by J. S. Scott
“Hello, Paige,” he said in a smooth baritone. “Fancy meeting you here in Colorado.”
I yanked on my wrist, frantic to get away from him.
“Let me go, Justin,” I said in a tremulous voice.
“You know I never let a woman say no to me,” he reminded me with a malicious smile.
Bastard!
I hated myself for feeling a very real fear as he studied me carefully. “Let me go or I’ll make a scene,” I threatened, even as my body trembled.
“I’d prefer to get you a drink,” he countered. “You look amazing. The years have only made you even more attractive.”
I shuddered with revulsion. “Fine,” I agreed weakly. “I’ll take a drink.”
I’d die before I’d take anything he offered, but as I’d hoped, it forced him to let go of my arm long enough to flee.
I ran like I was running for my life, memories that I’d closed the door on long ago bursting into my mind as I ducked and weaved until I hit the exit and flew through the door that led outside.
Panicked, I hadn’t even thought about the snow and ice I’d have to navigate in insanely high heels. Instantly, I slipped and tumbled down the marbled, cement steps, not even noticing the pain as my knees and palms connected with the sharp ice and cement.
I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I’d fallen.
Desperate, I headed onto a lawn with calf high snow, hoping nobody would follow since it was dark once I left the entrance area and stepped off the treacherous sidewalk.
My mind was focused on only one thing.
Escape!
Run, Paige, run.
Finally, I stumbled into a small wooded area, oblivious to the tree branches hitting my face as I clawed my way into what I hoped was safety.
Exhausted, unable to go any further, I landed on my hands and knees in the snow.
Please don’t let him follow me.
Tears started to flow down my face, and I could hear the harshness of my breathing. One sob escaped my lips, and then another as I relived the event that had changed my life.
The fear.
The humiliation.
But the thing I’d hated most was the helplessness.
“Paige?”
The male voice sounded behind me, and I couldn’t help the terrified scream that left my mouth and rang out in the previously silent darkness.
CHAPTER 7
Sebastian
I’d sensed her fear.
Even across the space that separated us, I could feel her tension and watched her body language as she’d quickly escaped the spot where I’d left her.
I’d finally had my chance to speak to Mr. Talmage alone, and I’d simply blown it, excusing myself only moments after Paige had left.
After catching a flash of her burgundy dress as she’d fled through the door, all I’d had to do was follow her crazy path of footprints through the pristine snow to find her.
What the hell?
Hearing her strangled sobs had been like taking a dagger in the chest, and her ear-piercing scream of terror had me dropping into the snow beside her and trying to protect her icy-cold body from the elements.
She struggled, trying to claw at my face as I subdued her by pinning her hands over her head and covering her with my body. “Paige. Stop. It’s me. Sebastian. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I couldn’t see her clearly in the moonlight, but I felt all the fight leave her as she started to realize who I was.
“Sebastian?” she choked out on another sob.
“It’s me.” I stood and lifted her out of the snow, confused, but I didn’t really care why she was crying or scared. My only instinct was to protect her from whatever had upset her.
She’d dropped her small bag by the sidewalk, and I dropped it on top of her body to get a better grip as I trudged back through the snow, my feet almost numb with cold as I headed back to the building.
“No. Please. I can’t go back. I can’t do this. I’m sorry,” she said in a terrified whisper.
“Then we won’t go back.” I’d be damned if I’d take her somewhere that was only going to increase her fear. “I’ll take you home.”
Changing direction, I headed toward the parking lot. “Are you okay?” Maybe it was a stupid question. Paige obviously wasn’t okay, and she definitely wasn’t the type of woman to freak out over much of anything.
In the light of the parking lot, she shook her head and clung to me with her arms around my neck, her face buried in my chest.
Goddamn it! What in the hell had happened?
I was damn near running as I arrived at my vehicle, needing to find out whether she was sick or injured. I’d hardly seen any emotion from her other than her determination to succeed.
Now, she was literally falling apart.
I opened the passenger door of my SUV and settled her in the seat. “Are you sick? Hurt?”
She shook her head, a blank expression on her face now. I could see scratches on her cheeks and forehead, probably from colliding with the bushes and trees I’d found her in. Her lace sleeves were torn, her elbows abraded, and on further inspection, her palms were in the same state. “You are hurt,” I said angrily.
“I fell. Can we please go. I’m okay.”
Christ! She sounded so sad and frightened that I raced around to the driver’s side and started up the engine, hoping the heat would kick in quickly and we’d both thaw out.
Since the location seemed to be part of her issues right now, I got us on the road and headed back down the mountain.
She was shivering, and I glanced over at her as she wrapped her arms protectively around her body.
We were both silent as I navigated the highway. The drive back to Denver would take a while.
Finally, the heat started blasting, and I could feel my wet pants and saturated shoes and socks beginning to warm up again.
“You have to tell me what happened, Paige. Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No. Please. I don’t want that.”
“Then tell me,” I insisted.
“I’m so sorry. You didn’t get your talk with the seller, did you?”
