Things Remembered (Accidentally On Purpose Companion Novel #3) (16 page)

The gauzy dress was carefully pulled forward off my shoulders and pulled down until I could slip my arms out. Only seconds later, the dress fell to the floor with a soft, whispery sound, and I was left standing before him in only a black, lacy bra and matching panties.

My heart pounded a million beats a minute, and once again, I trembled with nervousness, but I didn’t want to stop. In fact, I wanted to pick up the pace.

“Take your shirt off,” I demanded breathlessly.

He raised an eyebrow but eagerly obeyed. A moment later, his shirt fell away, revealing his muscular chocolate chest. He was in perfect shape, which made me really appreciate the early morning workouts he did four days a week.

“Now the pants.”

He looked amused with a sexy smile pulling at his lips. “I don’t remember you being so demanding in the bedroom.”

I raised my chin haughtily. “We’re not in the bedroom. Now off with the pants.”

“Take them off your damn self,” he countered. “I took your dress off for you. Fair is fair.”

“You know I don’t play fair.”

He reached out and circled my nipple with the tip of his finger. I barely swallowed back a moan.

“You will tonight, Baby Girl,” he said, his voice soft, but firm.

I narrowed my eyes at him but reached for his pants. I pulled the belt out first and threw it aside. Then I released the hook and began to pull down his zipper. My knuckles brushed over his erection as I went, making him suck in a breath. I let his pants fall and stepped back while he kicked off his shoes and stepped out of the puddle of pants.

I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic, but he put a hand on the back of my head and roughly pulled me to him before kissing me hard. It was relentless and powerful, stealing away my breath and senses and bruising my lips.

I let out a startled squeal when he put his hands under my ass and lifted me off the floor. I wasn’t used to men plucking me up like I weighed nothing. I clung to him as he chuckled and carried me to the couch. He put me down carefully, laying me on my back as he carefully lay down on top of me.

My body shivered beneath him. I was still nervous. I wasn’t a born again virgin, but my sexual encounters had been few and far between over the years. It was hard for me to let someone have any kind of control over my body, even if he was just trying to give me an orgasm. So for years, I’d stuck with the same guy for my sexual needs because he knew how
not
to touch me, and he didn’t try to be my boyfriend. We were strictly benefits with friends, seeing how the friendship part really didn’t matter to me.

Did I trust Grant with my body? It made sense to trust him, as he had never given me a reason not to, but…

I was thinking too damn much. There shouldn’t be so much thought while I was more than half naked with a more than half naked man that I was pretty sure I loved on top of me. There should only be action, attraction, and passion.

I turned my brain off and tried to slip back into the moment.

“You went somewhere,” Grant said, peering down at me. “Are you okay?”

I smiled. “Yes, I’m okay.”

My fingers eased down his back and slipped under the waistband of his boxers. He moaned softly and lowered his head to my breast. He kissed down the slope and discovered my nipple with his teeth. Moaning, I lifted my hips to meet his and moaned again when his erection pressed against me. He nibbled and sucked on the pert nipple through my bra as he rocked against me until we were both panting.

We kissed frantically, each of us battling for control. His fingers manipulated the tips of my breast, sending waves of pleasure straight down and between my thighs. I tried to reach between us to stroke him, but he took firm hold of both of my wrists and pinned them above my head, growling salaciously in the back of his throat before nipping at my jaw.

Then it happened. The images slammed into me. Voices and laughter from the past. The scents of beer, cigarettes, weed, and something musky.

I fell into my broken memories, melding with them.

“Stop,” I said in a panicked whisper.

I didn’t know who I was telling to stop. Grant in the present or
them
in my past.
Them
…those motherfuckers. Motherfuckers!

“Stop!” I screamed it. I screamed it again and again until I felt the pressure leave my wrists and body.

I came up out of the fractured memories as if I had just swum up for air from the bottom of a deep pool. I sat up gasping and clutching at my chest.

“Mayson,” Grant said my name like a lost child as he stood close by, watching me helplessly.

I didn’t have it in me at that moment to feel sorry for him. Something inside me cracked.

“You can’t just hold someone down!” I screamed at him through tears that I had only then become aware of. “You can’t just hold me down like that!”

I got to my feet and frantically searched for something to cover myself with. The first thing I found was Grant’s white dress shirt. I held it to my chest as my body heaved with sobs. Dusky trotted onto the scene, barking and whining warily as he watched.

“Mayson, what the fuck is wrong?” Grant said, his voice firm and demanding behind me.

I whirled on him and shoved him away from me with one hand. He stumbled back and I shoved him again and again as Dusky barked behind us, until he finally caught my hand.

“Let go of me!” I screamed, snatching my hand away. “You can’t violate me like that!”

His eyes widened and then grew stormy. “Violate—what the fuck are you talking about? Tell me what happened to you, right now,” he demanded, pointing at the ground between us. “Tell me what the fuck happened to you!”

