PJ glanced at his frames. “I think your glasses are really hot, actually.”
“Well, maybe these ones are.” Beau waggled his brows and pursed his lips in a goofy model pose that had her giggling. “Wanna know something funny?”
“Yes, I could definitely use funny right now.”
“I don’t even need these. I got contacts in high school.”
“What?” PJ smacked him in the arm playfully. “Then why do you wear them?”
Beau shrugged. “I started my accounting business pretty young. A lot of my clients are seniors. I think it helps ease their mind if I dress—”
“Like an old man?”
Beau snorted. “I was going to say professionally.”
PJ smirked.
“Whatever, wiseass. Moving on.” Beau scooped up her legs and settled them over his lap. “So, was Andy awkward too?”
“Yeah, but not in the same way. Hers was always more of a social thing. She had a hard time connecting with people.”
“Then how did you two connect?”
“Mutual dislike of an overcrowded cafeteria,” PJ said dryly. “We found the same hiding spot to have our lunch. There were these bleachers outside by the track. They were a small hike across campus, but it was quiet over there. We had the place to ourselves most of the time. At first we didn’t really talk much. Andy would just sit on the bottom bleacher eating the same strawberry yogurt she brought every day from home, and I’d be at the top with my cardboard tray of overcooked food from the lunch room.”
PJ smiled nostalgically. “After a few weeks, the bleachers between us disappeared. I found out Andy was actually a year older than me, but she’d been held back starting elementary school due to a speech delay. Honestly, I would never have known if she hadn’t said something because by the middle of seventh grade, we were talking about our favorite books and helping each other with homework. By the end of the year, we were laughing and gossiping about boys.”
“Sounds pretty normal,” Beau said, gently stroking her thigh.
PJ nodded as she gnawed at her lip, growing anxious as she considered the next part of her story. “Eventually, we got to talking about Wade. We both had a crush on him, which was also normal because probably half the students at Baylor did. Probably some teachers too. Wade had everyone eating out of the palm of his hand, could charm even the shy girls like Andy with one little wink.”
PJ paused, swallowing back a wave of self-loathing. “God, I was so stupid. I used to stalk him around campus, scribble his name in my binders, all the usual pathetic stuff. It wasn’t until the last week of eighth grade that I realized what kind of dirtbag I was obsessing over.”
“What happened?” Beau asked quietly.
PJ stared back at the TV, the memory of that day playing in her head like some awful teen soap opera. “The Monday before graduation, I got my lunch as usual and walked over to the bleachers. Andy wasn’t there. I remember thinking maybe she’d just gone to the bathroom, so I sat and waited for her for a few minutes. But then I happened to look down, and I saw her yogurt container lying in the grass, and that was when I started to get worried because Andy would never have littered like that. So I got up and started walking in the direction of the racquetball courts near the track. I don’t know what exactly possessed me to check there. Neither one of us was any good at racquetball during PE, so it wasn’t like we would have been smashing a ball around on our lunch break. But, with every step I took, I just knew. I knew she was there. Call it women’s intuition or something, but I’d always been a little creeped out by how secluded the courts were. They had these big wraparound walls, and they faced away from all the buildings on campus. It was a total blind spot really…”
“Perfect for ambushing someone,” Beau surmised, his eyes darkening as he tensed.
“Yeah.” PJ sucked in a breath, letting the rest of it out in a rush. “I heard them before I saw them. Wade was telling Andy how good of a kisser she was, and how he wouldn’t mind a kiss somewhere else. I rounded the wall of the last court, and I saw him pushing her to her knees in front of him. She was confused at first. I think she thought he meant like he wanted to take her someplace else to kiss her, but then Wade’s unzipping his jeans and grabbing her ponytail, and Andy’s catching on real quick, and I’ll never forget the look in her eyes then. She was scared.” PJ swallowed again. “Hell, I was scared. I was standing there frozen, couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and then I heard her tell him no. Actually, it was more like ‘No, thank you.’ Like she was rejecting a bite of our crappy cafeteria food instead of the dick he was trying to pull out of his pants.”