“Fuck Talmage!” The last thing on my mind was a lost opportunity. I was too damn afraid to care whether I lost a hundred deals. All I wanted was to have Paige back again.
“Talmage?” she asked hesitantly.
It was too damn dark to see her eyes, but I didn’t need to. I could hear the trepidation in her voice. “Ervin Talmage. The seller.”
“Oh, God. He’s Justin’s father.”
“Yeah. I met Ervin’s son when I got to the table. Cocky bastard,” I remarked, still confused. “Do you know Justin?”
“Yes,” she replied, her voice devoid of emotion now. “I didn’t realize it was a Talmage function.”
“Old boyfriend?” I asked, hoping to God she’d say no. I didn’t want to picture Paige with another guy.
“I met him right when I was graduating with my bachelor’s degree,” Paige confirmed.
It didn’t escape my notice that she hadn’t really answered my question.
“Did you date him?” Okay. Shit. I was annoyed.
She let out a humorless laugh. “You could say that. Things didn’t go well. I kind of had a meltdown from seeing him after all these years.”
There was something more to her story. “You still care about him?”
She was silent for a moment before she responded. “I hate Justin Talmage more than I’ve ever hated anyone.”
“Must have been a pretty bad breakup,” I guessed.
“It was. Horrifying, actually.”
“Tell me,” I urged, wanting to know exactly what had happened.
She sighed, sounding resigned. “We met in my last month of school before I was supposed to co
ntinue on to Harvard Law. He can be charming when he wants something. We had a class together. Occasionally, I’d help him out with some of the coursework for finals. It wasn’t a difficult class, but Justin was a spoiled, rich guy, and he wasn’t used to working to finish anything.”
I was quiet, hoping she’d continue.
“He asked me out a few times, but I turned him down at first,” she admitted.
“I know how that feels,” I rumbled. She’d turned me down enough times for me to relate.
“Don’t ever compare yourself to someone like Justin. He’s…evil.”
I felt both elated and relieved that she didn’t find me to be equally as vile as Justin, but I feared that this story wasn’t going to end well. “How did you end up going out?”
“There was a party for graduation. I didn’t have anybody to go with and he asked me to ride with him. I was honest and told him I didn’t want anything but friendship with him, but I’d ride along with him since I didn’t have a car.”
“You actually went to college parties?”
“During my undergrad years, I was a different person. I studied hard, but I liked to have fun. I went to a lot of parties. I was…a lot more social. He changed me that night.”
I’d had a tiny glimpse of her fun side the first time she’d rode with me in my car. She had loved the power and the speed. Hell, she’d even laughed, a sound that still rang in my head at the oddest of times. Unfortunately, I’d never heard the sound again, and I wished that I could figure out how to make her that happy more often.
“So you ended up changing your mind and dating him?” Damned if I didn’t see red every time I thought of Talmage touching her.
“No. It was the last time I ever saw him.”
“Why?”
“He was an asshole,” she stated evasively.
“Did he hit on other women?”
“No.”
“Then what did he do to make you this upset?”
“He wanted more than I wanted to give,” she said shakily.
“Unrequited love?”
“He didn’t love me. He just wanted to fuck me,” she answered angrily.
I gripped the steering wheel hard, angry that Justin Talmage had badgered her for sex. The desire was either there or it wasn’t. If Paige had made herself clear that she wasn’t interested, it must have made her uncomfortable to have him trying to score. “Tell me what he did,” I growled.
“We went to the party, and I have to admit I did have one drink. He moved on me, but I kept having to tell him no.”
I maneuvered from the mountain highway to the freeway, able to increase my speed since the freeways were fairly clear. “I’m guessing he didn’t want to accept the fact that you didn’t want to be with him?”
Hell, I was relieved she hadn’t slept with Justin. Still, I wondered why she’d been so upset over seeing him again. Sure, it would be awkward between them, but her reaction was a little too over-the-top for there not to be more to her story.
“Did anything else happen?” I asked, knowing for Paige to actually hate someone, Talmage must have done something pretty shitty.
“Yes. That’s why I hate him. He turned my whole life upside down, changed me irrevocably. I try not to think about it, and I thought I’d finally succeeded. Seeing him again just brought back memories of one of the worst periods in my life. I’m sorry I freaked.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But you probably missed your chance at the property.”
“Fuck the property, Paige. What in the hell did Talmage do to make you hate him so much?”
“You’ll probably find it unbelievable,” she warned.
“I won’t. Just tell me why you dislike him, why he can throw a woman as strong as you into a panic.”
She took a deep breath before continuing in a hushed voice. “He knew he couldn’t get me drunk enough to have sex with him. I’d told him my limits before we got there. I partied, but I knew where to draw the line, even back then. I only had one drink, and I never even finished it.”
I waited patiently because I knew there was more, and if I spoke, I was afraid she wouldn’t spill the answer to the question I needed to hear.
Paige was hyperventilating again as she continued, “When he realized I was not going to give him what he wanted, he took matters into his own hands.”
