Big O's

  I had no doubt that she’d touched him, either.

  The poor, stupid idiot probably had no idea that she’d been using him to get to me.

  Idiot. I was frustrated beyond all belief at this insane turn of events.

  The target of two turbulent female gazes, I debated on what to do. I couldn’t believe that Raye had chosen to believe Calie over me, but there was nothing I could do about that.

  And I needed to find my brother, get him the hell away from Calie, out of her reach and beyond that? I needed to find out just what they’d done, and then, as much as it turned my stomach to think about it, I might have to drag him to the police.

  He’d never want to go, but the two of us had shit on our hands now, thanks to this stunt Calie was pulling. I’d risk talking to cops, something I personally tried to avoid, if it would protect my brother.

  Under the intensity of Raye’s gaze, I had to fight not to wilt.

  I shot Calie a look, and she flinched, but Raye didn’t even notice.

  “Be gone when I get back,” I advised her.

  Raye opened her mouth to snap at me, but I turned on my heel and strode off.

  Now that I had a destination of where to look for my brother, I wasn’t going to waste any more time.

  I found him just a block from Calie’s, heading in the direction of the subway I’d just left.

  He caught sight of me and went still.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Looking for you.” I braced myself in case he decided to try and go around me. He didn’t, though.

  Rocking back on his heels, Austen eyed me up and down. “Why are you looking for me? I’m doing just fine.”

  “The hell you are,” I snapped. “School’s calling Mom, hassling her and threatening to take her to court because of your truancy issues. You’re on the verge of flunking out of school, and that’s not exactly the ideal way to start off your adult life, you idiot kid.” Leaning in closer, I added, “And let’s not talk about the way Calie Smalls has accused the two of us of raping her.”

  For a few seconds, he just stared at me, no reaction.

  Then he blinked and shook his head. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit,” Austen fired back at me. “You’re just fucking jealous because she wants me now.”

  “She doesn’t want you,” I snapped. “She came after you after I told her I didn’t want her anymore. She’s using you to get to me, and guess what? It worked.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it. “You’re so fucking full of it.”

  “How in the hell do you think I knew where to come looking for you?” Lowering my voice, I added, “Girls don’t typically run around bragging to one guy that they went and shacked up with their baby brother. Not unless they’re up to something.”

  The two of us trudged back to the garage, not speaking much.

  He’d asked several questions, and I’d answered him the best I could.

  I’d asked him a few questions myself, and I was still debating on how to go forward.

  He and Calie had most definitely slept together.

  He wasn’t too keen on the idea that what happened between them was anything other than a hot chick being into him. But he was slowly coming around to accept the idea that Calie had accused both of us of raping her. I didn’t know what changed his mind, but maybe he knew I wasn’t the type to jerk him around about much of anything.

  I had no idea.

  When we finally got to the alleyway that opened up to the back of my garage, I said, “I’m going to call Mom and let her know you’re going to crash with me for the night. We need to figure out what we’re going to do.” I pulled my keys from my pocket, thinking about nothing more than getting warm and getting a beer.

  Both thoughts left my mind the second we turned the corner because the miserable excuse of a security light was shining down on a familiar head of flame-red hair.

  Raye.

  She was still here.

  She huddled against the back door of the garage, arms wrapped around her midsection, head tucked low.

  Something must have alerted her to our presence, because no sooner had I realized she was there than she was raising her head.

  Her gaze met mine, and she shoved off the door, her chin coming up as she looked from me to the teenaged boy standing next to me.

  “Is this Austen?” she demanded.

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Calie left.” She moved a few steps away from the door but didn’t leave the stoop, eying me warily. “She told me she doesn’t want to press charges because she’s afraid nobody will believe her. But I think the two of you should do the right thing and turn yourselves in.”

  I snorted. “I just bet she doesn’t want to press charges.”

  “Nobody ever wants to believe the victim,” Raye said, her voice tight. “But I believe her.”

  “It’s kind of funny how you’ll believe a total stranger, somebody you’ve never even met, over me,” I said, fuming and at the same time…hurt. How could she believe that lying bitch over me? I didn’t understand it. And I didn’t understand why I was so damn hurt by the idea.

  Raye stared at me with haunted eyes. “Nobody ever wants to believe the victim.”

  “Yeah, I can believe that, but the problem is, you don’t know who the fucking victim is,” I told her. Cupping a hand over my brother’s shoulder, I nudged him toward the door. “You need to go on inside, kid. I’ll deal with this.”

  “You’ll deal with it? This concerns both of you–”

  I clamped my hand tighter on Austen’s shoulder, squeezing until it had to be hurting him. “Go inside,” I said again. “You got me?”

  He nodded, and I caught sight of his pale face, realized he’d finally figured out, once and for all, that I hadn’t been jerking him around.

  I turned on Raye. “No,” I said in a cool voice. “This doesn’t concern both of us. At least not in the way you’re talking.” I almost told her off, so sick with anger I couldn’t see straight. Instead, I focused on the hurt. “I can’t believe you’re choosing to believe her. This is a fucking joke.”

