says as I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heart beat a comforting pace in his chest. The sound soothes me, and I snuggle into him. Our hands entwine, and I press little kisses to each of his knuckles one by one, before starting over again. Repeat, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, repeat. Doing something helps. I can’t change what he’s telling me. But I can press myself into him and kiss him tenderly, showing him that I’m here for him. That I’m not going anywhere.
“I was at a bar for a friend’s birthday. He got a little worse for wear, so the other guys bundled him into a cab and took him home. I lived in the opposite direction, so I planned to head home by myself. I did it all the time. I was a young man. A strong, fit one. If I was worried about anything happening when I was alone, it was being mugged for my wallet, not…”
I look up as he pauses, and I kiss his jaw gently. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
His brow furrows, deep lines coursing through it. Never did I imagine having this conversation with him. It’s the last thing I ever expected him to tell me. The last thing in the world I thought I would hear from his lips.
Yet here we are.
I settle my head back down and angle it up so I can watch him as he speaks, my heart heavy in my chest.
“I want to tell you, Harley. Of all the people in the world, you are the only one I’ve ever wanted to tell.”
“Okay,” I whisper, waiting for him to continue. The knowledge that he’s choosing to share this with me is bittersweet. Him telling me I’m the only person in the world he wants to share something with makes my heart swell with happiness. But at the same time, what he’s about to tell me is the sharp needle that will inevitably pop it before shredding it into a million pieces.
“I stayed to finish my drink, and this woman sitting next to me at the bar started chatting. She was older than me by at least ten years. She was flirty, made it obvious she found me attractive. I was twenty-one and fueled by hormones, so of course, I was flattered, and… I flirted back.” Reed’s jaw tenses, and his mouth flattens into a grim line.
“She bought me another drink, and that’s the last clear memory I have of the night. The rest is just pieces, fragments. Flashbacks here and there… dreams. Blonde hair. A woman’s voice talking, saying words I don’t remember. Being completely out of it, lying on my back, my head spinning, as someone moved on top of me.”
Blonde hair. Someone on top of me.
“She was blonde?” I search Reed’s eyes, nausea clawing its way up my windpipe.
“Yes.” He reaches up and fingers a wisp of my hair.
I swallow down the solid, scratchy lump in my throat as I remember all the times Maria heard Reed through her old apartment wall. She would hear him having sex with different women all the time. Rough, wild, hard sex. They were always blonde, and they would always leave shortly after. No one ever stayed. Reed always ended the night just as he started it.
Alone.
“Is that why…? All those blonde women?” I hold my breath; not sure I want to hear his answer. I just thought he was a man-whore who thought with his dick. How I wish that was the truth now.
He looks at me with such self-loathing in his eyes that my heart cracks right down the center.
“I’ve been an idiot, Harley. All those women I barely knew. It was something so deep-rooted, I didn’t even recognize it at first. At least, that’s how it started. I saw blonde hair, and I needed to be the one taking back control. I hated it. Despised it. I couldn’t see a woman with blonde hair without wanting to take her, use her, and discard her. Like what was done to me. Then it became a habit. I didn’t need to do it anymore. I didn’t even think about it like that as time went on. But I couldn’t stop.”
He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear.
“Then I met you. And blonde wasn’t the color of the devil anymore. It was the color of an angel. Everything about you, Harley, it’s so good, bright, and pure. I curse myself for touching you with my stained hands.” The arm Reed has around me tightens, pulling me closer to him. “But I can’t fucking control myself. I want you. All. The. Time. And it has nothing to do with my past or the color of your hair.”
I stare at him, letting his words sink in, letting the pieces fall into place.
“That’s why the other night when—”
“Yes.” He draws me closer and looks into my eyes. “Another habit. A reflex left over from a faded memory. I don’t think about it anymore. I swear to you, I’ve left it in the past. And what we just did, watching you on top of me. God… I’m glad I never did that with anyone else until now. That memory, Harls. It belongs to you now. All I will ever see from now on is you. You’re so fucking sexy. I could look at you all day.”
