Intimate

by Noelle Adams

  Intimate

  Noelle Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks referenced in this work of fiction: Tylenol.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  Teaser from Revival (Coming Soon)

  One

  Marissa Dalton wandered toward the front of the concert hall, drawn by the warm strains of the cello.

  So far this summer, she’d been trying to avoid Caleb Wesley, since he had always ignored her and she didn’t like his father. She didn’t think he could see her right now, though.

  And she wanted to listen.

  He sat on a chair in the middle of the stage, his cello between his legs, warming up to the venue before his concert that night.

  Marissa had been raised around classical music, since her mother played the violin professionally and her father managed classical performers. She’d never known anyone who played like Caleb, though—as if the cello, the notes, the music were part of his life-force, rather than something he was doing.

  She stood listening a long time before he noticed her.

  At fourteen, he was a lot taller than he’d been last year. He was cuter too, with those silvery-gray eyes and an incredible smile.

  She’d known him forever, since her mother and both of his parents had played in the same midlist string quartet until three years ago.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, pulling his bow away from the strings and blinking at her, slowly refocusing on the world outside his music.

  “Listening.” There was nothing else she could say. She was just twelve, and she’d never been good at making conversation.

  “You’ve been around a lot this summer.” Caleb went to an exclusive boarding school for the musically gifted, but this summer he was on his first solo tour, managed by her father.

  “Yeah. I’m with my dad full-time now.”

  “Why was your mom unfit?”

  She just glared at him stonily and didn’t answer. As of a month ago, she was in the full custody of her father, after the courts deemed her mother an unfit guardian.

  Marissa loved her mom, and she’d tried really hard for years—cleaning up, making her own meals, helping her mom get ready for performances, always putting on a good face for visitors. But she couldn’t help but be glad about the change.

  No more days watching her mother pass out drunk in the living room. No more nights waiting until dawn for her to come home from the bars. No more evenings left to the devices of a babysitter, who would either ignore her to watch TV or do dirty things with her boyfriend.

  Her mother had tried more than once, but she’d never been able to stop drinking, and her father had fought hard for full custody of her.

  None of that was Caleb’s business, though.

  “Did she do something to you?” he asked, unfazed by her cold glare.

  “Shut up.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “I was just asking.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “Fine. I was just trying to be nice.”

  “You were being a jerk.”

  “A jerk?” For just a moment, amusement glimmered in the gray eyes that were usually intensely serious.

  “Yes.” She had to fight to repress an answering smile. “A jerk. Just because everyone treats you like some little…little godling, like you’re God’s gift to music, it doesn’t mean you can stick your nose in my business.”

  The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “What did you call me?”

  “A godling.” She felt herself blushing but tried to keep her voice firm. “You know. A little god.”

  “Can’t I be a full god?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how to play anything?” he asked, changing the subject as if it were a perfectly natural transition.

  “Just piano.” In spite of her upbringing, Marissa had never been musically inclined, although she practiced dutifully every day.

  Caleb nodded toward the grand piano on the side of the stage. “So play something.”

  It was a test, she supposed. To prove her worth to Caleb, who everyone knew was a brilliant talent, a cello prodigy at the age of fourteen.

  She wasn’t going to fail the test.

  She went to the piano and slid to the front of the bench so she could reach the pedals, since she was short even for twelve. Then she started to play Grieg, the hardest piece she had in her memory.

  She thought she did pretty well. When she finished, she looked over and saw that Caleb had stood up and moved closer to the piano. “Not bad.”

  “Thanks a lot.” She made sure to sound sarcastic, as if his approval meant nothing to her.

  It actually meant a lot, coming from him.

  “Your hands are too small to be really good.”

  She frowned, even though she knew it was true. “No one asked you.”

  “But really not bad for such a mouse.”

  She made an indignant squeak. “I am not a mouse.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, you are. You’re tiny and you never talk and you’re always busy studying or working on something, even when you’re supposed to be on a break.”

  “I am not! I’m talking to you now, and I’m not working on anything.”

  “You should have seen yourself play. Like it was a job, rather than fun. I bet you never get in trouble either.”

  She never got in trouble. She always wanted to please her parents, her teachers, everyone. The few times she’d gotten in trouble had been so upsetting she’d been sure never to do it again. “I get in trouble all the time.”

  “No, you don’t. I’ve never seen anyone who works as hard as you. Even this summer, you’re always doing stuff for your dad. Don’t you know how to have fun?”

  “I have fun doing a lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…like reading.” She knew, even as she said the word, that it was a mistake.

  He laughed out loud. “Definitely a mouse.”