  “I guess it was a fucking joke when nobody decided to believe me when I was raped!” Her voice cracked as she shouted at me, the words left to linger between us.

  I gaped at her, shock jolting through me. “Raye?”

  She flinched at the sound of her name and whispered, “Nobody believed me.”

  30

  Raye

  Humiliation slammed into me.

  I couldn’t believe I’d just told him.

  I’d promised myself I’d never tell another living soul, not after the way things had gone after the last time.

  Nobody had ever believed me. My own mother hadn’t even believed me.

  Shaking, I stared at Kane.

  “Um…”

  I flinched at the sound of a young voice coming from just a few feet away.

  Jerking my head around, I stared at a face that was a version of what Kane must have looked like when he’d been a kid.

  “Hey…” The kid licked his lips, then looked over at Kane before looking back at me. “I don’t know what all is going on, but I swear, Kane and I didn’t hurt Calie. Shit, she came on to me. She was hanging out here one day when I got here after school – Kane had to run a car somewhere, and we got to talking…” His cheeks flushed, and he shot a look at Kane. “Man, I’m sorry. I really fucked things up, didn’t I?”

  Something about the way he said it cut through the fog in my head. Maybe it was because I could remember being young and scared – victimized.

  As if he sensed my attention, the boy looked back at me, and I saw him, really saw him. Just a scared kid. “Lady,” he said, voice shaking a little. “Kane and me didn’t hurt her. I mean, me and her…we might have…” He blushed bright red then, and I knew exactly what they might have done, and I held up a hand to keep him from going on.
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  My blood continued to roar in my ears, and I turned away from them both trying to reconcile what Calie had insisted happened to what had happened to me, to everything Kane was saying and to what my gut was saying. Shoving all the noise aside, I focused on my gut.

  I wasn’t scared to be here.

  That had to mean something.

  I couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with Chad, years later. Whether we were alone or not, I didn’t want to be around him. And I hadn’t liked him before…well. Before. Some part of me had recognized that something about him was off even before the night my life went straight to hell.

  “Kane?”

  Behind me, I heard them talking, and the kid asked, “Should I maybe go home? Do you two need to…”

  “I’m going home,” I announced, turning around to face them.

  I had to get out of here, had to think, and I sure as hell couldn’t do that with this kid’s young, frightened eyes watching me, nor could I do it while I kept worrying about Kane and Calie, while Kane kept standing there, watching me.

  “I have to go,” the kid said. “My mom…she’s worried.” He tried to smile at me. “She made Kane come find me because I kept ignoring her phone calls. Right, Kane?”

  Kane offered the kid a tired smile. “Yeah. You should head on home, Austen. Go straight there. Take the subway and text me when you get there, okay?”

  Austen nodded, but before he turned to go, he looked back at me. “You believe me, right? We didn’t do nothing to that woman. Really.”

  I didn’t know what I believed, but I didn’t think the boy would leave unless I offered something, so I gave him a strained smile.

  He looked relieved and turned to go.

  Once he disappeared down the alley, I said, “I’ve got to go.”

  But I didn’t even make it two steps before Kane caught up to me. “We should talk.”

  “No,” I said softly. “We shouldn’t.”

  “I don’t want you leaving here thinking I could hurt a woman, Raye. I’d never do anything like that,” he said, and there was a soft urging in his voice that compelled me to believe him.

  I wanted to.

  I thought about Calie’s persistent pleas, and I thought about everything I knew about Kane, and my need to believe him still won out.

  But…

  “I was raped at a frat party my freshman year of college.”

  Kane’s head jerked back as if I’d slapped him.

  I sucked in a breath of air and blew it out, looking away from him as heat swept up to scald my cheeks. I felt sick, a nauseous greasy sensation in the pit of my belly spreading through me.

  I already knew how this would go. I’d been through this before. He wouldn’t believe me. Nobody ever had. But I wasn’t going to hide anymore either.

  After what felt like unending moments of silence, I finally forced myself to look back at him.

  I didn’t see the scathing look of disbelief on his face that I had come to expect from so many. He was just…waiting.

  “I’d had a couple of drinks,” I said defensively. “I think somebody spiked the last one. I don’t remember a lot of what happened. All the memories are hazy. But I remember this one guy…”

  Chad’s face loomed large in my mind, and those memories sharpened, clarified. I thought I might get sick. Spinning away from Kane, I took a few steps forward and ran my hands over my face, fighting back the surge of nausea.

  “You should sit down,” Kane said gently.

  I shot him a look over my shoulder.

  He gestured toward his garage. “Do you…you can come in if you want. It’s cold out here.”

  I didn’t know what I wanted. But I was cold.

  I followed him inside, and when he headed into the little apartment off the back, I trudged along after him. He stood by the couch after I sat, one hand absently tapping his thigh as he asked, “You want a beer?”

  “Got anything stronger?”

  In response, he turned away and moved to the stove. He pulled down a bottle of whiskey and a minute later, I had a glass in my hand. The aroma alone was strong enough to make my head spin, and one sip of it had warmth running down my throat to heat my belly.

