by Marie Hall
We didn’t talk again until we’d turned off the freeway and onto the familiar small county road full of trees and barn-red outposts. Horses and cows grazed in pastures, and the lane she turned down next went from blacktop to gravel. The sun was beginning its slow slope toward the tree line, and it all would have looked like a postcard if it weren’t for the gray and threatening clouds off in the distance.
The smell of cut hay moved through the car, and my stomach churned just being back. I’d hoped when I’d left I’d never have to see the place again.
She rolled to a stop and immediately my body broke out in a sweat at the sight of that white wraparound porch.
“Zoe. I don’t…” I drummed my fingers on the door, staring at the house like I wanted to murder it.
“We can go, babe. Up to you.”
She was being understanding, but I knew she wanted to stay. I could do this. I could. For all the crap I’d put her through. Clearing my throat, I asked, “How does your father afford a place like this?”
“He’s an oilman, Alex. It’s all pomp and ceremony; this is the show-off house for the crème de la crème of the oil industry whom he rubs elbows with. You should see their house in Aspen.”
I was pretty sure she wasn’t joking, so I didn’t ask. The nerves were coming back, and when those bastards got their claws in me I got moody. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but seeing this place, where she came from, who she could be with, it all made me wonder why in the hell she would want to be with me?
Her dad was right. I was going nowhere fast and dragging her along for the ride.
Pulling up the long drive, she smiled. “There’s no one here.”
“When will they get back from vacationing in Napa? I don’t want any surprises, because I really don’t want to see them right now. I’m sorry, Zo.”
She patted my thigh. “They don’t actually live here, babe. They only come here when they’re going to throw a party. Like I said, the place is really mine. I just didn’t want to move into this big place all by myself. I tried to convince Jamie once, but she said it was too country bumpkin for her taste.”
She opened the door, then stepped out and waited for me to meet her before picking up where she left off.
“It’s one of Obasaan’s favorite places.” As she talked, her wrists fluttered like broken moth’s wings and her honey eyes danced with excitement.
Zoe looked like an exotic flower, as out of place in these surroundings as I felt. She was a wild bird of paradise with her flamboyant dress full of multihued polka dots. My girl looked like a transplant straight out of the fifties today—she was rocking the bouffant ponytail, and my fingers itched to trace the graceful lines of her tattooed arms.
I’d never seen anything so breathtaking. The sun set behind her as she walked backward, and she beckoned me to follow with a crook of her finger.
“What I wanted to show you is in the back. It’s the reason why I love this place so much. They had it taken down for the party, but it’s back up now and I want you to see it.”
Glancing over her shoulder, she bit her bottom lip. “You’re probably gonna think I’m lame, but I want you to close your eyes.”
“I’ve already seen the pond, Zoe.”
“Not what I want to show you. Please? For me?”
She bit the corner of her lip, and sighing with a loud huff, I closed my eyes. I felt more than saw the flicker of her hand as she waved it in front of my face.
“Are they closed?”
I nodded. “Yup.”
“Good. You wait here. Don’t move.” She squeezed my shoulder, and I heard the grass rustle as she scampered off; then the loud creak of a hinge caught my attention a couple of yards off in the distance.
A minute later she was back and holding on to my hand.
“Can I look now?”
“No.” She laughed. “Not yet. Just keep your eyes closed. Step. Move around that pothole. No, to your left. Yeah.”
Following her directions really didn’t help—I hit each and every pothole and rut and nearly face-planted once, but it was worth it because I was making her laugh, making her smile. The sound of it did strange things to my body. Made me both soft and hard. Breathless and ready to burst. Her dad was a memory fading into the darkest corners of my mind.
Eyes closed, feeling her hands caress my body, I was getting so turned on it was hard to think around the sudden swelling of my cock and what I wanted to do with her. What I kept preventing myself from doing because I wanted her to know she was different. But staying away wasn’t feeling like the right thing to do anymore either.