“A new memory,” I repeat, as Reed dusts his lips over mine.
“I need new memories, Angel. The others are shit,” he says, so matter-of-factly that I laugh unexpectedly.
He pulls me to him for a kiss, his lips curling into a small smile against mine.
“They’re really spectacularly shit,” he adds, before falling serious again.
I know there’s more. So much more. And I steel myself to hear it. I need to listen to everything no matter how hard it is to hear because it must be a million times harder for Reed to say it.
But he is. And he’s telling me.
Knowing he trusts me enough to share it has me scared I will cry again. But I must hold it together. This is his story.
“Go on,” I urge gently.
He strokes the back of his hand down my cheek as he speaks. “It took me a long time to accept the flashbacks were memories. I think I knew deep down, but to admit it was like saying it out loud to myself. I knew I’d accepted her drink and flirted back. So I questioned myself, you know? Maybe I had gone with her and wanted it? I was the guy, after all. How does a woman even rape a man? Force him to have sex if he doesn’t want to? They’re the kinds of things I’m ashamed to admit I might have thought before it happened to me.”
“Oh, Reed…”
He catches my lips with his and sucks in a deep breath as he kisses me.
“I’m going to tell you everything. And then I need to have you again. I don’t want the last words we speak to each other tonight to be about the past. Okay?”
“Okay,” I breathe against his lips. My soul already feels like it’s being tortured knowing what he’s been through.
“The next day I woke up alone in a dingy hotel that I had no recollection of going to. I was naked with lipstick on my dick and a banging head that made me want to barf just by opening my eyes. I didn’t know where the fuck I was or how I got there. It wasn’t like those mornings when you have a drunken night and you wake up feeling rough. This was different. I was scared, Harls. I knew something wasn’t right. I could feel it. It was like my body had been steamrollered. And…” Reed clears his throat. “And I hurt. In ways I never had before. In places that didn’t usually hurt after.”
I wrap my hand around the back of Reed’s head, pulling our foreheads together. “That should never have happened to you,” I choke out as a tear slides down my cheek.
“I know. At the time, I didn’t understand it. I got dressed and left. Caught the subway home in the same clothes from the night before. My parents were angry. They’d worried when I didn’t come home without calling. But Riley? She knew just by looking at me something was up. She refused to leave me alone until I told her. Then she wanted to go to the police, but I’d already gotten in the shower and scrubbed myself raw by that point. I didn’t think they’d believe me, anyway. I didn’t believe me. I’d never heard of it happening to a guy before. I thought I must have been drunk and compliant, otherwise, how would it have worked?”
“It can happen, Reed.” I stroke my fingers along his cheek, my forehead still pressed against his. I don’t want to move away. I can’t move away. He’s speaking every word with his mouth so close to mine, and I wish I could swallow them all, make them disappear to where they can’t hurt him anymore.
“Riley wouldn’t let it go. She called Griffin. He’d been with his dad the night before and missed the drinks. But he was a resourceful bastard, even back then. He knew people. He got me an anonymous drugs test done within a few hours. They found traces of Viagra and Rohypnol in my system. She’d drugged me. Probably put it in my drink.”
Reed’s fingers flex against my waist where he’s holding me as I catch the gasp in my throat before it exits my lips.
She drugged him. She drugged him and raped him.
“I kept it a secret from my parents and got on with life. Made Riley and Griff swear to keep silent. I didn’t know who she was. All I had was a fake first name, a blurry memory of her, and a sheet of paper proving I had drugs in my system. That’s all. She paid the hotel in cash, and they had no camera footage. Griffin checked. Riley checked. They both tried. And I did nothing. I just wanted to forget it ever happened. I didn’t think anyone would really believe it. Why would they? Women can pick men up in bars for sex if they want to. They don’t need to drug ones over a decade younger than them.”
