Rough & Ready

by Tracy Wolff

  Chapter 17

  Elara

  I stiffen against Tanner the second he orders me to spill, but—in typical Tanner fashion—he’s not having it. He tightens his arms around me, then rocks me a little as he murmurs all kinds of nonsense into my ear.

  I can’t even really make sense of what he’s saying—it’s more soothing sounds than actual words—but somehow it works. I can feel myself relaxing against him, my body conforming to the shape of his as my heart rate slows back to normal.

  Then again, all that might just be a result of being held by Tanner. I’ve never felt small or dainty in my life, never wanted to. And I don’t feel like that now. But here, in his arms, I feel protected in a way I’ve never been before. More, I feel cherished. There’s just something about him that makes me feel like I matter, in a way I never have before—to anyone.

  Maybe that’s how I finally find a way to do what he asks, how—when I open my mouth—the words just tumble out.

  “I don’t like to sleep in front of people. Which sounds stupid, I know. It is stupid, probably, because I know that everyone isn’t like…”

  “Like?” he prompts.

  I don’t say his name, partly because I don’t want to give him that much power over me and partly because I’m smart enough to know that Tanner won’t take kindly to what I have to say next…or the man I’m saying it about.

  “I had this boyfriend a while back. He used to like to do things to me when I was…asleep.”

  Tanner’s entire body turns to stone beneath me. His chest, his legs, even the arms wrapped around me go from rock hard to what feels like actual rock. And for long seconds, it even feels like he stops breathing, his chest no longer rising and falling beneath my head.

  I expect him to say something, expect him to demand more information from me. But instead he just waits, silent seconds ticking between us as I try to figure out how much I want to say.

  “Not like that,” I finally continue. “At least, not at first. Or…I don’t think so. It was more like I would wake up with bruises—on my arms, my stomach, my thighs—that weren’t there when I went to bed.

  “I mean, at first I didn’t notice. I’m an athlete, you know. There are bruises sometimes from working out or getting jostled on the court, stuff like that. But then they just kept showing up, in places I never used to get them. And I couldn’t figure out what was happening.”

  “He was hurting you. While you were asleep.” He sounds as horrified as I feel having to tell him.

  I nod, wait for him to say more. Wait for him to ask how I knew for sure. But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just pulls me closer, holds me tighter. And waits for me to continue.

  After swallowing down the bile burning the back of my throat several times, I finally do.

  “After a while, I even went to the doctor and got a blood test, just to make sure something wasn’t wrong. That I wasn’t anemic or something and that’s why I was bruising so much. I wasn’t. Everything was normal. Except my doctor started asking questions about my boyfriend, started going down this whole domestic violence path that I thought was totally absurd. I mean, I would never let some guy knock me around. That’s not who I am, you know?”

  He nods, and his arms have relaxed a little, are back to being gentle around me. But the rest of him is still as tense as ever. “I know.”

  “But then the bruising started getting worse and I started waking up with really bad headaches, like I was hungover even though I hadn’t had so much as a glass of wine. It started to really freak me out, to the point that I stopped sleeping for days at a time. Especially since every time I asked my boyfriend, he’d tell me how he would wake up and find me missing from bed. Would talk about how he’d look around the house for me and find me sleeping in weird spots, or just staring into space completely zoned out.”

  My voice breaks a little, but I ignore it, keep going. I hate talking about how stupid I was, how gullible and naïve and vulnerable I was with Jeremy but if I don’t do it all now, I know I won’t be able to start again later. Already, I can feel everything I’ve worked so hard to build slowly collapsing inside me.

  “I went to a sleep specialist who did all kinds of sleep tests on me, but nothing ever happened when I was there. She said that wasn’t unusual, that something might still be wrong. She gave me some pills to take that might help.

  “But I asked around the other players—I was on the road with them for weeks during the season and none of them ever saw me sleepwalk, never saw me do anything but sleep like a normal person. I asked my mom and dad if I’d had incidents as a kid, but there was nothing. Only when I was with my boyfriend did something happen. And I only woke up with bruises after I slept with him.”

  I pause, take a series of deep, shuddering breaths as I try to get my racing heart back under control. Tanner doesn’t push me. Instead, he holds me so close that I can feel his own heartbeat—slow and strong and steady—beneath my hand. I concentrate on it for several seconds, concentrate on him for several seconds.

  The rough and ready feel of him.

  The soft and tender sound of him.

  The warm and musky scent of him.

  I concentrate on all of it, on all of him, and it works. Slowly, slowly, slowly, I can feel myself start to calm. Can feel myself relaxing against—and into—him. As I do, it helps me find the strength to tell the rest of the story.

  “I started to figure things out, started to get suspicious. So I had cameras put in while he was on the road—”

  “He was a player?” Tanner asks, the first thing he’s said since I started talking.

  “Yeah. Still is.”

  He starts to say something else, but I shake my head. “Don’t ask. I’m not going to tell you who he is.”

  His eyes narrow and I’m pretty sure if he grinds his teeth any harder he’s going to break one. But he doesn’t yell, doesn’t move away. Doesn’t do anything but ask, “Why not?” in a deep, controlled voice.

