Poser (25 page)

Ivy

My lucky panties.

Lost.

Gone.

Never to be seen again.

Until they showed up on the end of my bed. The bed I shared with Braeden.

I loved these little red lacy thongs. They had a four-leaf clover on the right hip in gold glitter. Hence the reason I called them lucky.

The last time I saw them was the night before the big championship Wolves football game. The night I slept with Zach.

I’d woken up the next morning, hung over and partially disoriented. I was dehydrated for days. I was ashamed even longer.

After I’d showered and cleaned myself up, I picked up the clothes scattered around the room. I never found my panties. I was too ashamed to ask Rimmel if she’d seen them. I figured they’d turn up when we moved out of the dorm.

I didn’t find them.

I assumed I’d lost them on the way back to the dorm, in a drunken moment of passion.

I shuddered.

Beside me, Braeden tensed.

Oh God, Braeden.
He was sitting here beside me, so sweet and concerned. I knew the hollow, almost vacant way I was acting was probably eating him alive. As much as I wanted him right now, a piece of me wished he wasn’t here. I didn’t want him to see me this way.

I hadn’t lost these panties that most certainly were
not
lucky that night.

There had been no drunken moments of passion.

There hadn’t even been consent.

“Ivy,” Braeden said in a cross between fear and worry. “You’re scaring me, sweetheart. Please say something.”

How was I supposed to speak when the memory wouldn’t stop hounding me? I clung to the hope that maybe it wasn’t a memory after all, but just a terrible dream. More evidence that I’d surely lost my marbles.

#

Muddled. Everything around me was so incredibly muddled. Even my own thoughts were unclear. What was happening? I knew it wasn’t good because the pit of dread and the feeling of stark horror clung to me. It stuck to my thoughts just like the fog that made it hard to think.

The familiar feel of my sheets was against my back, but I didn’t remember coming home. I thought I was with Missy at a party.

How did I get home?

I felt the mattress dip and tilt; my body shifted with the change in weight. But I wasn’t the one moving. My limbs felt like lead, too heavy to move.

But I knew I did want to move.

The unfocused image of someone rose above me. He had dark hair, and at first, I wanted to smile. Braeden had dark hair.

The sound of the man speaking blew away just a smidge of the clouds filling my mind. Just enough for me to realize this was not Braeden. This wasn’t someone worthy of my smile.

What the hell was Zach doing here? Hadn’t I told him to get lost? I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t the kind of girl who would come back to my room with someone as vile as him.

Wait.

Zach was in my room.

Panic, strong and sure, clawed at the back of my throat. I pried my eyes open, tried to hold them as wide as I could. Why was I so tired? What was happening to me?

I saw his lips move. I saw him smile. Something was wrong.

Why wasn’t he wearing a shirt? Why wasn’t I?

I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be here with him. I didn’t want to be half naked. I didn’t want to sleep with him.

My body jerked, and I stared up through hazy eyes at him. He tossed some clothes—my clothes—aside and then stared down at me.

“I just knew you’d have something slutty on beneath those clothes,” he said.

“Please, no,” I begged. It seemed like maybe I’d said that already.

I felt a touch along my hip and rough fingers probed below the band of my thong.

“No.”

Zach didn’t act like he heard me. Had I even spoken out loud?

Next thing I knew, my pair of lucky red thongs were dangled over my face.

Those things were soo not lucky.

“You mind if I keep these? A little reminder of the night I owned you?”

I tried to push myself up, to run away.

My body didn’t obey.

I tried to scream, to yell.

My voice was silent.

It was like my body was no longer my own to control.

It was like I was a third party, standing in this room, watching something horrible about to happen.

I couldn’t stop it.

Rough hands poked at my entrance, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

Maybe being detached wouldn’t be so bad after all…

I didn’t go to sleep, but I didn’t really stay awake.

The statement “out of it” had never held more truth.

I felt the violation in my body. I felt the screams and cries echo inside me.

But even as I started to sob, I’d somehow slip away again…

Into nothing.

Nothingness was preferable to this.

#

I jolted back, hitting against the wall, and the thongs dropped like a weight onto the carpet beside me.

