CHAPTER SEVEN
Olivia
ASIDE FROM A THERAPIST, I HAD never told anyone what happened at Fieldbrook. Not even North, the one person before Dean whom I could trust. After a huge fight with my mother when I was thirteen, I left her to go and live with my aunt Stella, my father’s sister.
For five years, I stayed with Stella and her husband Henry in Castleford—classic small-town Wisconsin. Stella had strict rules for my stay—good grades, part-time job, church attendance, no drinking or sleeping around—and I was happy to obey those rules. After years of instability with my mother, it was a relief to have structure, rigid and stifling though it was.
For five years, no one had anything bad to say about me. No one had anything to say at all. I was quiet, contained, studious. I didn’t date and had only a few friends, choosing to focus on my studies and extracurricular activities like speech-and-debate that would look good on my college applications. When I was eighteen, I earned a full-tuition scholarship to Fieldbrook College, an exclusive private school near Milwaukee.
The day I got the acceptance letter, I stood by the mailbox with my pulse racing as I felt the past slipping away and the future opening up like an endless field in front of me.
Dear Miss Winter,
On behalf of the admissions committee and board of directors, we are very pleased to inform you that you have been selected as the sole recipient of the prestigious Fieldbrook College Merit Scholarship…
Finally I could stretch my wings, leave my self-centered mother and my repressed life with Aunt Stella far behind. Finally I could figure out who I was and what I wanted to be.
Three months later, I packed up everything I owned and drove across the state to start my future. That was it. Both the beginning and the end.
And then six years later with Dean… a beginning again.
Even in the early part of our relationship, I knew I would tell him before I slept with him. I had to. But I didn’t know how or when I would… until I had no choice.
The weekend after our strip Scrabble game, he came over to my apartment on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We spent a couple of hours working—he graded essays, and I researched a paper about information resources—before I took a break to put some dirty clothes in the washing machine. I gathered up a few quarters and my laundry basket, declining Dean’s offer of help as I went down to the third-floor laundry room.
A dozen washers and dryers lined the narrow room, the yellow glow of fluorescent lights overhead. Several of the machines were running, the washers making sloshing noises, the dryers rotating with the tumble of clothes. No one else was there, and I put my basket on the table and started taking out socks and T-shirts.
I was in a somewhat meditative zone, focused on sorting the colors. Any noise was muffled by the rhythmic sound of the machines. I didn’t hear Dean enter the room, didn’t even sense his presence. All I knew was that two big, male hands suddenly slid around my waist from behind. Fear hit me hard and fast.
My heart jammed up into my throat. I yanked myself away from him and bolted, only to find myself trapped in the corner.
“Liv?” Dean backed off, shock and dismay flaring across his face. “Liv, I—”
“Wait…” Goddammit. I held up my hands and tried to take slow, even breaths.
I was there again, back in a laundry room with boys I hardly knew, music and laughter pounding through the walls, dizzy from the noise and the smell of beer.
They were big, both of them. One of them stood near the door. I’d known even then that I was trapped, even if I had gone into the room willingly, even if I had fooled around with the blond boy who had looked at me the way no one had before…
“That… that scared me,” I stammered.
“Liv, I’m sorry.” Dean dragged a hand down his face. “I never want to scare you.”
I drew in another breath and felt my heart began to settle. “You don’t scare me. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t be with you if you did. I’m… it just caught me off guard.” I tried to smile. “Bit edgy sometimes.”
He knew that already. I’d gotten skittish during our first intimate encounter, and he’d seen me through a full-blown panic attack at a football game.
But none of that was because of him.
It was because of me.
“Come on.” He tossed my clothes into the basket and grabbed it. “You okay to go back up?”
I needed nothing more than to get out of that laundry room, where the stuffy air and noise of the washers now pounded at me like a headache.
Dean kept a distance from me until we were back in my apartment. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water, taking a few swallows as I gathered my courage.
“I messed up.” I set the glass in the sink and turned to him. “I tried so hard to get away from my mother, to prove I wasn’t like her, and then… then suddenly I was.”
“What happened?”
“I… I told you about the perverts who messed with me when I was a kid.” I clenched my hands together, shoved away icy memories. “My mother’s so-called boyfriends. The only good time I had was when we were at Twelve Oaks, the commune in California. But she made us leave again after only a few months, even though I wanted desperately to stay. That was when I left her. That was when I finally thought I might have a chance to be like other girls.”
