Stripped (21 page)

“You’re running away again.” He’s equal parts angry and resigned and sad.

“No!”

“Then what would you call it?” His eyes are blue-gray, and he’s pacing away from me.

“I don’t know. I’m just saying I need some time.”
 

“Time for what? Either you want me or you don’t.”

“It’s not that simple, Dawson—”

“Then explain it to me.” He turns back to me and stands over me and stares down into me, into my soul. “Tell me one true thing.”

“I want you so much it terrifies me.” I can’t look at him.
 

“Why does it scare you so much?”

“Because it’s so much, and I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what this is between us.”

“It’s a romantic relationship, Grey. It’s not that complicated. I like you, you like me, we spend time together. We make love. We tell each other true things about ourselves.”

“Then you tell me one true thing about you.”

He rubs his hand over his face, and then through his hair. “Okay, fine. You’ve still not told me anything real, anything deep. I know you’re afraid, that’s no secret. But I’ll show you what I mean when I say ‘one true thing.’ I’m the son of Jimmy Kellor. My mother is Amy Lipmann. You’re in film, so you have to know those names.”

I knew this. Of course I did. Dawson being Jimmy’s son was public knowledge. But somehow I never thought of the effect that would have on Dawson. Jimmy Kellor was—and still is—one of the best-loved directors of all time. He was notoriously difficult to work with, demanding and exacting and quirky, but he was brilliant. He’s mostly retired now, and is famously reclusive. No one knows where he lives, but he’ll sometimes consult on a film from his home, via email and phone. Amy Lipmann was a romance actress from the seventies and eighties. She had a reputation as a wild child, and her relationship with Jimmy Kellor was a huge scandal at the time, since he was over forty and married with kids. Amy was barely twenty-one. Jimmy left his wife and kids for Amy, and the two stayed together for almost twenty tumultuous years. Tabloids recorded every accusation of cheating on Jimmy’s part and every visit Amy took to rehab. Eventually Amy overdosed on cocaine in the mid-nineties. Jimmy’s last film was the year Amy died, and he hasn’t directed since.
 

Dawson sighs. “So yeah. I grew up around Hollywood. I was an extra in Dad’s movies starting at the age of four. He got me my first real acting role when I was six.
Mountain on the Moon
. After that, I got my own roles. Mom and Dad managed me.” His eyes go dark, brown with remembered pain. “You want another true thing? I found Mom. When she OD’d, I mean. She was in her bathroom. She was naked in her tub. The tub was empty, not filled with water. She was just sprawled in it, covered in puke. I was just a kid. It was in ninety-six, so I was like…eight, I guess. The puke was all bloody. I didn’t speak for six months after that. I was in the middle of filming my second feature film and when I shut down, they had to recast and reshoot.”

I put my hand over my mouth, trying to imagine what that must have been like for a little boy. I can’t.

“My mom died of cancer. When I was a senior in high school.” I’m barely whispering. “She was my best friend. My everything. She was the only one who understood me or supported me. My dad…I’ve never gotten along with him. We’ll just leave it at that. Then she died, and I watched it happen. Day after day I watched her fight and fight, but she lost, and she died and…she—she left me! She died, and left me alone, and God didn’t stop it.”

Dawson wraps his arms around me, and I sink into him, absorb his scent, the feel of his skin against my cheek. I’m losing myself in him, bit by bit.
 

I push away. “I need to go home,” I say, wiping tears from my eyes. “I can’t deal with all this.”

“Grey—”

“I’m not running from you, Dawson. I just…I’m overwhelmed.” I am running, though, and he knows it.

“Okay. Fine. Whatever.” Dawson rubs at his jaw with his knuckles. “Greg brought the Rover back for you. It’s in the driveway. In fact, hold on.”
 

He disappears, and I sit on the bed and sip at the now lukewarm coffee. He comes back after a few minutes with a piece of paper, a pen, and my purse.
 

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Do you have any cash?” he asks, apropos of nothing.

“Um, yeah. Why?” I reach for my purse and dig out a roll of bills.

“Give me a five.” I hand him a $5 bill, and he turns the piece of paper around to face me. It’s the title to the Range Rover. “Sign here, and date it.” He points at a line.

“Dawson—”

“Just do it. Please.” He’s not looking at me.
 

I sigh. “I’m not taking your car. It’s worth, like, $140,000.”

