by Leanne Davis
“I’m okay,” she said quietly. He was too choked up to begin to speak. He was reluctant to let her go but she withdrew and wrapped her arms over her stomach.
Ally came around the desk to Kylie. She wrapped Kylie in her arms and hugged her to her chest. “He’s a dirty, rotten bastard pretending innocence. It doesn’t change what he did to you. Okay? I won’t doubt you. Neither will Mom and Donny. Never again are you alone against him.”
Kylie hugged her sister back, but her gaze strayed to Tristan and then away. He had no idea what she felt towards him. She most likely detested him. He deserved that.
“You weren’t going to come up here, why did you?”
“I don’t know,” Kylie answered Ally. “But I did. I think I wanted to talk to Tristan.”
“Do you still want to?”
His head popped up in surprise and a faint bit of hope. She nodded. “Yes. Why don’t you give us a few minutes alone?”
“Here? You want to do this here in his office? His family’s business? Why don’t we at least go somewhere more neutral?”
“Because we’re here. It’s okay, Ally. Just wait for me? Okay?”
Ally scoffed. “As if I’d ever leave you alone in Tamasy territory. Never again. I’ll be right outside the door. Waiting.” She glanced at Tristan, the message clear.
Ally passed him and then, they were alone. He shook his head, the exhaustion making his limbs feel heavy.
“Do you really believe me?” Kylie said.
“I know you can’t believe that I do. But it wasn’t an act. I just didn’t want to believe he could do that.”
“It was a shock to me to realize he’d do that too. I doubted myself for a good year. I’d argue with myself that I must be wrong. I mean, why? Why would he bother to do it? All he had to do was ask and I’d have had sex with him. You understand that, don’t you? I wanted to have sex with your brother.”
He shook his head. “I understand whatever your motivations were you didn’t deserve what he did.”
She tilted her head in consideration. “Why did you never ask me? In all this time we were together and spent time together, why didn’t you ask for my side of the story? You could have used it against me. Made sure to spin it around to suit Tommy’s and your needs. Why didn’t you ask me who it was?”
“I haven’t been with you to suit Tommy or my family’s needs since I met you. I’m not sure I ever was. I was irritated, beyond irritated, when my grandfather came in this very office with this stupid assignment that I needed to go neutralize first Cadence and then you so that Cadence’s claims couldn’t be given more credence. I swear to you, Kylie, when this first started, I believed my brother. He’s always talked rude and crude about girls. They were either hot or not, he was sleeping with them or not. You can imagine the language he uses. I just thought he was young and blowing off steam. Arrogant, but never, not once, did I consider he was dangerous or actually did this.”
“I don’t understand, what changed your mind? I would have slept with you the night you walked me home from work. It would have been done, right then. I imagine you were supposed to get pictures to discredit me. I asked you in, but instead you asked for a date. I don’t understand you… Why didn’t you do it then?”
He dropped into the chair in front of the desk. Defeated, he agitatedly kept running his hands through his hair and linked his fingers behind his neck. He finally leaned forward, staring down at the carpet. “I’m just a manager, Kylie. I don’t think I was ever going to actually do anything. Not like Grandfather was thinking. I mean, sleep with someone for some nefarious reason like that? It has and will never be my way. I just wanted him off my back. I obviously let him influence me far too much. But to actually go through with it? I don’t believe that was ever my intent. I might have intended to talk to you. Maybe. But I wasn’t really interested in the task of managing Tommy’s current crisis. But then, I met you.”
“And?”
“And everything in my life changed.”
“I don’t really know how to believe that.”
She slipped into the chair next to him. So quiet and unassuming. So the entire center of his life now, and yet she wouldn’t believe him. “From the first moment you smiled at me there was something in me that responded to you. The first conversation, whisper, touch, kiss, I felt something different than ever before. It wasn’t a week before I told Morgan we were no longer sexual together. It was you. It was just you.”
