My dad sighed. “Lo, just keep in mind how ugly this can get. You know the tabloids will dredge up whatever they can, and speculation can get pretty messy. You need to be sure you know everything you can about this Jase guy if you’re going to get into a relationship with him. I would hate to see you blindsided by his past.”
“Dad, he’s twenty. He doesn’t have a past.”
“Logan, he’s a Hollywood actor. He has a past of some kind.”
I didn’t say anything. I just let what he was telling me sink in. I, of course, had nothing to hide, but what if Jase did?
“Baby, please be careful,” my dad said then, his tone softening to one that reminded me of my childhood.
His cautions came from a good place. I knew that.
“I will, Dad. I promise.”
“Good. Now, will I get to meet him when I come visit you for Family Weekend?”
I laughed. I knew he wasn’t thrilled that I was dating someone so high-profile, but at least he was playing along and saying what I wanted to hear. I knew that once he met Jase he’d think the world of him, just like I did, and everything would be fine.
“If we’re still together by then, absolutely. We can all go to dinner or something.”
I hope we’ll still be together by then.
“Alright, it’s a plan. Now tell me all about school and how much you love USC.”
I smiled. That was a much easier subject to entertain.
***
Later that day, I met Ethan for lunch on campus, and I quickly found myself wishing I’d just stayed home. I was fresh off a phone call to Jase in which I’d told him about the articles and my dad’s reaction to them. He didn’t seem worried, so that helped me to keep things in perspective, although I was starting to freak out just a little, and I think he could tell. I kept thinking about the gravity of the situation and just how far the reach of the Internet extended.
It was unnerving to have your life displayed without your permission. Jase was used to it, but I wasn’t. But then he said some of the sweetest things, and I knew instantly that everything would be okay. I wasn’t dealing with any of this alone. I had Jase, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Everything would be fine.
“Take care, beautiful,” he said, right before he hung up, so of course when I met up with Ethan, I was all giddy and smiley and feeling all gooey inside.
Ethan could instantly tell something was up.
“You’re, like, glowing. Why are you glowing?” he asked skeptically, as I slid into the seat across from him with my food.
“I’m glowing?” I questioned, unable to hide my smile, as I took a French fry off of his tray.
“Yeah, you’re all smiley and flushed, and your eyes are all glazed over. Are you high?”
My mouth dropped open, and I grabbed another French fry and threw it at him. “I am not high, Ethan! I just had a date last night, that’s all,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, forcing the smile from my face.
“And what time did said date end?” he asked teasingly, seeing right through me.
“When he dropped me off at my dorm this morning,” I said with just a side of mocking, but I was seriously unable to hide the grin that had crept onto my face yet again as I thought about my perfect date with Jase the night before.
He’d actually cooked me dinner, which he was extremely proud of, as I sat, drank wine, and watched him show off his skills. I had no skills of my own in the kitchen, so I was extra impressed as he flipped and sautéed and stirred. And that was all before I actually got to taste what he’d made. It was delicious, and I seriously wondered at that point if he had any flaws.
After dinner we snuggled on one of the big couches in his entertainment room and watched two movies before I fell asleep with my head on his lap. Jase had fully intended to drive me home after he woke me up, but as we were walking to the front door, instead of turning left, I turned right and pulled him into his magical bedroom where we proceeded to do unmentionable things to each other for the next two hours.
When I saw that it was getting really late, I’d told him I was ready to go, but he’d looped his arms around my waist, pulled me back against his chest and asked me to stay the night.
So I spent the night with Jase Brady, snuggled in his arms and probably had the best night’s sleep I’d had since I moved to L.A. In the morning, we slept in and he started to make me breakfast, then burned breakfast because I distracted him, and then he started all over making me crepes filled with strawberries and whipped cream. Talk about romantic!
Then I decided that as much as I wanted to spend all day lounging on his couch and making out with him, I knew I had to put some distance between us. Things were progressing really fast, and I knew neither of us was mentally ready for that.
So Jase drove me home, kissed me sweetly, told me he’d call me later, and quite possibly the best date I’d ever had, came to an end.
“Okay, so who is this guy?” Ethan asked, turning on his big brother defenses.
“No one,” I said, picking up a cucumber from my salad and taking a bite. He was going to be a buzz kill on my good mood, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
“Bullshit. You have never once since I’ve known you stayed out all night with a guy. He means something to you, but you don’t want to admit it.”
Yeah, he’s starting to mean a whole lot to me, but you hate him, so I’m not telling.
“Just let it go, E.”
“No,” he said, crossing his arms. “You’re like my sister, and I won’t have you sleeping with some guy who might not be a good person.”
“Why do you think he’s not a good person?” I demanded.
“Because you won’t tell me who he is, so that means he’s someone you’re embarrassed to be with. Why? Is it because he’s an asshole, or is he in some unsavory line of work? He’s not Garrett’s dealer is he?”
“What? No! Wait. Garrett has a dealer?”
Ethan looked at me like I was nuts. “Yeah, but just for weed. He’s not into the harder stuff.”
