by Sharon Page
I try to be tough and pragmatic about things. The only way the guy will be caught is with clues. Again, channeling CSI. And the T.V. show Castle.
On the second day after the attack, I’m sitting with Jonathon at the coffee shop in the University Center. Lara is writing a mid-term, and Jonathon and I are waiting for her to finish so we can both take her back to Jonathon’s house. I’m supposed to be studying, but when I’ve read the same sentence six times, I give up.
“I keep trying to remember what happened,” I explain to Jonathon. “There had to be some clue I could give the cops and campus security. Some minute, insignificant clue that points directly to this guy.”
“You’ve done everything you can. Don’t torment yourself. I know what that’s like.”
But I feel I have an obligation—to myself and other women on campus—to get this guy caught.
That night my mother arrives, and I stay with her at the inn for a couple of days. It’s nice to be with her. Of course, we talk to campus security and the cops. Mom is angry with Yardley’s security, even though I keep explaining there wasn’t much they could do before I was attacked.
I also get interviewed by the local news media. Jonathon kept them away from me at first, but I agreed to do the interviews. I want to make sure other women know about the threat.
Posters get put up all over the campus, warning women to go to Security if they feel threatened, or if they receive strange messages. A description of the guy is put out over all local media, but given he wore a mask, I doubt that will lead to an arrest.
He’s out there.
Has he given up on me? Does he want to take another shot?
When my mother leaves, Jonathon sends his driver to take her and me to the nearest airport, so I can see her off. She’s so scared to go, I can tell. I promise her I will be careful.
I make her swear once more not to tell Ryan.
***
After three days at Jonathon’s, Lara and I return to our dorm room. I ask her if it’s okay. I’m afraid if I wait longer, I’ll never be able to go back. I’ll be trapped by fear. I know what it’s like to be aware of fear all the time. I used to be like that with my stepfather.
“I’m tired of being afraid,” I say to Jonathon, quietly, when he drops us off at the room to ensure we get there safely.
His brows tug down in concern. “Just be careful. I’ll take you anywhere on campus you want to go. At any time.”
“What about your classes?”
“Mia, do you really think they mean more to me than you do?”
The things he says break my heart. If I didn’t have Ryan, I think I would fall in love with Jonathon in a heartbeat.
Then he says, “If I find that guy, I don’t know if I’ll turn him over to the cops. I’d like to kill him.”
“God, Jonathon, no. I don’t want you going to prison.” I’m scared. He is like me, which means there is rage burning inside him. He told me he constantly fights to control it. What if he lets go of it?
“Promise me you won’t do that.” I touch his arm. “That scares me more than knowing the guy is out there. Please, please, promise me.”
My eyes are gazing into his, pleading. I know he wants to refuse to make the promise.
“Jonathon, I couldn’t live with that. God, that would destroy me to have you do that.”
He frowns. “I would never hurt you. I promise, Mia.”
Leaning down, he brushes a kiss to my forehead. It’s not a sexual kiss or romantic. I realize it as the gesture of a guy who is trying to hang on, and he’s found someone who understands what a struggle it is. It’s a mark of sharing, of friendship. When he steps back, I impulsively throw my arms around him and hug him. Then I let him turn away and leave.
When he’s gone, I close and lock the door. Then I ask Lara, with hope in my heart, “When you guys were alone together at Jonathon’s…did anything rekindle?”
As she returns clothes to her drawer, she shakes her head. “It’s over, Mia.”
Damn. I want Jonathon to have a loving relationship. I really do.
Chapter Eleven
A snowstorm hits on Friday, two weeks before Thanksgiving. Lara and I run back from the residence cafeteria, pelted by snow. We are only wearing hoodies and sneakers, because it has been warm since Halloween, but tonight the wind is bitter. Jonathon isn’t with me, for once. But to stay safe, Lara and I are walking with a group of a dozen women from our floor. Now, we always travel around the campus in groups. Since Lara and I are freezing, we run ahead of the others.
