I Dare You

by Ilsa Madden-Mills

One night. Two damaged hearts. The passion of a lifetime.

  *A modern love story inspired by Pride and Prejudice*

  Warning: 18 and over please. Book contains language, sexual situations, and triggers.

  Prologue

  Elizabeth

  A stabbing pain in my temple.

  Fat and swollen lips.

  A throbbing tenderness between my thighs.

  Why did I feel like I was dying?

  Muddled images flashed in my head, but nothing connected or made sense, just a big black hole of nothingness. Thanks, vodka.

  The ache seemed to spread across my face. I groaned. Had something hit me?

  Nausea curled as I got my bearings in the dark. Bit by bit, I figured out I was sprawled cross-wise on a bed that wasn’t mine.

  A small hotel room came into focus.

  Careful to move my head slowly, I gazed around, taking in the battered nightstand and a rickety desk that had seen better days. In the corner of the room lay the beaded clutch purse I’d borrowed from my best friend Shelley for prom. Okay. But where was she?

  My last memory was dancing in the gym. Maybe on top of a table?

  My eyes went around the room.

  Threadbare navy curtains.

  A bed that reeked of stale cigarettes and body odor.

  A bottle of Grey Goose.

  My stomach lurched at the memory of that bitter taste sliding down my throat, and I swallowed to keep the bile down.

  Was this a hangover?

  I didn’t know. I had nothing to compare it to.

  Snippets of the night came in vivid clips.

  Dinner with my boyfriend, Colby, and my friends Shelley and Blake at an Italian restaurant in downtown Petal, North Carolina. Lots of giggling. Colby sneaking in his flask so we could spike our drinks. Dancing under twinkling lights at the prom in the Oakmont Prep gymnasium. Getting in Colby’s Porsche to head to the lake for an after-hours party.

  No memories of the lake came to me.

  Colby, though, I remembered him urging me to drink, pushing the bottle at my mouth on the way to prom and then later as we drove to the lake. Don’t be a pussy, Elizabeth. Drink it. Let’s rule the world, babe.

  Rule the world was his thing. He was invincible, and I guess since his father was a Senator of North Carolina, he believed it. Being part of his inner circle, especially being his new girlfriend, made me feel like I was freaking royalty.

  My tummy still fluttered from winning prom queen to his king. On stage when they’d set the sparkling crowns on our heads, he’d turned to me and told me he loved me. Crazy and giddy happiness had filled my heart. He loved me. The girl from the wrong side of town. The girl without a real family. The girl who was nobody.

  I’d waited for someone to love me like that my whole life.

  More flashes from the car came and I groaned.

  I remembered the second sip. Third. Fourth.

  Things got hazy.

  God, I couldn’t remember.

  Colby giving me a little white pill.

  Did I take it?

  It was all so fuzzy.

  Pink, sparkly sequins dotted my hands and I gazed down at them on the bed. My dress—the one I’d scrimped and saved to get by waiting tables at the local diner—lay in scattered pieces around me. My body was on display with my breasts hanging out.

  I whimpered and tried to cover them, but my arms were too sluggish. Panic ate at me—and then an awful realization hit. The material had been ripped from bust to hem, the delicate spaghetti straps torn off. My underwear lay twisted around my ankles and spots of blood dotted the coverlet below me.

  For a millisecond my brain refused to accept what was plain as day, but when reality finally settled in, horror pooled in my gut.

  My hands attempted to move but only fluttered around my body.

  Red marks. Bruises. Scratches. Teeth marks.

  No. No. No. This was all wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen tonight.

  Whispers came from a corner of the room. Colby.

  My eyes found him standing shirtless in the bathroom, his back to me as he talked on the phone.

  Pieces of his conversation came to me.

  “She’s out of it, man … like an animal in the sack … popped that cherry …”

  His words hit me like a tsunami, and my breath snagged in my throat. I struggled to regain my equilibrium—to focus—lying to myself that this whole episode was a figment of my imagination.