“Now?” I huffed, trying to take extra-long steps to make my problem less obvious.
“Now.”
I opened my eyes, and sitting not five yards in front of me was the same pond I’d been standing in front of yesterday before my life went to hell in a handbasket. It was easily two football fields long and wide. Oaks and other trees I couldn’t name crowded the bank. It was placid, but the way the sun shone off the water made it shimmer with shades of silver. It was massive, but I knew immediately it wasn’t the pond she was showing me. It was the tall white, green, and red Indonesian-inspired pagoda floating upon a massive dock that had definitely not been there before.
“Where the hell was this thing at the party?”
She smiled. “It’s called the magic of having lots of money and being able to afford lots of people to clean up a mess and restore balance in two point two seconds.”
An instant transformation overcame her. She was still hot and sexy as hell, the sex kitten I knew and was coming to feel intensely for, but she was sparkling. A lot like her pond, she was glowing and not just from the rays of sunlight surrounding her. It was coming from inside, and I couldn’t stop myself from moving toward her, wanting to get inside her joy and make it my own.
“Whenever the family would come here, I would always hide in the pagoda and sometimes even pretend to be someone else. Someone normal.”
“Nah.” I shook my head. “You pretended that your white knight was coming to rescue you, admit it.” I smirked, grabbing her around the waist. Slapping my chest, she scooted out from under me.
“Pft. If I wished for anything, it would have been a samurai warrior.”
“Sexy,” I purred.
Rolling her eyes, she snorted. “You’re such a freak.”
“You love it, admit it.” I looked back toward the pond, ready to wax poetic like an ass about the setting, anything to impress her and get her to turn that smile back on me. But when I turned back, the words dried up because she’d taken her dress off and was standing in front of me in a baby-blue bikini with powder-white polka dots.
“Strip down, cowboy.”
Yeah, I was digging it. Though I wasn’t so sure about swimming in pond scum. “Swim in that?”
“What?” She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid a little fish might suck on your big toe? It would ruin your mystique forever, cowboy.”
“I’ve got mystique?”
She wet her lips but didn’t answer, just turned and kicked off her heels. She darted toward the small wooden dock. Her apple-shaped bottom jiggled enticingly, catching my eye, mesmerizing me. I didn’t shake myself from that stance until she’d splashed into the water in a graceful swan dive. A large ripple was all I saw as she disappeared beneath the green stillness.
Like flipping a switch, I went from ogling with a goofy-ass grin on my face to shucking my boots, jeans, and shirt off as fast as I could. I was only had my boxers but that would have to do.
She splashed to the surface of the water. “C’mon, cowboy, I’m waiting.”
And I couldn’t wait another second.
In two seconds I was jumping off the dock, in another two I was kicking to the surface and letting out a war whoop of surprise at the shock of the cold water against my warm flesh.
“Hell, that’s cold.”
“Baby,” she drawled, then swam toward me, and suddenly it
wasn’t too cold.
Her arms were wrapping around me and she was initiating a kiss that stole the air from my lungs.
“See, isn’t this nice?” she asked after a second.
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, slowly wading closer to a spot where I could stand. The water must have been really deep because it took me a second to be able to stand without being on tiptoe. Wrapping long, lean legs around my waist, she nipped at my ear.
“It’s perfect,” I agreed.
She nuzzled my neck, making my skin hot, then sighed. “Talk to me.”
I snorted. “About what?”
Her look—a raised brow with pinched lips—said it all.
Exhaling loudly, I played with the string at her back, tugging it gently at first, then a little harder each time, absently wondering how many tugs it would take to make her slip out of the top.
“I didn’t read through the folder, Alex.”
My jaw jutted out at the reminder of the party. It felt like a million miles away, and I didn’t want to think about it again. I wanted to forget that crap had ever happened. “Zoe, let’s not.”
“But my mom did say something, and I don’t want you to be mad.”
