Accelerate

  “Not my fault, boss,” Payton tells him with an insolent tilt of her head that only she would get away with. “I tried to take her to her apartment. I even told her about the way you stocked it with groceries and how you got a home health care nurse to stop by every day this week to check on her. But she was having no part of it. She wanted to come here.” She gives him a what-was-I-supposed-to-do? shrug.

  And while her story isn’t quite accurate—she pretty much bombarded me with details of everything Nic’s done for me before I could even think to ask—the outcome is the same. I wanted to come here, even refused to let her take me home until I’d seen Nic.

  Nic’s stormy green gaze shifts to me. “You should be in bed,” he says.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I tell him, my chin tilted in challenge. “So why don’t you take me there?”

  Payton whistles long and low. “And on that note, I am out of here.”

  “Me, too,” Lena says hastily. “Benji’s at camp and I need to be…anywhere but here.”

  With no more fanfare than that, they’re gone, the front door closing behind them with a solid thump.

  After they’re gone, we kind of stare at each other, not sure what to say. Or at least, I’m not sure what to say. Nic just looks pissed. I don’t know if it’s at me or Payton or the universe, but I’m trying not to take it personally. Trying not to let it derail why I came here.

  I’m not sure how successful I’m going to be, though. It’s a scary as hell look, way scarier than when he kidnapped me, and I can feel myself shrinking under it. At least until I realize that’s exactly what he wants me to do.

  He’s trying to intimidate me, trying to send me running from here with my head down and my tail tucked between my legs. The bastard. Probably thinks he’s doing me a favor, probably thinks it’s better that way for the both of us—at least if I interpreted his little disappearing act at the hospital correctly.

  Which I did. I so totally did.

  With that thought in mind, I narrow my eyes at him and say, “So, are you going to offer me a seat or are we going to stand here until I actually fall down?” Even though I’m feeling a hundred times stronger than I did three days ago, I add a little sway to lend the words veracity.

  It must work, because Nic leaps into action. I expect him to wrap an arm around me and escort me to the couch, but he doesn’t. Instead he sweeps me into his arms, then takes the stairs two at a time as he carries me to his room.

  It’s been so long since he’s touched me—when the sum total of our relationship is little more than a week, three days seems like an eternity—that I can’t help melting against him. Can’t help burying my face in the juncture between his neck and his shoulder. Can’t help breathing deeply and absorbing his citrus and ocean smell deep into my lungs.

  Any more than I can help nuzzling in and pressing a string of soft kisses along his throat.

  Nic curses, nearly stumbles, but he doesn’t put me down. Instead he strides down the hall to his room and then crosses to the bed.

  I clutch at him, not ready to lose his warmth yet. Not ready to lose this feeling of being right where I belong after days of feeling helpless and alone. He must know how I’m feeling, though, because he doesn’t dump me on the bed and take about a million steps back like I fear he will. Instead, he settles on the edge of the bed with me in his lap.

  I bury my face against his collarbone to hide my smile, but I know he can feel it. Just like I know he wants to yell at me for coming here, but is holding back because I’m injured.

  He cuddles me against him for several minutes, stroking my hair and pressing soft, gentle kisses to the top of my head. I relax a little bit with each kiss, and with each minute that passes. Because it doesn’t feel like he doesn’t want me here, doesn’t feel like he’s going to send me away.

  Payton assured me that wouldn’t happen, but I don’t think I believed her until this moment. I think I was too afraid to believe her, too afraid of how much it would hurt if Nic sent me away. I’m still bleeding from the fact that he walked out the first time. If he does it again, I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.

  “What are you doing here?” he finally asks, when the silence between us has stretched taut as a circus tightrope.

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  I snort. “Well, that’s a cop-out if ever I’ve heard one.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know exactly why I’m here.” I struggle against him. “You may not want to deal with it, but you know.”

  “Stop,” he tells me, tightening his arms around me so I can’t move anymore. “You’re going to hurt yourself if you keep squirming like that.”

  “I love how you’re so worried about me hurting myself or about Anderson hurting me or Jacobs hurting me and yet are so oblivious that you can’t figure out that you’re the one who’s done the most damage to me.”

  I’m kicking myself as soon as the words are out because I know—I know—that Nic is going to take them the wrong way. That he’s going to hear the blame and none of the love, the accusation and not the exasperation.

  Sure enough, he’s dumping me on the bed and scrambling away from me before I can so much as take a breath to explain myself.

  “I didn’t mean that the way you’re taking it,” I tell him, climbing gingerly to my feet because I’m still sore and weak.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s only one way to take it,” he answers grimly. “I fucked up. I got you hurt and—”

  “Definitely the wrong way.” He’s back to staring out the window, just like at the hospital. This time I don’t force him to look at me. Instead, I wrap my arms around him from behind and press my cheek against his back.

  He’s so warm and big and solid that it comforts me in a way nothing has since he walked out of my hospital room three days ago. Because he’s real and he’s here and he’s letting me hold him. No matter how messed up we are right now, the fact that he seems to crave my touch as much as I crave his is everything to me.