“Son of a bitch—”
“Yeah. I started to lose it. I must have made a noise or something because Wade let go of her hair and whipped around real fast. Andy hopped up all red in the face. She wouldn’t look at me. She just jetted out of the courts with her hands over her ears when I started screaming at the fucker. And that’s when he…” PJ felt a wave of nausea hit her as she remembered the bite of his hands. Awful hands that weren’t anything like the warm ones lying motionless on her leg now.
“He covered your mouth, didn’t he?” Anger and guilt flashed over Beau’s features as he looked at her.
PJ nodded, staring down at her lap. “He slammed me up against the wall of the court and got his hand over my mouth and nose. He told me to shut up, or he’d keep it there. I couldn’t breathe, and I was starting to panic, so I nodded and kept quiet. He let go of my face but kept me pinned to the wall as he said all these horrible things. I remember him laughing, telling me my little crush on him was cute and all, but he didn’t fuck trolls. He threatened to ruin me if I told anybody about what I’d seen. He said even if I did, no one would believe an ugly bitch like me who’d been stalking him all over school. Then he just walked away.”
Beau swore, yanked his glasses off, and tossed them on the coffee table. “That piece of shit. I’m thinkin’ I shoulda done more than clock that fool Saturday night.”
“You punched him?”
“Couple of times.”
“How’d that feel?”
“Not nearly satisfying enough.” Beau sniffed, his jaw tense as he brooded silently for a moment. Then he turned to her, one hand moving to her chin, lifting it gently as his expression softened. “Everything he said was bullshit, PJ. You’re beautiful. Inside and out. You have to believe that.”
“I’m starting to,” she said with a shaky smile. “But after that day… well, I was kind of messed up for a while.”
“Did you report Wade to the school?”
“Not initially. Andy didn’t want me to. I called her the night after it happened. She was really embarrassed. Told me not to say anything because her parents had been fighting a lot lately, and her family was scheduled to move to California right after graduation, and her parents were already stressed. Andy thought if they found out what happened with Wade, it would just make everything worse, and they’d get a divorce.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.”
“I know. Andy was always worried that every little issue she had was going to bust up her parents.” PJ sighed. “I tried to reason with her, but Andy wasn’t having it. The more I pressed, the more agitated she became. She ended up yelling at me on the phone, screaming at me to ‘stop trying to make her think about things she didn’t want to think about’ and if I was a real friend I would ‘stop trying to force her to talk to our stupid principal’—”
Beau stiffened next to her, something she’d said clearly having registered with him. “Jesus.” He looked stunned for a moment. “Andy’s autistic, isn’t she?”
“Well, yeah.” PJ frowned. “Didn’t I mention that?” She really thought she’d mentioned it. Apparently, she had not because Beau was suddenly looking thunderous on the couch beside her.
“That piece of shit took advantage of a fourteen-year-old girl on the spectrum?! Now I really want to beat the hell out of him.” Beau’s knees started bouncing furiously. PJ
pulled her legs away. Beau’s angry gaze shot to hers and softened. He took a deep breath. “Tell me the rest of it.”
“The rest isn’t much better.”
“I can handle it.”
“Whatever.” PJ curled into his side and laid her head on his shoulder. “I did end up reporting Wade. I debated for days about doing it because I was scared it would cost me my friendship with Andy. I knew she was moving, but she was one of the few friends I had, and I really wanted to stay in touch. I also knew if I let Wade get away with what he’d done, he’d probably pull the same type of shit with someone else. In the end, I decided to compromise. I figured I’d report what had happened, but just leave Andy’s name out. I’d say I didn’t get a good look at the girl he was harassing, and she ran off before I could ID her, and then he jumped me. I thought Wade shoving me and stuff would be enough to get someone to punish him.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No,” PJ said bitterly. “Mrs. Frye, the counselor I told, said she was ‘soooo sorry’ this happened to me, and she would definitely ‘have a chat’ with Wade about what happened, but without any witnesses there wasn’t going to be much she could do because it would turn into a ‘he-said, she-said’ situation. Then she’s all like, ‘I sure wish we had more time to run a thorough investigation. We take these matters ‘soooo seriously.’ Why didn’t you come to us sooner with this? It’s the last day of school.’ By this point, I was so pissed, I kinda lost my shit on her. I was like ‘Because it just fucking happened, ya dumb bitch.’ Needless to say, that didn’t help my case with Mrs. Frye.”
