First Touch

by Laurelin Paige

  “Funny that we both have an Amber that had an impact on our lives.” Reeve’s eyes narrowed as he considered me. “Anyway. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.”

  I cleared my throat and dove in as if the name situation was no big deal. “I didn’t have any money. Didn’t have anywhere to go. I’d been instructed to take it easy until my body fully healed.” Specifically – no sex. “Which meant I couldn’t depend on, um, my usual methods of survival. Besides, I’d decided with a baby I didn’t want to do that anymore. I had to find a better life.”

  “You were going to keep it?” Again, there wasn’t judgment in his tone. There may have even been awe.

  “Yeah. Dumb, I know.”

  “Not dumb. It was yours.”

  My throat tightened. Even Amber hadn’t understood my reasons for not terminating the pregnancy. But Reeve had hit it square between the eyes – I’d never had anything that had been mine. Earned and created by myself rather than given to me by someone else. That tiny multiplication of cells, though its makeup was half dependent on a man, was still half dependent on me. On my existence.

  It was the first time I’d felt there was a reason to my life.

  The only time – until I’d gotten the call from Amber.

  “So she invited me to stay with her and Bridge until I got on my feet.” I tossed the stick to the ground and waved at the smoke, pretending that was why I was choked up and teary.

  But Reeve wasn’t stupid. He knew. He didn’t say anything, though. Just waited for me to go on.

  I still coughed to keep up the act. Cleared my throat again. Plunged ahead. “It was great for the first couple of weeks. Bridge seemed generous. He gave me whatever I needed. I had my own room in his mansion. I got to be with her. And I was growing a child. It was maybe the best time in my life.

  “But it was all a mirage. The more time I spent with them the more I realized it. Underneath Bridge’s nice-guy exterior, there were dark undertones that she never noticed because she was out of her mind addicted to cocaine.”

  “Dark undertones?”

  “Well, one time when they were both high, I watched him fingerbang a stray cat while she looked on and giggled. When he moved to reach for the fire poker, I left the room.”

  Bile gathered in the back of my throat. God, if I couldn’t get through this part of it, how the hell was I going to get through the rest?

  It didn’t matter how. The words were surging now and wouldn’t be stopped. “I tried to talk to my friend – to Amber – about it. But Bridge had never done anything to hurt her, and that’s all she really cared about. And I get it. I do. He wasn’t married and he treated her like more than a mistress. Like a wife. Let her run his house and play Rich Girl of Beverly Hills, and that was really all she’d ever wanted in her life. To feel safe and get to be in charge of things.”

  Reeve lowered his eyes, as though he felt guilty, and I wanted to assure him that Amber and I had been very different in our wants. Wanted him to not worry that those were the things I was after, in case he was feeling bad about not offering it.

  But it wasn’t the time. This wasn’t that story and I’d already hinted at those things earlier in the day, the kinds of things I wanted from a man. “Anyway, when I mentioned concern over Bridge she denied it. Said that I was the one who was into ‘the really sadistic things’ and so I saw things out of context.”

  “Ouch.”

  “She had her reasons for saying that.” After everything she’d seen from me, she was justified. “She also told me that if I was looking for an invitation into their bedroom that it wasn’t happening because she and Bridge were completely monogamous.”

  “Double ouch.”

  “No. It was fine. And something that warranted being said after our past live-in relationships.” I caught Reeve’s skeptical expression. “What’s that look for?”

  “Nothing. Go on.” Except, he went on instead of letting me. “I just wonder if you were selling yourself short.”

  Maybe this would be a little of that story after all. “I didn’t have a pretty past before this Reeve. I told you that earlier. I’d earned every assumption she made about me.”

  “People change.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But you said you were trying. She should have at least given you credit for that.” He was oddly defensive, as if he was taking Amber’s accusations personally.

  “I was trying. She knew better than I that it wouldn’t get me anywhere because it was in my nature. I’ve accepted that now, but I hadn’t then. No matter what you do, you can’t deny who you are, Reeve. I can’t deny who I am.”

