#Poser

by Cambria Hebert

  “I was raped.”

  Chapter Forty

  Braeden

  The words sliced me open and left my insides to spill out.

  How did one function with everything he needed on the inside suddenly ripped out?

  I knew.

  Those three words, I already knew them. Hadn't I just stood there and suspected Ivy finally realized?

  It didn't matter.

  The shock was unmatched. Sure, on some level I understood my girl knew, but to hear her say those words, to hear out loud a nightmare that up until now only rattled around inside me…

  It was like finding out all over again.

  The images I found on Missy's computer played through my head like a slideshow.

  The violation Ivy experienced was something I knew a man likely couldn't fully comprehend.

  I honestly didn't think she'd arrive at such a clear realization. I thought maybe her doubts and questions would slowly reveal a larger picture.

  It would have been kinder that way.

  Not that there was one fucking kind thing about any of this, but at least Ivy wouldn't have been overcome by the truth.

  I stood there in the center of our bedroom. The room where I held her in my arms every night and listened to her sighs when I kissed her skin. This place was supposed to be our sanctuary.

  But that bastard invaded it.

  He wormed his perverted, sick ass right here.

  I stared down at the red lace thongs. They still lay exactly where Ivy dropped them.

  Were they the culprit?

  Was seeing them the trigger for this?

  Holy fucking balls, did she remember that night?

  Please, God. I hoped not.

  I didn't want her to have to relive that hell for a single, solitary second. But if she remembered, the torment would be endless.

  Just like mine had been.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Ivy

  “Put me down,” I said, my own voice sounding foreign to my ears.

  The silence in the room was uncomfortable, almost tense. Braeden’s arms didn’t comfort me. They felt like a vise holding me in place.

  I didn’t want to be in place right now. I think I wanted to shatter.

  Was this how it would be from now on? Would everything feel changed?

  He didn’t automatically do as I asked. Instead, his dark-chocolate stare shifted to me and flickered with bleakness and pain.

  This was going to be hard on him too. I wasn’t the only one who was going to be irrevocably changed by rape.

  But I couldn’t think about Braeden now. I could scarcely think at all. I was too violated, too shocked, too dirty.

  How could this happen?

  Why didn’t I know until now?

  My God, I’d been living months and months inside a body that had been invaded, violated, and used.

  He used me.

  He shoved his… his… I shook my head. He shoved himself inside my body.

  I didn’t want Zach. He was the last man on Earth I’d ever touch. I knew that, didn’t I? I’d said as much to myself a million times. I was so shocked I would stoop so low as to let him touch me.

  I hadn’t at all.

  I said no.

  “Put. Me. Down.” My voice scraped out of my throat, raw and sick. Whatever he heard made him finally listen. The second my feet hit the carpet, I ran. The ends of the towel around me flew open, and I rushed out of the bedroom.

  I fell to my knees in the bathroom, hitting the cold, unforgiving tile. Pain jolted my knee, but I ignored it.

  Nothing was worse than the pain inside.

  Mental flashes of him ripping at my clothes, forcing his hands down into my thong, assaulted me.

  They wouldn’t stop.

  And neither would the sound of my mind screaming, No, no, no!

  I leaned over the toilet and vomited violently. Over and over again, I gagged and heaved. My back hurt so badly and my chest burned from the force of throwing up.

  As I emptied out every last drop in my stomach, my hands gripped the white porcelain. It was cold and smooth, but my fingers ached from holding on so tight. My throat burned from the acid splashing up my esophagus.

  I was raped.

  “Ivy,” Braeden said from somewhere close by. Tears blurred my vision and shivers racked my body.

  “Go,” I choked. “Just go.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said.

  “I don’t want you here!” I yelled and started sobbing.

  I shoved off the toilet and fell back against the wall. The towel had fallen off of me, and I was sitting there completely exposed.

  As I cried, I pulled the towel into my lap, using it simultaneously as a cover and a tissue.

  Even though I screamed, he didn’t leave. I wanted him to. I didn’t want anyone to see me this way. I didn’t want anyone to know what Zach had done to me.

  I’d rather be a slut than a victim.

  But I didn’t get a choice.

  My no was ignored.

  Why? Why hadn’t I fought him off? Why hadn’t I screamed until someone came running?

  Nearby, I heard the lid to the toilet close and the sound of it being flushed. The tap water in the sink ran. It sounded so far away, like I was in another universe.

  Beside me, Braeden fell to his knees. I stared at his jean-clad thighs, just staring at the faded blue fabric without really seeing.

  “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  It reminded me of the first time we’d had sex. He’d brought me a cloth and placed it between my legs. He’d always been so considerate of me. So careful.

  Zach had been rough.

  Zach had been hurtful.

  I started sobbing again. Open weeping and unintelligible sounds filled the small bathroom.

  I felt Braeden’s hands as he wiped my face and neck. He used care and caution, and every once in a while, through my own sobs, I would hear him whisper it would all be all right.

  But how could it be?

