by Laura Lee
“Wait…are you saying you want to have sex with me too?”
Jaden runs his palm over the tip of his length and moans. “Hell, yeah, babe. We all do.”
Stephen pushes him to the side. “Back up, Jay. Her cherry is mine. Then you can have a shot.”
“Fucker,” Jay mumbles. “Why do you always get to pop their cherries?”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Stephen pulls me to the edge of the table and drops to his knees. “Shh, baby. Just close your eyes and we’ll take good care of you.”
“KAT, WAKE UP!”
I’m tangled in sheets as I come to, trying desperately to free myself so I can breathe. I wind up falling onto the floor as I finally manage to break loose.
“Whoa!” Gavin shouts. “Are you okay?”
I struggle to calm my racing pulse. It was just a dream, I tell myself. Nightmare, rather. Definitely a nightmare. Gavin must notice my distress because he joins me on the carpet and wraps his arms around me.
“What’s going on, Kat?”
Shit, I must look like a freak right now. I can only imagine what he’s thinking. I’m sitting on the floor naked with my knees pulled against my chest. My skin feels clammy and I’m sure I have an awful case of bedhead.
“Nothing,” I say and shake my head. “Just a bad dream.”
He cradles me to his chest and strokes my hair. “Who’s Steve?”
I pull away from him. “What?”
“Steve,” he repeats. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“You were mumbling for the most part. I think you may have said, ‘Steve, don’t do this.’ or ‘I don’t want to do this.’ Something like that.”
Damn it. How am I going to explain this? I try schooling my features. “Hmm, that’s weird. I don’t know any Steves.”
Gavin frowns. “Kat, if we’re going to give this a shot, you need to be honest with me.” He helps me back onto the bed and tucks me under the covers. “Now tell me about your dream.”
“You don’t want to know. Trust me. It wasn’t really a dream. More like a memory.”
“About some guy named Steve?”
“Stephen,” I correct. “He was my boyfriend during freshman year. It was a really bad break up. He’s the reason why I don’t date.”
“Well, now I really want to know.”
I sigh. “Gavin, please…don’t. I don’t like thinking about it, let alone talking about it. I like the way you look at me now. That would change if you knew.”
He brushes his fingers through my hair. “Kat, I promise that nothing you can say will change how I feel about you.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I argue. “I already told you…I’m damaged goods.”
“And I already told you…I don’t care. I want to know what makes you tick. Whatever happened back then, obviously still affects you now. You’re already thinking about it—or at least your subconscious is. I want to know you. If possible, I want to help you. I can’t do that if I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”
His sincerity is obvious but I still hesitate. Not many people know the truth about what happened—not even Bree or Dylan. Sure, they’ve all heard rumors at one point or another—the whole town has. But the only people who know the true extent of my living nightmare are the people who were directly involved. Since I was a minor at the time, my name was hidden from the media. It didn’t stop the speculation, though, once a quarter of the soccer team wound up in jail and I became pregnant.
Since Stephen and his friends were old enough to be tried as adults, they weren’t spared in the least. Neither was my foster father, Pete. It wasn’t that hard to connect the dots, especially since his wife, Judy was incredibly vocal about blaming me for his arrest. She couldn’t accept the fact that her husband could be such a pervert. She went from doting mother one minute to woman scorned the next, publicly shaming me, trying to convince everyone that I put him up to it, despite piles of evidence to the contrary. The only reason Gavin is so clueless is because he’s new to town. I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before he hears something.
I sigh deeply, accepting the fact that I’d rather have him hear it from me than anyone else. I roll over, thinking that it would be easier to get it all out if I don’t have to face him. Gavin allows me to look away but he doesn’t tolerate any distance. He scoots right behind me and wraps his arms around my midsection.
“When I was fifteen, I lived with a really great foster family…people that I thought were great anyway. They were the only solid examples of parents that I had ever had. I had been with them for about six months before my world was turned upside down.”
“What does that have to do with Stephen?”
“I’m getting to that,” I reply. “Please, Gavin. Just let me say this before I change my mind.”
He kisses the back of my shoulder. “I’m sorry for interrupting. Please go on.”
“Anyway…one night the Andersons were gone—Judy and Pete. They were going to be away all night so my boyfriend, Stephen, convinced me to invite a few of his friends over. They were drinking and doing something similar to Ecstasy. I had been slowly sipping on a beer but that’s it. Until Stephen drugged me.”
I feel Gavin stiffen but he doesn’t say a word.
“I was mad when I figured out what had happened…but a little while later, my anger melted away. Stephen and I started fooling around and it felt really good. I know now that it was the drugs enhancing the sensations, but I didn’t consider that at the time. All I know is that I wanted him. I was a virgin but I thought he loved me. I was prepared to give him my virginity right then and there. When he began undressing me, one of his friends said something, reminding me that we had an audience. I told Stephen I wanted to stop but…he didn’t.”
Gavin tightens his arms around me. “What do you mean he didn’t? He didn’t want to stop?”
“No, he didn’t. Neither did his friends.”
