Sugar Rush (2 page)

The minute the door slams shut, blocking Sela and her treacherous, lying eyes, I fall back against it. I immediately slump down to the floor, my legs splayed out in front of me, toes tilted outward, and my hands sit like useless lumps on my thighs.

When I first saw Sela sitting in my office, I was filled with rage such as I've never known. It was blistering hot and my ears were buzzing with static as adrenaline pumped like acid in my veins.

I knew.

Immediately knew she had lied to me about needing to take a walk that day after Thanksgiving because she was overwhelmed. I quickly figured out that she had taken my key chain and had a copy made so she could get into my office. It tied together nicely.

How could I have been so stupid? How could I not have seen the duplicity?

How in the fuck did I get played so well?

My body went on autopilot, my brain refusing to accept a single word she said, because she's a proven liar, and I hate liars more than anything. Hate fucking secrets and gray areas and deception and cover-ups. My parents taught me well to hate it, creating such a vile environment for what masqueraded as a family that they unwittingly made a man with no tolerance.

I'm sure lies continued to drip from her mouth even after I caught her. Hell, I'm not even sure what she was saying as I pulled her through the condo; my only concern was getting her out of my life. Rage, fury, bitterness…it was all the fuel I needed to push her right out, as I realized that Sela was not only playing with my life, she was playing with my heart.

As I sit here, feeling as if I don't have a single ounce of strength within me, I realize that as the mania subsides, I'm left with a desolate emptiness. Just minutes ago, I was full of Sela, and now there's a hollowness surrounded by a bitter husk.

I hear a sound on the other side of the door, and of course I know it's Sela.

A hoarse bark of a sound…a pained sob perhaps? An attempt to get me to feel bad about what I've done?

My fingers curl inward, press into my palms, and I have to push hard against the overwhelming need to open that door to comfort her.

I push up off the floor and stalk through the living room, trying to get as far away from the door and the sound of Sela crying. I cross my arms over my stomach, hugging myself almost protectively, and pace back and forth along the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the bay.

Something hits the door. A tinny sound, barely noticeable, and my head jerks that way. I take a step in that direction and halt myself.

Turn back around, face the window.

My body tenses, waiting to hear something else. Maybe Sela isn't done and will start trying to call out to me through the door. Maybe she'll try to throw more fiction at me, and in fact, maybe that's why she's silent right now. Her brain is working up a new web of deceit in which she'll try to capture me.

I wait and I wait, yet I don't hear anything else.

Please, Sela…say something and make a liar out of my feelings right now.

Dropping my arms, I walk hesitantly to the door and lean so my ear is placed against it. I don't hear a sound. I put my eye to the peephole, bracing myself to see Sela curled into some pitiful fetal position.

There's no one in the hallway, although I can't see all the way down to the elevator. For all I know, Sela's waiting there, ready to spring out at me.

I think about her last words. Those I do remember.

“JT raped me.”

My teeth gnash over the ludicrousness of that statement. While I haven't spent every waking minute with Sela, I've spent enough time with her to know that couldn't have occurred. Not only was there very little opportunity, but I think I'd fucking well know if something horrific like that had happened to my girlfriend.

I know what rape does to a woman. I've seen it.

Fuck, I've felt it. I've felt a woman sobbing and shuddering in my arms, sunk in despair and pain after she was brutalized. JT is a shit, an abuser of women, and I'm not sure to what lengths he'd go anymore. But there's no fucking way JT raped Sela in the past several weeks we've been together. I would have absolutely known something was wrong. You can't hide something like that.

You can't.

I know the only fix is time, and that's not even a complete fix. A rape victim needs time and support and assurance. She needs love and the ability to work through the shame and humiliation. That shit doesn't happen in days. It doesn't happen in months.

It fucking happens in years.

And all of a sudden, something strikes out at me with such force and detailed clarity that I actually stagger back from the door a bit.

It's a memory of Sela on the first night we met.

Sitting on a barstool and staring across the room at JT.

With anger.

I remember seeing it clearly on her face, and thinking it was odd that she'd be staring at him that way. I had assumed that night was the first time Sela had met JT, and that's why it was so weird that she'd be looking at him that way.

Unless that wasn't the first time they met.

“JT raped me.”

She didn't say when, did she?

My mind races as I try to recall the last ten minutes of my life and I can't pull forth anything. I can only remember her looking up at me, arm outstretched, as she said,
JT raped me.

I assumed she meant since she and I had started up together. I assumed she was lying and inferring JT had done something nefarious, knowing my relationship with him has been strained and hoping I'd take her side over his. I immediately discounted her proclamation because I know what rape is, and there's no way in hell that could have happened since we met.

But what if he fucking raped her long before she and I ever met? What if she was at that Sugar Bowl Mixer that night with the intent to confront her attacker?