“You happened to me!” I screeched. “You! You
left
me. You abandoned me by myself and I had no one. No one! And then they hurt me and it’s all your fault,” I sobbed. “It’s all your fault, and I
hate
you for it. I fucking hate you for it.”

Grant stared at me, confused and scared, and angry. His hard stare registered in me and I began to come to my senses. My cloud of fury and hate began to dissolve and I realized what I had done, what I had said.

I covered my mouth and muffled a wail. Grant looked like he wanted to come to me, but he was afraid to touch me, afraid of how I might react.

Moments passed, and I thought it would stay silent but for the music playing in the background. I thought music would be the only sound we’d hear forever, and maybe that was preferable to the conversation that was about to happen.

“Tell me.” His voice was steady and soft, but he was over the bullshit. There was no getting out of it unless I threw myself out a window to escape it.

“T-two years af-after you left,” I stuttered tearfully. “I-I was hu-hu-homeless and-and desp-desperate.”

I was homeless and had no one but Tack, which was as good as having no one on most days. My mom and most of my family wanted nothing to do with me. Sharice was dead and gone, and Grant may as well had been dead and gone. So, when Annie—an old friend I had known back when I’d dated Randy—told me I could come stay with her down in North Carolina for a while, I’d jumped on it. She’d claimed that she had cleaned up her life, and I thought that maybe I’d be able to clean mine up, too, since I’d be away from all my usual influences.

I’d packed up my little tiny, piece of crap Honda, and went to North Carolina. I’d quickly realized that Annie wasn’t as clean as she had claimed. Her small dilapidated house had been nothing more than a drug house. People had come and gone all hours of the day and night. It was hard to stay clean in that environment, probably harder even than it had been when I was back in New Jersey.

Annie left one night to go stay with her boyfriend a couple hours away. I remember sitting with a group of guys whose faces I can’t remember, drinking, and smoking. After several weeks in that house, it wasn’t an unusual occurrence to find myself getting messed up with strangers. Someone had handed me another drink in a pink cup, and I’d taken it. Just like that. I drank it. And then my nightmare started.

Someone, or maybe more than one someone had held me down, but I’d been too weak to really struggle, and I’d kept going in and out of consciousness. I had heard their laughter and the jeering and cruelty in their voices. I hadn’t felt pain, because I was so drugged up on whatever they had given me, but I did
feel
. I felt their hands and mouths on me, squeezing, pinching, twisting, and slapping and biting.

“Eventually, I fell unconscious,” I told Grant, still stuttering and crying. My eyes were unfocused, staring at the window behind him, staring into the past. “I stayed that way. I don’t know how long they did…what they did…I was missing more than twelve hours by the time I came to on the floor.”

Shaking so hard that my knees threatened to give out on me, I finished telling him about the memories that had haunted me for years.

“I can’t remember most of it,” I whispered, finally looking at his ashen face. “But they must have...” I swallowed and lightly touched my thigh, high and close to my vagina. “It was here, and in between my…my…” I slowly looked over my shoulder and down at my bottom. “There,” I whispered. “It was crusted on my chest, and…” I held back a sob. “And I could taste it in my mouth.”

Grant lowered his head and closed his eyes tightly. His hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, and with a very controlled voice, he asked a question.

“What is ‘it’?”

“You know what it is,” I whispered. “You have two kids, you don’t need me to tell you what they left behind, on and inside me.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t unclench his fists, and he seemed not to even breathe.

“Continue,” he whispered hoarsely.

“I was scared,
really
scared for the first time ever. I went to the emergency room, and it was there that I learned that I had bite marks…on my back, my breasts…everywhere…” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. I was still sobbing softly, but feeling weak and exhausted. “They did a rape kit, but none of them were in the system. They could have been arrested ten thousand times for various things, but if their DNA isn’t in the system…” I shrugged. “You know how that goes…”

“Is that why you got clean?” he asked, still unmoving.

“Ultimately, yes.” I wiped at my eyes.

Grant stood immobilized for another moment longer before finally opening his eyes and looking at me. They were glazed, not with tears or remorse, but with unbounded fury. Anger was evident in every inch of his body as his muscles tensed and his jaw clenched.

He dropped his eyes and walked past me. Surprised, I turned and followed his progress through teary eyes as he walked down the hall. I heard the bedroom door slam just before he roared, “Fuck!”

Something crashed against the wall and he roared again, and something else crashed to the floor. Then it was quiet.

I stood outside the nook, anxiously switching from foot to foot and watching the hallway as Dusky paced anxiously around the ware-home. I didn’t know if I should go to Grant or not. I had never seen that level of fury in him, ever, not even when I did some really fucked-up things. I wasn’t afraid of
him
, but I was afraid in general.

