Timing

by Mary Calmes

  “I wanna lie down with you,” he said, kissing up the side of my neck to my ear, breathing out sharply, covering me in goose bumps from head to toe. “Don’t you wanna get in my bed, Stef? Don’t you wanna wrap yourself around me?”

  I groaned, unable to stop shaking.

  He took a quick breath. “Lookin’ at your sweet little ass with my stuff dripping out of it is makin’ it hard to breathe.”

  His words were having the same effect on me.

  “Stefan Joss, where are you?”

  The yell was shrill—she wanted me now. Without another word to him, I bent, yanked up my briefs and jeans, and bolted from the porch.

  “You smell like come and olive oil.” He laughed at me as I threw open the screen door.

  I had just enough time to flip him off before Charlotte appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “Jesus Christ, Stef,” she barked at me. “I’ve been looking for you for a half an hour!”

  But even though she was mad, all I could hear was Rand’s throaty laughter. He really needed to get it together. It wasn’t that funny.

  ONCE THE crowd thinned out, I went upstairs with Charlotte and lay down on her bed. I listened to her talk about Ben and the wedding flowers and the appetizers and how much she hated vegans and why my idea of having a photo booth had been so inspired. She had wanted to have cute pictures of everyone, and now she was sure to have them. The photo booth would make two prints of every picture, one for the guest and one for Charlotte’s wedding album.

  “How did you ever get so brilliant, Stef?”

  It was a photo booth; I had not found the cure for the common cold. “Seriously, how tired are you?”

  She groaned loudly and flung herself facedown on the bed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  There was a long, muttering explanation spoken into the pillow.

  “Look at me, because I didn’t hear a word of that.”

  She rolled her head to the side, her eyes fastened to mine. “I said that Ben wants to know about the worst day of my life.”

  My stomach did a slow roll.

  “What should I say?” she asked, her fingers featherlight across my jaw.

  “What do you want to say?”

  She took a shaky breath. “I want to tell him, but I’m just afraid that he’ll look at me different after. I should have told him a long time ago.”

  Her face looked pained.

  “Honey, do you—”

  “Will you hold my hand?”

  “What?”

  “When I tell him”—she swallowed hard—“will you hold my hand?”

  I took a quick breath. “Cut out my heart instead.”

  Her sigh touched my face. “I already did that.”

  Laying there, my face inches from hers, I watched her eyes fill, saw the tiny rosebud lips purse and the delicately arched brows tighten slightly.

  “Ben’s downstairs.”

  “He’s drunk.”

  “Maybe that’s better.”

  We sat up at the same time.

  “It’s a lot to take in the night before your wedding,” I told her.

  “And I should do what?” she asked me seriously. “Begin my life with him with this hanging over us?”

  “What’s hangin’ over you?” I snapped at her. “If he never knows, who cares?”

  “Easy for you to say.” Her sigh moved my hair. “You know already.”

  I rolled my head back so I was looking at her.

  “Sorry, that was a shitty thing to say.”

  Only at that moment, staring into her eyes, did I realize how terrified she was. I grabbed her hands tightly, startling her, as evidenced by her gasp.

  “You know… whatever happens….”

  She nodded quickly, the tears spilling over, trailing down her cheeks. The reassuring smile she gave me, trying to comfort me, was painful. “Go get him.”

  I didn’t say anything; I just got up and went to the door.

  “And Rand.”

  My head swiveled back to her.

  “I want Rand to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he should,” she said, her tone telling me that she was resigned to the idea.

  Halfway down the stairs, I remembered to breathe.

  Maybe it was my face, or the way I couldn’t bring myself to speak, but when Rand saw me, he got up from where he was sitting apart from the others. Instead of sharing space on the couch, he was alone in the wingback chair.

  “Stef,” he said softly, moving quickly to step in front of me. His hand slipped around my neck, his thumb sliding down my throat. I doubted that he even realized he was touching me, wearing his affection and possessiveness for anyone to see. It was fortunate for him that everyone was drunk. They didn’t even spare us a glance.

