wasn’t letting him off the hook. “How am I different from Josh, or the guys who hurt Julie, or whatever monster drove that poor girl to leap to her death? How am I any different from them, making out with a freshman in my garage?”
“Sophomore in two months.”
“That’s not the point, Chase. You need to be free to enjoy your life, but here I am, stifling you. You haven’t even entered your twenties, and I’ve almost finished mine. You need to be free.”
He cupped her cheeks. “Being with you has freed me. Do you know when I was in shackles? Back in New York, when I couldn’t touch you. When I was sure my brother would kill himself working to make sure I never did. That was when I was in chains, Lila.” He leaned in and kissed her, pulling away with effort. “This is freedom. Just this. Me and you. I told you I would wait for you for the rest of my life, and I meant it.”
She sighed.
“But I hope to god you won’t ask me to,” he added, smiling.
She leaned over and matched his kiss with one of her own, grinning when he stole a few more.
“All I want to do is take care of you,” he said. “No matter what happens, I’ll always take care of you. Let me. Talk to me.”
A long silence moved between them, but their eyes never wavered from each other.
“You can’t chase away my monsters,” she whispered.
His eyebrows pulled. “Why not? You’ve been chasing mine away since I was thirteen. Since the second I laid eyes on you.”
She bent across the gearshift and covered his lips with hers, allowing them to linger just long enough to make her intensions clear. She pulled back only an inch, and looked up at him.
His eyes had fallen closed, conversation forgotten, as he was now back inside that beautiful dream running in his head.
She kissed him, once more, just to let him know it wasn’t a dream. It was real. Everything she was feeling, that she’d been feeling for a long time before then, was real. The sound of his moan coming alive between their lips was almost indiscernible, but she heard it. Her lips left his with a soft smack. She pulled away, leaving the tiniest whisper of space, taking in his face.
His eyes were watching her intensely, rife with a mixture of confusion and ecstasy.
“You
do take care of me. You always have.” She answered the unasked question on his face. She leaned in for more of his lips, already addicted to his taste. Her mouth dropped in surprise when he pulled back ever so slightly, denying her. She immediately reached up and cupped his cheeks.
He took her wrists in his hands, his eyes growing soft.
“I want to take you out.” He swallowed hard. “On a real date. I want to drive out of the state, far away from here, to a place where we don’t have to hide. Just you, me…” He motioned between them. “This. I want to hold your hand outside of this house. I want to look at you across a table without you looking over your shoulder every five seconds.” He swallowed. “Grams has a beach house in Portland. It’s about a two-hour drive from here.”
A smile replaced the worried frown on her face.
“Okay.” She blushed.
Chase had never seen a more beautiful sight, and he pulled back, once more, when she went for his lips again. His entire body rolled with chills. Denying her took every inch of will he had, but he wanted to do this right. He needed to do this right.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” He started his truck. “Can you open the garage door for me on your way inside?”
“Well, I--” Lila faltered at his abruptness, the engine shaking the seat under her. “Do you want to come inside for a little while?”
Chase took the steering in a death grip as he watched her. He recognized the carnal expression on her face instantly. He knew the darkness that swept across those big brown eyes when she wanted to fuck better than he knew his own name. He’d watched her bestow that look upon many men, most of them unworthy of her, each one hitting him a little harder than the last. He’d watched her give it to his own brother, dreaming of the day when she’d look at him that way--like she wanted to do unspeakable things to him, let him inside, make him cum. He immediately grew harder in his sweats. It was almost unbearable, how badly he wanted to do the same to her, but it had to be right.
Thunder Rolls (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy Book 2) Page 20