A few minutes later, just when I considered going back there, I heard the door open and Grant appeared seconds later. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and had his sneakers on. He didn’t look at me as he walked toward the door, and he didn’t say a word before exiting and closing the door behind him.

I stood there stunned for several seconds before I made my feet move. I dropped his shirt on the floor and ran to the door. By the time I reached the railing, he was on his bike, rolling out of the garage.

He left. Without a word, without a wave, or a glance.

Chapter Fourteen

Grant didn’t come back that night, and I was much too stubborn to pick up my phone and call him. I wasn’t going to chase him when only a few weeks ago I was chasing him
away
. I also wasn’t going to chase him because he ran away when I was shredded and vulnerable after he’d promised he would never leave me again. Even if he didn’t mean it to be forever, he still took the yellow-bellied, dastard way out and that was unacceptable.

The following morning, I took my damn dog, grabbed most of my personal belongings, packed them into my car, and went home. I wasn’t home for more than twenty minutes when someone banged on my door. I opened it automatically, assuming it was old Mr. Gibbons. I was wrong.

Grant’s herculean body filled my doorway. His hands gripped the frame like he had to himself for something. He looked like hell. His eyes were bloodshot, his shirt was rumpled, and his jaw was unshaved. He was also still very angry, but behind his simmering rage was a deep sorrow.

“How did you get up here?” I asked him, my voice hoarse. I didn’t invite him in, even though Dusky was panting happily beside me.

“I told Mr. Gibbons that we had a fight and that I wanted to apologize but I knew you wouldn’t let me in. Why are you here?” His voice sounded worse than mine, as if he had been screaming all night.

“I live here,” I answered flatly.

“You barely live here. You’ve been mostly living with me in the ware-home. Why are you
here
? Why did you take your things and our dog and leave?”

“He’s
my
damn dog! And what did you expect me to do?”

“Let me in so we can talk.”

My voice cracked and quavered with emotion. “There is nothing to talk about. You
fucking asshole
,” I hissed as I began to cry. Pointing my finger at his chest, I said, “You
promised
me that you would never leave again. You
promised
. I was shredded and you
left
.”

Grant dragged a hand over his face doggedly before resting his eyes on me again.

“If I didn’t leave, I would have destroyed the whole damn house,” he said in a hushed, gruff voice. “I didn’t want to inadvertently hurt you.”

“You couldn’t say that before leaving?” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

“You dropped a fucking atomic bomb on me last night, Mayson!”

“I have been living with this for
eleven years
!” I shouted in his face, and then after a few seconds, my voice dropped to a whisper. “I
can’t
run away like you did. I have tried, but I found that I cannot run away from myself.”

I wiped angrily at my tears. I was so disgusted with myself for bawling like a child.

His voice quaked. “I didn’t run away. I couldn’t comfort you because I didn’t have any control over my anger. I didn’t want to hurt you!” He reached for me and put his big hand on my face. His thumb brushed away my falling tears. “Come back home with me.”

I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch, holding onto his hand with both of mine, but only for a moment. I carefully removed his hand from my skin and released it.

“I was never good enough to be with you,” I told him, trying to hold my sobs back. “I still don’t know why you ever loved me. I’m tainted and dirty. I’ll never be able to completely wash away the drugs and what I allowed to happen to me. Heroin will always be a part of me. Those men will always be a part of me. I will always be this ugly person with an ugly past and that past will always be present with me. I can’t be with you and your kids, Grant.”

He looked like I just ripped his heart out of his chest with my bare hands. His face was a mask of disbelief and pain, and it was killing me.

“You still don’t see yourself,” he whispered, more to himself than to me. “Don’t do this, Mayson.”

“You have to go,” I whispered, looking away from his broken face. I began to back up and close the door at the same time.

“Baby Girl,” he whispered. “Don’t.”

I did. I closed the door and turned the locks. I knew he was still there, though. I didn’t hear anything, but I could feel him there, silently begging me to change my mind and open the door. I could almost picture his forehead resting against the cool metal.

I backed away with one hand over my mouth to muffle the sound of my sobs. If he wanted to, Grant could use the key I had given him and let himself in. He could come inside and plead with me, argue with me, and try to change my mind, but I stood in the living room watching the door for a very long time. He didn’t come in.

Finally, when I thought that enough time had passed, I went back to the door and put my eye to the peephole. The hallway was empty.

Grant was gone.

“Mayson, wake up.” Someone tapped my face lightly with an open hand. “Mayson? Can you hear me? Wake the fuck up.”

When he pried open my eyes, I groaned.

“What?” I moaned drowsily, trying to bat away his hands, but I felt too weak.

The blanket was torn away from me and one arm was lifted. I felt his fingers exploring, searching.

“How much did you take?” he asked. “Did you do it through your arm?”

“Get off me.” My words were mumbled as I tried to roll away from him, but he wouldn’t release my arm.

