Dak
One of the things that always gets me about the show Outlander—yeah, I watch it on the DL. The guys would never let me live it down, even though it’s totally not just for chicks. There’re a lot of rugged fight scenes between all those Scottish dudes. Anyway, one of the things that always catches my attention is the vivid green of the open fields of grass where they film. It’s like the true green I used to color my drawings of grass when I was a kid. The same color of the vibrant green eyes staring at me right now. The eyes which were like a molten aphrodisiac the first time I gazed into them. Trace is staring at me with such intensity I think those eyes are piercing right through me and cleansing away all the black webs of guilt clinging to the recesses of my heart.
She’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. I pray she doesn’t realize what I already know. She’s too good for me.
“Between the two of us we’re a big enough melodramatic shit show to deserve our own reality series don’t you think?” she purses her lips into a half smile and shrugs.
“I guess we are.” I return the smile. It’s incredible. With a few words, she’s able to bring me back to the here and now, pull me out of my tortured past, help me ease the heavy guilt burdening me.
I was scared she was going to think I was the biggest loser when she found out what happened to Abbey because of me. Instead, she’s telling me it’s not my fault. Maybe she’s right. It’s possible everything happens for reasons unknown to us. But even if she believes there are obscured forces in the world mapping our paths, I don’t know if she’ll want anything to do with me. This whole thing might be too much drama for her. She’s recovering from her own ‘shit show’ as she put it; she sure as hell doesn’t need to deal with mine. But despite my fear of her walking out of here and never wanting anything to do with me again, it feels like a colossal weight was lifted off my chest and I can breathe for the first time in a long while.
“I can’t let you weasel out of doing your share of this research report. I suppose I’ll have to stay for a while.” She gives me a little push against my chest and I grab her hand and hold it over my heart. She leaves her hand in mine and keeps penetrating my soul with those doe eyes.
“We better get started before it gets any later.” She slips her hand from mine and picks up her backpack from the floor, pulls out her laptop and notebooks, and drops the bag next to the bed. “I can use my backup battery if we need it since the power’s still out.”
“I have an extra battery too. Let me get my laptop.” I jump off the bed to retrieve my computer and external battery from my desk.
“You sure you’re okay? We can work on this tomorrow if you want. We’ve got a few days. I’ll bring the samples in tomorrow and tell Clancy we’ll turn in the paperwork in a couple of days.”
“No. I’m good.” I swipe a hand across my face. Christ. I’ve never cried in front of a girl before. I never talked about any of this to a girl before either.
“Dak, I’m sorry about what I suggested last night. I understand now why you can’t help me out. Like you said, I don’t want it to be weird between us.”
“It’s cool. Nothing’s weird.” We’ve shared so much, and since she brought it up, I need to know what prompted her to make the outrageous request last night. “I’m a little confused why you had such a radical change of mind, though. And what do you mean ‘help you out?’” I sit next to her on the edge of the bed.
“Forget it. Sorry I brought it up. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me. What is it?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing.” She’s biting on her overworked bottom lip, again. I know she’s thinking hard about something.
“I would say the request you made was based on the dream-provoked…or should I say finger-provoked orgasm, but you made your proposition before the incredible incident even occurred. I heard your moans when I pumped my fingers inside you last night. But again, it was after you asked me to fuck you. So why did you change your mind?”
“Can you stop it with the blow by blow description already!” She puts her hands over her ears. The fifty shades of red creeping up her neck and face after I mentioned finger fucking her is the only proof I need to confirm Trace is not the type of girl to want, or ask for, a one-night stand.
“There. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You can’t even hear me talk about putting my fingers inside you, but all of a sudden you’re into a casual fuck like nothing matters. Why?”
“Never mind. Forget it, okay? Since when does a guy need to know the hidden meaning of life and love when a girl offers to fuck him no strings attached anyway?”
“Since the girl is you. What’s going on?” I reach out for her hand, but she backs away from me.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t bother me if I stayed with you. I’m going. We can finish the project tomorrow,” she snarls and stands up to leave, but this time I manage to grab her wrist. There’s no way she’s running out of here and leaving this bullshit hanging in the air between us again.