  “I didn’t go to parties,” I told him softly, staring at the floor. “I wouldn’t have gone to that one, but my roommate asked me and…” Shrugging, I glanced over at him. Thoughts of May Wynn on top of everything else weren’t going to help me settle, but May Wynn was part of it. A huge part of it. The way she’d laughed in the days that followed…I suppressed a shudder and focused on the glass I held. “We hadn’t gotten along all year. I hadn’t made many friends, and when she asked me to go with her, I was so excited. It was the end of the year, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I was finally figuring out how to fit in.”

  Pretty, popular, and as vicious as a tiger shark, May was the reason I’d gone to the party to begin with. She was also behind so many of the rumors that had been started afterward.

  If it was in me to hate, I would have hated her with a passion.

  “She told me the party was going to be fun. I get there, and there are all these upperclassmen, and everybody is drinking…I’d never had more than a glass of wine before, and May keeps pushing drinks on me. By the third one, I was already feeling a little tipsy. And that one…it tasted funny. I told her, but she just laughed it off.” I licked my lips, looked down at the glass of whiskey I held.

  “Don’t drink it if you don’t want it,” Kane said.

  “I want it,” I told him, lifting it to my lips in the hopes it would steady my nerves. “I only drank about half of it. I put it down, and I think maybe I was going to get some water or something. But this guy…his name was Chad…he…um…he came up to me and asked me if I wanted to dance. I told him no, but he insisted, and I was feeling too bad to fight with him. We were dancing, and that wasn’t too bad – I didn’t like the guy. He’d been bothering me all year. But the dancing wasn’t too bad,” I said it again, staring into the whiskey. “I don’t remember when we left the room. I just remember we were in the crowd with everybody else. Then it was someplace dark, and Chad was pulling at my clothes…and he…um…”

  Kane’s hands closed over mine. He was gentle as he took the whiskey away, just as gentle as he held my hands. “You don’t have to keep talking, Raye. It’s okay.”

  “His friend videotaped it. It got uploaded to the internet. Everybody saw it. People laughed,” I whispered. “And they didn’t believe me when I said I’d been drugged, that he hurt me.”

  Fury ripped across Kane’s face. He bowed his head so that all I could see was the crown and his dark, thick hair. He tugged my hands to his lips, and I shuddered when he kissed them.

  Finally, he looked back at me and whispered, “I believe you.”

  I jolted in surprise.

  Nobody had ever told me that.

  I believe you.

  “You…you do?” Dazed, I fought to keep the strength in my body, fought not to go lax and collapse back on the couch. It was as if the strength it had taken just to go through life with everybody who knew me thinking I’d lied had drained me. And now that somebody had said those three words, it was more than I could handle.

  I believe you.

  Tears burned my eyes. Dropping my head down, I pressed my lips to his head, felt his hair against my mouth as I whispered again, “You do?”

  Kane just nodded.

  “May told everybody she’d seen me hanging all over him, that I’d been teasing and flirting with him all year. She told everybody I was just a tease and that I’d told her I’d was going to fuck him that night – that was why I wanted to go to the frat party all along. Everything was just horrible. Going to class, seeing people…” I shuddered, remembering the humiliation of those final days. “Then I went home, and I thought things would get better. But my mom didn’t believe me either.”

  Kane’s body went tense. “Okay. Okay.”

  He lifted his head, and I let him c
up my chin, lifted my gaze to his.

  “I can’t imagine what you went through, Raye,” he said, his voice gruff. “It makes me sick just to hear it, so I can’t imagine what it did to you. But I never forced myself on Calie. She was pissed I broke things off with her. I guess that’s why she went and did this.”

  He brushed his thumb over my lower lip. “If I came across a man hurting a woman, I’d rip him apart. I can’t stand the idea of it. And if I ever meet the guy who hurt you…”

  I thought about Chad, how he’d all but cornered me in the boutique, and I looked away.

  He took a shuttering breath. In. Out. “Do you believe me?”

  31

  Kane

  Her eyes met mine, so big and dark and uncertain, and it was enough to break my heart.

  I didn’t think she would believe me. Maybe with her history, it would just be too hard.

  But to my surprise, after a few more seconds, she offered a tentative nod. “Yes…I think I do.” A nervous smile quirked her lips, and she added, “Some part of me didn’t accept her accusations from the very start, anyway.”

  One of the nervous knots in my gut uncurled at her words, and I wanted to cup her face, bring her mouth to mine.

  I didn’t let myself.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you,” she whispered.

  “I think I get it.” Reaching up, I brushed her hair back from her face, relieved when she didn’t tense or pull away. “After what you went through, it’s a miracle you can trust anybody.”

  She bit her lip, her eyes darting away before returning to mine. “Up until you, I don’t think I really did.”

  Those words melted something inside me.

  “Still,” she continued, reaching up to grip my wrist. “Whether you understand or not, it doesn’t change what I did, doesn’t make it right. If anybody knows what it’s like to have people not believe them, it’s me. I should know better.”