That first night we were together. Sela's juices on my mouth and her neck and chest flushed red from orgasm.

“That was the first time a man has made me have an orgasm.”

Sela had not been able to orgasm with a man before.

It had seemed impossible to me then, knowing a beautiful, sexy, and vibrant woman like Sela couldn't attract a man who would bend over backward to make her come. No one could take one look at Sela lying on a bed, legs spread and eyes full of uncertainty but with a tinge of hope, and not do everything in his fucking power to make her come until she's screaming his name out to the heavens.

A woman not achieving climax with a man.

That's a serious sexual hang-up.

One that could be caused by being raped.

Everything hits me at once. I'm practically blinded by images and memories of the last few weeks, all little details that I can now piece together.

Sela's not your typical Sugar Baby. It's a ruse to get close to JT.

Sela's naïve when it comes to sex.

The aloof nature with which she held herself away from me.

The moments of uncertainty I saw on her face when we were intimate.

That absolute antipathy she had for JT the few times they've been in the same room together.

The fact I've come to see that JT has the potential to really harm a woman.

“I swear to God, Beck…this is about JT,”
she had cried out to me as I dragged her out of my condo.

Sela
was
raped by JT before we even met.

The absolute truth of that hits me square in the center of my chest with the force of a wrecking ball.

“F-u-u-u-u-u-ck,” I groan painfully as I lunge for the door, absolutely sickened by what I've just done.

I jerk it open, my eyes immediately going to the array of items that I vaguely remember flying out of Sela's purse when I kicked it through the door. My head jerks to the right, toward the elevators, but she's gone. Her purse is gone, and she's gone, but she left behind all that shit that spilled out. My gaze drops down farther and I see the condo key with the blue rubber cover on the head of it.

It's like a kick to my nuts seeing it lying at my feet.

“No, no, no, no,” I chant in agony as I squat to pick up the key. “Not you, Sela. This could not have happened to you. Not to
my
Sela.”

I don't want to believe it because I literally don't think I can stand to know Sela suffered that way. I don't want to believe it because it makes me a monster for what I just did to her.

I stand up and pull my phone out of my pocket, quickly choosing Sela's number at the top of my favorites list. On the second ring, I note that I can faintly hear a corresponding sound coming from the bedroom.

“Shit,” I mutter, and run back to our bedroom, where I see her phone lying on the nightstand beside the bed. I disconnect and look wildly about the room, trying to figure out what to do.

A quick glance down at my watch and I note that Sela couldn't have been gone for more than five minutes, ten at the most. She could still be down at the next BART stop, waiting for public transit to whisk her away from me.

I snatch Sela's phone from the nightstand and sprint for the front door. I pat my front pocket, relieved to feel my car key in there should I need it, and practically careen off the doorjamb as I try to cut into the hallway. I grab the knob and pull it shut hard behind me, not even stopping to lock up.

I have to catch Sela before she can get away.

Someone above is looking out for me because the elevator shows up within seconds. I jump in, jab the lobby button, and urge it to go faster. I start throwing up prayers to whoever may be listening to let me make this right with her. I'm so ashamed of the way I threw her out of my life, and how easily I discounted her claim of rape. It may be the worst mistake I've ever made, and I hope to God I can fix it.

When the elevator stops and the doors slide open with a soft
whoosh,
I bolt out and then turn left and dash for the front doors. I practically run over John, our doorman, and apologize to him as I hit the sidewalk.

The BART stop is one block down and half a block over, and luckily the sidewalks are fairly empty. It's past the morning rush hour but it hasn't hit lunchtime yet. I race around the corner of Mission and Fremont at a Mach 1 sprint, and my eyes immediately go to the bench in front of the bus stop. There's only two people there waiting, and neither of them are Sela.

My chest heaving for air, I look both ways down the street, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I squint, peer hard…willing her to appear.

Fuck…I can't even remember what she was wearing.

Totally fucking useless.

She's gone and I know it, so I start a slower paced jog back to my building. I utter another apology to John as I brush past him into the lobby, head over to the service stairwell, and take the stairs down one more flight to the garage. Sela has to be going to her apartment and I can easily beat her there by driving. I'll just be waiting at her front door for her, and hopefully by then I'll have something monumental figured out to undo this clusterfuck I've created.

TEN YEARS AGO…

“Bryce is such an asshole,” Whitney says as she leans her elbows on the rail bordering the upper level of the mall. It overlooks the food court below, and the smell of greasy burgers and stale Chinese food filter upward. My nose crinkles in disgust.

“Agreed,” I say as my eyes slowly roam around the upper level, checking out the action tonight. I'd already scanned the food court below, and nothing of interest was going on down there.

“He didn't say why?” she asks.