  Colby grunted. “I don’t think she’ll be able to walk for a week.” A pause, and then he burst out laughing at something the other person must have said.

  Something fragile inside me cracked and split wide open.

  A sound tore from my throat, low and primitive, and his eyes swiveled to me.

  I flinched, every muscle in my body jerking in revulsion.

  “Gotta go.” He hung up and stalked toward me, stopping at the edge of the bed to stare down at me with ice-blue eyes. A flash of annoyance crossed his face as his gaze skated across my body. “You made a mess.”

  Being from the trailer park, I’d had more than my share of scuffles with boys who wanted my attention and girls who wanted to boss me around, so I knew how to kick ass. Right then every nerve ending in my body wanted to jump up and claw his heart out piece by piece with my nails. He’d done this to me.

  Rage burned inside, but I couldn’t move.

  My voice came out thin. Reedy. “You hurt me.”

  I struggled to sit up but collapsed backward.

  He watched me dispassionately as I flailed around on the bed, letting the moments tick by, escalating my fear.

  My tongue dipped out to lick dry lips.

  He scooped up his white dress shirt from the floor, careful and steady hands buttoning it up, and that gesture, it said everything. He pulled on his pants and checked his sandy hair in the mirror. He wasn’t drunk at all.

  “What did you give me?” I pushed out. “Why?”

  “Don’t play games, sweetheart, you begged for it. This was consensual.” He twirled his fingers around the bed, a look of derision on his face. “Whatever I gave you, you took it without asking.”

  “No, that’s not true.” Had I?

  “Oh yeah, and you were the best lay I’ve had in months. Well worth the time I spent on you.” He bent down until his eyes were level with mine. “Don’t be telling lies about what happened here. No one would believe you anyway as drunk as you were. Still are. I’m sure there’re photos and videos from the prom to prove it.” He laughed as if hit by a sudden memory. “Damn girl, you were crazy in the gym, dancing on the tables and yelling at people. Chaperones tossed us out, babe. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a bad influence on me.” He cocked his head. “That’s what I’ll tell everyone at least.” He brushed at some lint on his trousers.

  I shook my head. No. I was the good girl who’d scored the highest in her class on the SAT. I was the girl who volunteered at the local animal shelter—and not just for service hours. I didn’t get thrown out of parties. I barely got invited to them.

  He pushed hair out of my face, his fingers trailing down my cheek.

  I flinched and jerked away as far as I could. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Ah, and here I was hoping you’d be ready for another round.” He chuckled, his hands fiddling with the ring I’d made for him a few weeks ago, a sterling silver band with our initials etched on the inside with a heart between them. I’d spent hours on it, engraving the letters and then fashioning the metal until it was perfect. I’d even used some of my college savings to buy the butane torch and tools necessary to make it good enough for him.

  “You said you loved me.” I hated the weakness in my voice.

  His lips quirked up. “I tell all the girls I love them, Elizabeth. You just took a little longer to give me what I wanted.”

  A strangled noise came out of my mouth.

  He sighed and zipped his pants. “Don’t be upset. We both wanted this.”<
br />
  No, no, no.

  He twisted his ring off and twirled it between his fingers. “I guess you’ll be wanting this back now.” He tossed it on the nightstand and it made a tinkling sound as it hit the wood, spun off, and fell onto the floor.

  He checked his appearance in the mirror one last time to straighten his jacket. “Well, I have to go, but I’ll see you at graduation in a few days. Later, babe.”

  And then he walked out the door, shutting it softly behind him.

  Thank God.

  I sucked in a shuddering breath, my lungs grasping for more air.

  To make sense of what had happened.

  An hour went by. Another one.

  Memories flashed like a horror movie you didn’t want to watch but couldn’t stop. Colby carrying me in the hotel and placing me on the bed. Ripping my dress. Groping at my legs. Hitting. Shoving. Pain.

  I’d tried to say no, but the words hadn’t come.

  I’d tried to move, but I couldn’t.

  My body had been a frozen statue, and he’d moved me where he wanted. Twisted me. Ruined me.