The tightness in my heart loosened as I met Dean’s gaze—that of a strong, protective, good man who liked and wanted me in all the right ways.
“I was a straight A student,” I said. “Never caused a single problem. I went to Fieldbrook when I was eighteen. It was a small college, less than fifteen hundred students. Good humanities and language program.
“After I moved there, I felt free, for the first time in… well, for the first time ever. That fall semester, I met a guy in my accounting class who was a year ahead of me. An athlete. On the crew team. His name was Justin. He was handsome, popular… and I hadn’t dated at all, so it was flattering when he showed an interest in me.
“I’d always wanted to do what other girls did. To feel normal. I wanted to go on dates, wear pretty clothes, have close friends, learn how to flirt… but I’d been too afraid, too worried that Stella would find a reason to kick me out. So being at Fieldbrook, I finally felt like I could do all that, now that I was on my own.
“I went on a date with Justin… he was the first boy I even kissed… then he asked me to a party a few days later. House on the outskirts of town. It was loud, lots of drinking, all that stuff. Can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t try and leave.
“After a few hours, Justin and I ended up in this tiny laundry room at the back of the house and started fooling around. I’d had two beers, but I wasn’t drunk. It was mutual, and at first, I liked it. I thought… I’d spent so much of my life feeling different, being the strange, quiet girl or being an outsider with my own mother, that it was nice to have Justin’s attention, to feel included and… I don’t know. Wanted.
“So we were kissing and touching, and…” I had to look away from Dean then, my face burning. “I had my period. I told Justin that when he started getting more aggressive. He… well, he got mad. Thought I’d been leading him on for nothing. I was too naïve to have thought of that… but not too naïve to realize what he had expected from me. That was when I got scared.”
“Liv…”
I held up my hand to stop Dean from coming toward me, knowing I would shatter if he touched me.
“He told me to strip to the waist and give him oral sex. I didn’t want to… but I… the room was really small, and it was hot with all this noise from the party and the thumping bass of the music… he was between me and the door, and I… I felt trapped. I just did what he told me to do so I could get out of there.
“It… uh, it took me a long time to understand why I went along with it, that I was still being coerced. After it was over, I looked up and saw one of Justin’s friends standing at the door, blocking the only way out. I didn’t know how long he’d been there or how much he’d seen, but it was enough.”
I fell silent. Humiliation scorched me from the inside out.
“I can’t remember the other guy’s name. Justin said something to him. I couldn’t hear past the loud music, the ringing in my ears. And this other guy came toward me, and I knew, I knew I’d have to do it again, with this guy I didn’t know at all… but thank God a couple showed up, wanting to use the room to smoke a joint. It was enough of a distraction that I was able to pull on my shirt and get the hell out of there. I got a ride home with another girl. Spent the rest of the night stumbling between the shower and getting sick in the toilet.”
I could feel Dean’s rage, his instinctive move toward me.
“Wait.” I backed away. “I was… I didn’t realize what had happened, that I could have reported it. I just tried to put it behind me and crawl back into my shell. Justin asked me out again. I said no. I felt horrible, dirty. Ashamed. I kept flashing back to the time that pervert used me to get off, and my mother didn’t stop him. I felt like I’d let those boys use me the same way, and I hated myself for it.
“I turned Justin down twice more. He didn’t like that. Told me I had no right to turn into an ice queen, that kind of thing. I thought he’d just move on and leave me alone. Then I found out he had a girlfriend, and that the other guy had told her what happened in the laundry room… well.
“She left me some nasty messages, and gossip started. It seemed like the whole campus was talking about me within a week. Saying I was a slut, that Justin had paid me, that I’d have done it with any boy. All the horrible things people would have said about my mother.
“And I hadn’t made any close friends, so no one really knew me. I went from this… this quiet little nobody to… that. The slut who sucked off a guy at a party while another one waited his turn.
“I couldn’t walk across campus without someone saying something or looking at me, and this girl and her sorority sisters would send me emails and leave messages… I tried to ignore it all, but I started having trouble concentrating and sleeping. Then I just fell apart.
