by Leslie Scott
I took a deep breath and forced myself to see him in my mind, to remember what he’d done to me. Instinctively, I reached for my throat. My fingertips tracing the ghost of healed bruises. Jordan didn’t miss it, instead he turned and took both my hands into his much larger ones.
The question in his eyes proved I wasn’t over as much of it as I thought I was.
“I…I—” I shook my head and closed my eyes.
“Tell me,” he whispered as he pulled me against that large expanse of chest. I nuzzled him and breathed in the scent of his cologne, of man, of summer. Jordan was my anchor.
“And you have to promise not to tell anyone. Not even Aiden or Breanna,” I pleaded.
“Raelynn—”
“Promise me, Jordan. There are some things that I don’t want them to know. Just like there are things you don’t want them to know.” He wouldn’t see me in that way. He’d survived so much worse. I trusted him with my secrets. I trusted him more than my own family.
He nodded his ascent against the top of my head and I took his silence as his promise. My faith in him was that strong.
“I didn’t want to have sex with him. We’d come close—but I didn’t—he wasn’t you. Just like Hunter wasn’t you. Eventually, Caleb didn’t take no for an answer. He held me there, with his hands wrapped around my throat, until I blacked out… He raped me.”
I spit out the last words as if I could spit out the taste they left in my mouth. Beside me Jordan went rigid, like stone. His hands fell away to his sides and jerked my heart down with them.
When several long moments passed and he didn’t say anything, I sighed. “I let it go too far, I’d known I was letting Caleb take it too far. But flirting with that edge had seemed exciting. It had kept me from thinking about home and all the things I was missing. Because in truth, I’d never really wanted to leave. I left to prove a point, to myself…to you.” I left the fence, pacing, itching for movement.
“I came home realizing I never should have left, I’d never wanted to be anywhere else—” Anything else I was going to say was lost when he wouldn’t look at me. I needed him to look at me, to see me.
“Look at me, Jordan.” I waited, wrapping my arms around myself to fight back a nonexistent chill, until he brought his stormy gaze to mine.
That storm was filled with guilt and anger. I’d been naïve to ask him to feel neither.
“I let it go too far, I kept pushing the limits. I knew how he was. I knew it was only a matter of time until I pushed too far.” I faced my shame head on and took responsibility for it. I was no longer going to be a victim. “It was my fault.”
“Bullshit,” he snapped and moved so fast my head spun, he loomed over me. His words were terse, spoken through gritted teeth. “I don’t care how far you let him push, he should have stopped the second you said no.”
I’d pushed Jordan before. I’d seen him angry. Never angry like this. For the first time in my life, fear prickled at my skin because of Jordan. Not for me, he’d never hurt me. I feared for the damage he could do elsewhere. At that moment, he could lay waste to entire civilizations.
Words left my mouth in a rush as I tried to calm him. “It could have been worse, Jordan. He didn’t really hurt me.”
“The hell he didn’t!” he shouted. His large hands reached as if to grab me before they turned and gripped the fence hard enough for the wood to creak under the pressure. “Just because no one can see the scars, doesn’t mean they aren’t there, Raelynn! Each time you flinch away from me, each time you touch your throat, those are scars too. He hurt you.”
He was right, I couldn’t argue any of that. How many nights had I lain awake with the ghost of Caleb’s hands on my throat, saw Caleb’s face hovering over me as I fought for breath? Jordan had seen it too, more than once.
“It’s over, whatever it was, it’s done.” I placed a hand on his arm. The skin beneath my fingers was warm and the muscles trembled. He had my secrets now. The weight of them still bore down on my soul. Especially when he reached for me, then hesitated.
“The first time a man touched me after that, was you Jordan. From the moment you kissed me that night at the canning factory, I had new memories. After that, what he did to me didn’t matter as much.”