  I held myself together and watched the minutes tick by on the digital clock as my alcohol-soaked brain struggled to make my body move again. In tiny increments, I slid my legs down until they touched the floor, my toes clenching into the cheap, fuzzy carpet. Groaning, I forced myself to sit up and then immediately fell. I crawled until I got to my purse in the corner of the room and found my phone.

  Panic drove me.

  Any minute he could come back in here and do it again.

  My hand shook as I pushed 911 but froze when the nasally voice of the operator came on.

  “You’ve reached 911. Do you have an emergency?”

  Shame. Guilt. Remorse. Truth.

  Had I asked for it?

  Was this my fault?

  I panted, the throbbing between my legs reminding me of my sin.

  “Hello? Do you have an emergency? Do you need assistance?” The voice was more insistent.

  “No,” I croaked and ended the call.

  I gazed down at my ruined dress. Who’d believe a girl whose father was in prison—if he even was my father—versus the wealthy son of a senator? I was white trash, a small town girl lucky enough to get a scholarship at the prep school down the road.

  Nausea rose again, more violently this time, until the contents of my stomach spewed out everywhere.

  The smell of alcohol made me sicker.

  Mocking me. Telling me the cold hard truth. I’d had a part to play in this scenario.

  I clutched my chest, my heart hurting. Broken.

  My muscles screamed.

  My head banged.

  I was done. Dead. Cold. Even my skin wanted to crawl away.

  The sun crept up in the sky, the rays curling in through the dirty curtains. Dawn, a new day, but I’d never look at the sunrise the same.

  Clarity happens to all of us when our heart jumps ship, and mine was no different.

  Something dark slithered around inside me, crawling into the crevices of my soul and suffocating it. Everything I’d believed about myself … about who I was … about love … unraveled, turning into something dark. Dirty.

  Love is a knife that cuts out your heart piece by piece, feeding it to the boy you love.

  Broken in more ways than one, I vowed to never fall again.

  My body caved in on itself as I wept.

  Chapter 1

  Elizabeth

  Two years later

  Sweat dripped down my neck as I tucked blond hair behind my ears and groaned in the hot sun. It was Friday afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the only day I had to move into my new apartment before junior year started on Monday. “Welcome back to Whitman University,” I muttered as I pulled yet another box out of the trunk of my beat up Camry.

  For only being twenty years old, I’d accumulated a lot of stuff.

  Most of it consisted of jewelry making supplies and books except for my furnishings, which I’d inherited from Granny Bennett when she’d passed this summer. A beige and green plaid couch, a kitchen table with ducks painted on the top, an old bedroom suite, and a collection of crocheted doilies in various colors was my inheritance from her. Not exactly Ethan Allen, but it had a certain style.

  “Your apartment looks like an eighty-year-old cat lady lives here,” Shelley called down to me as she popped her head out of my apartment to peer down over the railing at me. My bestie since prep school, she was a privileged rich girl, a sharp contrast to my own wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing, but she’d been there for me through everything. Even Colby. Her red hair had gotten fuzzy in the humidly, but it didn’t detract from her prettiness. She pinched her nose and made a scrunchy face. “And it kinda stinks.”

  “Stop your complaining and get your butt down here to help. I’m melting in this heat,” I said.

  She snorted and made her way down the metal stairway. “You and your fair skin. If you’d get out of the house now and then, you might get some color. But no … all you do is study and work at the bookstore. You probably have more colors of highlighters than you have dating prospects. Not to mention, you go to the library so much people think you work there.”

  I grinned. “I’m not that bad. I see people in class. I even talk to them sometimes.”

  She lowered her head at me. “Get real. If it wasn’t for me forcing you to go out with me—like tonight—you’d hole up here and eat ramen noodles for the rest of your college career.”

  “Meh, sometimes I eat pizza.”

  She sent me a smirk and grabbed one of the boxes at my feet. We waddled back up the staircase and came to a stop at apartment 2B on the second floor. A two-bedroom with a balcony and a bathroom, it felt like a mansion compared to the dorm room I’d lived in all last year. I was on the corner and facing the setting sun, and I only had one neighbor on my left, 2A.

