Full Contact
Page 59

Blade Saw offers to take Jess home, and she gives me a farewell hug. She says Tag was happy to see her and asked her to come for the next Sunday dinner to distract Mom from harassing him about the fight.
After everyone leaves, I step into Tag’s room. He’s pale and clearly in pain, but his anger is still there.
“That was fucking humiliating. How am I going to teach now?” He shifts on the bed and winces.
“There weren’t that many people there. Mostly just the people who know you well.” I pause, wondering if this is really the best time to bring up his crazy behavior, and then I do. “Why did you do it?”
He hesitates, and then shrugs. “I wish we could live that night all over again. I wouldn’t take the easy road. I’d do everything I could to make that bastard rot in jail.”
My breath leaves me in a rush, and I sit on the chair beside Tag’s bed. “We didn’t take the easy road. At least, it wasn’t easy for me. But I don’t regret our decision to keep it quiet. Mom and Dad would never have recovered. They would have lost their house and their jobs, and who knows what would have happened to us? You remember all the threats and the bullying. Luke’s family has too much power.”
He scrubs his hand over his face and sighs. “I just can’t help thinking it’s dragging us down. We changed our lives, moved on, but it’s still there. He’s there. He took something from us that night. Maybe you would have wound up being a famous artist with shows all over the world. Maybe I would have become a pro fighter. We never had a chance to become who we were meant to be. Tonight, I thought I’d try and take it back. But it was too damn late.”
I’ve never heard Tag sound so defeated. He’s my rock. My fighter. My protector. My everything. Chest tight, I squeeze his hand. “Dad just texted. They’re just parking the car. I’m not up for seeing them, so I’m gonna take off. Do you want me to go by your apartment and pick anything up? I can come back later.”
“You can’t go to my apartment.” He cuts me off with a sharp tone. “I told you before.”
“But…”
“No.”
“Should I come back after Mom and Dad leave?”
He shakes his head. “I just want to be alone.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Tag nods and I make it out the door and partway down the hallway before I am overwhelmed by emotion. Fear, anger, remorse, and guilt wage a war over which of them should destroy me first. My chest tightens and I lean against the wall and struggle to breathe. But this time the air doesn’t come.
Someone puts a hand on my shoulder. I hear words in the distance, a woman’s voice, white disappearing into a sea of black. My knees hit the floor but I feel nothing. I am at once empty and filled with pain.
And then warm arms enfold me, lift me, carry me. A heart firm and steady beats against my chest. The rumble of a voice, the creak of leather, and the rich masculine scent of Ray.
He strokes my hair and talks, holds me against him. I can’t make out his words, but his voice pulls me out of the darkness. I draw in a breath of sweet, cool air and look up into a sea of blue.
“There she is,” he whispers.
“And here you are.” I bury my face against his chest, breathing him in, resting my cheek against the soft cotton of his Twisted Sister T-shirt as he leans back on the bench in the hallway.
“What happened to Tag is my fault.” My voice chokes with tears. “He wanted his life back. The life I stole from him.” And then, because he came when I needed him, because he says he is broken too, I tell him what I should have told him before. “I was…” Raped. But no, I’ve never been able to say that word. Even now. “Sexually assaulted.”
“Raped.” He says it for me, his voice calm, soothing, but I can hear a tightening in his tone.
“Yes. When I was eighteen.” I tell him everything: how Tag told me not to go to the party, but I went anyway, how I trusted Luke because he was Tag’s teammate, how Tag saved me and fought with Luke and they both fell out the window. And then I tell him about the threats that started when we got to the hospital—phone threats, email threats, a smear campaign on social media that suggested I was setting Luke up to get his family’s money. I tell him how we decided not to go to the police or tell our parents, to protect our family and to make it all go away. But, of course, it didn’t go away. I couldn’t paint anymore. Tag couldn’t fight. And our parents knew something was wrong and were hurt we didn’t let them help us.
Ray strokes my cheek as I talk. His hand is warm against my palm. He doesn’t shout or yell or cry or look at me as someone who needs to be pitied. He is simply there. And that is exactly what I need.
“I get panic attacks when I feel like I’m losing control or something that reminds me of that night.” I close my eyes and lean into the warmth of his palm. “I have trouble with trust and getting close to anyone—and I have real trouble with intimacy.”
“You trusted me enough to tell me.” Ray leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Means a lot to me.”
My cheeks flame. “Well…you’re different from the guys I was with. Charlie and James treated me like I was made of glass. They would get…overly emotional. They were so gentle, kind, and considerate, and I tried, I really did, but I always felt like a victim. I never felt normal. And Peter, another guy I went out with… I didn’t tell him what happened because I didn’t want to be treated that way again. But something about him set off my triggers, and when I finally told him, he cut things off and said he couldn’t handle my baggage. After that, I kinda gave up.”