by Liv Bennett
He can’t be a murderer, can he? He can’t be plotting the death of young women. He helped me out on the highway and defended me against Max just because he’s a good man.
I hate doubts and dilemmas. If only I had proof of his involvement in my sister’s death beyond any doubt. Then perhaps, I could hold my heart back. But, right now, with so many uncertainties, I can’t control how I feel about him.
Fortunately, Austin picks a spot behind me, so I can focus on the workout although I have a suspicion he just wants to check out my butt. The thought makes me hot from the inside out. I can’t wrap my head around the change in my mood. Whereas I was fuming with anger toward him an hour ago, I’ve just turned into a soft kitten needing his caresses.
For a moment, I allow myself to pretend he has no connection to my sister’s death and likes me for me. I push out my buttocks a bit more while bending forward, standing, or squatting to give him what he wants.
Next time I look him in the face, the softness in his gaze is gone. His eyes are dark infernos when he looks at me, his expression harder like that of a wild animal. I take in a sharp breath of air and feel his desire hot on my skin as if he’s touching me everywhere. He’s got it bad, but I’m worse, practically a bitch in heat. My hormones are raging so badly I’m ready to put aside my suspicions of him.
This is how innocent girls fall for playboys. Hormones are like a virus corrupting a perfectly functioning piece of software.
Austin and I barely make it out the door at the end of the workout session. I grab his bag for him as he couldn’t care less about it. As soon as we’re outside, he pulls me into the small alley between the gym’s building and the one next door, pinning me against the cold wall, pressing his mouth against mine. As his tongue sneaks in to part my lips, his hands circle around my knees and lift me up, wrapping my legs around his hips.
He pushes his erection against my pussy, leaving no doubt about his lust for me. Beneath the flimsy fabric of my yoga pants and his shorts, I can feel him throb when he grinds against my pelvis, up and down, turning my insides into hot lava.
I moan into his mouth, hard, my voice cracking. This is so wrong and so fucking delicious.
He breaks the kiss, his lips still working, sucking the skin along my neck. His hands are palming my buttocks, squeezing them in rough strokes. His mouth reaches my ear, his hot breath tickling me. “You, me, my apartment.”
I swallow, my eyelids halfway down in my dreamy state. “I need to go back to my hotel. I need to get ready for work.”
“Fuck work. I need you alone and naked.”
Oh God! “I need to talk to you first.”
His gaze at me is one of disbelief as if asking me if I’m crazy.
“Please,” I whisper, and his mouth comes crashing down on mine. He sucks my lips as if he can’t get enough of me, his manhood rubbing my pussy with delectable strokes like he’s trying to change my mind.
I manage to pull back and get my feet down on the ground. He runs his fingers through his hair, trying to collect himself and failing miserably. Both of us breathless, we head for his car first so we can drop the bag with the sweater in it and grab his phone. Then, we take my car to drive to the hotel.
We practically race to the elevators in the hotel, pushing the buttons several times in our impatience. As soon as I close the door of my room, he reaches for the hem of my t-shirt, pulling it over my head and capturing my lips. His eyes turn wild at the sight of my breasts spilling out of my bra.
His hands immediately grip my hips to pull me toward him, our sweaty bodies smashing against each other, soft curves molding into hard muscles.
His erection is still as hard as steel. I’m half-naked, making out in my room with him. There’s only one direction this is going unless I stop it. “Austin, I need to tell you something.”
“Tell it to me when I’m inside of you.”
My eyes roll toward the back of their sockets. “Please.”
He steps back, practically dragging himself away from me as if it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. His breathing is labored and loud, and the sight of his muscles glistening with drops of sweat makes my head spin. “What, sweetie? What do you want to tell me?”
My cheeks blush as a wave of embarrassment washes over me. I move toward the bed and settle on its edge, my eyes flicking down to the floor. Even though I’m in just a bra and yoga pants, I don’t have the urge to cover up. Just the opposite, I want his eyes on me.