Instantly my spine went rigid and in my heart I knew what she was going to ask, knew it with every fiber of my soul. “The 911 call.” It wasn’t a question, but it didn’t have to be. She didn’t act confused or surprised; her look was sad but full of questions.
Strumming her fingers along the whiskers of my jaw line, she nodded. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”
“But you’re curious?” A dragonfly zipped along the surface of the water before quickly speeding off.
For days now I’d known this talk would come, knew I couldn’t hide it forever. But I still wasn’t sure telling her this was the right thing to do. This was dark and deep, and what if she wasn’t as certain of me as I was of her? What then? I didn’t know if I could handle the thought of someone knowing me so intimately. This wasn’t like some fetish I was into. God, I wish that’s all it was. Wish I could just tell her I liked to be whipped and chained and humiliated, be forced to call my latex-wearing girlfriend “mistress.” It would be so much easier than this.
“Cowboy.” Her touch was so, so gentle, and I couldn’t stop myself from trembling. “Baby, look at me. You don’t have to tell me—I’m sorry I asked. I’m sorry.”
The dark clouds I’d spotted in the distance earlier now seemed much closer.
“What did your mother tell you, Zoe?”
Soft hands framed my jaw, forcing me to stare back at her. “Mostly just speculation. But I won’t deny that the questions are bothering me. I can’t stand the thought that my parents know more about you than I do, that they learned it doing something so disgusting. I’m sorry they did that, babe. I swear I had nothing to do with that. But I’m worried about you.”
I’d told Ryan from day one of meeting Lili that he needed to be honest. That if he was seriously considering making her more than just a part-time thing he needed to tell the truth. Those same words had been spoken to me by Doc.
But faced with my own words, I finally understood Ryan in a way I never had. The sick fear that chewed at your stomach like cancer and made your skin break out in a sweat and hives was a bile-churning kind of sickness, and I didn’t want to do it.
I closed my eyes.
“Alex,” she said, and her voice trembled.
She only ever called me by name when it was serious. I knew I should look at her, should laugh it off and pretend, but the mask I’d worn for so long was slipping and crumbling to dust right in front of me. I couldn’t fake it anymore; it just wasn’t in me.
But I couldn’t tell her this either. We were only just starting. What if she left? What if she called me a bastard and told me never to call her again?
Fuck.
That thought hurt, like physically hurt. I hadn’t felt so alive in years. Being around Zoe, it was like learning to walk again, run again, after years of thinking you’d be wheelchair bound for the rest of your life. To even imagine having to go back to the chair was unimaginable.
“Alex, look at me.” Her voice cajoled, and as if I were a cornered animal scared of its own shadow, the soft cadence of it calmed me and began to work its magic. “Babe. Look at me.”
Wrapping her arms and legs tighter around me, she smiled, and the ice around my soul began to slowly thaw.
“Hey.” She smiled gently. “You’re back. You feel my arms? My legs?”
I nodded.
“They’re squeezing you. I’m squeezing you. Alex, you’re not alone. Not if you don’t want to be. I’m here for you. You can trust me.”
I wanted to. So damn bad. I wanted her to know me. To really know me. The way very few people in this world did. I wanted the freedom to be around someone and not have to always pretend that I was okay, that my life didn’t suck.
Thunder rumbled.
Doc’s words floated to me, brought to the surface from the depths of my mind.
But the truth stuck in my throat. I opened and shut my mouth like a fish on land, desperate for water.
She laid her head on my chest. “You can trust me.”
“Why are you pushing this, Zoe?”
My question didn’t seem to be one she’d expected, because her entire face frowned. “I want you to trust me.”
“I do.” I disentangled her limbs from my body. I needed air. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell Zoe, or even that I was really mad at her.
“But…”
But… some truths were private. Terrible. So awful you wished you could take bleach to your brain and scrub it out.
Jaw clenching, I clawed my face. “Have you ever thought there are some things you don’t really want to know?”
“No.” She shook her head.