“I’m sorry, Rae.” He pulled his hat off and rubbed his head before settling it back. He kicked rocks around in the dirt. “I want to kill him. I want to choke the life out of him. I can’t tell you all the things I really want to do to him for what he did to you. You wouldn’t like that part of me, I spent a lot of years trying to bury that part of me…bury the part of me that comes from my father.”
That, I had expected.
“And when I look at you I want to make you forget him. But if I touch you right now, I’m so angry I’d be no better than him.”
“You aren’t him.” It was a simple statement, but no less true. I could never confuse the two men, no one could.
“No, I’m not.” He pulled me against his chest and looked down at me. “He’ll never touch you again.” It was more of a growl than a whisper.
“I know.” It was important for him that I understood. Just as it was important to me that he wasn’t ashamed to look at me, to touch me. I wasn’t dirty to him. We stood like that until the sun disappeared in the distance, me holding him as he trembled with rage. Right there, until he calmed and pressed his lips to my hair.
Apart we were both broken. Together we were whole.
Chapter Sixteen
I tried to convince myself it wasn’t cowardice that had me waiting until my house was empty to go home. I’d have to face them all soon anyway, we’d all be at the track testing for Street King Showdown. I wasn’t ashamed, not of Jordan or the staggering change in our relationship. I was still too emotionally raw to deal with any of their questions.
I’d cringed when I’d lied via text message to my sister, then again when I’d begged Hadley to cover for me with my family and tell them I was staying with her. She agreed, but only if I told her where I really was. She hadn’t been surprised.
I went home, grabbed a few things, shoved them into a bag, and jogged back to Jordan’s.
“Hoping they don’t catch you?” he asked with a raised brow when I came in, winded.
“N—” I stopped myself and shook my head, hair dancing around my face. “Not like you’re thinking.”
“How am I thinking?”
His face was a mask of caramel colored skin and dark eyes, unreadable even to me. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I wasn’t the only one stripped raw from the past twenty-four hours. “That I don’t want them to know I’m here with you.”
He said nothing. Bingo.
“It’s not that, Jordan. They know me. You know me, look at me, what would be the first thing you asked me if you saw me?” I’d seen myself in the mirror in my bathroom. I didn’t look like the girl who spent the night with the love of her life. My eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles, and I was pale and disheveled. Breanna would say I was a hot mess, and she’d be right.
Jordan and I had been on a rollercoaster of epic proportions. My very being was lighter and free for the first time in a long time. That didn’t mean I looked the part.
I waited until his muscles relaxed before I went to him. By the time I did, he was rubbing his face with his hands. “I’m sorry if I upset you.” I let him wrap me in his arms. “I just don’t want to see anyone else right now.”
“It’s okay.” He kissed me, tenderly. “I’m processing.”
“Me, too.”
A hot shower, toothpaste, and a change of clothes helped me process. I needed to breathe. The more I could, the more settled everything in my life was. It was as if chains I hadn’t known I carried had slipped off. The dirt and grime they’d left behind washed off me and down the drain with the dirty water.
I put on makeup, and for the first time in a long time, I liked what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I could love the person who looked back at me.
> I smiled and chewed on my lip when I passed the spare room and its weight bench. I almost giggled at the giddy, light feeling that came over me. Nothing that had happened there had been dirty or wrong, it had been beautiful.
Jordan turned to me in his bedroom. He stood half dressed, his chest bare, smelling of the same soap I’d found in his shower. The smile he greeted me with made my heart stutter a step in my chest. “You look good, Raelynn.”
I tucked a damp tendril of hair behind my ear. I wore nothing but a pair of fitted jeans and a black tank. Nothing fancy, nothing special, but to him I looked good. Quite frankly without a shirt he looked good enough to eat. “Not so bad yourself.”
He laughed, but I stopped him short of pulling his shirt down his chest. I traced the scars, from the big one at his shoulder to the barrage of smaller ones that the tattoo covered. Several of which were easily kissed from my height. So, I did.
“Raelynn.” His voice was so thick with arousal it stole my breath.
