Second Opinion (14 page)

There was that look again. I kept saying things that clearly hurt her feelings, but I didn’t know how to say the right things. I tended to blurt out whatever came to mind first before thinking of the right things to say.

Avery’s response was again silence. I backtracked. “I’ll deal with Quinn.”

She sighed. “I know this is confusing for both of us, but I don’t want to get into something I have to keep a secret from one of my best friends.” She took a long drink of her margarita, and when she pulled the glass away, a tiny crystal of salt was left behind on her lip. I kissed it off.

“I didn’t mean that. I don’t want to keep it a secret, either. I just think we need to keep it quiet until we know what it is.”

She nodded. “It’s a learning curve for both of us.”

“It is. But I’m enjoying learning together with you.”

“So am I. And in the spirit of learning new things about each other…” she trailed off.

She made me want to talk about Rachelle. Maybe after she told me about her past, I’d be ready to talk about my own history.

And then again, maybe not.

I sat quietly and allowed her to gather her thoughts.

“Okay, first of all, I need you to promise this stays between us.”

“Of course.”

“Second, I don’t want you to see me differently.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t know what happened yet.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m falling for the girl sitting in front of me, history and all.”

She froze, her margarita halfway to her lips. “Wait. What?”

I thought about what I had said and realized that once again, I’d spoken without thinking. Fuck.

Shit.

Motherfucker.

Did I really just say that?

“What?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my mind and the waver out of my voice over the fact I’d just told Avery I was falling for her.

“You’re falling for me?”

“What?” I repeated.

“You’re falling for me.” This time she said it like a statement, not as a question.

I glanced around the room, refusing to meet her eyes, feeling like a total fucktard for letting that slip out while a small part of my brain screamed with the need for a response, a reciprocation.

My eyes finally landed on her.

“Yeah,” I said softly, taking the risk and doing my best to overcome the fear racing through my veins. “I am.”

Her eyes glowed with some mixture of heat and lust and excitement and emotions I wasn’t ready to name. She set her drink down on the table in front of us and crawled into my lap. She pressed a gentle kiss to my lips, a kiss that promised more and showed me exactly what she was feeling.

She pulled back, those big, brown eyes I suddenly found comfort in staring back into mine.

“Feeling’s mutual,” she whispered, and I grinned as a sense of relief pervaded every part of me.

I pulled her face closer to mine with my hand on the back of her head, and I really kissed her.

Her fingertips grazed my cheeks lightly, and it was her soft touch that told me everything was going to be okay. It was terrifying to admit even to myself I wanted something more than a few nights of sex with a woman, but something about Avery made me feel like it was going to be okay.

She pulled away and stood. “If we keep this up, I’ll never talk.”

I reached for her. “Then maybe we talk tomorrow,” I said.

“I want to get this out. It’s been on my mind a lot lately.”

“Come here,” I said softly, and she climbed into my lap. I cradled her in my arms, and I was confident that whatever she had to tell me wouldn’t change anything. We were just at the start of something incredible, and whatever she held in her past didn’t matter.

It was her future I was concerned with.

I couldn’t see her eyes, but maybe that would make whatever she had to tell me a little easier.

“It started my junior year of high school,” she began. All I could do was sit back quietly and hold her. I traced a pattern along her arm as she spoke. “I blossomed in junior high. I always had this body that’s sitting on you right now. It was both a blessing and a curse, but more of a curse when you’re surrounded by catty high school girls who are jealous of their own shadows.”

She paused and took a breath before continuing, her tone bitter. “I started dating a senior named Jace. He was a basketball star. He was popular. All of the girls wanted him. I didn’t know my best friend, Amanda, wanted him the most and would do anything to get him.”

Hearing her talk about another guy raised my hackles. I hated the idea of her dating someone else, which was funny considering the way I’d treated women over the past four years.

“Jace seemed too good to be true, and it’s because he was. He was the convincing type, always pushing things a little further than I was comfortable with, but I didn’t know enough to say no when the captain of the basketball team was giving his attention to
me
when he could have had anyone he wanted.”

I tightened my hold on her. I didn’t want to stop her in the middle of her story, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest.

Not because it would change my opinion of her.

Because it was making me angsty. It was making me want to hunt down this Jace douchefuck and beat the living shit out of him.

And I hadn’t even heard the whole story yet.

“I agreed to have sex with him even though I wasn’t really ready. We did it a few times, and I thought I was in love. Then Jace’s parents went out of town and he decided to have a party. It was huge. Everyone showed up, and I felt so special being the one there with the popular guy who was throwing the party. The girls all looked at me with jealousy, and the guys all looked at me like they wanted me. I felt sexy and beautiful, and the more I drank, the more intense everything became.”

She shuddered in my arms, and I knew with her movement we were getting to the tough part of the story.

She continued, and I hadn’t even realized I had stopped tracing a pattern along her skin and I was holding her so tightly to me that my knuckles were turning white.