  “Can you and Ben come upstairs with me?”

  “’Course,” he said, turning only his head to look over his shoulder at Ben. “C’mon.”

  “Stef, what—”

  “Now.” Rand’s voice dropped into his chest, and I heard Ben’s quick intake of breath before he was up and standing beside me. “We’ll follow you.”

  When I opened the door of the bedroom minutes later, I found Charlotte standing at the window. Her face, when she turned, was panicked.

  “Shit,” I muttered, crossing the room to her, taking the trembling hand she reached out to me. She was already a mess.

  “Char?” Ben asked, and I heard the click of the door closing behind him.

  She took a breath, forcing a smile. “Okay, so the other day I blurted out about the worst day of my life, and you said you really wanted to know.”

  He was stunned; it was all over his face. The man had been laughing and having a good time earlier, and now, suddenly, he was stone-cold sober. “Charlotte—”

  “And I know it wasn’t just that, because you’ve known from other things I’ve said, how weird I get sometimes in the dark or when we went to that swingers’—”

  “Charlotte!” He raised his voice, glancing at me and Rand. “I don’t think—”

  “I was excited to go.” She smiled, even though her eyes were starting to moisten, redden. “I told Stef all about the retreat.”

  His eyes snapped over to me. “She told you about that?”

  But before I could answer, as she did in most situations, she answered for me. “Seriously, Ben there’s nothing—and I mean really, nothing—I don’t tell Stef.”

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  “Like remember the time you shot your wad so hard you hit the cat?”

  “Charlotte!” he coughed.

  I smiled at him, giving him the big thumbs-up. “Nice distance, by the way.”

  His eyes were huge as he turned to look at Rand.

  Charlotte’s brother clapped him on the back. “Not bad, but I don’t have a cat. If you can hit one of my hunting dogs, I’ll be impressed.”

  I could tell from his expression that of all the revelations of the past few minutes, Rand joking around with him was the biggest. Ben was looking at him like he’d grown another head. When his eyes hit me, I just shrugged. I’d had no idea the man could laugh or tease or be funny either. I had been just as surprised.

  “So anyway—” Charlotte cleared her throat. “The point is I really wanted to go. I mean, I’m as twisted and kinky as the next girl, but when we got there, it was just…. I wasn’t expecting the bondage part of it, and even that would have been okay, but—”

  “You freaked when those two guys grabbed your arms.”

  She nodded fast. “Yeah, I mean if the girls had strapped me in, I probably would have been all right, because the straps themselves, the harness… that wasn’t like what happened, so it wouldn’t have reminded me.”

  “Char,” Ben began softly, taking a step toward her, “I don’t think you really want Rand and Stef here when you—”

  “Oh no,” she cut him off, lifting a hand to stop his progress. “I have to have Stef here, and Rand…. I
mean, I should feel weird telling him that his baby sister is willing to take part in a ménage or even an orgy, but even though I talk a lot of trash about my brother… he’s still my brother, and c’mon, I tell my family everything. Even my Mom knows about the weekend with the swingers.”

  “She does?” Ben gasped.

  “Oh sure.” She nodded. “My family is not emotionally stunted like yours is, Benjamin. We all talk about things.”

  “Char—”

  “But the only thing I’ve never told my mother or my brother or you is about the worst day of my life,” she cut him off, squeezing my hand, shifting on her feet so she was pressing against me. “And you should know… I mean, I was telling Stef that I should’ve just told you before, but I just—I never—”

  “You were raped, weren’t you?” Ben swallowed hard, the muscles in his jaw working.

  I saw Rand’s brows furrow as he crossed his arms, waiting.

  “Honey.” Ben’s voice was soft, caressing. “I don’t—”

  “No,” she said, her voice small, nasally, as tears filled it, welling up in her eyes. “I wasn’t raped. My friend Mandy was.”

