“Okay then,” I hear her call out after me. “I guess you can go ahead and keep the picture.” I attempt to block out her laughter as it bounces off the building behind me. My feet can’t get me where I need to be quickly enough.
~ ~ ~
The plane’s engines scream in my ear as we taxi down the runway. Announcements come over the speakers following the pre-recorded safety video. Flight crew walk down the aisle checking seat belts and closing overhead compartments. I’ve seen it all a hundred times before. It all becomes drivel in the background as my thoughts overcome me.
His face isn’t one of those in my nightmares. But there are so many. And he was there at the party. The proof is sitting back on my parents’ kitchen counter along with a letter to Skylar, explaining how I can’t stay for her wedding. Lame excuses of an emergency with Charlie. I hope she won’t hate me for missing her special day.
I can’t stay. I can’t walk up the aisle with him. I can’t stand across the altar from him knowing he could be one of them. It would explain how he was so quick to accept what happened to me. How he kept telling me nothing in my past could change the way he felt. How he was always protecting me. How he held me tightly last night, silently sobbing behind me. Maybe guilt was consuming him.
Could I really have fallen in love with a boy who raped me?
Denial shoots through me. I try to convince myself it wasn’t him. But there’s no denying the truth in the picture. I turn up my music, mindlessly staring down upon the shrinking city. And as the water below slowly overtakes the land in the window, I bid a final goodbye to New York.
chapter twenty-four
mason
Pre-season is over. I don’t report to training camp for almost six weeks. It couldn’t have worked out better. I plan on spending every minute I can with Piper and Hailey. The latter may involve kissing a little ass where Cassidy is concerned.
My lawyer said it shouldn’t be too hard to get joint custody. It’s pretty common these days, even when people have demanding jobs like mine. But it will take time.
I can’t begin to think of how Cassidy’s behavior could affect my daughter. I would go for full custody, but without proof—without hard evidence of her somehow endangering Hailey, I don’t have a case. I can only hope it was a one-time thing. I’ve seen her drunk plenty of times, but in the city, where driving isn’t involved, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. But Saturday night was different. She was completely out of it. And that asshole she was with. I shudder to think Hailey could be exposed to someone like him. I’ve always known Cassidy was a slut, but if she’s into drugs. Shit. I don’t even want to think about it.
I’d rather think of Piper. We passed a major milestone over the weekend. What happened to her is unbelievable. Worse than I imagined—which was maybe some old boyfriend forcing himself on her, or at the very worst, a random stranger assault. But, God, multiple boys raping her while she was obliviously whacked out on sleeping pills? That sickens me. And I know all too well what it’s like to not know the difference between nightmares and reality.
She trusted me. She opened up to me and then she let me hold her all night. I know she believes she’ll never be ready to give herself over to me completely, but I think she’s wrong. In a few short months, she has conquered so many fears. She’s let me kiss her. Touch her. Put my tongue on her. And the orgasms she’s had—if I tried to choreograph the perfect orgasm, I still wouldn’t have come close to even being in the same damn ball park as the reality of watching her lose control and enjoy the ones I’ve given her.
As I put myself through the paces on a treadmill, my mind goes wild just thinking of the sexy birthmark on her thigh. The alluring tattoo that sits just below her ear. Her perfect creamy breasts that I swear were made specifically to fit my hands. The sweet, musky scent between her legs.
Stop it.
I increase the speed of my treadmill and the volume of my music so it’s hard to think about anything but keeping up my punishing pace.
When my run is finished, I look around the gym. I came early, hoping to run into Piper. With my days free for the next month, I thought we could work out together.
We haven’t talked since she left my place yesterday morning. We both skipped Sunday brunch out on Long Island. I think she needed time to process everything. If what she said is true, other than Charlie and her parents, I’m the only other soul who knows. Hell, I’m still processing it myself. I’m still reeling over the fact that her admission connected us on some surreal level I never thought I’d experience with a woman.