“We can finish it now. What aren’t you telling me? I opened up to you about some shit I never told anyone because I trust you like I’ve never trusted anyone. You obviously don’t trust me because I know there’s something you’re not telling me. What the fuck is going on?”
“I trust you. It’s why I asked you to…to…”
“To fuck you.”
“No. Why do you always put it like that?”
“How else should I put it? Isn’t that what you want? You want to get laid. You want me to fuck you. That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“No…well, yes. But…fine. You’re right. I didn’t exactly tell you everything last night. After…after Sean came to my apartment the last time…um…things kind of got worse.”
Oh fucking hell.
“How can they have gotten any worse?”
“Trust me. They did,” she whispers.
“Christ. How much more crap do we need to rehash tonight.”
“See? I told you. Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it and you don’t want to hear it.” She tries to pull her arm out of my grasp, but I pull her back to the bed.
“No. I want to hear it. I need to hear everything the prick did to you. Tell me what else happened and what’s going on with you.”
Although it sickens me to hear the levels of douchery the asshole put her through, I need to know and she needs to share all of it if she is ever going to move on from the pain. She says it was even worse than what she’s already shared. Once again, I’m consumed by the desire to beat the crap out of the motherfucker.
“Like I said, I was…crushed by what happened.” She blows out a long breath and hesitates before speaking again to tell me the worst part of the trauma she endured. “The whole thing was so surreal. I felt like I was walking around inside a nightmare. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus on schoolwork. A few days later when I went to skate practice because I thought skating would help take my mind off of everything, I see a bunch of the girls standing in the corner of the locker room all focused on the screen of a cell phone. They’re all giggling and pointing and making comments like ‘holy shit’ or ‘what a slut’ and other things. When they see me they get quiet, their cackling becomes snickers and their loud comments become whispers. When I ask them what they’re looking at, they snicker again and walk out of the locker room. I didn’t know what was going on. A few seconds later one of the girls I hung out with from the team comes back in the locker room and pulls out her cell phone. She says, ‘Holy shit, Tracey, what were you thinking letting them take pictures?’
“I asked her what she was talking about, and let who take pictures? I had no idea what she was talking about. She holds her phone out for me to see. I looked at the screen, but there was no way I could be seeing what I was seeing. It was a picture of me naked on Sean’s bed, with Sean on top of me. You couldn’t see the face of the other guy, but you could see him naked from the waist down, standing next to the bed. Kyle had managed to take a picture showing enough to make it appear to be the two of them having sex with me. She asked if it was me, but she knew. My face was crystal clear on the screen. I ran into the nearest stall and threw up.”
Fuck.
Bile begins churning in my stomach and it feels like it’s about to flame out of my eyes. If those assholes were standing in front of me right now I’d rip both their heads off and spit down their necks.
“Christ. Trace…”
“It was pretty bad.” She shrugs, like it’s taking everything she has to keep going. “I sent Sean a text and told him I had to see him right away, told him to meet me at the quad. He didn’t answer. So I threatened to out him and Kyle to get him to answer. He answered in about five seconds, said he would meet me in ten minutes. When I saw him after not seeing him for several days I didn’t know if I wanted to kick him in the balls or hug him.”
“Hug him? Are you fucking kidding me? You should’ve cut his balls off, never mind kicking him. Why the fuck would you want to hug him?”
She went through a different kind of hell than me, but it was hell nevertheless. I’m so angry I can’t manage to be sweet and understanding. I feel like I can spit nails at the two dickholes who took advantage of her. My thoughts are back to beating, murdering, slashing.
“I know. So dumb.”
“Fuck that noise. You weren’t dumb. You just—”
“I was dumb. Even after everything he did, I missed him. We were together for a year. I couldn’t believe that was how it was supposed to end. I confronted him with the picture posted on the university’s social media site. He claimed he knew Kyle was taking the picture. They had discussed using the night and the photo as some kind of insurance. But he swore he didn’t know Kyle was going to post it, not unless he had to.