“I couldn’t get out of bed. Stopped attending classes. I couldn’t eat. Some people asked what was going on… I got emails from professors, the financial aid office warning me I wasn’t fulfilling my scholarship obligations.
“But I’d spent so much of my life alone, I had no idea how to reach out for help, to ask for it, even when I started having panic attacks… so I ended up losing the scholarship because I couldn’t keep up academically anymore. Two months later, I dropped out of college.
“It was the only time I wished I was still with my mother. Wished I didn’t have any responsibilities. Everything I’d worked so hard for… gone because I’d messed around with the wrong guy. I got in my car and hit the road. Exactly like my mother had done.”
My heart was beating too fast, pulsing shame through my entire body. I risked a glance at Dean. He was staring at the floor, his every muscle clenched with anger.
“Three days later, I found myself back in California,” I continued. “At Twelve Oaks.”
A memory of the commune felt like cool water soothing a scorching burn. My breathing was fast and shallow, but I felt lighter, as I always did after I talked about what had happened. Though I’d only ever told a therapist before, telling Dean reminded me that I’d put myself back together. That I hadn’t ended up like my mother.
“It’s why… why I shut down for a few years, why I hate feeling trapped,” I explained. “I blamed myself. I’d had the sense that if I didn’t comply with what Justin wanted, something even worse would have happened. It was only after Twelve Oaks and enrolling at community college that I started thinking I could actually get back on my feet again.”
Dean didn’t look at me. Tension drenched the air around him.
I swallowed hard. “Dean, I… I haven’t held on to my virginity because of some moral code. I just… I’ve been so afraid of everything. Afraid of what people would say, what they would think of me, what would happen next. I didn’t date for years after I left Twelve Oaks.
“You’ve been the only man I’ve felt like I could trust. And that first time, when you kissed and touched me, I got scared because I liked it so much. I liked you. How you made me feel, and I… I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do with you…” I dragged in a painful breath. “Dean, why… why can’t you look at me?”
“What?” He straightened, his eyes blazing suddenly. He crossed the room and reached out to grab my wrists. “I can’t look at anyone but you, Liv. I can’t see anyone but you. I… I’m so fucking crazy about you that it’s scaring the shit out of me.”
I could hardly understand him through the pounding inside my head. I smothered the shame, fighting to focus on the here and now.
“I know, Liv.” Dean tightened his grip on my wrists. “I know what it’s like to blame yourself. To be forced into doing something you don’t want to do, then have it crash and burn around you. I’ve known for twenty-five years. And it’s bullshit. You have no reason to feel ashamed. None. Those bastards… goddammit.”
He stopped and pulled in a breath, as if trying to regain control of himself.
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Liv. I don’t think you even know how strong you are. You didn’t let your mother or any of those sick bastards define you. You started a whole new life twice. That takes a courage most people can only dream of.”
I stared at him. I had never thought of it like that. I didn’t even know it could be looked at that way.
“God knows,” Dean said, “I haven’t started a new life even once.”
I loosened one of my hands from his grasp, sensing that his own self-blame was rooted in his family situation.
“Now you know why…” Tears stung my eyes. “Why I wanted you to…”
I gripped the front of his shirt, trembling with the urge to confess everything I felt for him.
“I knew there was more, Dean, I knew it could be good. Not like it was for my mother or… or me. I so wanted to know what… what it could be like… and with you it is. It’s been what I wanted, what I’d hoped for…”
“There’s more.” He lifted his hands to the sides of my head, tangling his fingers into my hair. “You deserve so much more. I want to give you so much more. Not just sex, but—”
“You were wrong.” I blinked back a fresh wave of tears. “When you said I didn’t expect anything from you, you were wrong. And I lied… when I said I didn’t want you to fix me… oh, God, Dean. I think I knew you were the only person in the world who could.”
His mouth came down on mine, swift yet tender. Relief surged through me, diluting my anguish as our bodies sealed together like the pages of a closed book. My hands were trapped between us, and I spread my fingers out across his chest. Warmth collected around us and slid into the frozen places of my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I… I don’t want to be someone who expects more from you than—”
“Stop.”
“But I…”
Dean lifted his head, his hands still in my hair. Our breath merged between us.
“You don’t need anyone to fix you, Olivia, least of all me.” Dean pulled me closer, his eyes never leaving mine. “Because you’re not broken.”