Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (10 page)

He was still rubbing
her back as she spoke, and their hips were touching.
 
She knew that it should bother her, but
it didn’t.
 
Somehow, his closeness
was actually helping her feel safe enough to tell the story.

“I wasn’t expecting
to hear from him or see him,” she continued.
 
“We hadn’t gotten that serious yet.
 
So when he texted me, I
almost—almost said no.”
 
She
closed her eyes tightly.
 
“God, I
wish I’d listened to my instinct.”

Elijah was watching
her intently.
 
“It’s not your
fault,” he said.
 

It might have been
cliché, Caelyn thought, but the conviction in his voice made it feel real and
truthful.
 

“You’re right,” she
said.
 
“But I still wish I’d
listened to myself.”
 
She took a
deep breath and let it out.
 
Now she
was getting to the scary part, and her stomach was getting tight, burning a
little as she geared up to remember the worst.
 
“Obviously, I said yes.
 
I got dressed up in my very cutest,
sexiest outfit and I went to his apartment.
 
I don’t know what I was expecting.
 
I was ready to hook up with him,” she
said.
 
“But I don’t think I had any
intention of going all the way.
 
I
mean, he was only the second person I slept with—”

“You didn’t sleep
with him,” Elijah interrupted.
 
“He
assaulted you.”

She nodded.
 
“Yeah.
 
Yeah, I know.”
 
She wiped at her eyes.
 
“Anyway, when I got inside his
apartment, I was surprised by how it looked.
 
It was a nice, big place,
off-campus.
 
But it was messy.
 
There were beer bottles and beer cans
all over the place, a pizza box open on the coffee table in the living
room.
 
It kind of smelled.”

Elijah laughed at
that.
 
“Figures.”

“Jayson asked me if I
wanted to hang out and watch a movie.
 
I said sure, even though little alarm bells had started going off in my
head.
 
They were distant alarm
bells, but something just felt—off.
 
I could tell he’d been drinking, for one thing.
 
He smelled like beer, and his hair was
kind of messed up.”
 
She thought
about it.
 
“But it was more than
that.
 
His whole vibe was just
wrong.
 
He was looking at me
differently—looking at me like I was his prey or something.”

Elijah’s jaw was
flexing again, which she knew was something he did when he was getting
upset.
 
It touched her a little that
he was so worked up on account of her.
 

“You don’t have to
tell me it all if you don’t want to,” Elijah said.

“No, I want to.
 
Maybe I need to, even.
 
If I don’t tell someone, I think I might
go crazy.”

“I’m listening.”

“We were just sitting
and watching some dumb movie.
 
Transformers or something—maybe it was the second one.
 
I couldn’t focus.
 
I ate some pizza and tried to make small
talk, but Jayson was being strange.
 
Quiet.
 
He started telling me
how good I looked, how much he liked my skirt.
 
I said thanks, tried to make a
joke.
 
I ate more pizza, thinking it
would keep him from trying to kiss me.
 
I was starting to plan excuses for leaving.
 
And then, he put his arm over my shoulder
and hugged me really, really tightly to him.
 
I could feel how strong he was.
 
Jayson is a big guy, and I was surprised
at how hard he was holding me.
 
I
told him he was hurting me and he just laughed and said that he just liked me a
lot.
 
And then it really
started.
 
He wouldn’t let me go, and
he was just holding me, kissing me a little.
 
I didn’t want to kiss him back, but I
was afraid.
 
So at first, I did kiss
him a little bit, thinking it might slow him down.
 
Only the exact opposite happened.
 
He put his weight on me and pushed me
back onto the couch, and then he started groping me, putting his hands all over
me.
 
Finally, I got scared and said
I wanted to stop.
 
He ignored
me.
 
I said it louder and then he
got really rough.
 
He ripped my
panties off and put his fingers right into me.
 
I was crying, telling him to stop, and
he told me not to fight it…and then he eventually just stopped responding.”

She realized she was
shaking violently now, as if it was happening again, this very instant.
 

Elijah looked
slightly alarmed.
 
“Caelyn, relax,”
he said.
 
“Relax.
 
No one’s going to hurt you again.”

“How do you know?”
she said, her voice almost a whisper.

“Because, I’ll kill
anyone who tries.”

She nodded, still
shaking violently.
 
“Thank you for
saying that.”

“Is it bothering you
that I’m sitting so close right now?”

She looked into his
eyes and shook her head.
 
“No.
 
I know you wouldn’t ever hurt me.”

He smiled a little,
but then his smile faded.
 
“Tell me
the rest.
 
I can take it.”

Caelyn looked away,
drawing her knees up to her chest and putting her cheek against her knees.
 
She closed her eyes.
 
“From there, things just progressed
fast.
 
I think I might have blacked
out a little bit.
 
It crossed my
mind that I might die—that Jayson was totally insane and he might kill
me.
 
His eyes weren’t normal, they
were dead.
 
He wasn’t seeing me, he
didn’t care that I was crying and begging him to stop.
 
He just kept going.
 
He raped me.
 