“I don’t know how to say this.” I feel like I’m admitting to a crime. My fingers are fidgeting in my lap. “I’ve never done this before.”
“What?” His voice comes out loud, thick with surprise. “Are you saying—”
I risk a glance up at his face, wincing. “Yeah, I’m a virgin.”
Ch 18
A Family Secret
My announcement stuns him. I can see the disbelief on his face, the questions forming in his head. Why? How? Aren’t you like twenty-five? Are you some kind of hermit? Have you never had the urge?
He clears his throat and swipes his hand through his hair, while his other hand is on his hip, his eyes on the ceiling, the walls, the floor, anywhere but on me.
He doesn’t hit me with endless questions, though. “I’m sorry. I probably scared you with my over-enthusiasm.”
“No, no, you didn’t.” I give him a shy smile. “I’m not scared.” At all, though I should be!
“I just didn’t think—”
“I know.” It’s as embarrassing for him as for me. Whenever I thought of my first time, I dreaded this moment more than the sex itself. Will he stop liking me now, think less of me? Does he expect me to explain why to him? Should I even try?
I dismiss the idea. He’ll think me crazy if I delve into my fear of abandonment, my trust issues, my difficulties in forming attachments, and my inability to love. I probably don’t need to say any of those things. The writing is on the wall. How many normal, emotionally-balanced girls at my age are virgins?
An urge to cry overwhelms me when I realize he’s probably trying to figure out a way to leave me now that he has a glimpse of who I really am. I’ll make it easy for him. “You can leave if you want. I won’t hold it against you.” Perhaps it’s best for both of us.
“What?” He’s taken aback. “Why? Do you want me to leave?”
“No. I didn’t say that.”
He walks over to the bed and settles right next to me, our hips and thighs pressed against each other. He faces me, sporting a playful grin. “I’m not gonna run away because you’re weird. I like weird. We just need to do it the right way. Slowly.”
He raises his hand up to my head, gently nudging it toward his shoulder, and caresses my hair with gentle strokes perhaps to reassure me he’ll stay in my life despite the massive emotional baggage I’m bringing with me.
My sense of people must be terribly off. Instead of fearful, I’m calm beside him despite knowing about his connection to two dead girls. He may very well be an ax murderer, and I’m resting my head on his shoulder without even a flinch.
“I need to shower,” he whispers. “Would you mind if I use your bathroom?”
“No, go ahead. I’ll go after you.”
He takes off his hoodie and pulls his t-shirt over his head, laying them both on a chair before heading to the shower. Damn that rock-hard body. He closes the door only halfway, and I hear him humming a melody.
I smile to myself, at the same time feeling clueless about how I’ll ever advance my investigation while being blindsided by my hormones. I shake my head. It’s not just my hormones. I like him. I really do have feelings for him.
My phone rings in my purse at that moment. Grabbing my purse off the floor, I walk back to my bed and check the screen of my phone. It’s an unknown number.
“Hello?” I answer without thinking twice.
“Is this Ashley Elwood?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kelly Somerville. We talked earlier this morni
ng.”
Ruby’s classmate from her Econ class! I almost drop my phone. I can’t believe she’s calling me after siccing her bodyguard on me. Trying my best not to sound overzealous, I reply to her as I run to the bathroom door to close it. “Hello, Kelly.”
“I’m sorry about earlier. My father is a politician, and I can’t get involved with a scandal.”
My shoulders sag in disappointment. Is she calling me just to apologize? “All right, I understand. I just thought you might know something about my sister. Her death…she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d kill herself.”
“Look, I can’t talk much. And you didn’t hear this from me, but something strange was going on with her.”
My heart leaps. “Like what?” I press the phone harder against my ear and hold my breath for fear of missing anything she has to say.
“She got sick, like very sick, and she didn’t know what was happening to her. Then she found out she was pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” I yell and cover my mouth instantly.