  I press closer and I can hear his heart beating. Like Nic, it’s quiet and steady and way too fast.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  The words are hoarse and painful and absolutely the last thing I expected to hear from Nic Medina, alpha male extraordinaire.

  “Tell me,” I say, pressing kisses to his shoulders and back.

  He shudders then, his whole body shaking with the strength of the emotion tearing him up inside. It tears at me, too, how broken he is. How hurt, when he spends so much of his life trying to fix everyone else. Oh, he’ll deny it if I say anything, will hide behind his seven years in prison and his badass reputation, but I know the truth. Nic’s heart is as big as his ego, as big as his family. As big as the shoulders he balances the world upon.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he tells me.

  “You won’t hurt me.”

  “You don’t know that. I hurt everyone I love.”

  My heart skips a beat at that. I know he loves me, have known it ever since he walked out of my hospital room rather than risk hurting me. But hearing him say it is different than knowing it in my gut. Different, and better.

  “I’ve never seen you hurt anyone. I mean, besides Anderson and he totally deserved it.”

  He laughs then and it’s one of the saddest sounds I’ve ever heard. “Stick around a little while and I’m sure you will. There’s a lot of ways to hurt someone.”

  “I know. Just like I know, you’re not capable of ninety-nine percent of them.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I can. I do.”

  I try to keep it steady, but there must be something in my tone that tips him off because he’s turning then, looking at me. Really looking at me and I swear it feels like he can see all the way to my soul.

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath. Wonder if I’m really going to do what I think I am. I haven’t talked about this to anyone in nearly three years
, haven’t told a soul in California about what happened to me when I was in college in Ohio. But this isn’t anyone, this is Nic. He’s the only one. And he’s hurting. If I can take that away, if I can show him who he really is, how can I not do it? No matter how much it hurts to pull the scabs off old wounds.

  This time, it’s his arms that go around me. His lips that press soft kisses to my cheeks, my shoulder, the top of my head. “I’ve got you,” he says. “No matter what you tell me, I’ve got you.”

  It’s the reassurance I didn’t even know I was waiting for, the last bit of the puzzle that is Nic and me together, falling into place.

  “It’s not an original story,” I tell him after taking several deep breaths to steady myself. I grab hold of his biceps, dig my fingers in just a little to balance myself. “It’s probably happened a million times before.”

  “It doesn’t matter how many times it happened,” he tells me grimly, and he’s holding on just as tightly as I am. “It only matters that it happened to you.”

  I laugh, because he sounds a lot like my old therapist. The two of them couldn’t be more different and yet, here we are.

  “I was a sophomore in college, working on a degree in biology at the time. I wanted to be a doctor, so I studied pretty much all the time. My roommate was a communications major and, let’s just say, she didn’t. So one day, after I’d aced a major chem test, she demanded that I come out and celebrate with her.

  “I started to tell her no, started to do what I always did, which was make a bag of popcorn and stream a movie on Netflix. It was kind of my relaxation ritual, my wind down at the end of a long week. But Mandy kept poking and prodding and begging me to go to a party at one of the frats until I finally gave in. I didn’t want to go, but there was this guy she liked and she didn’t want to go alone, so…

  “I drew the line at letting her dress me. She wanted to put me in a tiny miniskirt and a half shirt, but that wasn’t happening, so we compromised by letting me wear what I wanted as long as she got to do my makeup. Needless to say, she went to town. Red lips, smoky eyes, I almost looked pretty.”

  “You’re beautiful,” Nic tells me. “So beautiful.”

  I laugh. “I’m not, but thank you. I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “Jordan—”

  I cut him off. “Please, I need to get through this. If I don’t say it now, I don’t think I ever will.”

  He nods, doesn’t say another word. But he tightens his arms around me just a little bit, holds me just a little bit closer. He feels good—this feels good—and I burrow in. It’s been a long three days without him.

  “I won’t bore you with the details, but we went to the party. My roommate ended up hooking up with the guy she liked pretty quickly and I was left trying to make my way through the masses downstairs. I was careful, thought I was doing everything right, but then I ran into this guy from my anatomy class and we got to talking. He seemed like a really nice guy—we’d been in a study group together all semester, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know him. Anyway, he offered to get me a drink and I let him. I’m a little vague on the details of what happened next, the next few hours are just a bunch of images and impressions—none of them good—that don’t really fit together. At least until I woke up the next morning in a park about two miles away from the frat house. I was naked and covered in…” I trail off, deciding he’d seen the pictures. I don’t need to point out the obvious.

  “Did they catch him? The guy who did that to you?” Nic’s jaw is tight, his hands clenched, but the gentleness of his voice—and his embrace—never changes. Neither does the closeness with which he holds me.

  Which makes this next part all the more difficult to get out. “You mean the guys?”

  “There was more than one?”

  “Oh, yeah. The lab found DNA from nine different men on me.”

  “Nine?”

  I nod, risking a glance up at his face. It’s one thing to find out your girlfriend was raped. Quite another to find out she was gang-raped by the equivalent of an entire soccer team.