Beau sighed as he kissed the top of her head. “You were angry, Pru. You had every right to be. And a competent administrator would have understood and run a thorough investigation no matter what.”
“Well, I knew she at least talked to Wade because he gave me the death glare the next morning at graduation.” PJ yawned as she burrowed against Beau’s shoulder. “And even after he transferred on to Jefferson Prep, and I went to Finkerton, he made good on his threat. By the time I started my freshman year of high school, there were already rumors going around about me. The girls wouldn’t look at me. They’d just walk past me in the halls like they thought I had some kind of disease, or they’d whisper in class, like they’d heard from so and so that I’d lost my virginity when I was twelve and shit. The guys weren’t much better. Most of them treated me like I was some kind of desperate horny bitch who’d bang anybody with a pulse.”
“God, I want to hurt that weasel exponentially more by the minute.”
PJ lifted her head, turning to face Beau more fully. This was the final part of her story, the saddest, most pathetic part of the whole thing, and though she definitely didn’t want to go into details, she needed Beau to know the truth. Especially after what they’d done in the hall. “Well, the rumors weren’t totally untrue. I did sleep around a little when I was younger, just not with anyone they said I did or when they said I did…” PJ frowned, her gaze shifting down to her naval piercing. For the first time, she was a little ashamed of it.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Beau said gently. “No judgments. I had some of my first sexual experiences around that age too.”
PJ looked back up with a tired smile. “Around that age, huh?”
“I was sixteen.”
“I was fourteen.”
Beau lifted her chin again. “No judgments, Pru.”
“I’m clean though. I’ve been tested since. And I’ve never done it without a condom.”
“Same here.” He flushed, his gaze darting to his son’s room. “Well, aside from the obvious.”
PJ didn’t miss the flash of guilt in Beau’s expression. She knew Max’s conception hadn’t been planned. At one time, there had been plenty of rumors flying around about Beau as well. And plenty of judgment. Clearly, Beau was still judging himself. She didn’t like it.
PJ bumped his hips with her own, hoping to distract him with some strategic flirting. “Sooo,” she drawled, batting her stubby lashes at him, “any chance you want a little reciprocity for that hallway action?”
Beau relaxed, a husky chuckle escaping before he dropped a chaste kiss on the bridge of her nose. “Yes, I want, but no way can I have. That’ll have to wait.”
“Oh, shoot,” PJ said, playing off the immediate rush of heat stinging her cheeks with a saucy snap of her fingers. “Did my long-winded tale of woe spoil the mood—”
Beau cut her off with another kiss. This one wasn’t chaste. This one was hard and fast, and tasted of vanilla but promised all kinds of things that weren’t. PJ whimpered when he pulled away, her lips on fire, her skin now flushed with something other than embarrassment.
“It didn’t,” Beau said with the sexiest damn smile. Then he shifted on the couch, putting some space between them as he sighed. “But considering everything you just told me, and because I’m older and wiser, I think we should slow things down. We’ve gone from friends to more than friends really fast.”
PJ grinned hopefully. “So we’re more than friends then?”
“Yes. Definitely more than friends.”
“How slow we talkin’?”
Beau swiped at his face, and she could almost hear him stifling another one of those growls as her gaze slipped to his pecs. “Christ, Pru… you’re seventeen. I’ve taken advantage enough. I’m trying to be responsible here—”
“Oh, relax, ya boy scout. I’m eighteen already.”
“What?”
“Today’s my birthday.”
“Really?” Beau looked dumbfounded.