  She was shaking with annoyance now, deciding Caleb was even more of a jerk than she’d thought.

  Mustering all the dignity she could, she got off the piano bench and walked away.

  She hadn’t even reached the side of the stage when he stopped her. “Wait. Don’t be mad. There’s nothing wrong with being a mouse.”

  She turned on him in a fiery rage. “I. Am. Not. A. Mouse.”

  He blinked. “Okay. Got it.”

  “Just because everyone acts like you’re the center of the universe doesn’t mean you are. So you can play the cello. Big deal.”

  “I never said it was a big deal. I was just trying to get to know you.”

  “No, you weren’t. You were being a jerk.”

  For a moment, she didn’t know how he would react—whether or not he was going to get annoyed and ignore her like he had before.

  Then his face relaxed into a smile. “Okay, fine. I was be
ing a jerk.”

  Feeling like she’d unexpectedly scored a victory, she said, “I don’t like you at all, you know.”

  His smile broadened, and she couldn’t help but love how it looked. “Yeah, you do.”

  “I do not.”

  He laughed again, the sound warm and rippling and strangely comforting.

  The worst thing was silently admitting he was right.

  ***

  six years later

  Even after a forty-two minute shower, Marissa still felt dirty.

  Everyone she passed seemed to stare at her as she limped through the quiet campus. She’d always been a mouse, a good girl, the girl no one really noticed, but she didn’t feel that way tonight.

  It was after midnight, and the farther she got from her dorm, the emptier the sidewalks and parking lots became.

  She wasn’t nervous, though. She was numb.

  She headed toward the music building on the west side of campus, more out of instinct than out of any conscious decision.

  When she arrived, she used her ID card to let herself in and headed up to the practice rooms on the sixth floor.

  No one was practicing at almost one o’clock on a Sunday morning.

  No one but Caleb.

  Even at busy times, he always managed to snare the best practice room—the one with a beat-up couch against the wall—so she walked toward the door at the end of the hall.

  Her head pounded, and her throat hurt, and she was painfully raw between her legs.

  She’d thrown up earlier, afterwards, but she didn’t think she would throw up again.

  The practice room door was closed, but she opened it without knocking.

  The rich tones of the cello spilled out into the hall to envelope her.

  Caleb sat on a chair in the middle of the room, his practice cello between his legs, his eyes closed as he played.

  He had no idea she’d stepped into the room. When he played, the music was the only thing in the world.

  Marissa’s stomach twisted as she leaned against the doorframe, listening to the familiar strains of Bach’s Cello Suite #1.

  He must have just started because he was only a minute into the Prelude.

  She’d heard him play this particular piece a hundred times. It had been one of his standards when he was on the concert circuit, and it was nearly always requested when he performed at private events now.

  It had never been her favorite of the pieces he played.

  For some reason, however, the music hit her poignantly tonight.

  The notes were so achingly beautiful and the world was so achingly broken that she started to cry.

  The first time all evening.

  Caleb began the first movement of the suite, swaying slightly with his music, handling the graceful instrument like a lover. Then she must have sniffed too loudly.

  He glanced toward the door, his eyes slightly fuzzy the way they always were when he was interrupted mid-piece.

  He jerked and pulled his bow away from the strings. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, swiping away some of the tears, suddenly embarrassed for no good reason.

  Obviously, her wordless lie didn’t convince him. He surged to his feet, carefully set his cello aside, and strode over to where she stood.

  “Why are you crying?” he demanded, his eyes scrutinizing her face and then every detail of her appearance.

  Her dark hair was still wet from the shower, so she’d pulled it into two long braids. She wore baggy sweats that swallowed her small form, and she knew her face was too pale.

  “I thought you had a date tonight,” he said, very slowly.

  “I did.” She tried to sound natural but failed miserably. Her voice cracked on the last word.

  Something fierce blazed in his eyes, turning them from almost silver to steel gray. “What did he do to you? Tell me his name.”

  “No. It wasn’t like that. He didn’t do anything.”

  “Something happened. You look like you’re going to fall over.” He put a hand on her back and urged her over to the old couch. “Sit down.”

  When she lowered herself gingerly, he closed and locked the practice room door and went over to grab a bottle of water from the floor near his backpack.

  He handed it to her, and she obediently took a swig. He’d already drunk from the bottle, but they’d been sharing drinks for years.

  “Now tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing.” When he started to object, she hurried on. “Nothing big or serious. Really. I just had a date.”

  “And what happened at the end of the date?” He’d obviously put some of the pieces together already.