His hands slid up my sides and under my arms. He lifted me with ease, my legs instinctively wrapped around his waist. There was no urgency, only a slow burning need. We tumbled back on the bed, his lips warm against my neck as his hands sought their own fortunes.
Without fear, I reached for his denim clad arousal. The groan I received in response was well worth my effort.
“Raelynn.” Again, the sound of my name on his lips sent chills across my flesh.
I stroked him, first through his jeans. When he’d had enough, he unzipped them and freed himself to my touch. When he kissed me after that, everything around me spun in a haze of desire.
“Yo! Jordan!”
The shout from the back of the house brought his head up, the slamming of the back door had him sliding off me and adjusting his clothes.
I knew the voice, we both did. Vic wouldn’t hesitate to walk all the way through the house to find him. They were like that, my brother and Devin too, Jordan’s place was home. They’d expect a head’s up if he wasn’t here alone. So, it wasn’t a surprise when Jordan jerked a shirt over his head on his way out of the bedroom. Leaving me without a word.
I lay flat on my back on the bed, fighting to catch my breath as the room continued to spin. It was several long minutes before I could breathe again, several after that before I could feel the heat drain from my face. I was too stunned to be annoyed by Vic’s interruption.
They were well into their conversation by the time I slipped from the bedroom and down the hall. I could hear them in the kitchen, Vic’s voice anxious and Jordan’s quiet.
“I don’t know man, I tried to call him but he wouldn’t answer. I texted him back and all he said was to ask you, that you’d know. But the car’s gone, Jordan, completely gone.”
“It’s his to take.” Jordan’s voice was so cold it stopped me from walking into the kitchen.
“What’s going on, Jordan?” Vic’s voice was shrill with tension. Though I couldn’t see around the corner, I could imagine the way Jordan rolled his shoulders in response. It wouldn’t be easy to keep us secret from Vic, but he would for me.
The front door was to my right. I could slip out of it and not face this at all. I could go home, and Jordan would never say a word to anyone. I could turn around too, go back and hide in his room until Vic left.
There was a pit in my stomach. It was easy to figure out who had Vic all riled up when I stopped thinking about myself for longer than a minute.
“He said you could tell me. Tell me, man, this don’t feel right, he’s never—” I stepped into the kitchen and Vic broke off mid-sentence. Whatever he’d been about to say was replaced by two solemn words. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and slumped into the stool. “How’d he know?” I was asking Jordan, but Vic shrugged with him.
The answer came from my brother’s voice at the backdoor. “He saw the two of you in bed together this morning.” Aiden was propped against the doorframe, he’d left it open. “Incoming, Raelynn, he called Bree not me. I think I might have bought you like two or three minutes’ head start.”
Bewildered, I wondered why he was buying me a head start at all. Sure, Breanna had been hard to read since I’d been back, but who I was or wasn’t sleeping with didn’t seem to be something she’d be overly concerned with.
My sister blew past my brother in the doorway like a hurricane. “What the fuck?” Breanna’s voice was lit with anger. The sort of anger that one reserved for being betrayed by their own sister. She looked at Jordan one time and shook her head, before turning her dark glare on me. She looked every bit the manic gypsy, all long dark hair and anger. “You.”
I readied for the onslaught as she crossed the kitchen to me. I’d been on the receiving end of her anger more than a few times. I wasn’t overly concerned. Jordan wasn’t impressed. Breanna caught the threat in his eyes and ignored it. Even if she hadn’t known him our entire life, I don’t think she would have been afraid. When she was mad, she was ten foot tall and bulletproof.
“Outside,” I said calmly. She clenched her jaw before spinning on her heel. I pointed at Jordan. “Stay out of this.” I needed to figure out why my sex life had put a bug in my sister’s ass. I didn’t need him getting involved.
The haughty way she slung her hips as she stormed out left me feeling angry too. As if the way she walked, her long legs eating up the grass so that I’d have to practically run to keep up with her, put her at an advantage and she knew it.