As we near our dorm, I slow down. There’s a guy on a motorcycle on the drive outside the front door. His legs are stretched out in black jeans, he wears a leather jacket and he’s pulling off his helmet—which is black and crimson, with a reflective visor. As he lifts it up, I see his hair, illuminated by the outdoor lights at the door. Even through the swirling snow, I can tell he’s got light blond hair, buzzed short.
Ryan? I grip Lara’s arm. “Lara, I think it’s Ryan. I’m going to run up and see.”
I sprint through the snow, arms crossed over my chest because I’m so cold. Oh God, it is Ryan. He swings his long leg over the motorcycle. “Mia!”
He runs to me, and lifts me off the ground, sweeping me into his arms. He spins me under the falling snow, his arms wrapped tight around me. I smell the leather of his coat, the sweet Ryan-ness of his skin and the clean sexiness of his laundry soap. He bends down to me and I surge up and press my mouth to his.
I kiss him hungrily. It’s been so long and I’ve fantasized about this so much. This is going to be the best kiss ever. I coax his mouth to open and I wriggle my tongue inside to play with his. Ryan tastes of coffee. My tongue runs over his smooth teeth to find his tongue and duel with it. Our tongues tangle, and go back and forth, from his mouth to mine. It’s been so long since I’ve kissed him that I want to savor this. Though I’m getting eager for the main event.
Wait, we’re standing outside the dorm in a snowstorm.
Softly, Ryan moans into my mouth as he lowers me gently to my feet. I stay on my tiptoes, my arms wrapped around his strong neck. I run my fingers over the warm skin of his throat. His stubble teases my fingertips.
Snowflakes melt to water on him and me. I should draw back from the kiss, but when I try, he cups my face and kisses me with a slow, languorous motion that makes me want to dissolve.
Oh God.
He breaks the kiss first and he buries his face into my neck. He kisses me there, at the base of my jaw, and erotic tremors rush through me.
My knees almost collapse.
“You shouldn’t be here. How can you be here?” I whisper. “You’re supposed to be at school. Not here, on a motorcycle…what am I saying? I just want to kiss you.”
But he doesn’t kiss me. He tips up my face to look at me. “Your mom told me what happened. Are you okay? She told me you are, but—but I had to see you. Are you really okay, Mia?”
Fear makes his voice shake and I realize that’s what is making his voice pale, and his eyes look so full of pain. This was exactly why I didn’t want mom to tell him. She broke her promise. But mainly, I want to reassure him.
“Yeah, I’m really okay, Ryan. Nothing bad happened—”
“Nothing bad? Some guy attacked you. You don’t just shake things like this off, Mia. You must still be frightened. Things like that give you nightmares. You can tell me the truth.”
Looking into his eyes is different than looking up at Jonathon’s. Both these guys care about me. But Ryan is the one I belong to. Also the one I want to protect.
He pulls me close and I’m dwarfed by his strong body, feeling small and safe and protected in the circle of his strong arms. His lips touch my forehead. He’s holding me like Jonathon did, with all the tenderness, but there’s a depth of sexual intensity leaping between us that makes me quiver. This has to be love—the fire and the need and the desire to be as intimate with him as I can be, but with the yearning to see him happy and sh
are with him and hold him tight.
It’s love and it’s awesome.
“I wish I’d been here,” he says. “Your mom told me this guy had been stalking you. You should have told me. I would have come up—”
“I know you would,” I say, breaking in. “I know you would have come to my rescue. But you are supposed to be in school—”
“You are more important.” This time it’s his turn to cut me off.
“You make me want to cry when you say that, it’s so sweet,” I tell him honestly. “But I’m okay. And I did try to protect myself. I’d taken the stuff the guy sent—the emails and the picture to campus security. I let people know where I was going to be, so when I walked home and he grabbed me, someone came to my rescue.” I don’t want to specify who.
Suddenly I think of Jonathon holding me while I cried. He opened his heart to me, telling me secrets that he would only tell someone he trusted a lot. And that gave me to the courage to tell him the truth about my past.
Things I can never tell Ryan.