  His expression hardened, and I had the distinct feeling he didn’t like hearing that. “Go on,” he said.

  Now I was the one who felt defensive. Did he expect me to try to change those things again? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t, and I’d made that clear. And he hadn’t seemed like it had bothered him earlier. “Is that a problem?” I asked cautiously. “That I can’t change?”

  He softened just slightly. “No. No. Of course not. Go on.”

  His reaction still had me befuddled, but I pushed it off and ventured back to my tale. “So, what’s next?…” The worst parts, that’s what. The blood and pain and bruises that went so deep they could be felt for months. Longer. I felt a rush of panic just thinking about it, let alone saying it.

  So, maybe I wouldn’t say it. “Jesus, this story is really a damper. I shouldn’t be telling —”

  “Finish it, Emily.” It was his commanding tone. The one I couldn’t argue with.

  “Okay.” I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, my mouth dry. Best to just blurt the rest out. Cold. Clinically. I focused on the fire. “One night, after everyone had gone to bed, I had a knock on my door. I thought it was her, but it was Bridge.”

  If I looked in the darkness, anywhere other than at the flame flickering in front of me, I could see him again, his face etched with cruelty, alcohol fuming on his breath, his eyes gleaming with wicked intent, the weapon in his hand.

  “I didn’t invite him in, but he came in anyway. I told him I wasn’t interested. I told him no. But he didn’t listen. Said that he’d heard all the stories about what a bad girl I was and how I liked it naughty. And after all his generosity, I owed him.”

  “He raped you.” It wasn’t a question and I knew Reeve had said it so that I wouldn’t have to. I nodded, barely perceptibly. An inch of forward motion with my head. It was such a hard word to come to terms with because of all I’d allowed men to do to me in the past. Hard to defend myself, as women always had to do when they used the R word. And hadn’t Bridge been right about me? I was a bad girl. I did like it naughty. It wasn’t that I thought I’d deserved what he did. I just didn’t know that I didn’t either.

  I wrapped my arms around myself wondering if Reeve felt the same. Wondering if he thought that Bridge had every right. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  Forcing myself not to care, I went on. “I tried to fight him.” The one time in my life I’d fought. It did no good. “But he was a big guy. And he had a pair of scissors.”

  Reeve cursed under his breath.

  I shut my eyes, closed my lids tight, tight. Blocking out the images, the memories. Putting up the wall.

  When it was back in place, I opened my eyes, cleared my throat once again, and jumped to the conclusion. “After it was over —”

  “No.” Reeve was so forceful, so commanding, he left no room for me to do anything but halt. I lifted my eyes to his. “Don’t skip to the end,” he said. “Tell me what he did. Tell me the details.”

  My stomach lurched, my worry from earlier confirmed. “I’m not telling you this so you can get off on the fucked-up —”

  He lurched forward to the edge of his seat. “You think I’m getting off on this? I want to have him killed, Emily. I want to know his name so I can track him down and have him destroyed. But first I want to know everything he made you suffer so that I can make sure he suffers equa
lly.”

  His rage stirred and stunned me. It moved me that he would say he’d kill for me, except that he might actually mean it and then I was still moved but then I felt guilty about it.

  And regardless of what he meant, I wasn’t worth that kind of trouble. “Reeve —”

  “Tell me.” It was an order. It was law.

  Again, I concentrated on the fire. Pretended the details were about someone else. “He, um, forced me on my stomach. He cut the curtain cords with the scissors and used them to tie my hands and feet to the bedframe. Then he put his fingers in me. Uh, like, all his fingers at once. It wasn’t gentle. Then he put his cock inside and put the scissors at my throat and told me if I made a sound that he’d…”

  I covered my eyes with my hand. No matter how much Reeve pressed, I couldn’t say the things that Bridge had threatened to do to me. They ended in death and that was the best part of it.