“That’s not how it works, though. You know that. She hurt you, Reed. She planned that and she—”
“I know, Angel.” He presses a kiss to my lips. “I know that now. But I was young, and I just wanted to ignore it. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of moving on. I was working for a record label. Just entry level stuff. That’s when I met Bea. She was at a concert for this big band we’d signed. I had a backstage pass around my neck, and she thought I was more important than I was. We started dating, then a couple of months later, she moved into the place I was renting. The next thing I know we’d argued about something, and she told me if she stayed, she wanted more commitment. She wanted to be engaged. I didn’t agree. I just didn’t correct her.”
A surge of jealousy rises in my gut as he talks about Bea. It’s stupid and irrational. I know he never loved her. He’s told me as much. That they were wrong for each other, and she only wanted to be with him when she thought he was moving up in the world and she could hitch a ride with him. But still, hearing him talk about her, knowing they lived together and were engaged. Knowing she was there for him, being that person when he needed them most. Even though I didn’t know him then. It stings like salt in a wound.
“Harls.” He smiles at me, reading my face like a book.
“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t confide in her. She read texts from Riley on my phone and confronted me about it. I never told her. I didn’t want to. Partly because I wanted to pretend it never happened, and partly because I didn’t share things with her. Not things like that. Our relationship was never like that.”
“What happened when she found out?”
Reed’s eyes darken, and he looks away from me.
“Nothing. We carried on. She never mentioned it again. We broke up a few weeks later, and I moved with Riley and my parents to California.”
I assumed the move was to help Riley when I thought it was her who had been hurt. But now I know it wasn’t.
“If your parents didn’t know, then why did you all move?”
I don’t miss the way Reed’s eyes close and his brow tenses, a deep furrow running along the width of it as he draws in a deep breath. Whatever he’s about to say is hard for him. But nothing can be worse than what he’s just told me. Nothing is worse than the thought of someone hurting him.
“I was having thoughts… dark ones… about harming myself.”
Wrong.
His words smash into me like an axe to the heart, pulverizing it into a sludge that threatens to force its way out of my mouth as my stomach heaves.
Wrong. That is worse. So much worse.
“Griffin found me in time,” he says as I stare at him, my eyes hot and burning. “He talked me down off a ledge. Literally.”
My vision blurs and blood rushes in my ears as I search his eyes. “I can’t… I…”
“Kiss me.”
“What?”
“Kiss me,” he repeats gently.
I press my lips against his and swallow down my sob as he kisses me deeply, holding the back of my head with one hand.
“I’m okay, Harls,” he whispers against my lips, making me sob out loud as he kisses me again. “It was a long time ago. I went to a therapist. I talked to my parents. I learned to deal with it. I moved on, Angel. I kept living.”
I nod as he keeps kissing me. I know what he’s saying is true. Reed doesn’t lie. And he’s been living his life for years, more than a decade since it happened. He’s successful, and he’s calm and in control. He’s brilliant and charming and confident. He’s living. He’s strong and healthy. But the thought that he was once in a place so dark that he considered not being here anymore lances through me, shadowing over everything, churning every cell in my body up until I realize I’m crying. My body shakes and my chest burns as I imagine a world without Reed in it. A world where the sun never rises.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay, Angel. It’s okay.” He kisses the tears from my cheeks, holding me tighter, and then his lips are on mine again, coaxing them apart, reaching inside me and soothing me with long, loving strokes. “I hate to see you cry. Nothing in the world is worse.”
He kisses me again and I pull him closer, pressing the length of my body against his and welcoming the heat of his skin onto mine. At least it reminds me that we are both here, in this moment. This is real. He’s here with me. He’s okay. It’s all in the past.
“She was never caught?”
“No. We filed a report before we moved. After what happened, I told my parents everything. They needed to understand why I almost…” He clears his throat. “Nothing ever came of it. Not enough evidence. I wouldn’t even know her if I saw her. I could pass her on the street. I could speak to her. And I wouldn’t even know. It took a long time to accept that’s the way it will always be. But I’ve made my peace with it. It’s something that happened to me. It’s something that should never have happened. But it did. I’m not going to let it wreck the rest of my life.”
