Page 75 of The Wildcat

I collapse next to her, and she crawls into my arms. Both of us so completely destroyed, there’s no going back. There’s no more running. No more chasing. It’s just us. Together.

“Cross...” she whispers into the darkened, quiet room, her voice raw. Tears pool in her eyes.

“We’ve got our whole lives, Everly. Sleep now. I’ve got you.”

“No more running,” she whispers and closes her eyes.

Sometime before the sun rises, Everly lies on my chest, her naked body draped over mine, awake but soft and languid and barely moving. Hours of mind-blowing sex will do that to a person. If it weren’t for her fingertips drawing lazy circles on my chest, I wouldn’t even know she was awake until she flashes me those eyes I love.

“I don’t know why you’re so patient with me, Cross.” The dejected tone in her voice breaks my fucking heart and makes me want to slay every one of her demons and bring their heads back to her as a prize.

“One day, you’re going to tell me who hurt you, baby. You’re going to let me shoulder that fucking burden for you. Because nothing should have as much control over you as you give this.”I temper my words, so they sound gentle, even though inside, I feel anything but.

She lays her head on my chest and looks away. “I never had a serious boyfriend until college. And even then, I’m not sure if we were ever actually serious, or if it was just convenient. He knew my friends, and that’s where I drew my line. I didn’t bring him around my family. I never did. When you grow up in a family like mine, people like to use you. Either so they can say they know this group of athletes, or they want to use you to get to them, in the hope to use them for something. It always drove Keith nuts that I wouldn’t bring him to games or family dinners, so we ended up being one of those dramatic couples who broke up every other month. But we were together, on and off, almost all four years. More off than on, if I’m honest.”

A chill skates down my back. I already don’t like where this is going, but I keep my mouth shut and tangle a hand in her hair, rubbing the base of her skull. I need to tread carefully and guard my reactions or I have no doubt she’ll freeze up.

“By graduation weekend, we’d been off for a little while, and I promised the girls I wasn’t getting back together with him...” She sits up and tucks the sheet around herself. “They weren’t big fans of his. But we had friends in common.”

“So that was what? Two years ago?”

“Not quite.” She sighs deeply, and her shoulders shake. “It will be two years next June. I hadn’t seen him for a while by then. He’d called a few times, but I was just done. You know what I mean? When you get to that point with someone where you don’t want to do the on-off thing anymore. It’s just over. We ran into him and a few friends at the bar. We all partied together, but every time he’d try to dance with me, I’d move away. I didn’t flirt. We didn’t hook up, and I know I told him I wasn’t interested more than once, but he never was good at being told no.”

Goddammit. No. Please God, don’t let this woman be about to tell me this.

“We’d all been friends since freshmen year in college, so we didn’t think anything of it and went back to the house when the bar closed. Back then, the five of us lived in a house off campus. But it was just Brynn and me that night.”

My blood is boiling with a rage that’s going to be someone’s destruction.

I’m going to find this guy, rip his dick off, and use it to beat him to death with my bare fucking hands.

“The last thing I remember is the room swimming around me and then thinking I needed to go to bed.” She chews her bottom lip as tears pool in her aquamarine eyes. “I woke up the next morning naked. Keith was lying next to me in bed. He was naked too. And I couldn’t remember anything. It wasn’t like a hangover. It was a blackout.” She straightens her shoulders and swallows. “I’ve been drunk before, Cross. But I’ve never blacked out. And I hadn’t had that much to drink. It wasn’t adding up, but it felt like my brain was muddled.”

“Fuck, Everly.” I move so I can wrap my arm around her, but she inches away.

“Just let me get through this, okay?”

“Whatever you need, baby.”

Her smile is small and so fucking broken, violence burns in my veins.

“He tried to convince me we hooked up. No big deal, same as always. But the thing is... I knew in my heart he was lying.”

“Everly...” I cup her beautiful face in my hands and gently wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks. “You don’t have to keep going if this is too hard.”

As if I hadn’t spoken a word, she stares right past me. “I stayed in bed all morning. Until he left. Until the house quieted and I was sure I was the only one home. Then I sat in theshower and cried for hours. Until the water ran cold, and my skin was wrinkled and freezing. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even try. Because hours after I woke up naked and sore, my memory started to come back to me in pieces. Not the whole night. Never everything. I still don’t remember that much. But it came back in... in flashes. Like slides of an old grainy home video.” She turns in my arms and stares right into my eyes.

“I told him no, Cross. I know I did. But we’d been together for years, and he thought I was just playing hard to get. That’s what he kept saying.Don’t play hard to get now, Everly.”

My voice gets lost in my fucking throat.

“He drugged me, and he had sex with me while I was too out of it to stop him. And it was my fault.”

“It was not your fault, Everly. He drugged you, and he raped you. You said no while you could, and he waited until you couldn’t to take advantage of you. None of that is your fault.”

“I trusted him, Cross. I let him into my life, and I trusted him. If I hadn’t?—”

“No means no, Everly. And if you weren’t able to say no, then it shouldn’t have even been an option. No. It’s an entire sentence. It’s all you ever should have had to say, and if you couldn’t fucking say it, then it should have been automatic, baby.” I’m trying so fucking hard to watch the anger in my voice, so I don’t scare my girl and she doesn’t shut down. “He attacked you, Everly. Did you ever tell anyone? The girls? The police? Your family?”

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