“Nope,” I say calmly, although my stomach curdles when I think about the very public brush-off I got yesterday after school. Bryce and I had been dating for three months, and my face flushes with embarrassment when I think of all the proclamations of love I'd given him. He was my first real boyfriend in high school and I had fallen head over heels.

Bryce was very tall with sunny good looks that would have been common in Southern California, but only made him stand out like a beacon in our school in Menlo Park. He was the star of our basketball team, every girl wanted to be with him, and every boy wanted to be him. Some of the best days of my life were spent just strutting through the hallways between periods, my hand grasped tightly in his as he'd walk me to my next class.

It was like a dream, and I was giddy, and happy, and in love.

And then he crushed me by dumping me after school in the parking lot standing outside the driver's door of his Mustang, surrounded by his buddies. I thought he'd be driving me home as he did every day after school since basketball season was over. Instead, he simply told me, “Listen, Sela…I want to break up.”

I was stunned, and sure I heard him wrong. “What?”

“It's the end of my senior year. I'm heading off to college in a few months. I don't want to be tied down, especially not with a girl as young as you. You're not going to be able to hang with me and it will just be awkward, you know?”

No, I didn't know.

I didn't understand at all.

“But I'm sixteen,” I told him lamely.

“Tomorrow you'll be sixteen,” he pointed out, and one of his friends snickered loudly. At least Bryce had the grace to shoot him a dirty look and a small shake of his head.

“And you're breaking up with me the day before my birthday,” I said in wonder and not to him in particular, and not a question either. Just a statement as to his douchiness.

Bryce just shrugged and reached for his car door. But then, as an afterthought, he said, “Look…you're a nice kid and everything…”

I tuned him out as I turned and walked away. That's all I needed to hear from him.

He thought I was a kid.

And now my eyes roam the busy Saturday night floors of the mall, bustling with shoppers and teens just hanging out, looking to have some fun. My eyes cut over to the Gap, directly across from me, and I see three guys walk out. All in jeans, T-shirts…look about my age, maybe a little older. Two of the guys are okay, but one is really cute. He's carrying a bag in his hand and laughs at something one of his friends says. He then pauses, takes his phone out of his back pocket, and answers it. His eyes travel left as he talks with a smile on his face, sweeps across the expanse of the mall, and then his gaze lands right on me.

While he converses with whoever is on the other line, he stares at me…lips quirked upward and eyes bright with interest. I smile back at him, conveying interest because he's really, really cute with light brown hair that's worn a bit long and what looks to be brown eyes.

My pulse starts fluttering when he ends the call, says something to his friends without taking his eyes off me, then starts heading my way across the bridge that connects to the opposite sides of the second story.

Whitney is rambling on about Bryce, something about wanting to crush his nuts in a vise, but I don't pay attention to her. He gets closer, his friends following a few steps behind him.

I can tell the minute that Whitney sees him because her voice trails off with a soft, “Oh, wow.”

“Hey,” he says when he stops a few feet from me. His eyes cut to Whitney and then back to me. While he doesn't overtly check me out, I can tell he likes what he sees. I'm thankful for my most flattering jeans and my mom's red heels I stole out of her bedroom before I left, hiding them in my large purse while walking out the door in sedate black flats. Those now reside in my bag and the red heels add four inches to my height.

“Hey,” I say back, my eyes cutting down to his bag. “Good shopping?”

He shrugs, and it's very cool, I think. “Just killing time. We're getting ready to head out to a party.”

“Cool,” I say, hoping I sound cool and not lame.

“I'm Dallas,” he says, and then nods to his friends. “That's David and Blake.”

I turn slightly and grab Whitney's hand, pulling her forward to stand beside me. “This is Whitney…my best friend.”

Dallas nods to her and his buddies turn away from us, both checking out their phones. Neither one of them looked at Whitney twice, which I don't get. She's really pretty with auburn hair and soft brown eyes.

But then Dallas makes me forget that when he leans in toward me and says, “Want to go to the party with us?”

“Where is it?” I ask casually, trying not to sound excited.

But I'm so excited. This is exactly what I was looking for tonight. Some type of validation that I'm interesting and worthy of a man's notice.

“It's over in Atherton,” he says. “Some rich dude's house. My sister goes to college with him.”

The way he says “rich dude” leads me to believe that Dallas is not rich himself, but that doesn't bother me. He's very cute and he looks at me like he doesn't see a kid.

“Sounds fun,” I chirp at him. “Right, Whitney?”

“Um, I can't,” Whitney says. “My curfew's at ten
P.M.
”

Bummer. My parents said I could stay out until midnight since it was my birthday.

“Excuse me a minute,” I say to Dallas, and pull Whitney five paces away. I lean in toward her and whisper, “Come on, Whitney. I really want to go. Call your mom and tell her you're staying the night with me.”