Instantly, I knew what she was going to say, and I felt like I’d been sucker punched. I was holding my breath, hoping to God she wasn’t going to utter the words I definitely didn’t want to hear.
But she did.
“He raped me,” she admitted in little more than a whisper, confirming my suspicions, and my greatest fear.
CHAPTER 8
Paige
He raped me.
I hated saying those words, and worse yet, I didn’t want to go back to one of the worst periods of my life now that I was trying to move on. However, seeing Justin again, after all the years that had passed, catapulted me back to a time I just desperately needed to forget.
Tears rolled down my cheeks in the darkness of Sebastian’s vehicle, and I was glad he couldn’t see me clearly. I hadn’t been this big of a wreck in years. My hands were shaking, my heart was racing, and as I let my head slam back against the headrest, I think I just gave up trying to avoid telling Sebastian the whole truth.
I knew I had looked like a lunatic when I’d fled into the snow, and now I sounded like I was losing my mind. How could I explain away what happened?
I couldn’t.
Jumbled visions kept coursing through my brain about that night.
The helplessness.
The fear.
The complete humiliation that I suffered after Justin had simply taken what he wanted. Hell, I hadn’t even been able to put up much of a fight.
“Why isn’t he in jail?” Sebastian questioned angrily.
“I never pressed charges against him,” I admitted, the rage I’d felt back then coming back to me as I remembered that my rapist had gotten away with repeatedly violating my body as I laid there naked and unable to fight back.
“Why?”
“I went to the party with him willingly. He brought me a drink. He slipped me a roofie or some kind of mind-altering drug. It took over my body so fast that everybody just thought I was drunk. It wasn’t difficult for him to get me away from the crowd and into an empty room,” I told him shakily, swiping at the tears that were still trickling down my face.
“A date rape drug? Where you conscious?”
“Yes. But I was so dizzy, and I felt like I was in a dream state. Sometimes I felt like my mind was outside my body, but I also had periods where I was lucid and I knew what he was doing. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t even call for help.” My voice was cracking under the tension and anxiety of reliving the experience. “And I was scared.”
God, it felt good to admit to somebody that I’d been terrified. During the moments where my mind could process what was happening, I’d wondered if Justin had planned on letting me live to tell the story of what was happening at the time.
Sebastian’s tires squealed as he braked hard and maneuvered off an exit that was pretty much deserted. He parked in an empty lot of a grocery store.
Before I could process what he was thinking, he had his seat back and was hauling me into his lap.
I went willingly. For once, I accepted the comfort and safety he offered.
“I don’t like hearing that you were scared,” he grumbled as his strong, muscular arms tightened around my body. “I wish I’d known. I would have killed the bastard. Tell me the rest.”
I buried my face in his chest and wrapped my arms firmly around his neck. I was shivering uncontrollably, even though the vehicle was still running and warm. “I lost track of time, but I know he raped me more than
once. When he got bored, he finally took me back to my apartment. I passed out on the trip home. Some of the details are still blurry, but I woke up naked in my bed the next morning.” I knew I’d never forget my confusion, and then terror as I started remembering parts of the night before. I still didn’t have a lot of clarity about the whole incident. I just knew what had happened.
Sebastian started a gentle rocking motion, like he was comforting a child. I should be horrified, but I wasn’t. It was the only time I’d felt safe when I was alone with a guy in years.
The sobs I’d been holding back started to rack my body, and I let myself pour everything out. There was no stopping it now.
The pain.
The anger.
The fear.
The helplessness that I’d hated the most.
“You’re okay, Paige. I promise you that he’ll never get near you again,” Sebastian crooned softly.
Rationally, I knew no one could protect me, but for just a moment, I wanted to pretend his words were true. I wanted to believe that being cocooned in his arms would always keep me from harm. “I hate him. I hate him so damn much,” I choked out painfully.
“I know, baby,” he rasped. “Me, too. I wish you would have gone to the police.”
I took a few deep breaths to try to calm down. “I wanted to. But my father worked at Talmage headquarters in New Hampshire, only an hour away from where I was going to school. I didn’t want to let Justin get away with what he did, but my parents begged me not to come forward in public when I told them. My dad worked in the accounting department of Talmage Corporation, and Mr. Talmage was the CEO. The Talmage family is well-known and respected in New Hampshire. They finally convinced me not to go against a family that powerful. Who would believe me? Justin was their golden child, their only male heir. I had no proof. By the time I told my parents, the drug was through my system. I don’t think all of the drunk people at the party thought anything unusual happened.”
“Was your father afraid of losing his job?”
I swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump that suddenly formed in my throat. “I’m sure he was,” I hedged.
That incident was the sole reason for my distance with both my parents. For so long, I’d resented them for not supporting me. I’d wanted to go to the police. My mom and dad talked me out of it, literally begging me not to do it. In the end, I’d done what they advised. Honestly, my impression was that my dad hadn’t wanted to lose his job, even though he was far from being an executive.