I don’t know how long it lasted.
 
I just know that afterward, he acted
like nothing had happened.
 
He got
up and went to the bathroom and then he came back and started watching the
movie again.
 
I told him I was going
and he said he would text me tomorrow.
 
I just said fine, because I wanted more than anything to get out of that
apartment and away from him.”

She heaved a deep
sigh, opening her eyes again, as if coming out of a trance.
 
“Once I got back to my dorm room, I
realized that I couldn’t stay there anymore.
 
I didn’t want to see Jayson ever again,
or even the school itself.
 
I wanted
out of Boston.”

“Why Florida?” Elijah
asked.

She smiled then.
 
“I’ll show you.”
 
She climbed off the bed and fished the
postcard out of her purse.
 
She got
back on the bed and handed it to Elijah, who saw it and grinned.
 

“This is cute,” he
said.
 
“But I still don’t get why
you decided to go here.”

The card was a
picture of a sandy white beach with a beautiful sunset.
 
Palm trees waved in the distance.
 
At the top edge of the card, in colorful
letters, it said GREETINGS FROM BEAUTIFUL SARASOTA.
 
She turned it over and showed him the
flip side.

Hey, Alicia!
 
Wish you were here—maybe Spring Break?
Love, Mom.

“My roommate, Alicia,
got this from her mother a couple of weeks ago.
 
She couldn’t care less about it.
 
She actually tossed it in the trash and
I found it.”

“I guess her and her
mother aren’t that close,” Elijah said.

“I guess not.
 
Ever since I found this card, I couldn’t
help but look at it.
 
I ended it
putting it in my room on my dresser, and every night, I looked at it and pictured
myself away from everything, walking on that beach.”
 
Caelyn laughed to herself.
 
“When I got back to the room last night,
I knew I was leaving.
 
But I wasn’t
sure exactly where to go until I was in the middle of packing and that post
card caught my eye again.
 
That’s
when I realized.”

Elijah raised his
eyebrows.
 
“That’s quite a story you
got there.”

“Yup.”
 
She nodded, pushing a few strands of
hair out of her face.

“Why not go to the
police?”

She flinched.
 
“I just can’t.
 
His family is wealthy, very
connected.
 
I know he mentioned
something about relatives who are judges and lawyers.
 
He’s a legacy at Cambridge.
 
I would get torn apart.”

“He can’t just get
away with it,” Elijah said.
 
“I
won’t let him.”

She turned her head
and stared at him, shocked.
 
“You
won’t let him?
 
What does that
mean?”

He just
shrugged.
 
“Don’t worry about what
it means.”

“Elijah, you don’t
even know the guy.”

“I’m pretty sure I
know what I need to know.”

“Please, that’s not
going to help anything.”

Elijah got off the
bed and started pacing.
 
“What’s his
last name?” he said.
 
He turned and
faced her.

She laughed.
 
“I’m not telling you.”

“Caelyn, tell
me.
 
Seriously.”

“No, Elijah.
 
You’re starting to freak me out.”

His whole body looked
puffed up, like he was ready to fight there and then.
 
The energy coming off him was
incredible.
 
Of course, in some
bizarre way, she had to admit it was sexy, too.
 
But she didn’t want Elijah knowing who
Jayson was and trying to defend her honor or whatever he had in mind.

“It’s not fair, what
he did to you.
 
The guy is scum,
Caelyn.”

“I know that.
 
But I made my decision.
 
I could have gone to the police and I
chose not to.
 
I’m not going to try
and let you and your friends take matters into your own hands.”

“Who said anything
about my friends?
 
I’m perfectly capable
of tearing that clown apart with my own two hands.”

She saw in his eyes
that he was totally serious.
 
He
wasn’t just trying to be a big shot.
 
“Please, you’re not helping me right now.
 
I just told you something that I haven’t
told to anyone else on this planet.
 
Can you calm down before I regret saying anything?”

Slowly, slowly, she
saw Elijah regain control over his emotions.
 
It took a visible effort.
 
His shoulders dropped a little, and some
of the blood left his face.
 
He took
a deep breath and released it.
 
“Fine,” he said.
 
“I guess I
have to respect your choice.”

“Yeah, you do.”

He sighed.
 
“Well, we’ve got a long day of driving
tomorrow and we should get to bed.”

She nodded.
 
Part of her wanted more.
 
She didn’t even know exactly what that
meant, but only that she was unsatisfied in some profound way.
 
He went to the bathroom and took a quick
shower, reemerging with damp hair, wearing shorts and a white t-shirt that
clung to his still wet body.

She had turned off
the lights, and now there was just the flickering of the TV.

Caelyn watched as he
climbed into the other bed.
 
His
muscles flexed and moved as he got under the covers.
 

Imagining him
climbing into bed with her instead, Caelyn felt a rush of adrenaline and
realized that she desperately wanted him to be close to her.
 
Maybe it was her instinct, wanting to
feel protected.
 
She didn’t know
what it was.
 
She just knew that she
needed something more from him.

But soon, she drifted
to sleep.