Braeden let out a gruff curse and reached for me.

I was up off the floor in seconds, cradled against his chest. He was warm. I didn’t realize I was so cold.

“Say something right now, Ivy, or I’m taking you to the damn hospital,” he demanded.

I huddled against him, pushed my cheek into his shoulder, and then I said three words a woman never wanted to say.

“I was raped.”

Braeden

The words sliced me open and left my insides to spill out.

How did one function with everything he needed on the inside suddenly ripped out?

I knew.

Those three words, I already knew them. Hadn't I just stood there and suspected Ivy finally realized?

It didn't matter.

The shock was unmatched. Sure, on some level I understood my girl knew, but to hear her say those words, to hear out loud a nightmare that up until now only rattled around inside me…

It was like finding out all over again.

The images I found on Missy's computer played through my head like a slideshow.

The violation Ivy experienced was something I knew a man likely couldn't fully comprehend.

I honestly didn't think she'd arrive at such a clear realization. I thought maybe her doubts and questions would slowly reveal a larger picture.

It would have been kinder that way.

Not that there was one fucking kind thing about any of this, but at least Ivy wouldn't have been overcome by the truth.

I stood there in the center of our bedroom. The room where I held her in my arms every night and listened to her sighs when I kissed her skin. This place was supposed to be our sanctuary.

But that bastard invaded it.

He wormed his perverted, sick ass right here.

I stared down at the red lace thongs. They still lay exactly where Ivy dropped them.

Were they the culprit?

Was seeing them the trigger for this?

Holy fucking balls, did she remember that night?

Please, God.
I hoped not.

I didn't want her to have to relive that hell for a single, solitary second. But if she remembered, the torment would be endless.

Just like mine had been.

Ivy

“Put me down,” I said, my own voice sounding foreign to my ears.

The silence in the room was uncomfortable, almost tense. Braeden’s arms didn’t comfort me. They felt like a vise holding me in place.

I didn’t want to be in place right now. I think I wanted to shatter.

Was this how it would be from now on? Would everything feel changed?

He didn’t automatically do as I asked. Instead, his dark-chocolate stare shifted to me and flickered with bleakness and pain.

This was going to be hard on him too. I wasn’t the only one who was going to be irrevocably changed by rape.

But I couldn’t think about Braeden now. I could scarcely think at all. I was too violated, too shocked, too dirty.

How could this happen?

Why didn’t I know until now?

My God, I’d been living months and months inside a body that had been invaded, violated, and used.

He used me.

He shoved his… his…
I shook my head.
He shoved himself inside my body.

I didn’t want Zach. He was the last man on Earth I’d ever touch. I knew that, didn’t I? I’d said as much to myself a million times. I was so shocked I would stoop so low as to let him touch me.

I hadn’t at all.

I said no.

“Put. Me. Down.” My voice scraped out of my throat, raw and sick. Whatever he heard made him finally listen. The second my feet hit the carpet, I ran. The ends of the towel around me flew open, and I rushed out of the bedroom.

I fell to my knees in the bathroom, hitting the cold, unforgiving tile. Pain jolted my knee, but I ignored it.

Nothing was worse than the pain inside.

Mental flashes of him ripping at my clothes, forcing his hands down into my thong, assaulted me.

They wouldn’t stop.

And neither would the sound of my mind screaming,
No, no, no!

I leaned over the toilet and vomited violently. Over and over again, I gagged and heaved. My back hurt so badly and my chest burned from the force of throwing up.

As I emptied out every last drop in my stomach, my hands gripped the white porcelain. It was cold and smooth, but my fingers ached from holding on so tight. My throat burned from the acid splashing up my esophagus.

I was raped.

“Ivy,” Braeden said from somewhere close by. Tears blurred my vision and shivers racked my body.

“Go,” I choked. “Just go.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“I don’t want you here!” I yelled and started sobbing.

I shoved off the toilet and fell back against the wall. The towel had fallen off of me, and I was sitting there completely exposed.

As I cried, I pulled the towel into my lap, using it simultaneously as a cover and a tissue.