“How did you think this would end? You knew about Tommy. The thing I didn’t think you knew about, you knew the entire time.”
He shook his head repeatedly. How to explain what seemed asinine in retrospect? “I don’t want to insult you with what I first thought. I used it to justify hanging around you without telling you who I was.”
“Try me.”
“I wanted to believe you were mistaken.”
He saw her twist around in the chair, her agitation obvious. “How did you think I was mistaken?”
“I wanted to believe you’d been drunk and blacked out. That you didn’t realize you two had sex and just thought…”
“When did you change your mind?”
He peeked up at her, surprised at the mild-mannered tone to her voice. “I think I always knew better. I couldn’t fathom how to admit to myself that the brother I love was a rapist.”
“He did it. I don’t know if you’re still conflicted on that. But he drugged me and had sex with me.”
Tristan’s stomach squeezed and he nodded as he stared almost blindly at his feet. “Tell me what he did to you. Tell me what you suffered. Tell me what these last two years dealing with it all alone has been to you.”
“Who am I telling? Tommy’s brother, who doesn’t want this to be true but is coming to grips with it… or my boyfriend? Who am I telling, Tristan?”
His head jerked up at her quiet, but stern question. He stared into her eyes. She didn’t cry. She didn’t flinch. He suddenly ignored everything, what he should or should not do or be or act. He simply fell to his knees, kneeling before where she sat, her hands clasped in her lap in the chair beside him. He put his hands on hers and looked up into her eyes, which were wide with shock at his sudden close proximity. “You’re telling your boyfriend. If you’ll still have me. I swear from this day forward, I will never keep things from you. I will protect you from anyone and anything that wants to hurt you, especially my brother. I believe you, Kylie. Please tell me about what Tommy did to you… and tell me as your boyfriend. And then, maybe you can find it in you to forgive me, and believe me.”
She licked her lips and then nodded slowly. “I had a thing for him. A crush. It was supposed to have been harmless and fun. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or a husband. I just enjoyed liking him. You know the feeling? Of seeing someone from a distance and feeling that thrill? I liked going to parties and anticipating if he’d be there. I had no expectations of him noticing me. I mean, he was Tommy Tamasy. I knew what that meant. This is a small enough college I understood the social hierarchy and where I fell on it compared to him. But it was a distraction. I didn’t think it would harm anything, or change the course of my life in any way.”
Her hands grew cold as she spoke. He gripped both in his as he stared at their clasped fingers. He glanced up at her. “It shouldn’t have.”
“I remember talking to him that night. I was so flattered. I thought I might pass out. I thought maybe for that night he was into me. That was okay with me. That’s what’s so stupid about this entire thing.” She raised her eyes to him, eyebrows lowered, perplexed, and her lips compressed in a flat line. “All he had to do was ask. I wanted to have sex with him. That night. Right then. All he had to do was ask me. Why? Why didn’t he just ask me? I just don’t understand why it even had to happen.”
It was extremely hard to listen to her. To comprehend this night two years ago that occurred between the woman he now knew and fell in love with and his little brother. He could clearly picture every part of
her story as she described it. Kylie and Tommy talking, smiling, flirting as people moved and undulated around them. Drunk and loud and fun. A college party.
And all Tommy had to do was ask her to have sex. Tristan gripped her hands in his. He pushed gently on them to get her to lift her head to meet his gaze again. “I don’t think we can understand. He’s sick. Not you. You didn’t do anything wrong. He did. He decided rape was a fun way to spend the evening. I don’t pretend to know why. Okay? I can’t understand why for you. I hope you realize drugging someone and forcing sex on them while they are out of it isn’t something I’ve ever contemplated, wondered about or desired. It disgusts me. But not you, okay? You don’t disgust me, you never have. Tommy does. When I think of you...” He drew in a deep breath and lifted his hand to cup her chin. “When I think of you lying there, at Tommy’s will, unbeknownst to you, his victim, it makes me want to go hurt him. I don’t know how to fix this. I want to. I want nothing more than to fix this.”
