In a flash, all of our clothes are gone and we’re nothing but skin locked together as we knock into every surface of the hotel suite, tables and chairs and couch and minibar, hands entangled and pushing and grabbing. His lips are in my hair and on my skin and everywhere and he whispers nothing and everything and that he never wants me to leave.
He’s pushing into my thigh insistently, kissing my breasts and neck and hair and moving his fingers down my stomach and to the meeting of my legs. He releases a low groan and we’re never going to make it to the bedroom; I need his hands and eyes and skin everywhere, all over me, now.
“Promise me that you’ll never leave me.” His words are soft, but his hands are hard and insistent and he’s grabbing my face and forcing me to look into his eyes. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I can’t handle not knowing anymore. I want you with me. I want you to be mine. All mine. No one else’s. And I’m not taking no for an answer.”
He’s holding out a black box and opening it. There’s a single diamond pendant on a long silvery chain and it’s beautiful and gleaming, but I’m still trying to process the words.
“Come with me to Prague.” He loosens the clasp on the necklace and reaches to put it around my neck and I feel the cool metal on my skin and it makes me shiver.
I can’t help it; I’m falling into his arms. I can’t find my voice to tell him all of the reasons why I can’t go to Prague or be with him forever. I try to open my mouth, to take the necklace off again, to tell him that it’s been a perfect week but it’s time for me to get back to my own life, but all of that seems silly and meaningless and all I want to do is to stay right here, in this moment, forever.
“Say yes.”
I’m curled against him, and I’m looking into his face and I can tell that he’s serious and I still haven’t responded, but I touch his face gently, and in it, there’s a kind of answer.
“You smell like heaven,” he murmurs.
Those words.
I had heard them before. There’s a memory there, deep inside and locked away. Other hands, other lips.
It’s playing a movie in my head.
I jerk away from him. His eyes are on me, huge and sad and disappointed, but I can’t look anymore and I’m trying to hide from it, but it’s flooding my system. A long pained sound escapes my lips and I put my head in my hands to try to stop it, to turn it off.
The memory, undaunted, long suppressed but never confirmed, shoots through me.
***
It started with a party, as these things always do. My first real high school party. I had begged Ben to bring me, to get me out of the house where the person who had once been my mother curled further and further into her own skin.
The house where pictures of my father were the closest thing I was going to get to seeing him again. Seeing my face and knowing that I needed a night of normal, he had reluctantly agreed.
Of course, Ben left me to chase after some long-haired blond girl. I was alone. I watched him from the corner of my eye and the tiny hope that lived somewhere deep inside me shriveled up.
But there was dancing and I loved dancing, so I lost myself in music. I feel the cool air hit my skin and I move with total abandon, spinning around and around, switching partners and moving amongst the crowd.
Ben is watching with amusement and he raises his beer to toast me. Maybe the dance lessons were finally paying off, I think. Maybe he’ll see me and decide that he wants me.
I take another long sip of the too sweet cocktail that was pressed into my hand by someone on the dance floor and another and another. I’m dizzy and my brain no longer belongs entirely to me. A thick-chested someone comes and moves his body next to mine, on top of me, his breath sickly sweet and hot on my face as he bends to kiss my face, my neck, anywhere but my mouth. I should stop him, I think, I need to leave.
I’m dizzy.
His hand flutters over my drink and I take a swig again and the dizziness is overwhelming.
I try to push back, but he lets out a deep-throated laugh and covers my mouth with his, smothering my words and my protests.
This is where the memory has always stopped before. I’ve never been sure of what happened, whether I said no or yes or something in between. I’ve never been sure.
Chris’s words, the wrong words, play in my head and they’re new, locked away in some deep recess of my brain that I’ve never been able to access before. It was ages ago and yesterday all at the same time.
“You smell like heaven.”
The movie keeps playing. We’re on someone’s couch now and it’s stained with grease and covered in dirty clothing.
From somewhere below, the endless pulse of a techno beat drums on. He’s reaching, grabbing at my dress, pulling my underwear down and his pants off in what seemed like one movement.
“No,” I say, again and again and again. He’s grabbing at my clothes, a nameless, faceless blob, and I’m saying, “Stop,” in a tiny-little-girl voice that wasn’t quite my own.
I’m still a little girl, I want to scream. I need to flee, but my limbs are heavy and I can’t do it, it’s all falling apart around me and I don’t know what to do.
He didn’t hear me, couldn’t hear me, didn’t hear me. His face is a monster’s hovering over mine. I could throw up or scream or run but I’m frozen instead. I do none of those things.
I can’t feel my fingers, I think. I can’t feel anything.
There was something in my drink.
He’s on top of me, pushing his half-hard penis into me, groaning and moaning, and still I did nothing. I wanted him to stop, but my voice wouldn’t come from my throat and I’m pushing back and we’re fighting and he’s scraping and clawing at my leg and he hits it with something and I scream out in pain but no one is there to hear me. Something, warm and wet and sticky, oozes down my leg.