“Grey, money means nothing to me. It never has. You want the Bugatti? I’ll give you the Bugatti. Fuck it. I can buy another one.”

“I don’t want any of your cars. I don’t want your charity.”

He throws the pen and title on the bed next to me. “Goddamn it, Grey. It’s not fucking
charity
.”

“You don’t have to swear at me.”

He slumps, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, I just…God, Grey. Just sign the title. Take the car. Do it for me.” I stare at him, and then I cave. I sign the title where he pointed, date it. “Thank you. Take it to the DMV on Monday. I’ll add you to my insurance policy.”

“Dawson, you’re not adding—”

“Have you won any of these arguments yet?” He looks at me with a quirked eyebrow. I shake my head and sigh, then fold the title and put it in my purse and start to leave the bedroom. I feel Dawson’s hand close around my wrist. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I’m just going home for a little bit. I need a shower. I need clothes. I have to do homework.”

“But you’re not going to work.” This is not a request, judging by his tone of voice.

“I have to.”

“No. You. Don’t.”

“I have tuition due. I have—”

“How much would you have made this weekend? Tonight and Sunday night? On average.”

“You’re not gonna try—”

He glares at me, speaking over me. “How…
much
?”

“A thousand, maybe?”
 

Dawson whirls in place, stalks to his closet, and opens a safe built into the wall. He pulls out an envelope and counts out some bills, returns the envelope, and closes the safe. His expression is grim and hard. “Here. Five thousand dollars. Take the week off.”

“You can’t buy me off, Dawson.” I’m both touched and insulted.

“Fuck, you’re stubborn,” he growls. “I’m not buying you off. I’m giving you a chance to have some time off.”

“If I take time off, I’ll never go back.”

“Good.”

“No! Not good! You can’t be my sugar daddy, Dawson. I’m a stripper, not a whore.”

“And I don’t want you to be either! I’m not asking you to
do
anything for the money, goddamn it!” He’s shouting, and I cringe away. He winces at my obvious fear and immediately quiets. “I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. You’re just making me so crazy. I’m not…I get how you would think that. I do. But...it’s a
gift
. The Rover is a
gift
. You won’t be with me, and that’s okay. Or no, it’s not. It fucking sucks. But at least let me help you. It’s not much, but it’ll make me feel better.”

“Feel better? About what?”

“You don’t get it? Really? You don’t see how I’m feeling? What you’re doing to me? How hard this is for me?” I don’t answer, and he tosses the sheaf of $100 bills on the bed beside me. He stands over me, staring into the middle distance. “Just go, then. Take it, don’t take it. What the fuck ever.” He moves past me, around the bed, and shoves open the door to his balcony.
 

I watch him stand with his hands on the ornate stone railing, staring out over Los Angeles. His posture reflects conflict, defeat, coiled anger. His shoulders are slumped, his head hanging low, his breathing slow and even. He looks like he’s trying to crush the railing into stone dust by sheer brute force. He looks capable of it.
 

I want to say something, to comfort him, but I can’t. I have no answers for myself, let alone him. I stand slowly, and then stop and stare at the thick pile of money, and I consider. In the end, I can’t take it. I want to. I want to not have to work, to not have to take my clothes off. But I can’t take anything else from Dawson. It makes me even more his, and I’m already losing myself in him, losing track of who I was and who I am and where that stops and he begins.
 

I get home, and I shower and put on clean clothes. I fumble my way through an essay on the use of lighting in
Schindler’s List
. It’s a poor essay, as my thoughts are scattered at best. Finally, I give up and close the cheap, refurbished laptop. I should have taken the money. I’m honestly terrified of going back to the club now. I’ll jump at every shadow, see a rapist in every customer. The horror of what I experienced was drowned and buried by the raw intensity that is Dawson, but now that I’m alone, it’s rushing back.
 

I put on a movie and try to watch it, try to distract myself, but even stupidly brilliant comedy like
Black Sheep
can’t keep my thoughts away from the hiss of that awful voice, the cruel steel of hands stripping me, crushing the air from my lungs. Panic becomes hysteria, which in turn becomes hyperventilation. I duck my head between my knees and try to focus on long, deep breaths. I’m on the floor, sweating, shaking and sobbing.
 

Lizzie finds me like this. “You okay, Grey?”
 