She shook her head. “You can’t fix it. You just learn to live with it.”
“Did you?”
“I think I’m starting to. I was messed up from it at first. It was so odd. To know my body had been used in ways I could not recollect. It was kind of like trying to recall the memory of when my dad left. There was nothing concrete to remember or grab onto as a point of reference. I knew that I’d had sex, yet nothing about it was in my memories. I felt dirty and used, yet I couldn’t name one thing he actually did to me. I don’t know what Tommy looks like naked or what he did to me that night. It makes the potency of the experience somehow altered. I don’t think I understood until about now that I am allowed to call myself a rape victim. And it took Cadence to teach me that.”
Tristan shook his head over and over. His voice was hoarse when he whispered, “Is there any way you could forgive me?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
So simply and so easily Kylie spoke her forgiveness. His gaze caught and held hers in a pleading, almost desperate prayer. “Believe in me again?”
Her hand crept up from her lap to rest over his hand that still held her face. “Yes.” It was a whisper, a near breath of air she spoke. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are the kindest person I know. I don’t deserve it; your forgiveness or your trust.” His eyes opened and he found her sad gaze on his. There was so much pain. Tommy. Kylie. His brother. Her rapist. He didn’t know the first thing about making sense of it all. He just knew how he felt about the girl before him now.
“What if I want you to have both? My forgiveness and my trust? What if I still want you?”
His eyes fluttered open. Her hand tightened over his. “I was there too, Tristan. I felt everything between us, and unlike the rest of my life where I doubt and I’m unsure, I know what was between us. I know you speak the truth how you felt about me. And more, I know you aren’t like Tommy.”
Her words released something in him. His body fell and he buried his face against her lap and wrapped his arms around her thin, small back and waist. He clung to her. Something about her trust, her belief in him, changed something deep in him. She didn’t think he was like his brother. The relief was sharper than any other feeling he’d ever had. The guilt he felt over what his own brother and then grandfather and then he had tried to do to Kylie was thick in his heart. But for her to release him of suspicion of being that evil. That bad. She didn’t even ask him. She just knew he wasn’t a rapist. It was an odd feeling to be on his knees clinging to a girl who he needed to hear didn’t think he was a rapist.
That she didn’t hesitate to forgive and believe in him humbled him. He didn’t know how desperate he was to know she didn’t think he was capable of such evil. Because he wasn’t. He knew that as much as he knew his own name, and that he loved this girl he clung to desperately.
He lifted his head and started to draw her head to his own but stopped, hesitating. “Can I kiss you?”
She smiled. “You don’t have to ask me. You don’t have to treat me as fragile or broken. I’m no different than the girl you first kissed against my door. I’m perfectly well and fine and unbroken when I choose to be with the man. And I choose you.”
He leaned in and touched his lips to hers. Gentle, sad, consuming, their lips touched. Her hands crept up to hold his face and brushed up into his hair. He released her and pulled her to him so he could hug her full against his body. Standing up, he supported her against him. “Are you going to tell me now, you might forgive me, but there’s no way we can be together? It’s too complicated? It’s too wrong? It’s too—”
She pushed her fingers over his mouth to shut him up. “No. I’m not. Tommy isn’t going to determine what I am in my life ever again. If you choose to let him determine who you can be with, I can’t stop that. But for me? No. Will it be easy? No. Obviously. You are going to lose your brother and possibly the rest of your family. I have no idea how they’ll react. I’m going after your brother, so that could be something you can’t stand or deal with. Maybe you’ll lose your job. I don’t know. What I do know is it won’t be my fault. It’s his fault for doing it to me and putting me in this position. But I am willing to try if you are.”
“I’ll stand by you. No matter what. I’ll be with you. Fuck my family.” He said it easily, quickly, and without reserve.
She stood up on her tiptoes and gently kissed his mouth with a sad smile on her face. “It won’t be that easy.”