I turned and headed for the shore. The dip in scummy pond water suddenly losing all its appeal. I was going to tell her, I was, but I wasn’t prepared to do it now, hadn’t worked up a game plan. You couldn’t just dump something like this on a person. It took time and thought and planning and fuck… she was ruining everything.
Wading back to shore, I started working pants on to my dripping legs the second I touched dry land. The jeans stuck and I had to tug harder, which only increased my irritation. She grazed the line of my back.
“You’re not running away from this, you hear me, Alexander Donovan?”
I snorted, snatching my shirt off the ground. “I’m a grown-ass man, Zoe. I’ll leave when I say I’m good and ready to leave, and I’m ready to do that now. So either call a cab or go back with me. Up to you.”
Planting her hands on her hips, she glared at me. And if I hadn’t been so pissed I might have actually found it adorable. Her posturing up at me wearing nothing more than a scrap of spandex with polka dots.
“You want to do an ultimatum? Here’s one for you.” She glared. “You leave and I’m done. I’m not putting up with your shit anymore unless you give me a good reason. I like you, Alex. A lot, but this isn’t how relationships work, not healthy ones anyway. And I’m done letting guys think I’m okay with it. So you decide.”
The words ricocheted like thunder between us, followed closely by a blinding sheet of blue-white light. The storm had blown in, and where the land had been so calm before, now twigs and pebbles stung as they whipped through the air and caught my cheek.
“You want to know? Fine,” I roared, not thinking anymore. Years of pent-up rage, of helplessness and pain, it all came out.
~*~
Zoe
“Alex…” I stepped into him, approaching him the way I would a wild animal. I’d never seen him this way, shaking and dazed.
The sky had opened up, thunder and lightning raged around us. The pond was churning and looking angry, and he just stood in the center of the empty field, letting the rain run down his face like tears. His silver eyes were on me but looking beyond me.
“
Alex,” I whispered. Still, he didn’t move. “Alex,” I said it harder. No movement. “Alex.” Harder again.
He didn’t even seem to be aware of me, but then I shook him. Not rough, but enough to make him realize I was still alive.
His eyes turned to mine, and I sucked in a sharp breath at the crippling pain inside them. My throat tightened.
His fingers were hard as they dug into my shoulders. “You want to know what that 911 call was about? Why I hung up on the operator after saying my dad didn’t deserve to live anymore? Why the cops came and interviewed me for hours and my parents told them to drop any investigation? You really want to know that!”
His words were angry and sharp, but he was dragging me into the curve of his body, leaning over me so that he took most of the driving rain off my head and shoulders. It was chaos outside, matching the chaos inside me. I knew we should go in the house. We shouldn’t be out in this—every instinct in my body screamed to get out of the field, but I couldn’t leave him like this. As much as he’d hurt me these last few weeks, I couldn’t just walk away from him.
The said the only thing I could think of. “I’m here.”
Wrapping my arms around his waist, I rested my head on his chest, flattening my palm against the steady beat of his heart.
His body shook and I wasn’t so sure that the water running off his face wasn’t in fact tears. Lungs shuddering for breath, he shuddered and then said, “When I was six, my dad—”
I couldn’t imagine what could make someone so confident and generally happy as Alex look so grim, without hope. I wanted to just crawl inside him, hold him to me, and never let him go. Shoving my hand under his damp shirt, I rubbed circles on the base of his spine, trying my best to ground him. To bring him back from whatever forces were trying so hard to pull him away.
“Raping. He raped. He—” His voice cracked.
I couldn’t move. Like my feet were glued fast to the muddy earth beneath them. I’d always wondered about the darkness, the ugliness that sometimes peeked out from behind his eyes, at the rare glimpse I got of terror and pain. I’d never understood it, could never have guessed.
Afraid to speak, but knowing I had to, I turned to look at him and grabbed his face, forcing his gaze to mine. “Who did he rape, Alex?” I was surprised to hear the strength of my voice, because I wasn’t feeling strong or brave. I was sick. Sick with the possibility of what might have happened.