PJ struggled not to laugh. For someone older and wiser, the guy was sometimes a little slow on the uptake. “Uhm, yeah… that was my birthday cake you were munching on back at the clinic.”
The relief spreading over Beau’s face would have been comical if it weren’t so obvious the guy had been working himself into some kind of fit thinking he’d molested her or something. “Hey,” she said, scooting back over to his side. “We’re okay. I’m legal.”
“Barely,” he muttered dryly.
“Don’t go there,” PJ warned. “Legal’s legal.” She pressed her lips to his cheek before moving on to the corner of his mouth. Beau turned into the kiss, his resistance crumbling as she nibbled at him. Then, suddenly, he was pulling away with a frown.
“But I didn’t get you a present.”
PJ smiled as she considered the matter. “Well, ya did give me my first non-self-induced orgasm.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
Beau brightened, his expression growing cocky.
“Of course, your kid kinda gifted me with a lap full of puke, sooo…” PJ winced as Beau groaned.
Then she was giggling, and he was biting his lip.
In a matter of seconds, they were cracking up, both falling to their sides on the deep plush cushions of his couch as they struggled to breathe. In a matter of minutes, their laughter was giving way to kisses, and PJ was struggling to think. Because the man’s lips were devouring hers, and it was so damn good.
But as Beau’s mouth shifted lower, and PJ was able to draw in a hit of much-needed oxygen, one thing did occur to her. One gift he’d given her that she really did need to thank him for.
“Beau?” she gasped.
Strong lips pulled away from the sensitive skin of her neck as he looked up. “Hmmm?”
“Thanks for listening to me.”
Beau smiled as he settled a hand on the curve of her cheek. PJ’s heart raced at the contact. Not because she was scared, but because it felt kinda wonderful. “Thanks for trusting me,” he said quietly.
Chapter 29
Beau woke to the sound of Saturday morning cartoons and the soft whistle of PJ’s snores. Sometime in the night, she’d turned on the couch so that her backside was pressed up against his crotch. Sometime later, the knot on her shirt had loosened, and his hand had found its way underneath to settle between the most perfect pair of breasts he’d ever felt in his life. Beau had
no idea how to remove it without waking the woman who was still fast asleep in his arms, nor did he actually want to. But considering his kid was sitting on the floor maybe five feet from them watching an old episode of Teen Titans Go! while nibbling on a slice of sandwich bread, Beau figured he really ought to try.
Reluctantly, Beau slipped his fingers free a fraction of an inch. PJ let out a soft whimper and rubbed her ass against his morning wood. He hissed in her ear, fighting back the desperate urge to grind into her. Damn, she felt good, all that lush softness tormenting him as she murmured something low and sexy that Beau couldn’t quite make out over the sudden loud ringing coming from his front door.
PJ jerked, her eyes shooting open.
Beau yanked his hand out from under her shirt.
Max hopped up from the floor. “I’ll get it, Daddy!”
“Wait a minute, buddy. Let me help you.”
But his son had already scampered from the room as PJ bolted to a sitting position beside him. “Stay here,” Beau told her, rising quickly. “It’s probably just a salesman or something.”
PJ nodded, blinking back the cobwebs of sleep and raking at the tangled lengths of her hair. “S-sure.”
Beau padded after his son, but didn’t make it more than five steps before he heard Max’s excited chirps as well as the familiar click of heels approaching from the foyer. Shit. It wasn’t a salesman.
His mother swept into the living room in a cloud of White Diamonds perfume, clutching a cheap plastic sack from a local hobby store in one hand and a vintage Hermès handbag in the other.
“Mornin’, sugar.” She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. “I was just in the neighborhood. The Yarn Barn over on Goodwood was having a doorbuster sale, and I had to stock up.” Beau sighed. Only his mother would wake up at the butt crack of dawn to save an extra thirty cents a yard on scrap fabric, but be perfectly willing to drop twenty grand on a purse. Usually, the woman’s eccentricities didn’t bother him, nor did her spontaneous visits, but right now was definitely not a good time.
Pretty Jane (The Browning Series Book 3) Page 20