  “Because this happened years ago and I’m not going to go there after all this time. More, I don’t want you to go there. He’s not worth it.”

  Tanner doesn’t say anything else, but I’m smart enough to know that with him silence doesn’t mean acquiescence. Still, I’m almost at the end and I want to finish so I don’t have to think about this again for a long time.

  “All my suspicions kind of came together at once, you know? It’s not like I started thinking about it being him and then didn’t do anything. Like in one week I was talking to my teammates and a psychologist and the sleep specialist and my doctor and we all kind of kept coming around to the same thing.

  “So even though I didn’t want to believe it, even though he seemed like the best guy in the world when we were together, I had to start thinking about it being him, you know. Like all the things he said being fake, like maybe he was gaslighting me or something. And it all seemed so far-fetched, you know? But at the same time, the most simple explanation is often the right one.

  “So I got a nanny cam, set it up in my bedroom. And for six nights—even though he was there—nothing happened. I slept through the night, no waking up in strange places, no inexplicable bruises anywhere on my body. I was beginning to think that maybe I was crazy, or at least that I was a terrible person for suspecting him.

  “I let down my guard. Up until then, I’d been super careful about watching my food and drink, about never taking anything he offered me, the whole nine yards. But that night, after nothing had happened for almost a week, I got up and went to the bathroom before bed. I didn’t think about the fact that I was leaving my water by my bed, didn’t think that in the two minutes I was gone he would do something to it.

  “But I was wrong. Because he did slip something into my drink. And though I only had a couple more sips of water before going to sleep, it was enough to k
nock me out. Enough for me not to know that Jeremy was undressing me, that he was purposely squeezing my breasts hard enough to leave marks. That the weird, semicircular bruises on the outside of my wrists came from where I was handcuffed to the bed. I woke up in the middle—” This time when my voice breaks, I don’t even try to keep talking.

  I don’t cry—I did too much of that after it first happened. I’m done crying over Jeremy and what he did to me. He doesn’t deserve that power. But I don’t have it in me to say any more. Suddenly I’m tired. So, so deep down tired.

  Tanner doesn’t say anything, either, he just keeps holding me, rocking me, stroking my hair. I don’t know how long we sit there like that, me taking comfort and him giving it. Long enough for the tea in his sparkly mug to go cold. Long enough for the rainstorm that had been threatening all day to actually move in, thunder rumbling in the distance.

  More than long enough for me to start to wonder what happens now.

  Eventually I have to move, though, my injured knee stiffening up from being in the same position too long.

  “You okay?” Tanner asks, the second I start to shift. “What do you need?”

  “Just to change positions. My knee hurts.”

  Understanding dawns on his face and he stands up, me still in his arms. “Where’s your bedroom?” he asks.

  If another man had asked that, I might be worried or nervous. But this is Tanner, who might actually be the best person I’ve ever met. And so I point him toward my room, enjoying the novelty of being carried for once. Enjoying even more the sweet, tender way he’s still holding me.

  Once we make it to my room, he deposits me gently on my bed. Then he switches on my bedside lamp before sitting down at the end of the bed and taking my feet into his lap. He carefully unbuckles my shoes, slips them off. Then he starts to massage my right foot, his strong thumbs digging into the arch of my foot with just the right amount of pressure to have my eyes rolling back in my head.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I feel honor bound to say, but a combination of pleasure and exhaustion have me slurring the words together.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” he says, voice so quiet and contained I have to strain to hear him. It’s the first time he’s said anything since I told him. “I want to.”

  I sit up then, lay a hand on his arm. “I’m okay, Tanner. I really am.”

  “I know you are, sweetheart.” He takes my hand, brings it to his lips. “But let me take care of you anyway. For me, if not for you.”

  He eases me back down onto the bed and I let him. Because I understand him. Because I understand that while parts of what happened will always be tender, will always hurt a little, I went through the real pain of it four years ago. But for Tanner, it just happened right now. And while he didn’t have to suffer the way I did, I’m smart enough to know how rough it is for him to hear something like this about a woman he cares about.

  And he does care about me. Just like I care about him. It’s fast, yeah. Crazy, maybe. But that doesn’t make it any less true—otherwise I never would have been able to tell him what had happened to me. And he never would have expected me to.

  Tanner moves on to my left foot, working the same incredible magic. As he does, I feel myself relaxing despite myself. Feel the last of the tension leave my body in a slow, subtle wave that leaves me feeling better than I have in a long, long time.

  He doesn’t stop until I’m pretty much a puddle of goo melted into my sheets. And even then, it’s only when I can no longer keep my eyes open that he actually stops.

  “I’m going to go now,” he tells me, easing slowly to his feet.

  “It’s okay. I’m awake. You don’t have to leave.” I try to sit up, but once again he eases me back down.

  “I’m fine, Elara,” he tells me, bending down to drop several soft kisses on my forehead, my lips, the sharp line of my jaw. “Get some sleep.”