I’m in love with her. I’m sure of it. And as soon as I can, I’m going to tell her. I’ll spell it out with Mr. T’s roses if I have to. Anything to make her understand that I’m all in. I’m in this for the long haul. No matter how long it takes. I’m talking marriage, kids, side-by-side burial plots. The whole nine yards.
I stare at my water bottle after taking a drink—a little piece of plastic that has so much more meaning than I ever thought it could. I vow to have a dozen cases delivered to my apartment as soon as I leave here.
I look at the banks of treadmills. I look at the weight stations. I walk past the boxing rings, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of her.
“How’s my favorite underrated, underutilized football player?”
I turn around, smiling at my favorite gender-neutral friend. Okay, my only gender-neutral friend. “Hey, Trick. How’s business?”
“Good. Busy,” she says. “So busy I’m thinking the bosses need to give me a raise.” She winks.
I laugh. “Glad to hear it.” I look over my shoulder, visually sweeping the premises once again. “Did I miss Piper?”
She looks up at the large clock on the wall. “Huh.” She tilts her head, studying it. “No, you didn’t miss her. She hasn’t been in yet,” she says, turning back to me. “Kind of unusual for a Monday since the restaurants are closed. In fact, I don’t think she’s missed a Monday morning workout since I met her, not counting the day of the marathon.”
My good mood dampens and my heart suddenly finds itself in the pit of my stomach.
Something’s wrong. And I’ll bet it has everything to do with Saturday night. Has she changed her mind about me now that I know her secret? Maybe she thinks I’ll see her differently; that I won’t want to touch her after knowing what happened. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just have to make sure she understands that.
I pull my phone out to text her.
Me: Hey, sweetheart. I missed you at the gym. Can I see you today?
I make some small talk with Trick and a few of the gym patrons, but my attention is largely focused on my phone—waiting, willing it to vibrate with a reply.
Clean from my shower, I throw my gym bag over my shoulder and head in the direction of Griffin’s townhouse. She hasn’t texted me and if she’s having second thoughts, she needs to see in person that I’m not.
Skylar smiles when she sees me, holding a sleepy Aaron in her arms. She opens the door and then cranes her neck to look behind me. “You’re alone?” she asks. “Where’s Piper?”
I try to ignore the twist in my gut. “I was hoping you could tell me. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning.”
Worry etches lines beside her eyes. “She didn’t stay with you again last night?”
“No.” I look past Skylar to the stairs, hoping Piper will come bounding down at any second. “She didn’t. Last I knew she was going into work.”
She waves me in, depositing Aaron in a nearby cradle. “She did. She worked the lunch shift yesterday.” Her questioning eyes sweep over me. “I’m confused. Because obviously you spent the night together on Saturday, and then you both begged out of brunch. We all assumed the two of you had finally gotten together and wanted some, um . . . alone time.” She winks. “But then I found out she took a shift at NYC. Did you guys have a fight or something?”
I shake my head with a sharp jerk. “Not at all. Quite the opposite. That night was one of t
he best of my life. Maybe the best. She finally—”
I stop my words mid-sentence. Skylar doesn’t know.
“She finally what?” she asks.
“Um . . . I think she finally realized that maybe we could be a couple.”
A triumphant smile sweeps across her face. “I knew it!” She claps her hands and then winces when she remembers the sleeping baby just yards away. “Wait. Then why is my little sister M.I.A?”
I shrug and run both hands through my hair in frustration.
“What, you think she’s having second thoughts?” she asks.
We share a look of defeat and then simultaneously pull out our phones to start texting and calling anyone who might have a clue.
I’m getting nowhere on the phone with Baylor when I see it in Skylar’s eyes. I don’t know who she’s talking to, but the way she’s looking at me right now—it’s the same damn way the doctor looked at me in the hospital seven years ago when he told me my parents were dead. Her eyes are full of unspoken words. They are heavy with sorrow. Her sympathetic gaze never falters from my prying eyes as she listens, nodding along with whatever she’s hearing.