“The strange thing is she said she didn’t have sex with anyone. She swore she was a virgin. We did several home pregnancy tests, and they all came up positive. She was sure someone raped her, but she couldn’t figure out when or how it could have happened because she never drank or got high at parties with us. She was always our designated driver.”
My head is spinning from being bombarded with so much senseless information all at one time. Ruby never whispered a word about her pregnancy to any of us. She must have been scared to death, dealing with it all by herself. “When did this happen? When did she find out she was pregnant?”
“I need you to promise me you won’t tell anyone that you heard it from me.”
“Of course, I promise. I’ll never mention your name to anyone.”
“Okay, uh, she found out she was pregnant in late September. Her family doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. She kept vomiting, and someone bought her a pregnancy test as a joke. She looked like a ghost when she came out of the bathroom with a positive test result. She didn’t want it to go on her medical records, so I talked to my own doctor and got Ruby the medical abortion pill.” She pauses with a long exhale of breath. “She took the pill with me. I was with her all day long. That was October 2nd.”
“Oh, my God!” The day Ruby was found dead in her bathtub. I swallow the lump of shock sitting in my throat.
“It was painful, the abortion, I mean, but she looked fine otherwise. I only left because she was starting to feel better. She said so herself. She said she felt tired and wanted to sleep. I turned off the lights and left. I never imagined she’d try to kill herself. Ever.”
Either this is some cruel joke some psychopath daughter of a politician would make up, or it’s the truth. As horrifying as the details are, my heart is siding with the truth. Only atrocious circumstances could explain Ruby abruptly ending her life. Becoming pregnant from an incident of rape she wasn’t even aware of? What kind of nightmare was she going through?
Even so, a doubt lingers inside me. The puzzle isn’t complete yet. Some pieces are still missing.
“Why would she go for an abortion if she wanted to kill herself?” I ask the first question off the top of my head.
“That’s what I keep on asking myself, too. She wanted to put it behind her and move on with her life.” I hear a noise in the background. “All right, I gotta go. As I said, you didn’t hear this from me. I can’t get involved in this.”
I assure her one last time and thank her before disconnecting. My head is about to explode from the bomb she just set off. Ruby was raped, discovered she was pregnant, and aborted it, all within the last few weeks of her life.
Where was I at that time? If she’d had me in her life, a real sister she could have trusted and gotten help from…I wouldn’t have left her side that night. I would have stayed up the whole time taking care of her. I should have. I could have. She didn’t reach out to me with her problem. Maybe she didn’t even consider that option. Why would she? I was never a sister to her. I abandoned her before she was even born. I declared her an enemy, the root of all my problems.
She opened up to some girl she’d known for only two months, for Christ’s sake!
Now this shame, this painful feeling of guilt, will stay with me, follow me like my shadow wherever I go.
I storm to the closet and rummage through my suitcase to find the quilt Ruby made for me for Christmas. If I’d opened the door for her that day…if I had let her into my home, into my pitiful existence…if I had given her a glimpse of my miserable life…maybe we could have built a connection. We could have become true sisters. I’d have become someone she could have trusted in her darkest hours.
I don’t even deserve to own the quilt she sewed with her own hands, investing her precious time, pouring her love into each square. I’m dreadful.
A faint noise coming from the door makes my head turn. The green light on the handle beams before the door opens with a click.
I leap back in fear and the quilt slips from my hands to the floor, my eyes growing large at the sight of Tara and my father standing in the doorway.
“Oh, dear, sorry!” My father covers his eyes, and I realize I’m half naked with only a bra and yoga pants on. My heart slams hard against my chest when something else dawns on me.
“Dad, Tara, what are you doing here?” I mumble, hoping they won’t hear the water running in the shower.
Right then, the bathroom door flies open, and Austin walks out, hair wet, body naked except for a towel wrapped around his hips.