  No one moved or made a sound, and Charlotte took a breath.

  “See, I had this great idea in junior year that for me to really date and meet lots of guys that I would move in with another girl and have the cool bachelorette pad.” She nodded, taking another breath, swallowing before she found her voice again. “And so I moved in with my friend, Mandy Woods.”

  “I don’t remember you living with anyone but Stef,” Rand said, letting her focus on the most mundane part of the story for a moment so she could get herself under control.

  “I know.” She smiled through her tears. “Because it was so short. I think it was like two months, and then I was back home… with Stef.” She wiped quickly at her eyes, taking another quick breath.

  “Love….” Ben moved closer, and when her hand didn’t stop him, she retreated just a little behind me. It was enough to stop him.

  “I can’t confess if I can’t get it out,” she told him.

  He stopped, and his eyes flicked to mine. “I hate that you know whatever this is and I don’t. It’s killin’ me.”

  It had nearly killed me at the time.

  “Okay,” she growled, shaking it off. “Sorry, I’m stronger than this shit. Here’s what happened. I woke up because I heard screaming, and there was a man in my bed choking me.”

  “Ohmygod, Char—”

  “Shut up,” Rand said, his eyes never leaving Charlotte.

  She gave a quick smile. “He told me that he’d kill me if I made any noise, so of course the second he let me go, I screamed my head off.”

  No one made a sound.

  “When he came at me again, I made it off the bed and out of the room, and I would have made it out of the apartment, but I tripped over Mandy,” she managed to get out before the sob took her voice.

  My arm went around her, and she turned into me, face in my shoulder, hands digging into my back as she clutched at me.

  “I thought… maybe I’ll write it down,” she cried and then suddenly laughed, looking up at me. “Fuck, it’s like a goddamn oral book report.”

  I grunted out my agreement.

  “Did you have to do those?”

  “’Course. Your teacher gives you a choice. You can either stand up in front of the class for three minutes or write a six-page report.” I smiled down at her, wiping away her tears. Her eyes were already getting puffy. “I always stood up.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you did.” She sighed. “I always wrote the six pages.”

  “Well.” I shrugged. “I am fantastic at oral.”

  She coughed before snorting out a laugh. “God, leave it to you to tarnish my memories of elementary school.”

  “It’s a gift,” I assured her, wiping away more of her tears with my hands. “Don’t cry anymore. You’re gonna look like shit for pictures tomorrow.”

  She giggled. “I know, right? I mean, you with your black eye and me looking like ass, what’re people gonna think?”

  “Who knows,” I grunted before blowing cold breath on her face. “There, now finish. It was your brilliant idea to do this tonight.”

  “Could… maybe you….” She shook her head, waving her hand at me. That was it; her voice was gone.

  “Shit,” I muttered under my breath. Somehow I had always known that the explanation would fall to me. Looking over at Rand and Ben, I realized how hurt Charlotte’s fiancé looked, and saw plainly the fury stamped on her brother. Quick was better, the Band-Aid theory, and so I took my own breath to settle the butterflies in my stomach. “There were two men in the apartment. The police agreed that the screaming Char heard was Mandy. She made it out of her bed after being raped, but she didn’t make it out of the apartment. They caught her and hit her, and she was just a little tiny thing, and….” How could I explain all the blood? How broken she had looked with her throat cut?

  “So Charlotte fell down, but she got up fast.” I smiled down at my friend for a moment. “And when she got up, she ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife.”

  “You fought,” Rand said flatly, and Charlotte turned to look at him and nodded.

  “She did,” I told him. “And when Kevin Kramer went after her and tried to grab her, he ended up dead.” I looked back down at her. “Like he deserved to, in that apartment with the girl he raped and murdered.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Mandy’s parents think you’re a fuckin’ superhero.”

  Another quick nod.

