Rin

I unlocked the front door with my heels hooked in my fingers and flats shuffling over the threshold, feeling wrung out and left stretched and twisted and sagging.

I’d taken the time to wipe the majority of my makeup off in an attempt to remove every trace of him from my face. The rest of me couldn’t forget him so easily; I could still feel the ghost of his touch on my thighs, his lips on mine, the place where he’d slipped inside me achingly empty, even now, an hour later. The train ride had been suffered with my glazed eyes on the window across from me as the tunnel blurred by in streaks of misplaced light, as the tiles of the station walls came to a slow, then a stop, then sped up again, throwing me back into the dark.

Dr. Lyons—Court, my boss—had finger banged me in front of a six-hundred-year-old painting of Jesus.

And I wished that were the worst part. But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

When I hauled myself through the door, I found everyone in the living room. Katherine’s feet were propped on the coffee table, and Amelia sat, folded up in an armchair in an oversized sweater and leggings. Val, next to Katherine on the couch, took one look at me and knew.

“What happened?” she asked solemnly.

Katherine twisted to look over the back of the couch, and Amelia’s face immediately bent in hurt on my behalf without knowing a single detail.

Tears bit at the tip of my nose as I dropped my bag and heels next to the door, kicking off my flats.

I didn’t speak.

Val and Katherine moved to give me room, and I sank into the couch between them, my knees together in front of me. I stared at the point where the hem of my skirt met my skin, trying not to think about the feeling of his fingers moving it up my thighs.

Val watched me for a second. “Okay, you’re freaking me out,” she said gently. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head as tears sprang, spilled, slipped down my cheeks, my chin quivering.

“Oh my God,” Val cooed, drawing me into her arms as Katherine moved to sit straight. And they let me cry, let me burn down my shame and hurt until it was ash in my chest.

I sat back when the worst of it had passed, swiping at my tears and schooling my breath. But I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, not when I told this story. I took a deep breath, the band on my lungs tight and painful.

“Dr. Lyons kissed me.”

“What?” Val blasted. Similar exclamations came from Amelia and Katherine.

Another breath. “He kissed me and we made out and he…he…” I didn’t even know how to say it in a way that wasn’t juvenile or crass. And with two shitty options, I chose the one that at least sounded hotter. “He gave me a hand job.”

The room erupted in noise, questions and expletives and gasps and several Oh my Gods.

I cringed.

Val held up her hands to quiet Amelia and Katherine. “Hang on, hang on.” They hushed, waiting with more questions behind their pursed lips. “I’m gonna need you to start from the top.”

So I did. I walked them through the day together—the talk about my dissertation to the painting, his subsequent freak out, my subsequent bullshit calling, and the third-base exhibition that would go down in the books as not only the hottest thing that had ever happened to me, but also the most mortifying.

They listened, completely gobsmacked, their mouths hanging open like trouts and their eyes bugging like they’d been electrocuted.

No one said anything for a second.

“That sounds to me like a harassment lawsuit,” Katherine said.

I snorted a dry laugh as Claudius jumped in my lap, and I found myself grateful for his weight and warmth and a comforting task for my hands. “I literally begged him. If he’d asked, I would have given him anything he wanted.”

“Even your B-hole?” Val asked suspiciously, though a ghost of a teasing smile was on her lips.

I turned my gaze on her to show her just how serious I was. “Anything.”

Amelia gasped, affronted. “Cardinal sin! You can’t let him near the back door, Rin! This guy hits too many things on the Never list. Like not dating mean guys.”

“We’re not dating,” I said, trying not to sound miserable, running my hand down Claudius’s back.

“I mean, what the fuck is this guy’s problem?” Val said, her brows knitting together and her anger flaring. “Is he a sex addict? Did he skip his meds? How can he go from accusing you of trying to sleep with him for a promotion to touching your lady parts?”

“In front of Jesus,” I added.

“In front of Jesus,” she echoed, pressing the point.

I sighed. “I have no idea. But I didn’t hate it at all, not until…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Not until he left.”

“That fucking asshole,” Val spat.

“Lawsuit,” Katherine said flatly.

Amelia sighed. “I don’t know. It kinda sounds hot.”

A sad smile brushed my lips, fading almost immediately into a frown. “It was. But…it was more than that. It was like I’d been waiting for him all week. Forever. And he’s not only out of my league, but he’s a complete asshole. Hot and cold and nothing in between. He’s a mess, a horrible, destructive mess. And I wanted him to touch me. I wanted him to stay.” The words he’d thrown at me before he shoved his tongue down my throat flashed through my mind, and my frown deepened. “He was so suspicious. I wonder what happened to him. I think…I think someone hurt him.”

“Don’t do that,” Katherine said, her dark eyes blazing. “I don’t care what happened to him—don’t let him treat you like this.”

“I won’t,” I said, hating that I meant it, hating the position he’d put me in. Hating that I’d begged him, hating that I would do it again in a heartbeat. “I just…I can’t believe this. And now…now I have to go back there and work with him. I have to see him every day, see his face and think about how it felt to kiss him, how it felt for him to want me, to touch me like he did. How it felt for him to walk away.”

“Asshole,” Amelia said, folding her arms with a scowl on her face.

“Well,” Val started, “the good news is that you have all weekend to get your head together, and you have us to keep your mind off things.”

“Movie night tonight—Easy A,” Katherine declared. “And I might have bought two pounds of bonbons from Wammes bakery in a PMS-driven frenzy.”

I brightened up, my mouth watering. “Oh my God, did you get the cheesecake ones?”

She nodded conspiratorially. “And the lemon crèmes,” she whispered.

Val groaned. “I don’t want to go to work.”

I chuckled, but the second I looked away, my gaze lost focus somewhere over the coffee table.

Katherine took my hand. “Rin, you didn’t do anything wrong. You know that, right?”

Just like that, the tears were back. I rubbed my nose to hold them off.

“I mean it,” she insisted, her words as gentle as her touch, which was to say moderately. “What happened wasn’t bad or wrong or dirty.”

A sad, single laugh left me. “I mean, it was a little dirty.”

She smiled. “But you’re not dirty. You’re not unclean. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s him who has the issue.”

“In his defense,” Val added, “you really do look hot in that skirt. I’d finger you in front of Jesus any day of the week.”

I laughed—a real one, a cackling, happy, surprised sound from deep in my belly. And for a moment, I thought in vain that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. As bad as they felt. As bad as they were. And that, come Monday morning, I would have a plan to survive.