It looks bad. It looks horrible. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going through Tara’s head as she flicks her large eyes between Austin’s naked chest and me. My father’s hand comes slightly off his eyes, his face tightening with shock.
“What’s happening here?” Tara stalks in as if owning the place. The door closes with a bang, making me flinch.
“What’re you doing?” Tara’s hand flies in the air, finger pointing at Austin. “Is this why you never bothered to give us a call? Your father was worried something might have happened to you. Huh!”
She barks with sarcastic laughter. “You’re fucking around with some guy instead of doing what you promised us. Clint gave you one hundred thousand dollars so you could investigate Ruby’s death. I bought you a fucking phone because you complained about your old one. You didn’t even have the courtesy to tell us you stopped looking. We trusted you. We believed in you! You were our last hope to find out what happened to our daughter. Is that how you thank us for our generosity? Is this how you thank us for raising you and giving you a roof over your head?”
The shock of seeing them renders me speechless, especially right after the trauma of hearing what happened to Ruby in the last days leading up to her death.
Tara walks around me, eyeing me up and down my semi-naked body, degrading every inch of me with her shameful glare, making me feel like the piece of shit that I am. “You’re a cunt just like your mother. You’re actually worse than her. I regret having raised you. You’ve always been nothing but a problem.”
I can’t even look at my father’s face. He has one daughter left, and he probably wishes she’d died too.
“Get out!” Tara yells. “Get the fuck out of the room that we paid for.”
Austin moves over to pick up his hoodie. Instead of putting it on himself, he wraps it around me, shocking me anew. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but there seems to be a misunderstanding. This isn’t what it looks like. We weren’t doing anything.”
Tara doesn’t even spare a moment of consideration for Austin’s defense of me and grips me by my arm and shoves me toward the door. “I don’t care what you were doing. Just get the fuck out of our lives.”
I’m too shocked out of my skin to defend myself. What can I say anyway? Ruby got raped, got pregnant, and had an abortion. She couldn’t live with the guilt and killed herself? My father will have to come to terms with her death sooner or
later, but knowing the harsh details of Ruby’s last days will do nothing but inflict more pain on him. I’d rather look like a fraudulent opportunist than weigh him down with a heavier burden.
I nod, giving up. “Okay. I’m leaving.” I walk back into the room to grab Ruby’s quilt that slipped from my fingers and reach over to grab the t-shirt I had on during the workout, meanwhile Austin hurries to pick his clothes up off the chair.
Tara advances on me and yanks the quilt out of my hand. “Oh, no, you’re not taking my daughter’s quilt!”
“But, my sister gave it to me. It’s mine.” I can leave everything behind, the clothes, the purse, my IDs, but not the quilt. That’s the last thing I have of Ruby.
“No.” Tara shakes her head with a murderous glare on her face. “You don’t have a sister. We didn’t tell you the truth because we didn’t want to make you feel bad, but we’re not your family. Clint isn’t your father. Ruby isn’t your sister.”
I gasp. My head jerks back.
Tara bears her teeth, her eyes flinty, her voice deep and edged with fury when she says, “Your cunt of a mother lied to Clint about her pregnancy. She fucked some other guy and claimed Clint was your father. Clint and I go way back. We were engaged to be married. Your mother used to be my best friend. She was going to be my bridesmaid. But, what did she do? She got Clint drunk, lied about sleeping with him, and claimed she was pregnant with his child. Now that I’m thinking of it, you’re just like her. Get out of our lives. We don’t want to have anything to do with you. Just go!”
Coldness strikes my core, and I shake as if the floor has been pulled out from under my feet. Everything I knew, everything I believed, is a big, fat, agonizing lie. Ruby isn’t my sister. Clint isn’t my father.
Everything suddenly makes sense now. Clint withdrew his affection from me because he knew I wasn’t his biological daughter. I was just an imposition he couldn’t get rid of. He was my father only on the birth certificate, and he had to raise me because the law said so. That’s all.