He reaches resistance but keeps pushing harder and harder. I think it hurts but I can’t feel my body.
“A virgin,” he says. “Heaven.”
“Stop. Stop STOP.” I say it over and over but he doesn’t stop, ramming into me again and again while shoving his tongue inside my throat.
He shoves himself back into his pants after a minute that feels like forever. He’s wiping the couch with a shirt and I’m frozen in agony.
“Someone will find you,” he says, satisfied.
I was covered in grime, the sweat and fluid pooling around me. I was drowning.
Blackout.
“Hallie!” The voice is coming from very far away and I sit up and heave on the floor. Ben’s brown eyes are horrified.
I heave again and run to the bathroom as he follows me. I’m over the toilet, and he’s holding my hair and I’m crying and he’s patting my back. I wash my mouth over and over with water and there’s a reflection in the mirror but it looks nothing like me.
My eyes are blackened and smeared. I try to wash my face and then I run to the toilet and throw up over and over again until there is nothing left.
Had I screamed? Why didn’t I scream?
If I could have just made my voice louder, if anyone had heard me. It happens all the time, I say to myself. What are you going to do, call the police? Have them take your blood alcohol level and laugh at you? Another drunken hook-up. Another party.
The blackness consumes me. When I wake up, I’m floating on water. Ben’s bed and his eyes hovering over me.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says, his hands running over my forehead. “What happened?”
And my head is filled with dancing and spinning and vague memories and I can’t remember anymore. “I don’t remember.”
And I don’t remember. Not exactly. Not until another voice said “heaven” to me and while that voice was filled with love and not filled with sickness, it’s the same words.
***
“Stop!” I screech, pushing Chris away from me. The memory of it, the night that I thought I would never remember, is now present in all of its hideous
detail. Chris’s eyes are wide and he’s backing away.
I want to explain what happened, why and how and what, but the thought of another pair of arms on my skin have taken over. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sick. I have to go. I have to get out of here.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you. You’re perfect.” And I mean it. He is perfect.
He touches my face gently, his eyes filled with confusion. I shudder from the contact of his fingers against my skin, even though it costs me dearly when I see his face. He grabs some pillows from the couch and throws them haphazardly on the floor, opening his arms to me without touching me.
Part of me wants nothing more than to settle into the nook beside him but the bile is rising in my throat and the urge to flee is stronger than the need to curl up with him. I need a second to breathe and that’s never going to happen in here, with him.
I kiss the side of his face softly and his arms move up automatically to pull me back down. “I just can’t do this right now.”
There’s nothing else that I can give at this minute. I’m falling apart. I see the hurt in his eyes and the lingering questions, but I can’t deal with them.
He was going to ask me why, I thought. I can’t relive it. Not again.
I grab my things, my purse and clothes and throw them on and something falls from my neck onto the floor.
“Hallie.” He says my name and it almost breaks me.
“It’s not you,” I repeat. I can give him that, at least. “I just need some time to straighten something out. I promise.”
He gets up and I know he’s coming to me. It takes everything I have not to retch on the floor. I bolt without another word, running out of the room while yanking my shoes onto my feet. Hoping that he wouldn’t follow me and knowing that he would, I yell for someone on the floor to hold the elevator and I disappear into the shaft and the doors close on his confused face.
The man in the tuxedo jacket gives me a sideways look, but I grab my phone and pretend to text someone, keeping my head bent low. I try desperately to remember Sophia’s address as I jump into the cab. The beginning of tears, bottled in my throat, begin to rise. I murmur something to the cab driver, and miraculously, he understands and begins to drive.
Keep it together, I tell myself. You’re tougher than you think. You’ve made it through this before. Not like this. Not all of this. The tears began to bubble out, silent, rolling down my cheeks in fat drops.
I manage to wipe my face and I hand the driver a twenty when we reach the door of Sophia’s apartment building. Charles gives me a concerned look as I rush past him. The confines of the too-tight dress stretch against my skin and I want it off. Fumbling with my keys, I unlock the door to the apartment and rush into my room, locking my door. The room was unfamiliar, alien, the same way that I felt inside my own skin.
What would he think of me? I had run from him without any explanation whatsoever, and he must think…
Everything was ruined. Why did I have to remember?
Fuck.
My phone rings and I see the name and reach for it desperately. My voice is a sob. “Ben.”
Chapter 22
CHRIS
I chase her to the elevator, but all I catch is another glimpse of her ravaged face before she disappears. I slam the door to the suite behind me, pacing back and forth and replaying her words in my head, her words and her face and the way that she had run.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you. You’re perfect.” She touched the side of my face, grazing my lips with her fingers. “I just can’t do this right now.”
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I pick the necklace up from the floor and twist it around my hands before letting it fall back to the ground.
For just a moment, I thought that she was going to say yes—to Prague, to a future with me. Then, something had made her change her mind.