  He starts swearing them, the words low and vile and outraged. So outraged.

  Most people might not be comforted by his reaction, but I am. So much.

  “Their DNA wasn’t in any state or federal database, but besides being morally bankrupt they also weren’t the brightest guys on the block. They posted pics of what they’d done all over their social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. They spent all night using me as their own personal rape toy and then they bragged about it to everyone who’d ever friended or followed them.”

  “Tell me they’re in prison. Tell me they aren’t still out there—”

  “They were arrested. They even went to trial. But I was at a Division 1 university with one of the best football programs in the state and they were football players. Even the guy in my anatomy class. So—”

  “Goddamnit, Jordan. Don’t tell me that. Please don’t fucking tell me that.”

  “They were good boys who made a mistake. A mistake that lasted seven hours and through various locations, but it was still just a mistake. They had bright futures. We didn’t want to ruin those futures, did we?”

  “I remember this,” he says, his voice so gravelly I can barely understand him. “I had just gotten out of prison and this was…this was the big story. They never used your name or your picture.”

  “No. But, where I was from, they didn’t have to. Everyone knew. They called me names, threatened me, made my life hell for pressing charges against those guys. Kept telling me over and over again that I was going to ruin their lives.

  “You know the funny thing about it? Through it all, I kept wondering what about my life, you know? Everybody was so worried about their lives being ruined that they totally forgot to care about the fact that mine already was.” The familiar rage builds up inside of me, the abyss yawning at my feet. I shove them both away, concentrate instead on the feel of Nic’s arms around me. The warmth of his body. The steady beat of his heart beneath my ear. It took me too long to get out from under the mess of it, too long to make it to this place in my life, for me to fall back into it now.

  “Baby. Oh, Jesus, Jordan. I’m sorry. Those bastards. Those mother-fucking bastards. Those—”

  I cut him off with a kiss, pulling his head down to mine so that I can do what I’ve wanted to from the moment I walked in his front door.

  He groans a little, kisses me back for one second, two. Then he pulls away. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. I’m sorry, Jordan. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I stop him with another kiss, then tug him over to the bed. I may be feeling better but I’m still weak from everything that happened. Add all this extra stuff in and I feel like I might fall down at any minute.

  “I didn’t tell you this because I wanted to make you feel bad,” I say when we’re both finally stretched on the bed. Nic was hesitant to lay down next to me, hesitant to touch me, so I solved the problem by crawling on top of him. All my stitches are in my back anyway. “I told you because I wanted you to understand.”

  “I do—”

  “You don’t. Baby, I know what a bad guy looks like. I know what he feels like, what he sounds like, what he is like. Someone who doesn’t care about what he ruins, someone who hurts other people without compunction or concern. During the course of the trial, I met a lot of guys like that—a lot more than just the nine who raped me. And you, Nic Medina, are nothing like those men.

  “Do you make mistakes? Yes, though not many as far as I can see. But you aren’t perfect, so we’ll go with it. But just because you make mistakes, just because you aren’t perfect, doesn’t mean you’re this bad person that you’re so convinced you are. Because you aren’t.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I do know.” I cup his cheeks in my hand, pull him down for another kiss. “You take care of everybody around you, do everything you can to make sure they’re happy and heal
thy and safe. You kidnapped me, for God’s sake, and not only did you make sure I got home safely, you bought me breakfast the next morning. Not to mention gave me a badass car.”

  “That’s different. It’s the least I could do—”

  “No, the least you could do would have been to knock me out and leave me in that garage. Everything you did after that was just proof of what a decent, wonderful person you are.

  “Besides, think about your friends. They’re all smart, savvy people, and I know they wouldn’t be sticking around if you actually were the bastard you seem to think you are.”

  “That’s different. They’re family.”

  I sigh, more than a little exasperated with this man. Just because I love him doesn’t mean I’m blind to his flaws, including the fact that he’s about as hardheaded as they come. “Okay, they’re family. But I’m not. So how do you explain everything you’ve done for me?”

  “That’s easy,” he tells me. “You’re everything.”

  His words so closely echo my thoughts from earlier that tears bloom in my eyes.

  “I should let you go,” he tells me.

  “You shouldn’t!”

  “I should. It would be safer for you, better. Definitely easier.”

  “Damn it, Nic—”

  “But I’m not going to. I know you keep trying to convince me that I’m a better person than I think I am, but the truth is, I’m not. I walked away from you once for your own good. And you should have left it at that, should have stayed away. Because now that you’re here, now that I’ve got you in my arms and in my bed, I can’t let you go again. I can’t walk away, even though I know it’s better for you if I do.”

  “It’s not better for me,” I tell him, tugging his shirt up so that I can press my fingers against his hot skin. “And if you walked away again, I’d just follow you. Because this is it for me. You’re it for me. I don’t give a shit what you did when you were a kid and I sure as hell don’t care what you did in prison to survive. All that matters to me is the man you are now, and that man—” My voice breaks and I swallow, force back the tears. Because Nic deserves better than my tears. He deserves all the love and happiness and desire in my heart.