“I asked him why he would do such an awful thing, because I still didn’t get it. If they were so into each other why didn’t they just go their merry way and leave me out of it? He said Kyle thought guys on the team were getting suspicious and they needed some kind of proof they weren’t having a relationship. The night with me and the photo was supposed to be their proof. Kyle decided to post the picture in case I said anything about the night with them. If he posted the picture, it would look like they were two macho football dudes fucking the same girl.
“Kyle figured if I said anything after the picture was out there, everyone would think I was trying to cover for sleeping with both of them and they would believe the star football players on campus rather than me. I knew he was right. No one would take my side over theirs.” Her gaze drops to the floor and she shakes her head, like she still can’t process what happened.
“I told Sean if I ever meant anything to him he would make Kyle take down the post. Sean stood there staring down at the ground. He couldn’t even look at me. He said he tried to get him to take it down, but Kyle said none of their teammates would want anything to do with them if they found out about their relationship and they might even be thrown off the team. He convinced Sean the picture was their insurance no one would ever question their relationship. That’s when I knew. It took that one final, awful jolt for me to realize Sean never felt anything for me.” She looks up at me again and brushes one lone tear off her face.
“It was only a horrible game of pretend, a cover-up. In the end, the university got the photo taken down, but enough people had already seen it. My life on campus or on the skating team was never the same. I kept spiraling down into a pit of depression until my parents finally insisted I drop out of school for a semester to get myself together. I was basically like a walking zombie. My heart had been ripped out of my chest and stomped on.”
She sighs and the desperate sound pierces my heart.
“It wasn’t any better at home. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sean and how naïve I’d been. I couldn’t stop the depression or the pain. One afternoon when everyone else was out I went into my mom’s bathroom, found her bottles of sleeping pills and painkillers and…and…” Her breath catches and she’s blinking rapidly again and I can tell she’s fighting back tears.
“Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Tracey,” I whisper over and over.
“I know. Stupid. So stupid. You thought I wasn’t afraid of anything. I was the biggest coward ever. How could I let a person as heartless and empty as Sean and the insensitive people I thought were my friends drive me to the point where I took a swan dive to rock bottom? I was supposed to be smarter, stronger. I hated the girl I’d become. It was so bad. When I look back at it now all I can see is how he was so not worth it, but it was more than what he did. It was the cruelty of so many people around me afterward. I was so…disheartened, so broken by the way the people I thought were my friends treated me. I didn’t want to die. I only wanted the pain to stop.
“I’m not that person anymore. I would never do anything so stupid again. But I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted anything to do with me.” Her words keep catching in her throat on short gasps.
“Oh baby.” I brush a strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t believe what you had to go through. I wish I had known you then so I could be there for you. I’m here now. You’re not stupid and you’re sure as shit not a coward. You’re the smartest, bravest person I know. You loved the fucker. People do crazy things for love.”
“Did I love him? I thought I did. But how can I be smart if I fell for all his lies and then made the stupid choices I did afterward?”
She doesn’t wait for me to answer; for me to tell her some guys hold superpowers at being dishonest motherfuckers and no one, not even the smartest person, has the ability to see through their Kryptonite of lies.
“Thank God my sister came home earlier than she was supposed to. She found me and rushed me to the hospital. They weren’t sure they could save me at first. After they did, I promised myself I would never give anyone the opportunity to hurt me again, never allow myself to be used again or think anyone was worth giving up my self-esteem or my life.”
When her gaze meets mine again, I sweep my thumb over her cheeks to brush away the tears trailing down her face.
“Anyway, I worked through a lot of this, becoming a stronger person every day. Even so, I’m still sacrificing a part of myself to the aftereffects of Sean and I don’t want to anymore.”
“I’m not sure I get what you mean.”
“I told you last night I haven’t been with anyone for…well…for a long time. The truth is, I haven’t…since that night with Sean and Kyle.”