As questions go, it’s kind of stupid. I mean, I’m clearly not okay. But this is Lizzie, and she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
 

But her presence forces a layer of calm over my panic, and I’m able to work my way back up onto the couch, wiping at my face and sniffling. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

She frowns briefly, then notices the movie playing on the TV, the medium-sized flat-screen Lizzie got for Christmas last year. “Oh, cool. I love this movie. Chris Farley is hysterical.” She plops down next to me, oblivious.

We watch the rest of the movie in awkward silence. Well, awkward for me. Lizzie spends most of it watching while texting. I should be getting ready for work right now. But yet, I’m not. I’ve never been late, never missed a day, never called in sick, even when I had the flu. When the movie is over, Lizzie half-heartedly works on some kind of science homework, and I finish my essay. Lizzie doesn’t notice that I’m not going to work. I feel like Timothy is going to burst through my door any moment and demand to know where I am. Or someone from the university is going to knock on my door and demand that I go back to Georgia.
 

Nighttime slowly rolls around, and I’m a mess. I’m jumpy, hungry, confused. I miss Dawson. I’m worried I’ve alienated him forever. I’m worried he’ll never give up on me and something will happen that I won’t be able to undo.

Eventually, I go to bed earlier than I have ever before in my teen and adult life. I lie in bed, dressed in a long USC T-shirt and underwear, and fail to sleep. I fail, because I think of Dawson. I don’t think of his anguished eyes when I refused his help, or his angry pose on the balcony. I don’t think of his rage-fueled driving. I don’t think of his nearly naked form as he changed into a pair of shorts.
 

I think of his hands, roaming my body. I think of his fingers inside me, creating pleasure I didn’t even know existed. Under the cover of my thin blanket, I slide my own hand down between my thighs, under my underwear, and I touch myself. For the first time in my life, I touch myself to find pleasure.
 

But my touch is cold and lifeless, compared to the memory of his hot, strong hands on me, and in me. I give up and try to remember how it felt.
 

I dream of Dawson when I finally fall asleep. The dreams take me to places that make me sweat in my sleep. I wake up throbbing between my thighs and panting, with an image of a totally naked Dawson crawling across a bed toward me.
 

Shadows obscure the parts of him I’ve never seen, but in the dream, in the waking memory, I can all too well imagine his lips on my breast and his hands on my hips.
 

However wrong, the dream leaves me desperately wanting it to be real.

Chapter 12

“What?” My voice is more than a little hysterical. Several students in the Office of Financial Services waiting room lift their heads from their phones and notebooks to stare at me in curiosity. “What do you mean, it’s been paid?”

The woman on the other side of the counter stares at me like I might be a little slow. “I mean…your balance has been paid.” She taps at her keyboard, then looks back at me. “In fact, tuition as well as room and board have been paid. You have a zero balance. An escrow account has been established as well, it looks like.” She’s a small woman in her mid-thirties, pretty in a frizzy, harried kind of way.
 

“A what?”

She frowns at me. “An escrow account. It means there is money available, ear-marked and arranged for auto-debit, for the remainder of your degree. For dorm costs and your food plan as well, it looks like. I didn’t know you could do such a thing, honestly.” She gives me a tiny, tight smile. “Someone likes you, Miss Amundsen.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

“It’s very simple, really. Someone has paid for the rest of your education.”

“I’m sorry if I’m coming across as stupid, I just—I don’t understand who would—who could—” I cut myself off, because I do know. I close my eyes slowly and try not to either cry or explode. “Thank you.” I whisper the words and turn on my heel to leave the office. Once out, I just sit in the Rover.

The leather is cool under my legs, and cold air blasts my face. It’s hot as anything outside, but the Rover gets icy in moments. The Rover has satellite radio, and I’m addicted to it. Musically, I’ve come to like everything, even hip-hop and pop, but my southern roots come through in my love for country music. “More than Miles” by Brantley Gilbert starts to play. This song, god, it’s tones from home, my home as it once was. I have a memory of riding in the front seat of Mom’s BMW, windows down and the wind tangling our hair as Tim McGraw blasts from the speakers. Mom loved Tim. Dad didn’t approve, since it wasn’t, like, Steve Green or Michael W. Smith or Steven Curtis Chapman, but it was always our secret, on the way home from dance class or during errands around town.