Jonathon understands because he’s been hurt. Ryan’s been hurt in his past too, but that’s not what I want to share with him. I want to share the future with him—I want to share happiness.
He’s still holding me tight, even though snowflakes are accumulating on his shoulders. “If I’d known—”
“You would have ditched school to come to me, Ryan, and I would never have forgiven myself.”
“They would have let me take some time off.”
“Which means you would have had to go back to school, so I would have had to deal on my own at some point. Ryan, I have to look after myself—” I stop. I’ve said it too harshly, because I’m trying to be honest. It didn’t come out right.
He reels back, his eyes look wounded.
“When I realized I was being followed I wished so much I could run to you. I know you would have rescued me. Being with you would have made me feel safe. But you can’t be watching over me every minute. Even if we lived together, I couldn’t ask that of you. I get it and you have to understand it too.” Then my heart skips a beat. “You being here now…is it okay with your college?”
His mouth moves near to mine, and I’m almost painfully aware of how close it is and how I could just move a little and start passionately sucking face with him again.
He moves his mouth to the side of my face, his cheek pressed to mine. “Yeah, it’s okay,” he says. His breath teases my earlobe and my knees shake. “Even it wasn’t okay for me to leave, I would be here. I had to see you. Touch you. Make sure you’re okay.”
“I am.”
He bends and nibbles my earlobe. Arousal streaks through me like lightning. My clit starts to ache, my pussy throbs. “I want you so much.” I can hear the pain of sexual need in my voice. “I want to slither down to the ground and pull you on top of me. I don’t even care that it’s wet and cold.”
He makes a soft groan of pure sexual hunger. “When I drove here I just wanted to see you and touch you. Now—God, I want to spend the whole night making love to you.”
My legs wobble. “We should go inside.” I see how his jacket is wet and slick with melted snow. His jeans are soaked too. My wits finally click in. “Did you drive here from your school on the bike? Through a snowstorm?”
“I did. I wanted to get to you as soon as I could.”
My stomach drops to my toes. “You could have had an accident.” I saw CNN—cars have been sliding all over the place, and there are accidents on most of the highways in New Hampshire and the north east coast. Then I ask, “Why didn’t you drive the truck?”
“I left it with Dad. He needed it.”
“He has his own truck.”
“Had,” Ryan says. “He defaulted on the payments and it got repossessed just before college started.”
Ryan hadn’t told me that. I know he’s owned the bike for a long time. He’d bought it used for a few hundred dollars and fixed it up. But to go on a motorcycle to school meant he couldn’t have taken much with him.
It figures his father would take something of Ryan’s to make up for his personal screw up. And Ryan is too good-hearted to say no.
“You just got here, didn’t you?” I ask.
“I stopped last night, but drove straight through today.”
“You’re sure it’s okay with your school.”
He ducks his head. There’s something he doesn’t want to tell me. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “It’s something at school, isn’t it?”
Abashed, he meets my gaze. “I haven’t been totally honest with you.” His mouth turns down, making my heart wobble.
“Things aren’t going that great, Mia. I’m on academic probation. My grades are too low. It’s a condition of my scholarship that I keep a good grade point average. I’ve had a hard time studying since Dad keeps imploding. Either he’s getting drunk or he’s out of money. Or I’m scared he’ll rack up another DUI. I miss you so much it’s agony, and I can’t put wanting you out of my mind. And I’m doing a lousy job on my work without your help.”
“Ryan, I want to help you.”
“I walked out on some of my tests without giving notice, which probably means I’ll been in deep shit when I go back.”
I can’t even speak. He shouldn’t have risked so much for me. “I’m sending you back.”
A grin winks his dimples at me. “No, you’re not.”
“Well, not on the bike. You could fly back.”
“I want to spend some time with you, Mia. I need to. Please?”
He gives me a hopeful look that makes my heart melt into a bubbling puddle of helplessness. “Okay,” I say.
Lara has the door open, so I take Ryan by the hand and bring him into the dorm building. I reach up to try to brush snowflakes off his brush cut, but I can’t reach the top of his head. He steps away and shakes off, then brushes his heavy motorcycle glove across his brow to wipe away some of the melted snow.