  “So I was quiet,” I said finally, summarizing. “And I was really good at obeying.” Once again, my sick perverted proclivities failed to protect me. I obeyed my rapist. I hadn’t struggled. Maybe deep inside I really had wanted it.

  I lifted my eyes to Reeve who was now pacing in front of the fire. He was probably already thinking it. I might as well say it for him. “I should have fought more.”

  He stopped abruptly and spun toward me. “Do not do that, Emily. Do not blame yourself.”

  “Yeah, right.” Just because he said it in that forceful way of his didn’t mean I could do it.

  Maybe I wasn’t as good at obeying as I thought I was.

  “I mean it, Emily.”

  I glared at him.

  But I wasn’t in the mood to argue about it so I continued instead. “He got bored with that after a while and he moved to…” I had to stop to take a breath and it shuddered on the intake. “To my ass.” In my head, I was still in cold, clinical mode, but my words were shaky, full of lumps and cracks that hadn’t been there before. “He didn’t use lube and I couldn’t help it, I screamed. He said for that, I needed to be punished. He used the scissors. In me.”

  “In your ass?” His tone said he knew the answer already.

  I shook my head no.

  Reeve let out a string of obscenities that ended in his foot meeting one of the empty beer bottles and sending it flying.

  The reaction was foreign to me. It hadn’t been one that I’d experienced after Bridge hurt me. I’d been angry, but never full of rage. And honestly, the only person I’d been angry with was myself.

  Watching Reeve’s outburst, seeing him feel the fury that had eluded me, was fascinating. It seemed so freeing to have an emotion that could be so easily concentrated into outward action. My pain had always turned inward. My anger only destroyed me.

  Reeve, though, he had the power to hurt others. I’d known that. In this moment, I saw it.

  In some twisted, fucked-up way, it was inspiring.

  He began pacing again. He gestured with his hand for me to keep going as he said, “What next? Tell me what happened next.”

  I pinched at the bridge of my nose. It should have been downhill from here, but the worst parts were yet to come. Hoping they’d hurt less, I hurried through them, letting each syllable tumble out nearly on top of each other. “When he was done, I was bleeding. Bruised. Every time I moved, my uterus spasmed with intense cramps. Bridge was passed out, and I knew I needed to get to a doctor, but I was still tied up. That’s when she walked in.”

  God. The look on her face. It had mirrored Reeve’s in many ways, but it wasn’t Bridge she’d been angry with.

  “You fucking bitch,” she said. “You knew I loved him, you fucking bitch.”

  It should have felt like a betrayal, because she’d automatically assumed the worst of me and the best of him, but the real bitch of it was I got her point. I got her point and I could even stand up for it if need be.

  “She blamed me,” I told Reeve now.

  Once again he halted his movement. “She blamed you? How the fuck could she – could anyone – have blamed you for that?”

  “She thought I’d wanted it, but” – I put a hand up to silence whatever it was he was about to say – “before you get mad at her, remember she’d seen me put myself in those kinds of situations on more than one occasion. She’d never pointed a finger before. And she’d always helped me out of them. Then this was how I’d paid her back? In her eyes, I’d stolen her man when she’d been nothing but compassionate to me.”

  Reeve shook his head incredulously, scoffing to himself.

  I continued to defend her. “She got me to the hospital. Even when she thought I’d asked for it, she still helped me.”

  “She’s a goddamn saint,” he said, drenched in sarcasm.

  “Well, not a saint. But she cared about me. Despite everything.” I glanced at Reeve. He looked appalled but he stayed tight-lipped, his hands working at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching.

  Whatever. I knew what I knew about Amber. He couldn’t change my mind.

  “That’s pretty much the whole story,” I said. “I miscarried by the end of the next day. I pressed charges, but Bridge didn’t even get arrested. I had too much history or he had too much money. I don’t know. When I was released from the hospital, I tried again to explain to Amber, but Bridge had a story that she thought was equally believable.”