Sophia’s words seep into my thoughts: “Ben’s been blowing up my phone. You better call that boy soon before I have to tell him what you’ve been up to.” And later, to me: “He means the world to her. They’ve got something that you just can’t compete with. History.”
I hadn’t ever asked her explicitly if there was someone else. Other memories haunt me—her voice telling me to be careful, her face laughing off the thought of my turning down James Ross and coming to Greenview.
She was in love with someone else. They had history, which is something that obviously matters to her. I was nothing more than a passing attraction.
It’s the only thing that makes sense.
I pick up the bottle of champagne and throw it against the wall. It shatters into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 23
HALLIE
“Slow down, Hallie. Slow down. Where are you?”
“I’m in New York, Ben.”
My voice sounds nothing like me. I’ve been babbling incoherently for the past five minutes, and Ben hasn’t said much. He’s probably wondering whether I’m ever going to start making any kind of sense.
“Yes, I know that, Hallie.”
I manage to get myself under control. “I remembered, Ben. Everything. I couldn’t remember and we didn’t know what to do. I thought I hit my head, but I remembered and I didn’t and he…”
I can’t get the words out, but Ben’s sharp intake of breath tells me that he knows what I’m saying.
“Slow down, Hallie.” His voice shakes. “It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
“I need you.” It’s a plea and we both know it.
A beat. “On my way. Where in New York are you?”
“Sophia’s apartment.”
He lets out a long breath. “Okay. Stay there, because I’m on the next plane to you. Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to stay on the phone?”
I take a deep breath. “For a little bit.”
“Okay.”
I don’t say anything and he doesn’t say anything, but I take long, deep breaths and listen to the sounds of traffic and car horns and people chattering away on his end of the phone.
I remind myself that people everywhere are living their lives and that I am going to be okay. Eventually.
A long time passes, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe more, before I speak.
“It’s going to be okay. You don’t need to come take care of me. I’m a big girl.” The words and my voice are saying different things.
“I’m coming.” He’s certain and I don’t argue.
“Ok. I’ll see you soon.”
“Ok.” His voice is tense and he starts to say something, but stops himself, and then starts again. “Love you.”
It’s not something we say to each other. It’s what I need to hear. “I love you, too.”
There’s a knock and I manage to get my legs to work well enough to get to the door of my room. Sophia is there and she’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Hallie? Are you okay?” She places her hand on my arm. “Did Chris…”
I shake my head no and try to paste a smile on my face. “No, no, I’m fine. I just…” I don’t know what to say to her to get her to leave me alone.
She nods her head in understanding at me. “Boys. They suck. I think I’m moving to men.”
“It’s really not…” I give up. Let her think what she wants. She puts her arms around me in an embrace. “Sophia, is it okay if Ben stays here for a couple of days?”
She’s taken aback for a moment and then her face relaxes into a smile. “Of course. I probably won’t be around much tomorrow, anyways. I figured you would still be with Chris, at his big press conference.”
I’m surprised. “How did you know about that?”
She grins wickedly at me. “Grapevine. Now, really, what happened between the two of you? You’re a mess, darling.”
I can’t let her think that Chris did anything wrong. He had done everything perfectly right. I was the one who screwed it all up. “Chris and I are fine. Or we were fine. We are fine. He’s great, ac
tually. Too good to me.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
“Really, Sophia, he’s been great.” My voice is shaking, faltering under the weight of having to talk like a normal person while the inside of my head is screaming.
“Really.” She’s dubious. “So great that you had to call in Ben, who’s probably the love of your life, to come clean up the mess?”
She’s right about my calling Ben to clean up my mess. I need him. But as she says the other part, about him being the love of my life, I don’t feel the familiar grip in my stomach when I hear his name or see his face, the little tug that goes right along with unrequited love for your very best friend in the entire world.
I feel need gnawing at me, need for my friend, the only person who was there, the only person I can talk to right now. But the need is untainted by the other feeling that’s resided in me for almost five years. I love him because he’s my best friend. I love him because he’s always been there for me.
It’s nothing like the way I feel about Chris.
The certainty cuts through me like a knife.
I’m in love with Chris.
For real. No ands ifs or buts. The knowledge makes my knees buckle and I sit down on the bed.
“I actually think I’ve managed to get over Ben.” The thought slips out before I have the chance to catch it. It surprises even me to hear my voice saying the words aloud.
“Really?”
I nod.
“Well, I guess Chris was good for something.”
“He’s wonderful. He’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, Hallie,” she says, patting my arm comfortingly. “Jensen claims another victim.”
I can’t help but think that she might be wrong. Her version of Chris is so unlike the Chris I’ve come to know that I can’t help but to hold out some hope for us. Maybe I’ve ruined everything with him. But maybe not.
Sophia’s watches my face carefully before she backs into the doorway. “Ok, I’m off to the Bronx to go dancing with Elle,” she announces. “That’s what I came in here to tell you. I was going to see if you wanted to come, but seems like you have other things on your mind. Like Chris Jensen.” She’s smiling at me.
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