“You need something to warm you up.” I’m thinking of the logistics of this. He’s driven for hours today in a snowstorm and must be frozen to the bone. He could be on the verge of getting seriously sick. I take him up to my room, with Lara, where I plug in a kettle.
“Do you like hot chocolate, Ryan?” Lara asks. “I’ve got six different kinds.” Dark chocolate. Peppermint. White chocolate. Raspberry chocolate. Spicy. Extra creamy.” For all she likes to eat healthy, Lara’s one vice-like addiction is hot chocolate and she shares it generously.
“Thank you,” he says, with his slight drawl. “If it’s no trouble.”
Lara looks at me and gives me a dramatic look of envy. I know she’s joking—i.e. she’s not after him, but she’s telling me how lucky I am.
I start tugging at his jacket and when I pull it off, standing on tiptoe to reach his broad shoulders, I see his sweatshirt is wet from where the snow melted through. He must be soaked to the skin.
I hang up his coat on the shower rod in our bathroom, then come out. I can’t quite believe it’s really Ryan, sitting on the chair at my computer desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His black leather motorcycle boots sit on the tray at our door, and a pair of black leather pants and his jacket are hung up. There’s something so intimate about that it makes me weak. Really, I don’t know why. My lips still tingle from his kiss. They feel full, swollen, and I want to go over to Ryan, straddle his hips and kiss him again.
Can’t do that. So I ask, struggling to sound casual, “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t have anywhere to stay yet. I came right here to see you.”
I was all he was thinking of. My throat is achingly tight.
He can’t stay in my room, obviously. I want to jump on him on a bed as fast as possible, and that I can’t do with a roomie. Anyway, I have no right to do it until he’s warm and dry and feeling comfortable.
The kettle boils, so I can at least warm him on the inside. He chooses peppermint hot chocolate, I get an extra creamy, and Lara goes for white ch
ocolate. She goes to our mini fridge (provided by my dad—he had it shipped to the room at the end of October as a surprise) and gets out our spray whip topping. It’s part of the hot chocolate indulgence.
She hands us our hot chocolate and winks at me. “I’m going to take mine down to the common room and see what’s on T.V.” Then she’s gone.
Ryan sips his drink, leaving a sexy mustache of whipped cream. I lean forward and lick it off, then we slip into a long, slow kiss. I savor Ryan’s delectable chocolate taste. Then I realize he needs to warm up, so I let him drink.
I fire up my laptop. “You know what I want to do?” I’ve never spent a whole night with Ryan. In a bed. “We’re going to rent a room at one of the inns in the village.”
I get the phone number for the Louis Mansion which I’ve always thought was breathtaking, as it’s a French Second Empire mansion that was converted into a guesthouse. There are beautiful fireplaces in every room, twelve-foot ceilings, enormous four-poster beds. It’s expensive, but I can afford two nights. After that, Ryan should go back to school.
How is he going to get back to school? I don’t want him to ride the bike in case he runs into a storm and has an accident. I’ve got some money, so I can send him back by plane.
I close down the window, my heart hammering with excitement. “I’ve booked two nights,” I say, aware that my voice is quivering. “I’ll grab my toothbrush and some stuff, then we can go. Uh, I guess we should take a cab.” I have to admit, if it weren’t snowing and freezing, I’d love to go on the bike and get to wrap my arms tight around Ryan.
I’m about to call the inn when my phone rings. It’s Jonathon.
“Making sure you’re okay,” he says softly.
“I am. Thanks for calling.”
Ryan lifts his head. He can hear and I’m scared I’m blushing. Nothing’s happened, except Jonathon and I shared some intense and emotional things. But I feel guilty, just because I’ve grown close to Jonathon. Yet Jonathon did so much for me. “Ryan is here. He just got here. He drove all the way, almost straight. My mom told him what happened and he left school and drove here. On his motorcycle.” It still scares me what he went through to get to me.