He sighed. “I want it to be. But whatever happens, I don’t want it to determine us.”
“This will tear you apart. And possibly us.”
“I know. But no more than what was already done to you. I can handle it, Kylie. I can handle it if it means I am with you.”
“Even if you lose everything that matters to you? Your family? Your brother? Your job?”
He wrapped her tight in his arms. “You’re what matters to me. And if it were anyone but my own brother, I’d want to cut his fucking dick off and stuff it into his mouth. The thing with it being my brother? I still want to. It’s not okay with me. It’s never okay with me. I’m with you. No matter what. No matter where this leads.”
She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “I think I love you too, Tristan.”
After all this, the most impossible of situations to be in and of all times, Kylie finally responded to his declaration of love. A short laugh escaped his mouth, which was shocking seeing as how a half hour ago he’d felt like he might never smile again.
“I might quite possibly love you too, Kylie McKinley.”
She smiled up at him and all he could do was smile back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
TRISTAN WAS AT HIS filing cabinet slogging through the endless correspondences as he sorted what was worth taking and what was worth leaving. He had a box at his feet with what he wanted. There was a knock at his office door. He glanced up and there was his grandfather.
Ellis looked as if he’d aged a decade. Suddenly old, fragile, arthritic, and confused. He walked in stooped, as if his body was bending to the weight of the world. He walked to the window like he usually did and stared out.
“What are you going to do?”
He’d sent his notice to his grandfather via email before he and Kylie had even left this office yesterday. He’d stayed with her until about an hour ago when he’d finally come in to clean out his stuff. He feared he might be locked out, but all his keys still worked and no one stopped him. There was a strange, dark pall over the office. Half the staff was missing. He wasn’t sure quite why. Did they know?
“Start my own business. I won’t take any of Tamasy’s clients, but I do have my own personal contacts I’ll be tapping.”
“How will you pay for it?”
“Bank loan. Like most every other new start up.”
“From scratch then?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you can do it? You’ve never had to be poor. You’ve never had nothing. You don’t even know how to do the job yo
u want to start a company in. You were never a worker.”
“I know I can do it. I’m good at knowing the product and managing others. I have knowledge and I have the motivation, whether you want to admit that or not.”
Ellis shook his head. “You’re the best manager I’ve ever seen at this, I just always wanted you to be better than you first thought you could be.”
“Where is everyone?”
“I gave them the day off. I didn’t want any scuttle going around. People will talk with you leaving…”
He stared at his grandfather’s bent, stooped body. His black suit as pristine as ever. His neatly combed thin gray hair. Tristan’s heart felt heavy. He loved this man.
Quietly he said to his grandfather’s back, “He did it. Tommy did it to both of them. I don’t know if there are others. But he raped at least two woman. I can’t pretend that didn’t happen.”
“You don’t know that. It’s their accusations against his. He said, she said. You don’t know that he did that.”
“You don’t think it’s impossible he did, however. You’d never believe it of me, but you really don’t not believe it of him.”
“I—”
“I know what you’re going to do, Grandfather. You’re going to try and do damage control about this, especially if Kylie goes after Tommy. I think she will. Know this, I won’t let things be covered up. She deserves justice for what was done to her. A girl almost killed herself over it. No more, Grandfather. It ends now. Or at least my part in it, what I can control. I am ashamed of us for what we’ve done to them.”
“Your grandmother would be turning over in her grave if she could see what this family has become.”
“Yeah, well, she should be.” Tristan stared at his grandfather’s back. “Tara, and now me. Maybe you should reevaluate your morals, and your ambitions. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend anymore I don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Then there is the wrong that Tommy has done. You usually convinced me it was for the good of the family and the company and our image, but what about the victims? What about those who can’t fight us? I’m ashamed at my part in Cadence’s suicide attempt. We bullied her and bought her off. We had no right. You sent me after a rape victim to try and use her. I’m done, Grandfather. I’m done.”