  The cloth disappeared, but he remained. He used the end of the towel I wasn’t clutching to ring out the ends of my still-wet hair.

  Then he brushed through it all, coaxing it all back away from my face. The repetitive motion of the brush through my hair calmed me. My sobs turned into heavy gasps and the tears slowed.

  When he was done, his large, warm hands lifted me off the floor. I clutched the towel against me, and he didn’t try to take it away.

  Instead, he held out his old Wolf Pack T-shirt, the one I’d claimed that morning on the beach. “You’re freezing,” he said. “Put this on.”

  I stood there shaking, and he pulled it over my head. I dropped the towel and pushed my arms through. The familiar feel of the soft fabric gave me a little more of a solid grip.

  Braeden knelt at my feet and held a pair of sweatpants ready for me to step into. I did, and the warmth seeped into my skin once they were pulled into place.

  My head felt thick and my eyes were puffy when he took my hand and led me out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. When the lamp beside the bed was clicked on, my eyes zeroed in on the thongs. I stood there and stared at them, shuddering at the barrage of memories tied to them.

  “I’m throwing these out,” he half growled and scooped them off the floor. When he did, the note that had been beside them fluttered onto the carpet.

  He picked it up, uncrumpled the paper, and stared at the crudely scrawled words.

  DON’T TELL

  “This was here too?” His voice was low and hard.

  Anger radiated around him and made me slink back. I wasn’t scared of him. I never would be. But there was so much raw emotion already inside me; I couldn’t deal with any more.

  “That fucking bitch.”

  My head snapped up. I might have been shell-shocked, confused, and sick inside, but I could still hear. Why would he say bitch? Zach was a lot of things, but a bitch wasn’t one of them.

&
nbsp; In fact, why wasn’t Braeden asking me—no, demanding to know more about my rape. Why did he seem to understand it hadn’t been tonight? Why did he seem to know it was in the past?

  I stared at him as question after question took bite after bite out of what was left of my insides.

  He must have felt me staring. He must have felt my gaze.

  He turned.

  His deep eyes locked on mine.

  Bleak apology was all I could see.

  The note in his hand slipped from his fingers and fluttered toward the floor.

  “No,” I protested. “No.”

  The guilt in his face turned into fear.

  I gasped. “Oh my God, Braeden,” I whispered.

  “Ivy—” He stepped toward me.

  I held out my hand, halting his steps. “Stay there!”

  He watched me helplessly as more questions swelled inside me.

  The picture on the Buzzfeed. It didn’t come out ‘til long after Zach was locked away. He couldn’t have done it.

  It had been done by the #BuzzBoss.

  By my so-called best friend.

  You’re so convinced I’m the bad one. Have you ever wondered who else around here kept secrets and told lies?

  Missy’s words replayed in my head. I knew she’d been talking about Braeden. I’d known he was likely keeping something from me.

  But this?

  Never in a thousand years would I have expected this.

  Tears blurred my vision once more, and I folded my arms across my waist. I felt like throwing up again, but there was nothing left inside me to purge.

  Except for two little words. Words that felt like a grenade and blew up my entire world.

  “You knew.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Braeden

  And there it was.

  The truth.

  The secret I wanted to tell, but never could.

  Her face was splotchy, her eyes swollen and red. The sound of her sobs in the bathroom would likely haunt my soul long after I was dead.

  Was I the cause of this, or was this the reason I never wanted to tell? Everything was blurring together—moments, thoughts, feelings.

  I couldn’t even fathom how she must feel, what she was seeing in her mind.

  I just hoped she didn’t remember the details. I just hoped she would be able to find some kind of peace.

  She is never going to forgive me for this.

  “You knew!” she yelled, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time.

  I stood there under the force of her wrath and nodded once. “Yes, I knew.”

  A sob racked her shoulders and she hunched in on herself a little. I stepped forward to go to her, but the second I moved, she straightened and took a step back.

  “How?” she demanded. “How did you know I was raped before I did?”

  I flinched. I hated that goddamned word. I hated it more than anything. It was ugly, it was violent, and the fact it was now associated with the woman standing in front of me made me want to kill.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” I said, calm. I felt anything but, but Ivy was enough of a storm. She needed the balance.

  “I will not!” she yelled. Prada went under the bed. “I deserve to know!” She angrily dashed away her tears with the back of her hand.

  She looked so small and fragile just then, standing there with my clothes hanging off her slim form. Her curves were hidden in too much fabric, and her hair was brushed severely back from her face.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” I vowed. “I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

  She sobbed. “A long time? How long have you known?”

  “Since the end of last semester.”

  She gasped. “Six months?” She said it like it was a long time, but to me, it had felt like an eternity. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

  “Because I knew it would do this to you,” I admitted, weary and filled with defeat.

  She stared at me, angrily.

  “How could I?” My voice cracked. “How do you tell someone they’ve been abused in the sickest possible way?”

  She flinched.

  “Ivy, baby.” I stepped forward.

  She stepped back. “No! Don’t call me that! Just tell me.”