Even though I screamed, he didn’t leave. I wanted him to. I didn’t want anyone to see me this way. I didn’t want anyone to know what Zach had done to me.

I’d rather be a slut than a victim.

But I didn’t get a choice.

My no was ignored.

Why? Why hadn’t I fought him off? Why hadn’t I screamed until someone came running?

Nearby, I heard the lid to the toilet close and the sound of it being flushed. The tap water in the sink ran. It sounded so far away, like I was in another universe.

Beside me, Braeden fell to his knees. I stared at his jean-clad thighs, just staring at the faded blue fabric without really seeing.

“Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

It reminded me of the first time we’d had sex. He’d brought me a cloth and placed it between my legs. He’d always been so considerate of me. So careful.

Zach had been rough.

Zach had been hurtful.

I started sobbing again. Open weeping and unintelligible sounds filled the small bathroom.

I felt Braeden’s hands as he wiped my face and neck. He used care and caution, and every once in a while, through my own sobs, I would hear him whisper it would all be all right.

But how could it be?

The cloth disappeared, but he remained. He used the end of the towel I wasn’t clutching to ring out the ends of my still-wet hair.

Then he brushed through it all, coaxing it all back away from my face. The repetitive motion of the brush through my hair calmed me. My sobs turned into heavy gasps and the tears slowed.

When he was done, his large, warm hands lifted me off the floor. I clutched the towel against me, and he didn’t try to take it away.

Instead, he held out his old Wolf Pack T-shirt, the one I’d claimed that morning on the beach. “You’re freezing,” he said. “Put this on.”

I stood there shaking, and he pulled it over my head. I dropped the towel and pushed my arms through. The familiar feel of the soft fabric gave me a little more of a solid grip.

Braeden knelt at my feet and held a pair of sweatpants ready for me to step into. I did, and the warmth seeped into my skin once they were pulled into place.

My head felt thick and my eyes were puffy when he took my hand and led me out of the bathroom back into the bedroom. When the lamp beside the bed was clicked on, my eyes zeroed in on the thongs. I stood there and stared at them, shuddering at the barrage of memories tied to them.

“I’m throwing these out,” he half growled and scooped them off the floor. When he did, the note that had been beside them fluttered onto the carpet.

He picked it up, uncrumpled the paper, and stared at the crudely scrawled words.

DON’T TELL

“This was here too?” His voice was low and hard.

Anger radiated around him and made me slink back. I wasn’t scared of him. I never would be. But there was so much raw emotion already inside me; I couldn’t deal with any more.

“That fucking bitch.”

My head snapped up. I might have been shell-shocked, confused, and sick inside, but I could still hear. Why would he say bitch? Zach was a lot of things, but a bitch wasn’t one of them.

In fact, why wasn’t Braeden asking me—no, demanding to know more about my rape. Why did he seem to understand it hadn’t been tonight? Why did he seem to know it was in the past?

I stared at him as question after question took bite after bite out of what was left of my insides.

He must have felt me staring. He must have felt my gaze.

He turned.

His deep eyes locked on mine.

Bleak apology was all I could see.

The note in his hand slipped from his fingers and fluttered toward the floor.

“No,” I protested. “
No
.”

The guilt in his face turned into fear.

I gasped. “Oh my God, Braeden,” I whispered.

“Ivy—” He stepped toward me.

I held out my hand, halting his steps. “Stay there!”

He watched me helplessly as more questions swelled inside me.

The picture on the Buzzfeed. It didn’t come out ‘til long after Zach was locked away. He couldn’t have done it.

It had been done by the #BuzzBoss.

By my so-called best friend.

You’re so convinced I’m the bad one. Have you ever wondered who else around here kept secrets and told lies?

Missy’s words replayed in my head. I knew she’d been talking about Braeden. I’d known he was likely keeping something from me.

But this?

Never in a thousand years would I have expected this.

Tears blurred my vision once more, and I folded my arms across my waist. I felt like throwing up again, but there was nothing left inside me to purge.

Except for two little words. Words that felt like a grenade and blew up my entire world.

“You knew.”