  She didn’t realize that the ten grand that Bridge had allowed her to give me had been retribution instead of charity. I didn’t blame her for taking his side. And she said she didn’t blame me either, but that maybe it was time for us to rethink our situation. I agreed. I wanted out, wanted to live a life where I depended on myself and my own money. A life where I felt safe, for once.

  I’d begged her to come with me. I’d begged her to leave Bridge and start again, without drugs, without abuse. “We always said we’d find our own life someday,” I’d reminded her.

  “We did,” she’d said. “And I’m sure someday’s gotta happen for us all one day. But it doesn’t mean mine’s happening at the same time as yours.”

  I’d clung to her when we said goodbye. She’d cried – she was always a crier. It was shitty to have that be my last memory of her, sad and bleary-eyed. Whenever I thought of her, it was hard not to think of her as crying.

  I wondered if she’d always thought of me as clinging. And was it really inaccurate if she did?

  The summarized version was what I told Reeve. “We decided it was time to part ways. I moved to LA and tried as best as I could to get my life together. Got some modeling gigs. Then some acting. And here I am.”

  “And that was it? You never heard from her again?”

  Until she called for help from here. But I twisted the answer so it wasn’t a blatant lie. “I haven’t seen her since. That was almost seven years ago.”

  “Why the hell do you sound like you did something wrong?”

  I flew to my feet and faced him. “Because I did! I let her go with him. I let her stay with a sadistic fucked-up rapist. I didn’t get her away from Bridge or away from the drugs. She rescued me every time I needed it, and I didn’t rescue her.” The whole time I’d been talking, this was the most worked up I’d been.

  He stepped toward me. “You’re carrying a whole lot of regret over something that was not your fault.”

  “It’s my fault she made those assumptions.” It sounded stupid when I said it out loud. I couldn’t explain what I meant. I huffed. “You don’t know, Reeve.”

  He threw his hands up. “Fine, I don’t know.”

  We stood silently, each of us facing a different direction, both of us brooding. I chewed my lip trying to figure out what to say or do next. I felt horrible. And I did have regrets – I regretted telling Reeve anything because now he was upset and I was upset.

  Though, I wasn’t quite sure what it was he was upset with. Bridge, yes. I knew that. But then, it seemed he was also ticked off at me.

  I kicked my toe in the dirt and mumbled, “Are you mad at me n
ow?”

  “What?” Before I knew it, he’d pulled me into him. “No, no, no way.” He kissed my hair, wrapping me tighter in his arms. “I’m mad at what that piece of shit did to you, and I’m mad at… at Amber, for letting that happen to you. I’m mad that you’re blaming yourself, but I’m not mad at you.” He pushed me away, his hands on my shoulders, so he could look at my eyes. “You got that?”

  I nodded, unable to speak, and he drew me back into his chest. He rocked me like that, both of us not saying anything, rocked me and hushed me even though I wasn’t crying. It was soothing though. For both of us, I think.

  So I hugged him closer to me and enjoyed the sweetness of being comforted.

  Eventually he spoke. “God. I can’t stop thinking about what he did…”

  “I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “I wanted you to tell me. You lived it. The least I can do is know.” He took a big breath that lifted me with it.

  When he exhaled, he stepped away.

  “It’s cold,” he said, rubbing his hands over the sleeves of my shirt. “I should get you inside. I’ll run you a hot shower and you can…” He paused. “You can get the smell of campfire off of you.”

  “Only if you’re planning on joining me.” When he looked at me uncertainly, I began to panic. “Goddamn it, you’re going to be fragile with me now, aren’t you?”

  He laughed, caressing my cheek with the back of his hand. “No. I’m really not. I’m still going to fuck you as hard as ever because I’m not a good man.” Then he grew serious again, meeting my eyes. “If you want me to, I’ll join you. I just wanted to make sure you had space if you needed it.”

  My chest felt tighter and looser all at once. Like something that had been stuck inside had been released but now there was something new filling up its place, expanding and swelling.

  “I think you’re a better man than you think you are.” But what I meant was, maybe you’re a better man than I think you are.

  CHAPTER 27