“I was dancing. I was sloppy drunk. I don’t remember what happened next. In fact, I only remember waking up the next morning by myself in Jace’s parents’ bed. It was disgusting… I won’t get into the details, but clearly I’d had too much to drink. But we were high school kids, so no one thought anything bad would actually happen. I found Jace passed out in his own bed, and I decided just to go home. I walked through the house, and there were a few people who’d stayed the night who were still asleep. I tiptoed through the mess of broken bottles and red Solo cups and headed home. It wasn’t until later that afternoon I even knew what had happened the night before.”

“What happened, Ave?” I whispered, afraid to know the answer.

“I didn’t drink enough to completely black out, yet I did. I don’t remember any of this, but there is photo evidence. Amanda wanted Jace for herself, so she drugged me and got three of the guys on the basketball team to get me naked and pass me around.” She paused and took a deep breath. “She took pictures and made sure Jace saw them. She wanted Jace to think I had cheated on him.”

“Oh my God.” I was quiet for a moment, and then I realized she might mistake my silence as something it wasn’t. “Did you press charges?” I finally asked.

“No. I was too embarrassed. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill Amanda. I was violated and drugged, and I hated myself for getting into that situation. I hated Amanda for what she did. I hated those three guys for what they did to me. I hated Jace for letting it happen.”

“He let it happen?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t know. He was busy playing host, making sure everyone was having a good time. He couldn’t be bothered with his drunk girlfriend. But he believed I cheated on him, and he dumped me instead of being there for me. He didn’t want to be with a slut who had a four-way with three of his buddies.”

Rage filled me. I had literally no concept of how any human being could be so evil to another human being. “Did they have sex with you?”

“According to the pictures, no. There was some touching, definite violating, but I don’t think they had sex with me. I have to believe they didn’t.”

“They assaulted you,” I said flatly.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And they got away with it.”

She nodded again. “I transferred schools in the middle of my junior year. I never told my parents the real reason, but I couldn’t go to school every day and look at those kids who had done that to me. So I moved in with my dad. That forced me to switch schools.”

I kissed her hair where my lips rested. “Have you talked to someone about it?”

“I saw a counselor in college on and off. She helped me sort through things. And now you.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

While the rage permeating my blood made me want to find all of the people who had hurt my Avery, the more important thing was sitting there and listening to her since she felt comfortable enough to trust me with her past.

Particularly considering she hadn’t trusted anyone else with it.

“But it did enough damage that I’m terrified to get close to people. It took me a long time to find girlfriends who I could trust, and it’s taken me even longer to find a guy who I felt enough of a connection with to tell that story.”

“I’m glad it was me.” I kept my voice soft and soothing.

“So am I,” she whispered. “It’s hard for me to trust men, but there’s something about you, Grant.”

I pressed my lips to her temple, and we sat quietly for a while. I contemplated telling her about Rachelle, but I couldn’t get up the nerve. I was proud of Avery for being able to tell me about the painful memories of her past when I wasn’t strong enough to share my own.

It was hard for me to reconcile the thought that she was worried I would view her differently after knowing her story.

“So anyway, that’s why I have struggled with relationships. The last time I was in one, it ended because I was assaulted and violated and accused of cheating. It makes it a lot easier to avoid that hurt if I don’t allow myself to get too close to people. That way I can end things on my own terms.”

I thought about that. It made sense. I could see how her coping defense was to distance herself from people when two people she trusted had damaged her. But I was in deep enough and I was a decent enough guy that I would never hurt her the way the others had. Even if our relationship ended, it would never be even close to what happened to her before.

“I’m not letting you use those excuses on me. I’m not letting you distance yourself because you’re scared.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and I felt a warm tear drop down to my arm. I just held her because I didn’t know what else to do.

She sniffled, letting go of the years of silence she’d endured on her own. It was strange that I knew something about Avery that only a handful of other people knew: her counselor, those who had attacked her, her ex-boyfriend. And now me. Not even my sister knew.

I stroked her arms and trailed soft kisses from her temple to her hairline. I felt closer to her with the secrets of her past exposed than I’d ever felt to another woman, and in the grand scheme of things, we were still just getting to know one another. But my slip that I was falling for her followed by her story had bonded the two of us closely together in one short night.

She eventually got up and put our margarita cups in the sink. “Ready for bed?” she asked.

I nodded, because it was silly for me to even consider not spending the night after everything she had shared with me.

And just like every night since the first we spent together, I lay awake for the entire night. On this night, I thought about Avery, the once damaged girl who had grown into the impossibly perfect woman I was lucky enough to be holding in my arms.

It had been the perfect night to confess my own past. She told me how she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders by confiding in me, and I couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to unload the burden of pain I’d carried since my split with Rachelle. But as close as I felt to Avery, and as much as I wanted to tell her, I’d already confessed one pretty big secret that night through a simple slip of the tongue. It was too much to go through the pain of reliving her story next to her. I couldn’t follow that up with my own story. I wanted that night to remain about her, and so I kept my own memories locked inside for a little while longer.

* * *

Every day managed to bring me closer to Avery. We spent every night together, sometimes at her place and sometimes at mine.

And almost every night, I lay awake thinking about her and about us. It was terrifying at the same time it was exciting. My feelings for her were only getting stronger with every night that passed, and I knew I couldn’t keep the fact we were together a secret from those I loved much longer.

Neither of us was willing to label what we had, but both of us knew without ever saying the words that it was already something serious.