“What’s your problem, Breanna?” My calm was barely contained, only siblings could make each other so angry with minimal effort.
“You.” She spun and turned all the rage in her body directly at me. “How dare you? Devin poured his heart out to you, he loves you, and you turn him down to go bang his best friend? Then lie to me about it? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Who I sleep with is none of your business.” I fought the urge to slap the self-righteous indignation right off her face. I couldn’t deny the lie or having Hadley cover for me. I didn’t have time in that moment to regret my actions. “What went on between me and Devin is none of your business.”
“It is my business when you hurt one of my friends, when you tear two people I care about apart.” She crossed her arms across her chest and sneered at me. I was struck for a moment by how terrifying and beautiful she was. My little sister, the warrior princess. “But, like always, all Raelynn thinks about is Raelynn.”
“That’s not true.” Adamantly I shook my head, but she continued before I could say anything else.
“Are you telling me you didn’t turn Devin down last night when he asked you out?” She snorted out a hateful laugh when I looked down at the grass instead of answering. “Are you telling me you didn’t immediately go home and fuck his best friend?”
“I did not.” I hadn’t, not right away. She made it sound wrong and dirty. It was as if all the mending I’d done on my spirit were washed away by one of the people I loved the most. When I looked up at her, angry tears were spilling over her eyes.
Behind me I could hear scuffling, I didn’t have to look to know it was my brother holding Jordan back.
“Don’t worry, Jordan.” She laughed hatefully. “I’m done. I needed to make sure it was true.”
“What’s that?” Jordan was angry too, practically shouting at her while I stood like a coward, my hands fisted at my sides. I couldn’t do anything but search desperately for any sign of the sister who loved me.
I didn’t see a trace of her.
“That my sister is a whore.” She spat the last word before storming away.
It hit me hard, right in the chest. I swayed on my feet. Jordan’s arms around my shoulders were the only thing that kept me from falling over. Tears spilled over my eyes and aching sobs filled my chest. I’d been called a lot of things by a lot of people, but never from my sister. Not like that, not with such authority and truth. She meant what she said and nothing I could say would change her opinion.
Breanna
never looked back. Not even once.
“She’s wrong,” Jordan hissed, his voice filled with anger.
“No.” I shook my head as she spun her truck around in our driveway and slung gravel all the way down the street.
My dad stood on our back porch, shaded from the late afternoon sun. He looked across the street at me and gave what I could only interpret as a sad smile before turning back into the house.
He’d heard it all.
“Well, I’m glad that’s over without bloodshed.” Aiden shoved his fingers in his front pockets and whistled. He and Vic flanked Jordan and me.
The four of us stood there for a bit as if we were surveying the destruction left behind by Hurricane Breanna.
“Your sist—” Jordan started.
“Don’t man.” Aiden held up a hand. “She’s still my sister, even if I don’t completely agree with her. They both are. I’m Switzerland right now, leave me out of it.”
I pulled free of Jordan’s arms. “I need to go.”
Numbly, I walked across the street, leaving the three men staring after me. None of them stopped me, of that I was thankful. But when I looked back, Aiden’s hand was on Jordan’s chest, holding him in place. Aiden and I were a lot alike. His actions proving that he knew I needed something none of them could give.
“Hey there, Rae.” My dad stood making coffee at the kitchen counter. Rick Casey and his coffee were never far apart, no matter what time of the day it was.
“Hey.” I stopped at the back door and fought the tremble in my voice. “I guess you heard all that.”
“Yup.” He poured a cup and turned, cocking a hip on the counter behind him. I was struck with how very much Aiden looked like him. Right down to the errant hair that constantly fell over his right eye. “Your brother called me after he talked to your sister.”
“Daddy, I—” I wiped the tears from my face with the palms of my hands. “It’s stupid, I shouldn’t keep crying. Bu…”
“Your sister said some pretty awful things.”