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.

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 cup 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?”