“Huh, I never knew,” I said, focusing my attention on my salad. Maybe now that we’d moved on to a different topic, I hoped Ethan would let the subject of my love life drop.
“So, who’s the guy, Lo?” he asked pointedly.
So much for dropping the subject.
“I don’t want to tell you,” I mumbled.
It wasn’t like he wouldn’t find out. The picture of Jase and me coming out of his mother’s café from earlier in the week was for sure to be in Celebrity Weekly’s next issue. I doubted we’d make the cover, but we’d be in there.
“Why not?” Ethan demanded.
I’d never kept anything from him before, and he hated that I was doing it now. I hated doing it, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice.
“Because you hate him,” I grumbled, knowing he’d figure it out.
“How do you know?”
“Because you told me – several times,” I spat, falling back against the back of my chair in a huff.
“What? Who did I tell you I . . . fuck! Logan!”
“What?” I asked, crossing my arms like a sullen teenager. I knew he’d figured it out, so I was bracing myself for a lecture.
“You’re fucking Jason Brady?!”
“Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “And no, I’m not fucking him, but I am dating him. There, are you happy?”
Of course, I was getting pretty close to fucking him, so I didn’t have a lot of room to talk. We were doing everything but, and I knew he was just waiting for me to give him the green light. And I was trying to psych myself up to take that step, although I was very close to giving in.
Ethan looked at me in astonishment. “No, I’m not happy. That guy’s an asshole.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s a really nice guy,” I insisted. “You don’t even know him.”
Ethan shook his head. “No, Lo, trust me on this. He’s a fucking dick.”
I didn’t say anything. I just loo
ked away and ignored Ethan and his self-righteous attitude toward the best guy I’d met in years.
“I like him,” I said defiantly, “and I plan to continue seeing him, regardless of your petty high school feelings toward him. He’s a really great guy.”
“He’s a rapist,” Ethan hissed, and I almost didn’t catch what he said.
My head snapped back toward him, and I leaned forward, my heart now pounding in my chest in the way you didn’t want it to be pounding. “What did you say?”
“He’s a rapist,” Ethan said again, keeping his voice to a whisper. “When he was a junior in high school, he and some of his friends gang-raped a girl at a party.”
“Bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. No way was that true. Jase hadn’t once tried to pressure me into anything when we’d hung out, and it would have been pretty easy for him to do that. “There is no way that’s true, Ethan. He’s not that kind of guy.”
Ethan gave me a pointed look. “How long have you known him, Logan? A month? Do you really think you can know for sure that he’s a good guy?”
I shook my head, refusing to believe what he was telling me.
“If it was true, the papers would have printed it, and he wouldn’t be the mega-star that he is today. There’s no way something like that wouldn’t get out. You have your facts wrong.”
Please, God, let his facts be wrong.
“I know he was arrested, along with four other guys, but they only found DNA evidence from two of them. The others three guys, including Jase, had good lawyers, so they weren’t charged with anything, and everything sort got covered up.”
“Then how do you know so much about it?” I snapped, crossing my arms and glaring at him. “Were you there?”
Ethan narrowed his eyes at me. “No, I wasn’t there, Logan, but a friend of mine was dating the girl who was raped, so I knew what was happening during the investigation. And he saw Jase coming out of her room right around the time the rape supposedly happened. If that’s not proof, I don’t know what is.”
I fought back the taste of vomit in my mouth, not wanting to think about what it must have been like for that poor girl. Being raped by five guys. I shivered at the thought. No way Jase could have been involved in something like that.
“Did the girl name him as one of the guys who was involved?”
Ethan shook his head. “She was drugged. She couldn’t remember anything about the guys, but her boyfriend rolled over on Jase, and then the guys who they found the DNA evidence from rolled over on the other two. Jase was pretty good friends with two of the guys involved.”
I sucked in a deep breath, trying to find a reason to acquit Jase in my mind.
“Just because he was there doesn’t mean he did anything,” I reasoned, but even as I said it, it sounded weak.
“Well, even if he didn’t do anything, he didn’t stop the other guys from doing it either. What kind of decent guy leaves an innocent girl tied up while his friends take turns raping her?”
Yeah, that’s exactly what I’d been thinking.
My stomach started churning at the images Ethan was drilling into my head, but what was worse, was he was putting Jase right in the center of them.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. “I don’t believe you,” I said through gritted teeth, feeling like I was on the verge of tears.
“Believe what you want, but I trust the guy who saw Jase come out of her room much more than I’d ever trust Jase. He was always an asshole, and he always treated girls like shit, but this was so much worse. They destroyed her, Lo.”
“Stop it,” I said through gritted teeth, fighting back the urge to let the tears fall. I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat.
“Lo, you know it’s true. I wouldn’t lie about something like this. I can tell you like him, but he’s just not a good guy.”
“No,” I said hoarsely, refusing to believe what he was telling me, but the doubt was starting to form in the back of my mind. I knew Ethan wouldn’t lie to me. “Jase wouldn’t do something like that.”
I was shaking my head back and forth infinitely, hoping it would suddenly change what Ethan had just revealed. It couldn’t be true.
I didn’t want it to be true.