“Wake the hell up! Tell me how much you took.”

I opened my eyes and glared at Kyle Sterling as best as I could.

“I didn’t do it.”

“Bullshit,” he countered. “If you didn’t do it, what the hell is this?” He held up the pieces of my handy dandy heroin kit. It contained two spoons, syringes and needles, an elastic band, and alcohol wipes. The only thing missing was the actual heroin.

“I didn’t do it,” I repeated, staring at the paraphernalia.

“It was right here on your nightstand,” Kyle said.

“Right. It was right there. Under a million and one animals and flowers made out of paper. If I did it, there wouldn’t be any origami. Besides, those are just instruments, not the actual drug.”

“Maybe the actual drug isn’t here because you used it.”

“Or maybe it isn’t there because I didn’t do it,” I snapped.

He stared at me for a long time before finally looking away and getting up from my bed. I reached for the blanket at the foot of the bed and pulled it back over my body, covering my head, too. Kyle snatched it away again.

“Get up,” he commanded and began yanking open the curtains to let in blinding sunlight.

I groaned again, curling into a fetal position and covering my head with a pillow, but he took that away and angrily threw it across the room.

He glared at me before letting himself into my closet. “You took
something
. You look drugged. What did you take?”

“Sleeping pills,” I said irritably, slowly pushing myself into a sitting position. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”

“How many sleeping pills?” He ignored my question as he moved deeper into the closet.

“Three.”

“And what is the prescribed dose?”

“One.”

Kyle stepped out, with his hands on his hips, looking furious.

I snickered. “You just came out of the closet.”

Wearing his bitch face, he asked, “What happened?”

I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. “It’s much too early for this.”

“It’s three in the afternoon,” he shouted before returning to my closet.

“Why did I give you a key again?” I murmured. I leaned back against the headboard and closed my eyes again.

“You gave me your key so that I can check up on you if I suspect that you are going to go on another binge and overdose again,” he said a moment later as he tossed something onto my bed. I opened one eye and peeked.

“What is that?” I pointed at the shirt and jeans.

“Clothes. Get dressed. Now.”

“You don’t like my underwear, Sterling?” I asked with a teasing smile I didn’t really feel.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said, ignoring me again. “But if you want to keep your job, you need to pull your shit together. You didn’t call out and no one could reach you. When your boss shot me an email, I tried to cover for you and tell her you were down with the flu, but I don’t know if she believes me. You’re still on probation, Mayson. They can make you take a drug test when you go back.”

I pulled my trembling fingers through my curls. “I didn’t mean to not call, but I was kind of knocked out.”

Kyle narrowed his eyes and asked, “If they test you, will you pass, Mayson?”

“I told you I didn’t do it,” I whispered.

“That’s exactly what a drug addict would say.”

I couldn’t even argue with that. How many times in the past had I said that I wasn’t high while I was soaring? He was right, and I didn’t know how to prove myself without pissing in a cup right then and there.

“I’m awake and clearly not high on anything right now, so you’ve done your service. You can go now.”

“Put your clothes on,” he said in his Batman voice. “I’ll be in the living room waiting for you.”

He left me alone after giving me a dark look.

I chose to take a shower before getting dressed. I stayed under the hot water for too long, sometimes staring at the tiled wall for long moments, unblinking and reliving the pieces of my violation that I could remember. I also relived the look on Grant’s face as I told him about it, and the look on his face before I closed my door on him and shut him out of my life...

After I got out of the shower and got dressed, I found Kyle waiting patiently for me in the living room. His suit jacket was hanging on the back of a dining chair in the corner, his tie was loosened and the sleeves of his shirt were folded up to his elbows. He meant business.

I sat down on the couch, feeling much less groggy than I had been when Kyle first woke me up. I looked around my apartment. It felt like something was off, and then it hit me.

“Where’s my dog?” I questioned, swinging my head back and forth as if I’d find him hiding somewhere. There wasn’t really anywhere for him to hide.

“You were so messed up that you don’t know what happened to your dog?” He crossed his arms as he gazed at me with derision.

“This is why I don’t have children,” I said pointedly. “Where is he?”

“I paid your neighbor to take him for a few hours. He needed to be walked and fed.”

I felt like a neglectful parent. I racked my brain as I tried to remember the last time I had taken Dusky for a walk or fed him. After Grant had left, I’d spent my morning and afternoon just trying to breathe. It was as if when I’d closed the door between us, all the oxygen was left on his side of the door.

“Tell me what happened.” His tone was unyielding.

I closed my eyes for a moment and then opened them slowly.

“I told Grant about the…the…” I swallowed hard and tried to force my mouth to say the word that I hadn’t been able to say, or even think. It was a word that made it
real
. You can’t come to any other conclusions with the word because it can only mean one thing. “I told him about the rape,” I said quickly.