She peels the phone slowly from her ear, closing her eyes as she sets in on the table in front of her. “What did you do to her?” she asks, her voice hollow, as if not knowing to accuse or support me.
My head tilts to the side as I ponder her question. “Do to her?”
A heavy weight settles in my chest. Oh, God. I pushed her too far Saturday night. She’s having some kind of delayed panic attack. “Nothing,” I say blindly, before flashbacks of her desperate chants send a burning wave of grief raging inside me. “I thought it was okay. I thought she was okay.” I tip my head back and blow out an agonizing breath. “Fuck, Skylar. What did I do?”
“I don’t know, Mason.” She walks over to me and grabs my shoulders, her petite frame forcefully turning my large one. She guides me towards the door. “But you’d better damn well figure it out. I’ve just been informed by my mother that she’s gone. She left New York and she’s not coming back. Not even for my wedding.” She opens the front door and pushes me through. “I love you. But I love my sister more. I hope whatever happened is just a misunderstanding. Fix this, Mason.”
The door slams shut behind me and I stand here, empty. As empty as I was the day my parents died.
I look down at my wrist, a constant reminder of what I lost. It makes me think of Piper’s bracelet. She touches it when she’s nervous, same as I do my scar. And I wonder—does it give her strength, or does it slowly suck the life from her?
I tap her name on my phone, but before I even hear it ring, it goes to voicemail. I plead with her to call me. To let me know where she is. To come back. I text her repeatedly as I rush back to my apartment, heading straight for the parking garage so I can go the only place I think may hold the answers.
Long Island.
~ ~ ~
Four angry eyes meet mine at the front door of her parents’ house after her father rips the door open. “You’ve got balls coming here,” he says. “I should call the police.”
Piper’s mom puts a hand on him, holding him back when he looks like he’s going to lunge at me. “Bruce, wait,” she begs, warring emotions evident in her teary eyes. “Look at him. He seems utterly wrecked. This is Mason. He’s practically part of the family. Maybe she’s mistaken.”
“Mistaken?” he spits at her as if she were a stranger. “You think our daughter is mistaken about this psychopath raping her?”
Jan cringes. Bruce hits the door with his fist.
I die inside.
She thinks I raped her? Oh, God. I did push her too far.
I double over, my hands meeting my thighs as I fight for breath. I’ll never be able to forgive myself. My body crumples, my back hitting the porch wall as my head finds its way between my knees. “No, no, no,” my broken voice stutters. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. She said she was ready. I thought she was ready.”
I can hear Bruce cussing over his hurt hand. Jan is crying—disappointment flowing with her tears. Her hand comes up to cover a heart-wrenching sob. “What kind of monster thinks a drugged-up sixteen-year-old can consent to sex?”
“Sixteen?”
It takes a minute to sink in. “What? Sixteen? No.” I look at their broken, angry faces. “Bruce, Jan, I’m confused and you are scaring the hell out of me. She told me what happened to her. She finally opened up to me Saturday night after I, after we . . .” I try to clear the desperation from my voice. “We tried being together but she panicked. That’s when she told me. She told me about the night she was raped and the boys who raped her. She slept in my arms after that. I thought she was okay.” I look at them, my expression pained and puzzled. “When she left my place yesterday she was okay.”
Bruce cradles his right hand gingerly as hatred clouds his eyes. “Told you about it? What’s to tell, you were there. You were one of them.”
“One of them?” I look up at him, my heart pounding painfully hard. “As in one of the sick bastards who raped her? What are you talking about? I just met her a few months ago.”
“Are you calling our daughter a liar?” He looks like he wants to hit me instead of the door.
“No, sir.” I stand up and steady myself on the wall. “I just think she’s confused because we had, well, we tried to have . . . ” I shake the uneasiness from my voice. I need them to believe me. “I know about her nightmares, about the faces she sees, maybe after our encounter, she thought I was one of them.”