  I wrap my arms around his neck, try to pull him down on top of me. But Tanner is as immovable as a wall when he wants to be and he doesn’t budge. The fact that I can’t move him even when I’m trying is another thing I need to get used to.

  “Please,” I tell him, when pulling on him doesn’t work. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “You’re going to fall asleep any second now and you made it very clear earlier that you—understandably—don’t want me here while you sleep. I’m not going to violate those wishes now, just because you’re sleepy and confused. I won’t do that to you.”

  “I know you won’t,” I tell him, wrapping myself even more tightly around him and holding on. “It’s why I want you to stay.”

  “Elara.” Sleepy or not, he doesn’t need to say it again for me to know what his answer is going to be.

  “Please,” I say one more time, and it’s barely a whisper now. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  He sighs, a heavy, weighty sound that slides right through me. “Okay, sweetheart,” he says after a long time. “I won’t leave you alone right now.”

  “Thank you.” It’s quiet, but no less heartfelt as I move over, making room for him on the bed with me.

  He sighs again, settles on the bed next to me. But he stays sitting up, his back against my headboard, like he’s planning on running the first chance he gets.

  To stop that from happening, and because he’s incredibly comfortable despite the ridiculous number of rock-hard muscles he’s sporting, I scoot up, too, until my head is resting on his chest and my arm is around his waist.

  I press kisses to his jaw and neck and the collarbone left bare by his open shirt. He shifts a little, drops a couple of kisses of his own on the top of my head.

  “Stay,” I tell him again, right before I drop off to sleep.

  Chapter 18

  Tanner

  I don’t sleep. I can’t, partly because the last thing I want is for Elara to wake up in the dark, feel me sleeping next to her and be afraid. And partly because the rage tearing through me is so powerful, so absolute, that it’s all I can do to lie here.

  I do, because Elara wants me to hold her and there’s no way I’m letting her down. No way I’m letting her go when she needs me. But fuck. Lying here, staring at the ceiling in the dim light from her bedside lamp, wondering who hurt her—if I know him, if I’m friendly with him—makes the top of my head want to blow the fuck off.

  It gets the best of me, the need to know who hurt her.

  The need to know who I have to destroy for what he did to her.

  Shifting a little, I pull my phone out of my pocket. Pull up my Google app. And start a search by typing in the words “Elara Vance boyfriend.”

  I get several hits that start with her college years at the University of Connecticut and go through her time with the Phantoms. I get rid of the college boyfriend—a guy named Jonas Vail—because he’s a lawyer in Connecticut now and, as far as I can tell, has never played a day of ball in his life. Get rid of another guy from a couple of years ago who’s an engineer at Qualcomm. Another twenty minutes of searching and I manage to narrow it down to three guys—Jeremy Knox, Steve Bradford and LaShawn Harris. I take LaShawn off the list because he’s retired and Elara specifically said the bastard is still playing ball—which leaves me with Jeremy Knox and Steve Bradford. I don’t know either one, but I’m going to get to know them. That much I promise myself as I fume…and read everything I can get my hands on about both of them.

  Somewhere around four o’clock, my phone dies and I toss it onto the nightstand to my right. And go back to staring at the ceiling and trying to breathe through the rage that’s taken over ever cell in my body, the fury that’s blanketing my brain and making it impossible for me to think.

  Making it impossible for me to do anything but rage.

  I’ve never understood men who hurt women, and I’ve sure as shit never understood how a man could hurt the w
oman who loves him. How he could get off on hurting someone who trusts him, whose job it is for him to protect?

  And Elara? My strong, beautiful, passionate Elara who’s always thinking about someone else, always trying to help and take care of someone less fortunate than herself? Who the fuck would even think of drugging her? Hurting her? Raping her?

  My hands start to shake at just the thought and my whole body soon follows suit. Because, goddamnit, the idea that this guy is still out there, living the high life, doing whatever he wants, while Elara continues to suffer? I’m not okay with that. I’m never going to be okay with it.

  I shift a little, pull her closer because I need to feel her against me. Need to know that she’s here next to me, safe and whole. Need to remind myself that the hell she went through was a long time ago and that she’s come out on the other side.

  It doesn’t feel like a long time ago, though. For me, it feels like it just happened, like there’s a gaping wound through my center that’s oozing blood and slowly destroying me.

  Reflexively, I hold her even tighter and Elara stirs. Moans.

  Immediately, I loosen my grip, start to pull away, but it’s too late. Her lids pop open and suddenly she’s staring at me with confused and sleepy eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her as gently as I can manage, even as I bring a hand up to stroke her hair back from her face. “It’s just me and I won’t hurt you, sweetheart. I promise.”

  Slowly the confusion leaves her eyes, only to be replaced by a wariness that breaks my heart. “Do you want me to go?” I ask, sitting up slowly. “I can—”

  “No.” She reaches out, too, wraps an arm around my waist and holds me tight. “Stay.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable in your own bed.”

  “That’s not on you, Tanner.” She sits up then, swipes her gorgeous blond curls back from her face with an impatient hand. “That will never be on you.”