I hear his teeth grinding. “Kat, I really need you to finish this story because I’m imagining all sorts of horrible things that I hope to God aren’t true.”
“Your imagination probably isn’t too far from the truth. It took me a while to see it this way…but the night I lost my virginity…I was raped. By four high school boys.”
His head falls between my shoulder blades. “Jesus.” He kisses my back and adds, “Kat, I don’t know what to say. All I have are useless platitudes.”
I laugh mirthlessly. “Oh, just wait. It gets worse.”
“How could it possibly get worse than that?”
“My foster dad, Pete, had an internet-based business that wasn’t very…legal. He was busted for distributing child pornography during a state-wide sting. There were a bunch of videos online—naked, private videos. I wasn’t his first victim. It turns out, he’d been recording their foster daughters for years. He had hidden cameras in the shower, my bedroom, and the basement. I’m sure you can imagine some of the content considering we were all at the perfect age to discover our hormones. What we thought was private…wasn’t. The entire incident with Stephen was caught on camera and released with the lovely title, Virgin Gangbang. Pete turned me into an amateur porn star and I had no clue. According to the feds, my series was very popular.”
“Fuck,” Gavin says.
“Oh, there’s more.”
“Are you kidding?” He is incredulous.
“I wish,” I say. “Like I said before, I didn’t see it as rape at the time. Afterwards, Stephen had convinced me that I wanted it. I had to have wanted it because I was wet…and I came. A lot. I never fought them off—never even tried beyond muttered protests. I just laid there in a dream-like state taking them into my body. Every part of my body, Gavin. In retrospect, I know it was the drugs, but I continued having sex with Stephen for weeks until the video surfaced and the police got involved. I was blinded by my desperation to be loved.”
“Please tell me those fuckers got w
hat they deserved.”
“Gavin, there’s one more thing.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“After the police raid, the arrests…I found out I was pregnant. With the timing, it was most likely the night of the rape. I don’t know which one of them fathered my daughter.”
“You have a child.” He tightens his arms around me and sighs. “Where is she now?”
The tears are falling down my face. I open the locket around my neck and remove the tiny scrap of pink muslin, holding it up for him to see. “This was hers. It was from the hospital blanket—the one she was wrapped in when she died.”
Gavin shifts his body and turns me toward him. Looking into my eyes, he asks, “How? When?”
My breath stutters as he kisses the tears away. “My water broke just over the halfway mark...they said my cervix was incompetent. It was a freak thing that just happens sometimes, I guess. She was born too early and there was nothing they could do. I was forced to deliver her, knowing that when they put her in my arms, it was for the sole purpose of what they called, comfort care. At twenty-two weeks, there was no way she would survive without significant brain damage. She was so small…so red and wrinkly. She only took a few labored breaths before passing away in my arms.”
Gavin pulls me into his chest as I cry for Amelia—for the chances she never had. His breathing becomes choppy and I recognize that he is crying too. This man I’ve only known for a few months is grieving over what I lost—my innocence, my optimism, and most importantly, my beautiful, helpless child. He whispers sweet words into my ear as he holds me, never once loosening his grip. For the first time since everything happened, I don’t feel like I’m floating in a dark abyss. Being here in Gavin’s arms, I feel anchored to the present. I think about what anchors represent: strength and stability. I realize that Gavin is my anchor. He makes me feel like maybe there is hope for the future—like maybe I’m not so broken after all.
I GET TO SCHOOL EARLY and hang out by Dylan’s locker. I see him down the hall, waiting to gauge his expression as he notices me. I’m hoping he’s had some time to cool down—maybe he’s talked himself out of believing what he saw. What he thinks he saw, I remind myself. If I’m going to convince Dylan that nothing is going on between me and Gavin, then I need to keep my story straight. I know the moment he sees me because he slows his pace and frowns. Well, so much for my hope that this would all brush over.
“Hi,” I say as I step aside, allowing him access to his locker.
“What do you want, Kat?”
“Since when do I need an excuse to talk to you?”
Dylan leans forward and lowers his voice. “Since you decided to start fucking our Lit teacher.”
Okay, this is it. This is the moment where I need to convince him that he’s totally off base.
“Dylan, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know where you got such a ridiculous idea, but—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Kitty,” he snarls. “You can lie to everyone else, but don’t lie to me.”
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
He slams his locker shut, grabs my arm, and pulls me down the hall into an empty janitor’s closet.
“Dylan, what are you—”
“Shut up!” he shouts. “Just shut the fuck up for one minute and let me think!”
I stand there silently, surprised by his outburst. I watch as he seems to be working through something in his head. He runs his fingers through his hair as he paces the small space. He finally stills and takes a deep breath.
“Look, I followed you. Okay?”
“What do you mean you followed me? Followed me where?” I ask.
“To that asshole’s classroom! You were acting weird so I knew something was up. I decided to follow you out of the cafeteria and find out what was going on.”
Okay, this isn’t too bad. I can work through this. The door was closed which means he still doesn’t have any proof.