  “We went to my room to have sex.”

  The words were supposed to be casual, matter-of-fact, but they sounded so horrible that she squeezed her eyes shut and shook a few times.

  “Did he hurt you, Marissa?”

  She couldn’t speak for a minute, couldn’t breathe, but she shook her head rapidly as an answer.

  “He did hurt you.” Caleb was getting tense again. She could sense it in his body rather than see it.

  He did everything—play the cello, drive his car, chase women, be her friend—with a passionate ferocity that was sometimes overwhelming.

  “Not on purpose,” she choked out, trying to ease the simmering defensiveness she sensed growing in him. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “If it was hurting you and he didn’t stop when you told him to, then he—”

  “No. It wasn’t like that.”

  “But you said—”

  “I didn’t tell him to stop!” A swell of panic and nausea rose inside her again at the memory of what happened in that bed. “I didn’t tell him.”

  The tension in Caleb’s body let down all at once, and he groaned softly, reaching an arm out to pull her against his side. “Damn it, Marissa. Why the hell not?”

  She leaned against his warm body, feeling almost safe for the first time all evening.

  He might be intense and complicated and incapable of settling into any sort of stable life, but he was the best friend she had.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, pressing her face against his t-shirt as she answered his question. “I just wanted to do it. Get it over with.”

  “You were a virgin?”

  She shifted slightly. She and Caleb talked about everything in the world.

  Except sex.

  Her cheeks started to burn. “Yes.”

  “He wasn’t…he wasn’t gentle with you?”

  “He wasn’t rough or mean or anything. He was just into it. And I wasn’t.”

  She hadn’t even begun to get into the sex. The kissing had been fine, but as it got more intimate, she’d experienced increasing waves of anxiety, nausea, and disgust that she’d fought desperately to ignore.

  Instead of thinking about the guy she was with, she’d only been able to think about nights as a little girl, trying to sleep with a pillow over her head so she wouldn’t hear what her babysitter was doing in the other room. Horrible, dirty things.

  Night after night after night.

  “I mean, it’s ridiculous,” she continued, suddenly angry at herself for letting something so long ago still affect her. “I’m eighteen. I should be able to have sex without having a breakdown.”

  Caleb was silent for a long time, but his arm around her was strong and familiar.

  She nestled into it and started to feel a little better.

  Finally, he asked, very softly, “Why does it bother you so much?”

  “What?”

  “Sex. This isn’t just something that happened tonight. Anything connected to sex does this to you. Why does it bother you so much?”

  Her throat tightened. “It doesn’t.”

  “Marissa.”

  “There’s no reason. Some people just aren’t sexy.”

  “That’s ridiculous, and you know it. It has nothing to do with being sexy. It’s like sex…why does it bother you
so much?”

  “It doesn’t bother me. I just don’t like it. Not everyone has to like it.”

  “Did something happen? I know the courts decided your mother was unfit, but I never knew why. Was there something that happened? When you were little?”

  Marissa breathed raggedly and pulled away from his body—since he didn’t seem quite as safe and cozy anymore.

  She could feel him staring at her, although her eyes were focused determinedly on the floor.

  “Why can’t you tell me?” he asked.

  They’d been close since that conversation on the concert stage six years ago. When Caleb took a break from touring to go to college—mostly because Marissa hadn’t stopped nagging him until he did—she’d decided to go to the same university so they could stay close. He’d gotten a full scholarship at one of the best music programs in the country, and Marissa majored in Latin, choosing what Caleb called the most useless major in the university curriculum.

  They told each other everything, but she couldn’t tell him this. She could never tell him this.

  Not just because she preferred to pretend that part of her history didn’t exist. But also because it would crush him.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said. “I was never raped or touched or anything like that.”

  “But something did happen when you were a kid? Something that turned you off sex?”

  Something. You could call it that.

  Her babysitter had never done anything until Marissa was sent to bed, but their apartment had been small.

  That kind of loud, crude performance couldn’t be blocked out by a door and a thin wall. She’d been too young to understand it, but she’d hated it. Hated anything that reminded her of it.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “If it’s no big deal, then why can’t you tell me?”

  She looked away, since his eyes were too knowing, too sharp.

  “Not everyone has to like sex,” she said at last. “People blow it way out of proportion.”

  “Maybe.” The one word was spoken in a dubious drawl.

  “I know you like it.” She’d be a fool if she didn’t know that, since he’d been getting around—a lot—since he was sixteen. “But it’s not the be-all of existence, the way everyone makes it out to be. Tell me the truth. Wouldn’t you rather give up sex than give up your music?”