“That was like…”
“Over a year ago.”
“No one? For over a year?”
“No. I was too afraid to. I didn’t want to let anyone get close again. I couldn’t let myself trust anyone. I…I couldn’t let anyone touch me.”
“What…what do you mean you couldn’t let anyone touch you?”
Please tell me she’s speaking metaphorically?
“What do you think I mean? You know…fingers, hands, skin, touching.”
“But…but you let me touch you last night.”
“I know. Crazy right? The guy I thought was the biggest super douche a few days ago turns out to be the only one in over a year I can let touch me.”
“I…wait…you thought I was a super douche? I mean …shit. I’m so sorry.”
I want to hold her in my arms, but now I’m afraid to touch her. I should be able to understand. It was a long time before I could put myself out there after Abbey. But Abbey was sweet and kind and loved me. This Sean dude is nothing but a real dickhole. Although I get it was a traumatic experience and loss for Trace too. She loved the fucker, even if he did turn out to be the world’s biggest prick. In my case, when I lost Abbey I hadn’t lost my trust in other people because of her death. If anything, I had lost trust in myself. I didn’t want to be with anyone else for a while because I missed Abbey so much and blamed myself for her death. I wasn’t afraid to be touched. Fear of being touched is a whole other level of trauma.
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to understand. The whole thing with Sean had me screwed up for a long time. I don’t want to give him one more minute of my happiness. I gave him enough of my past, I’m not going to give him my future too. I want to move on. So…I asked for your help.”
She hasn’t let anyone touch her—couldn’t let anyone touch her—for over a year and now she wants me to be the one to help her by having sex with her. Christ. I know she didn’t mind me touching her last night. But why do I deserve her trust over every other guy out there?
Sure, I know all the ways to please a woman, but am I capable of helping Trace overcome her fears? I’ve never been with anyone who requires that kind of sensitivity. I don’t do sensitivity or feelings. My mind is racing, trying to process this latest revelation. She must read the perplexed look on my face because she says, “It’s okay. I get why you said no. I’m sure one of these days I’ll find someone I can trust again. I waited this long. I can wait a little longer. For now, I’m glad we’re friends.”
Fucking hell. She’s going to go out there to find some other asshole to fuck her back to happy. She may be one of the smartest people I know, but she’s naïve as shit when it comes to guys. I’m sure there’ll be no problem finding some douche who will be more than happy to offer the use of his dick to fuck away her fears. But he won’t care about her and what she needs. He won’t notice the vulnerability and longing in her eyes and she’ll end up feeling even worse than she does now.
She definitely needs a friend like me to protect her from the Dick Ways of the Douchebag Human Male. If that’s not a handbook already in existence I may need to write it so every sweet, unsuspecting woman out there can use it as a guide.
She looks up at me and in the glow of the lantern light I can see the shimmering hopeful longing in those beautiful eyes. I can’t stop myself from scooping her into my arms and onto my lap.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m here, baby. I don’t know what I did to earn your trust, but whatever it is, I promise you, I’ll never do anything to abuse that trust. I’ll never do anything to hurt you. You’re incredible, you know that? Beautiful and smart and sweet. You deserve to be held and touched and treated like the goddess you are. If you want me to be the one to do that for you, I’m here.”
She stares at me and blinks a couple of times, like she needs my words to sink in. “I…I…wow…that was …kind of beautiful.”
Her brows pinch in confusion, like she can’t believe those words came out of my mouth. She’s staring at me again with those sparkling eyes. And damn, my mind is starting to shut down. My need to fuck her right this second has taken over every fiber of my body. But this isn’t about me, this is about Trace. I’ve got to take this slow and show her the level of worship she deserves from a guy.
The tension seeps out of her as she melts against my chest. I keep rocking her in my arms. The tsunami of tears she can no longer hold back are saturating my shirt. I’d hold her forever if it would erase her past experience. I can’t find the right words to make this better. In fact more words might not be what she needs right now anyway. We’ve shared all our past nightmares.