No, it wasn’t true.
But I knew in the back of my mind that I was wrong, and I’d just learned something that would erase everything good between Jase and me, every sweet thing he’d done or said and all the things I liked about him. I couldn’t let something like that go, and because of that, I knew I’d have to let him go.
“Lo, he dropped out of school right after it happened,” Ethan said, hitting the final nail in the coffin. “If that’s not a guilty conscience, then I don’t know what is.”
“Screw you,” I said, pushing back from the table and away from Ethan. I was suddenly so pissed off at him that I just needed to not look at him anymore.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he called after me, as I marched toward my dorm, fighting the tears that had started to prick the backs of my eyes.
I hated him.
I absolutely hated him. And when I said that, I wasn’t sure which guy I was actually talking about. I hated both of them. I hated Ethan for ruining something that had the potential to be so good. I hated that he’d told me, but more than that, I hated Jase for what he’d done.
It was amazing that I could go from falling headfirst for a guy to wishing I’d never met him in the span of five minutes, but Jase had raped a girl, or at the very least, he’d stood by while his friends had raped a girl.
And that was inexcusable.
I shivered inadvertently at the thought, unable to wrap my head around what Ethan had said. It was so contradictory to the guy I knew so well, who I’d trusted, or who I’d apparently thought I knew and trusted.
Shit! Fuck! Dammit!
I wanted to hit something, but a brick building and my fist didn’t seem like a good combination. Maybe I could call Jase and ask him if it was true.
Maybe he would deny it.
But maybe he’d be lying.
God dammit!
I felt my eyes start to fill and did everything I could to hold back the tears threatening to fall. My chest ached and felt like it might split open. My stomach was roiling. It took everything in me not to double-over and start bawling in the middle of campus, but I waited until I burst into my room to let the tears finally fall and collapsed onto my bed, letting the door slam behind me.
My phone dinged, alerting me of a new text message. I figured it was Ethan, but when I looked at the caller ID, I saw Jase’s name, and I threw my phone against the wall, hoping it would break. I didn’t want Jase texting me again. I didn’t want him to call me and leave a message and then be subjected to hearing his voice.
I couldn’t talk to him.
I didn’t even want to see his name on my phone.
The idea of what he’d done made my stomach churn, and I pounded my fist against my pillow repeatedly and screamed into it. The sound was instantly muffled by the fabric, but it felt marginally good to get it out, even if it didn’t change things in the least.
I cried until my eyes burned and my stomach muscles ached, and all I could do was stare listlessly into the void, wishing I didn’t know now what I didn’t know an hour before when everything had been good and sweet and exciting. But most of all, I just wished it wasn’t true, because as blissful as ignorance was, it didn’t change the fact that the guy I’d spent last night with had raped a girl against her will.
Henley came home about thirty minutes after I did, and when she saw me lying on my bed, staring at nothing, she immediately rushed over.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, as she perched next to me and smoothed my hair back from my face.
“Everything,” I said, hugging my pillow as the tears started to fall again.
I’d just reeled them in when I started to remember things Jase had said to me the night before and
how vulnerable he’d been and how he’d opened up to me. I didn’t want him to have the past that he did. I wanted him to be the good guy that I had overwhelming feelings for, who I thought just might have the same feelings for me.
It wasn’t fair.
“I’m so stupid,” I blubbered through my tears. “I’m can’t believe I fell for him.”
“Who, sweetie? Jase?” Henley asked, as her hand made circles on my back.
“Yes,” I moaned, burying my head in the pillow again.
“Oh, my God! What happened? I thought everything was going so well?”
“It was,” I cried, and then I told her everything, not even caring if she knew. Screw Jase and screw his privacy. I wasn’t quite sure he deserved even that anymore.
Henley didn’t say a word as I recounted the story Ethan had told me. She just sat on my bed and held me as I cried and listened to me talk about how amazing I thought he was, and what an asshole he’d turned out to be. She was a fantastic listener and was exactly the friend I needed in that moment.
I felt my emotions ebb and flow as I ranted to her about what a complete jerk he was and cried so much my chest ached at the thought that I wouldn’t get to be in his arms again, and then I was pacing the floor, so mad that I could have kicked something.
And that was the moment Ethan practically beat down the door to our room.
Henley let him in, and he stood in front of me, eyes flashing and arms crossed in front of him. He was pissed, and I was pissed, but I suddenly didn’t care. I launched myself at my best friend, craving the support he’d offered for more than ten years as I fell apart once again.
“I’m so stupid,” I gushed, new tears falling down my cheeks. “I should have listened to you.”
“It’s okay, Lo,” he said, all of his anger gone, as he stroked my hair. “You didn’t know. I should have told you.”
“Ethan, are you sure it’s true?” I asked, looking up at his concerned face.
He nodded just enough to let me know he hadn’t been fabricating his story.
Then my phone rang, and all three of us looked over at it. From my vantage point, I could see it was Jase calling me. I hadn’t returned his text from earlier, so now he was calling. Apparently, and unfortunately, my phone survived its impact with the concrete wall. Stupid Otterbox.
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