“That’s why you always say the past should be left there, where it belongs?”
“You do listen to me, then?” He lets out a low chuckle and wipes a lingering tear from my cheek. “I promise you. I’m okay. I never really think about it now. It’s in the past. And that’s where I want to leave it. The thought of someone judging me or pitying me because of one moment in my life… it makes me sick, Harley. It makes me physically sick. And I know it happens to people. They can never leave their past behind them because others won’t let them. That can destroy you more than the event itself. I promise you, it’s in the past. I only want to think about the present and the future now.”
I sniff and nod at him in understanding. He’s chosen to leave it in the past and not let it define him. He takes strength from knowing he survived it and has moved forward to live his life. And the rest? He leaves that where it belongs.
Behind him.
“Some good’s come of it. I try to focus on that. Riley went into law, and she’s great. She’s a ruthless attorney. She’s helped so many people get justice. People that might never have gotten it otherwise. And it’s why I went into politics. I want to make changes. Do things that make a difference to people’s lives.”
“You already do that, just by being you,” I croak, my voice raspy from all the tears. “I mean it, Reed,” I say as he looks back at me. “You’re amazing.”
He exhales a long breath and chuckles. The sound sends warmth radiating through my body, loosening my muscles, and easing all the tension I’m holding without even realizing.
“Careful, Mrs. Walker. I might start to think you mean it and aren’t just saying it as you’re on the payroll.”
“Jerk.” I smile.
He laughs and rolls me onto my back, kissing me again, all my tears finally dry.
“Am I amazing, or a jerk? Make your mind up, Angel.”
“You’re…”
He maneuvers my legs over his shoulders and pushes my knees up to my chest.
“I’m…?” He arches a dark mahogany brow at me.
“You’re…”
He slides into me in one slow, fluid motion, groaning in pleasure as I whimper beneath him.
“You’re…” I try again, tingles racing over my skin like electricity around a circuit.
His mouth is on mine as he begins to move inside me slowly. “I’m what…?”
I gasp into his mouth as he reaches to my breast and pinches my nipple, fucking me in deliciously slow, deep strokes at the same time. The sensation of his skin against mine with no barrier between us heightens every sensation as my body buzzes and vibrates around him.
“You’re…”
“Yes, Angel?”
He’s enjoying this. I can tell by the amusement in his voice and the way he’s sliding into me at the angle he knows full well rubs my G-spot.
“You’re…”
He told me he was going to have me again before we go to sleep. And fuck, is he having me, his strong body on top of mine, his weight creating the best feeling of safeness there is. My eyes roll back in my head as arousal races through me, soaking him and leaking out, spreading around my thighs every time he withdraws.
“I’m what, Angel? Apart from making this beautiful pussy of yours drip as I fuck you… what am I?” he growls against my lips before gently taking my bottom one between his teeth.
“Reed…” I say as he releases my lip.
His pace increases and he drives his tongue into my mouth, claiming me, obliterating any other thoughts I can have. The past melts away, and all I can focus on is him. Him inside me. Him stretching me. Him completing me.
“Reed what? Tell me,” he commands.
“You’re…” I pant, my breath coming in short puffs as he tilts his hips and hits my G-spot harder.
“I’m…?” He grins as my mouth drops open against his, and I moan loudly.
“You’re…you’re… amazing! And you’re going to make me come,” I cry.
He lets out a low groan from deep in his chest. It rolls through me and has me shaking and shuddering.
“Do it, Harley.”
His words are my undoing, and I come. I come with a force that has me crying out his name, my fingers fisting his hair and holding his face to mine as he fucks me with a satisfied smile on his handsome face.
“Yes, Angel,” he breathes. “Good girl.”
Then he spills into me, pushing himself as deep inside me as he possibly can.
“Harley,” he murmurs against my lips. “You’re beautiful. You’re fucking beautiful.”
“No… You… are…” I finally manage to say as I tremble in his arms.