  “But what about—”

  “Stef came,” Charlotte gasped like she was surfacing from deep underwater. “I turned around after I stabbed”—gulp of air—“Kevin in the throat, and the other guy grabbed me and punched me, and he was kicking me when the door opened and there was Stef.”

  Two sets of eyes on me.

  “I had a key,” I told them. “I called earlier, and she told me to come and sleep over after I went out ’cause we were supposed to do something the next day. So I got to the apartment and opened the door and….” I shrugged.

  It was hard, even after so long, even being so far removed from it, to put everything into words. The blood, the man beating the shit out of my friend, Charlotte’s face, the weight of knowing that in that instant, I was all she had.

  “Oh.” She sighed, easing away from me, and I saw her smile. I opened my mouth to stop her. “No—no, you know I’m good during this part. I can tell it from here, it’s just before, when I was scared and alone… but then you came,” she said, turning to look at the two men she had trusted with this story. “Stef just ran in, and the guy, Jared Kenny, he tried to stab me, but Stef was there before he could.”

  Adrenaline was a scary thing. I had seen pieces. The guy, Jared, had lunged at me, and before I even registered my action, my fist had connected with his jaw. He fell hard and fast, and the second he hit the ground, I kicked him. My motorcycle boot made mush of his face, but I wanted to make sure he stayed down.

  “When the police got there, it was all over.”

  “Did Jared go to jail?”

  She nodded. “He did.”

  “And is he still there?”

  “No, he died three weeks into his sentence.”

  “Do you know—”

  “Yes,” she cut Ben off. “The detective who took care of my case told me. Another prisoner killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “The detective didn’t say.”

  “How did the men get in the apartment?”

  “Through Mandy’s window. She was forever leaving it open. I told her all the time to…. Stef even put a lock on it so all she had to do was shut it, and it would…. But she forgot.”

  “Char—”

  “When the police interviewed Jared, he told them that he and Kevin were out shooting pool when they saw Mandy and decided to follow her home.”

  “Jesus.”

  She shrugged. “They
got in through her window and raped her, and when she got away and went to call the police, Jared stopped her. He beat her up pretty bad before he slit her throat.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Is it okay,” Ben finally whispered, looking at Charlotte. “Could I maybe hold you now?”

  She lifted her arms for him, and he lunged forward, grabbing her tightly, crushing her against him.

  “Oh baby,” he breathed into her shoulder, shivering hard. “I’m so fuckin’ proud of you. You were so strong, and you were so brave, and you never gave up.”

  “It was just survival instinct,” she sobbed. “That’s all. I’m not—”

  “You’re amazing,” he assured her, “and I knew it all along, but it’s even clearer now. Goddamn, woman, you’re a lion!”

  I was so pleased with him, so touched watching Ben hold my best friend, that I didn’t realize that Rand was speaking to me for several minutes.

  “What?” I asked softly.

  “Thank you.”

  I smiled up at him, into the azure eyes, before he moved to go to Charlotte and Ben. As I watched the three of them, I understood the magnitude of what my best friend had done. She had exorcised all her demons, had come clean to the two most important men in her life, and now she was ready to be married the following night with no secrets, nothing hanging over her. It was a triumph for her, and I was so proud and so happy, even though I knew our relationship had just changed forever.

  Because she had told Ben and Rand, I was no longer the caretaker of her secrets, no longer her champion. Her husband was taking my place as her safety net, and while that was the way it was supposed to be, I had no job if I wasn’t the person in Charlotte Holloway’s life who reassembled the pieces after she broke. If I didn’t ride to the rescue, what use was I? When I slipped from the room, no one noticed.

  Chapter 7

  I WOKE up broken. Sleeping on a chair in Rand’s den had been a bad idea, but it was where I had fallen asleep watching television. I felt all of my twenty-eight years, and even though I was in pain, when I told that to Rand’s uncle Tyler, he laughed at me.

  “We’ll talk again when you’re seventy-five,” he told me, pouring coffee for both of us.