She shakes her head and looks at me with worried eyes. “No way. Last time we tried that and got busted, I was grounded for a week. And besides…we don't know these guys.”

My eyes cut over to Dallas, who is looking down at his phone.

So freakin' cute. Way cuter than Bryce.

“He's nice,” I say. “And it will be fun, and besides…it's my birthday. The birthday girl gets to do what she wants.”

“No, Sela,” she says adamantly. “I don't want to get in trouble, and you shouldn't go off with strangers. It's dangerous.”

Something deep in my brain acknowledges the truth of this statement, but I push it aside. I'm sixteen, a hot guy is interested in me, and I want to see what the night holds. I'm feeling adventurous and a little vindictive, imagining having fun on my birthday with Dallas and relishing in being able to show up at some function in the near future with him on my arm and Bryce being jealous.

“I'm going,” I tell Whitney resolutely. “And I really wish you'd come.”

“Sela, don't,” she implores me.

Turning away from her, I tell Dallas, “I have to be home by midnight. I live in Belle Haven.”

“Not a problem,” he says with a charming grin, and it wouldn't be. It's only a few miles away, and if worse came to worst, I could always cab it. I had the cash that Mom and Dad gave me for my birthday celebration with Whitney and so far, we'd only bought an ice cream tonight.

“Last chance,” I say resolutely to Whitney with my head tilted to the side.

“This is not a good idea,” she warns me, but my decision is made.

Impulsively, I reach out and hug her. “I'll be fine.”

She gives me a wan smile but it doesn't really project. She's worried and miffed I'm doing this, but I'm too filled with excitement to even care at this point. I turn toward Dallas and I'm beyond giddy when he takes my hand in his.

“Come on, gorgeous,” he says as we start to walk away. “This will be a night to remember.”

I totally know it will. Grandiose ideas fill my head of Dallas coming by my school to see me; maybe taking me to the spring dance. I swear I won't strut too much as we walk by Bryce and his mouth hangs open in disbelief. I look over my shoulder to see Whitney chewing on her bottom lip with worry, and I wave. She doesn't return it.

We all exit the mall to the upper-level parking garage, Dallas holding my hand while David and Blake walk ahead of us. They lead us over to a later-model Nissan that's got dark tinted windows, multiple stickers on the bumper, and a huge dent in the rear quarter panel. Blake takes the driver's door, David the front passenger, and Dallas and I crawl into the backseat.

“So, this party is supposed to be in some mansion or some shit; mostly college kids, but no one will say shit to us,” Dallas tells me. “We're all eighteen.”

Not me, I think, but I'm not about to tell him that. He doesn't ask, and I'm thankful.

Blake starts the car and a rap song I don't recognize comes on.

David drums his hands on the dashboard in quick succession and yells, “Yeah…spark that owl.”

Dallas laughs and pops his hand on the back of David's headrest. “Hand me a stick, man.”

I'm lost already, no clue what they're talking about. David reaches into the glove compartment, pulls something out, and hands it over his head to Dallas.

He takes it, reaches into his front pocket, and pulls out a lighter. Then he puts a thin white joint to his mouth and lights it. I stare in fascination as his cheeks hollow and the cherry on the end glows bright. It's not the first joint I've seen, because hell, the kids in my neighborhood stroll around in broad daylight smoking them, but it is the first time I've been in such close proximity.

Dallas holds the smoke in his lungs and exhales slowly, before passing it over to me with a wink. “Want a hit?”

I know I should pay attention to the warning bells going off inside my head, and the small tingle of fear in my belly, but then I think of Bryce calling me a kid and I know without a doubt I don't want to be viewed that way.

Besides…it's my sixteenth birthday and I deserve to have some fun. “You'll get me home by midnight, right?”

“Absolutely,” he says with a broad grin.

I can't help it as I smile back, I take the joint from his hand, and bring it to my lips.

PRESENT TIME…

“That will be fifty dollars,” the cab driver says, jolting me out of my memories. I turn my head to the right and see the familiar gray house of my childhood.

I pull my one and only credit card out of my wallet and swipe it through the digital reader attached to the seat in front of me. I wait for it to process and add a 15 percent tip, realizing that for the first time in forever I can use my card without worrying that it's going to max out.

Thanks, Beck.
I really appreciate all the money you've given me to pay for school. It means I can actually afford things like a long cab ride out to Belle Haven.

I thank the cabbie and exit the vehicle, trudging up the sidewalk. I'm weary and I'm sad and this is the only place I thought to come. My apartment is foreign to me, having left that life firmly behind when I committed to moving in with Beck. It didn't seem right to go there, and all I could think about was crawling into my bed and sleeping away my misery.