“Or maybe you’re the one who’s confused,” he barks. “My daughter is no liar, and neither is the picture.”
“Picture?” I look between them, frustration and worry bleeding from my eyes. “What picture?”
“Wait here,” Jan says. Then she turns to Piper’s dad. “Don’t hit the boy, Bruce. You’ll go and break your other hand.”
Bruce nods, heeding her request. He stares me down, pinning me to the wall with his wrathful eyes.
After what seems an eternity, Jan returns, handing me a photo. It’s a picture of Piper—young and confidant. Her long honey-brown hair is all one color, falling far longer than it does today. Beautiful.
Then I’m sure my eyes betray me when I see myself in the background. “I don’t understand,” I tell them, hoping they can read the despair in my eyes. “I never met Piper until March of this year. I’d never seen her before. Where was this taken?”
Jan’s eyes betray her, revealing sympathy I’m not sure she wants me to see. She grabs my elbow, escorting me into their home. She gives her husband a look of warning as she guides me into the kitchen. I put the photo on the table and accept the water she offers me, eager to quench the intense thirst spawned by oppressive anxiety.
“What do you know about that night?” she asks.
“Only what she told me, Jan. Please, tell me what’s going on here.” The bitter agony welling inside me is crippling. “Where is she?”
Bruce picks up a chair, turning it around backwards before he puts it down next to me, offensively straddling it and leaning his arms on the top rail. “Let me tell you a story,” he says, his voice deep and rough, edged with a deadly calm. “Once upon a time there was a sixteen-year-old girl. A beautiful, talented, outgoing sixteen-year-old girl who never knew a stranger. She doted on her nephew, helping her sister raise him when she was young and alone. She was a great daughter, a loyal friend and a gifted actress.”
His eyes go dark and distant. “Then one night, a few weeks before junior year, she went to a party with some drama friends. They weren’t her usual crowd, but she was determined to fit in with everyone—jocks, geeks, bookworms; she didn’t want to be labeled or belong to only one group. There were football players at the party and some of her friends were trying to impress them. On a bet, she took some shots of alcohol with the football players.” He pauses to push the photo closer to me. “Shots you and your friends gave her. Shots that were full of drugs so you could
have your way with her.”
His uninjured fist pounds the table next to the picture.
I stare at it. And like a movie playing in slow motion, a night from high school floods my memories and my world is pulled out from under me like a cheap fucking rug.
That laugh. Her maniacal, eerily familiar laugh that sent chills down my spine a few weeks ago. It was from that night. I remember it now as clearly as the terror on Jan’s ashen face. I was seventeen and I was drunk. Not wasted drunk, but I had a good buzz going. Coach Braden would have kicked my ass if he knew I was drinking so close to the start of the season. By then, almost a year and a half after my parents died, he was more than my coach. He was my father figure. My guardian. My savior.
My friends had talked me into going to what was touted to be an epic party. The best summer blowout ever. It was at some rich kid’s house in the city. The place was gigantic and I remember wandering long hallways searching for an unoccupied bathroom. I passed by a slightly open door, a bedroom based on the noises coming from inside it. Clapping, cheering, and groans of pleasure were seeping through the crack in the door. Sex oozed from the dimly-lit room. I was seventeen. Of course I looked. There were several guys surrounding a bed, none of whom I knew more than to thank them for pouring me a beer from the keg. A girl was squirming around on the bed, arching her hips and making all kinds of sexual noises that had my young mind fantasizing for days. “Everything good in here?” I asked. All heads turned to me. A few guys looked annoyed as if I were going to join in and take a piece of their pleasure. The girl on the bed, whose face was obscured by some guy’s bare ass, crooked a finger at me, inviting me over with the gesture. “No thanks,” I said, as I shut the door and went to find a bathroom. That’s when I heard it. Her crazy libidinous laugh.
Black Roses (A Mitchell Sisters Novel) Page 21