“So?” I challenge. “I never denied being in his classroom. That doesn’t mean there was any debauchery involved, which is what you’re implying. Am I wrong?”
“I’m not implying anything, Kat. I’m clearly stating that I know you’re fucking around with Mr. Cooper. What I don’t know, is if he’s the same guy you were talking about that night in your apartment. That’s a question you can answer for me.”
“Of course not,” I deny.
Dylan scoffs. “Oh, well, that just makes it even better. So you can fuck a teacher while you’re hung up on some mystery guy, but not me, huh?”
“I’m not fucking a teacher!” I whisper shout.
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Really? What are you willing to do to prove it?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Fuck me. Right here, right now. Maybe that will convince me.”
I think about what Gavin said…to do anything it takes to convince him. The old me may have considered it. This new and improved Kat can’t stomach the idea.
“Oh, go fuck yourself, Dylan!”
“Oh, trust me, that’s all I seem to be doing lately. Because my stupid ass thought that if I showed you I could stop sleeping around, then maybe you’d take me seriously. You’ve been different lately…I thought you were ready to try some kind of commitment. Come to find out, you were just as busy as ever adding notches to your bedpost. With that asshat, nonetheless. Pretty fucked up, don’t ya think?”
“Nothing is going on between me and Mr. Cooper! How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
Dylan gets right in my face and hisses, “I heard you, Kat. I fucking heard you.”
I step back until I hit the wall. “What?”
“I pressed my ear against the goddamn door and listened. What do you think I mean? I heard everything, Kat. The argument, him telling you how much he wanted to throw you over his desk, you moaning his name. Do you think I don’t know a moan when I hear one, Kitty? Especially your moan? Give me a little fucking credit.”
“Oh, God.” I slam my hand over my mouth, having no clue what to say. What am I going to do? Gavin and I are both screwed if Dylan says anything.
“Wow, I’ve rendered you speechless,” he sneers. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Dylan…please, you can’t say anything to anyone.”
“Oh, that’s rich. Why would I want to protect that asshole?”
“Because it’s not just him you’d be protecting!” I try holding it in, but I feel my eyes starting to water. “Dylan, if someone finds out about this…not only will Gavin lose his job, but I’ll be at the center of a giant scandal all over again. You can’t let that happen.”
“I didn’t let anything happen, Kitty. You and Gavin are the ones who decided to fuck up. Don’t pin this shit on me.”
I grab his arm, pleading with him to look at me. “Dylan, you don’t understand. When we met…we didn’t know. We didn’t know he was my teacher.”
“How the hell is that possible?”
Now I’m the one who’s pacing. “Because…we met on my last birthday. At a bar. I was out celebrating my release from the system. I told him I was older. He didn’t know the truth until I showed up in second period on the first day of school.”
He looks at me skeptically. “Your birthday was over three months ago.”
“I’m aware of that, Dyl.”
His face turns red again. “So you’re telling me this has been going on for months? What the fuck, Kat? My God, all those weird little interactions between you two make sense now.”
“No, it hasn’t been going on for months. Not really anyway. After he learned the truth, he put a stop to it.”
“That’s not what it sounded like yesterday,” he argues.
“I know…I know. We just decided to stop fighting it. He’s different, Dylan. I’m different when I’m with him. Better. This isn’t anything like my previous hookups. You’ve got to believe me.”
“So he
is the guy? How old is he anyway?”
“Twenty-six,” I answer as a tear rolls down my face. “And yes, he’s the guy I told you about. If you expose us, I’ll never know if he can fix me. I really think he’s the one who can fix me, Dylan. Don’t you think I deserve the chance to find out?”
Dylan releases a breath. “Damn it, Kitty. Don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it,” I sob.
He pulls me into a hug. “Why does it have to be him? Why can’t it be me? All you have to do is let me in.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve asked myself that same question many times. I don’t know how to explain it, Dylan. I knew he was different from the first moment we met. There’s this thing about him…it’s ineffable. He gets me.”
“And I don’t?”
I pull back and wipe my face with my hand. “Please don’t take it personally. You’re my best friend, Dylan. I love you. I can’t lose you because of this.”
He hunches down to my level so we’re eye to eye. “You love me, but you’re not in love with me, right?”
I nod.
“But you think he’s someone you could fall in love with?”
“It’s too early for that,” I say. “But maybe, yeah.”
“I can’t believe I’m considering this,” he mutters. “I hate that guy!”
“You don’t know him well enough to say that, Dylan. I actually think you guys would get along if you gave it a shot.”
“Ha! Doubtful.”
I smirk, thinking about comments Gavin has made about him. “Yeah, maybe not. But it should only matter how I feel about him, right?”
“I guess,” he grumbles.
“So you really won’t say anything? To anyone?”
He points his finger at me. “I’m not doing this for him. I want to make that very clear. I won’t say anything, Kitty, but only because of you. I may not know exactly what went down freshman year, but I know it fucked you up. I won’t be the one responsible for throwing you to the wolves again.”