  I rubbed a palm over my face and started to talk. “I was so pissed when that Buzz of you and him went all around the school and after everyone started ridiculing you. I could barely see straight or think straight.”

  “You called me a slut,” she deadpanned.

  “Yeah, I did. I’ll regret it ‘til the day I die.”

  She fell silent, and the angry look on her face calmed just a bit.

  “Anyway, you and I were still trying to figure us out. I was so in love with you even then. I was scared as hell to be in love, and here you were, the one I wanted above everyone, being tortured by the #BuzzBoss.”

  She started to say something, but I held up my hand.

  “So after the night in your dorm and the Buzz with the pic of you and me, I decided to put an end to it. I wouldn’t have someone hurting you like that. So I started thinking, started piecing together stuff that no one ever saw before. I went to Missy’s dorm room. I charmed her roommate and went inside. She was drunk and didn’t pay attention to what I was doing, so I went through Missy’s laptop.”

  “And you figured out who she really was,” Ivy said, sounding more like herself.

  I said a silent, quick thank you to God, because seeing her fall apart in the bathroom scared me.

  “Her computer was filled with files. Files and files full of information, pictures, and texts. She had an email account set up with hundreds of emails full of gossip and speculation. She had enough material on that computer to get her through an entire year of notifications.”

  I still marveled at how sly she’d been and how well she had us all fooled. Hell, I probably never would have figured it out if she hadn’t shared that picture she took off my phone. When I realized she’d been the only one left alone with it, I knew it had to be her.

  “What does any of this have to do with me and being raped by Zach?” She wrapped her arms tightly around herself once more.

  I could still see her shaking, and I knew she was in danger of going into shock. Hell, I was worried sick she was going to fall over.

  Taking a chance, I snagged a blanket off the end of the bed and went to her slowly. She watched me carefully but didn’t say a word. I draped the fabric around her shoulders and tugged it across her chest.

  Her hands slid up to pin the sides together. “Thank you.”

  “Please sit down, baby.”

  She frowned when I called her that, but this time she didn’t yell.

  “Keep talking,” she ordered, and I would have smiled at her cute, demanding ass, but there was nothing cute about this moment.

  Nothing at all.

  I nodded and backed up to sit on the edge of the bed, keeping my feet planted on the floor.

  “Missy had an entire file of pictures from that night, Ivy. Zach sent them to the #BuzzBoss, not knowing it was her. I went through them. They make it incredibly clear what happened to you.”

  Ivy dropped into the chair near the door, surprise draining the color from her face. “Missy knew?”

  “Oh, she knew. She knew almost right after it happened. The file was dated in the fall.”

  She pressed a hand to her mouth and leaned forward so I couldn’t see her face. Her shoulders shook imperceptibly, and I knew she was crying again.

  She had a right to cry, and I wouldn’t tell her not to.

  “Keep going,” she said, her voice hoarse, and she didn’t look up.

  “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I didn’t want to believe it at first. It made me sick, so fucking sick. I should have been there that night. I should have protected you.”

  The torment I felt ripped right out of my chest. I could still remember that night, the way it felt like someone had punched me wit
h a pair of brass knuckles when I realized what I was seeing.

  Ivy was watching me again, her eyes wide. I shook off what I was feeling and pressed on.

  “I deleted the file. I wiped it off her hard drive and removed any trace it was there. I didn’t want her to get all pissy again and use the pictures on the feed.”

  “You just deleted them? It’s evidence, evidence against him!”

  “I emailed the file to myself before I did.”

  “You have the pictures?”

  I knew what she was thinking. I shook my head adamantly. “You’re not looking at them. I won’t fucking allow it.”

  “It’s not your choice.”

  “The fuck it isn’t!” I yelled. For the first time, my temper got the better of me. “Look at you! You think I’m gonna give you even more shit to be sick over? This is why I didn’t fucking say anything to begin with!”

  The force of my words and the emotion behind them spurred me up off the bed, and I paced across the room toward the windows.

  “It wasn’t your decision to make.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, my voice level. “But it was my choice. Perhaps it was the wrong one, but I did what I did because I love you.”

  It was like she hadn’t heard my words, because she completely ignored them. “What was in the pictures?”

  I turned from the window. “What do you remember?”

  “Not very much,” she admitted, her voice forlorn. “Mostly just flashes, memories of how I felt and how I couldn’t do anything.” She paused, and I swallowed. “I remember saying no, Braeden. I didn’t want him.” Her voice started rising again.

  “I know you didn’t, Ivy. I believe you.”

  That seemed to calm her. “He was rough and sort of mean. I remember the sound of him breathing… the ragged way he… his grunts.” She squeezed her eyes together, and I spun around.

  I stared at the curtains, but seeing only red, I fought with the urge to put my fist through the wall.

  “He taunted me,” she whispered. “I remember his words. He seemed to know I wouldn’t remember, but he’d told me…”

  A beat of silence passed after her voice faded away.

  “He told you what?” I ground out.