  As if on cue, the thump of loud rap music blasted from next door.

  I listened. Was that Eminem?

  “That’s loud and obnoxious,” Shelley said. “Maybe it won’t be as quiet here as you think.”

  I tried to be optimistic. “So? It’s two in the afternoon, not two in the morning.”

  “They’re just moving in, too,” she noted, nudging her head at the pile of boxes sitting outside the neighbor’s door, which I noticed was slightly cracked. She indicated the pile of books in one. “Looks like a nerd. Yuck. And here I was hoping you’d win the jackpot with a hot neighbor.”

  Making sure the new neighbor was nowhere in sight, I leaned over and hurriedly rifled through some of the titles: The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights. “Hmm, someone likes the classics. English major, maybe?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Boring. What you need is a sexy neighbor who likes to have great monkey sex.”

  I shook my head at her. “See, you say ‘monkey sex’ and all I can think of are hairy animals in bed. Gross.”

  She huffed in a teasing kind of way. “Whatever. It’s like every time you see a hot guy, you have FUCK OFF tattooed on your head.”

  Colby had been a hot guy and look what that had gotten me.

  I shrugged, swallowing down those memories. “So? I don’t want to fall for anyone. Ever. Love hurts. Remember?”

  “Yeah.” She nibbled on her lips, a hard look growing on her normally smiling face. She was remembering the hotel and the devastation that had followed. She’d been the one to pick me up that morning and take me home. The kind of girl who fell in love at least once a month, she was under the impression that if I could just meet the right one, then all would be well and I’d have my happily ever after. Crock of shit.

  “Don’t worry about me, Shelley. I’m good, okay? I don’t need a guy in my life to make me happy. All I need is you and Blake—and the occasional hookup.” Blake was my other best friend from Oakmont Prep who’d come to Whitman as well.

  She smirked. “Your sex rules again?”

  I nodded.

  Here’s the thin
g. I’d had sex since Colby. Plenty of times. The events of that night didn’t ruin my sexuality, only my trust in men. So a year after Colby, I halfheartedly propositioned a guy from my science class and asked him to come back to my room. Connor had been his name, and I’d seen him checking me out more than once when we had a lab together. That day, he’d looked at me like I’d suddenly grown two heads—me having a reputation as a bit of a bitch when it came to guys flirting with me—but he’d been eager. We’d walked back to my dorm room, and while the sex had been horrible, a furtive and awkward encounter, it proved that Colby had not won.

  He was not the last person to touch me.

  My body was my own.

  So was my heart, and I planned to keep it that way.

  After that, sex got easy—as long as I was in control. Over the past year, I’d made it into a game with strict rules. Pick an average guy who wasn’t popular or rich or too good-looking. Make sure he wasn’t taken. Make sure he didn’t drink or do drugs. Make sure he wasn’t an escapee from the local insane asylum. Have sex. Never speak to him again. End of story.

  It was about control. My choice. My rules.

  I had to initiate the first move, and I had to be on top. Most importantly, I had to be in my own bed and around my own things. Sex with me was tame by most standards, I suppose, based on some of the crazy stories Shelley had told me about her adventures. But I didn’t care. If they wanted me, then they’d follow my lead.

  “Maybe I’ll join a nunnery.”

  She grinned. “You don’t look good in black.”

  “True.”

  “And you aren’t even Catholic, goofball.”

  “Again, true.” I smiled back widely. I didn’t mind her teasing me. It was better than pity.

  I moved past her and we went back into my apartment to unpack. I pulled out a picture of me with Granny on her front porch the day I left for Whitman freshman year. Most days, it hurt to look at that photo, to see the skinny girl in the picture with the saggy jeans and wrapped wrists. But it was the last picture I had of Granny and me together, and that was worth something to me no matter how hard it was to be reminded of my foolish mistake with Colby. I set it on the coffee table.