A few nights later, I stood at Bennett’s door, my hand poised to knock.
I’d hung his drawing in my bedroom and studied it every night before bed. It reminded me of
Bennett. His laugh, his eyes, his warmth.
The fact of the matter was that I missed him. And I owed him an explanation, at the very least.
I wasn’t ready for anything, but at least it was a start. I’d never opened up to any guy before, but
something told me he was worth it. That he’d understand.
He lived by a preconceived code to protect himself. And so did I. And he needed to know why.
I knocked three times and waited. I heard movement inside, and then a voice. A female voice.
“Someone’s at your door, Benny.”
Benny?
I’d only ever heard his family call him that.
Did someone else know him as intimately?
The door opened just as I considered making my escape.
It was Rebecca. The ex-girlfriend that I’d met at the art show. My heart froze instantly. I couldn’t
blink, move my lips, or walk away. I could only stare at her blue eyes and shiny red hair. Her pretty face
and impressive figure.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re Avery, right?”
And then I became unstuck, for self-preservation’s sake. “Hi, Rebecca. I was just going to talk to
Bennett about something. But he has company, so I’ll come back later.”
“He’s in the shower,” she said with a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “We’re going out for a bite to
eat. But I’ll tell him you stopped by.” I practically sprinted to the elevator, my stomach throbbing. He had definitely moved on. Maybe
seeing Rebecca again made him curious about rekindling something with her.
I lay on the couch, the TV turned to a random channel, a tub of ice cream melting in front of me. I
told myself I couldn’t get upset over this. I was the one who’d pushed him away. Just because I was
ready to open up to him didn’t mean that would fix or even define our nonexistent relationship.
We were in limbo. He was in limbo.
So I could understand him wanting to forget, to move on.
I thought I heard them walk by my door, joking and laughing, so I blasted the volume on the
television. Not two minutes later, my phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Bennett: Rebecca said you came by. It’s not what you think, Avery.
Me: I’m not thinking anything.
Bennett: Don’t pretend. Not with me.
Me: Okay. How about this: I have no right to think anything.
Bennett: True. But I still wanted you to know.
Me: Why?
Bennett: You know why. How come you stopped by?
Me: It was nothing.
Bennett: When it comes to you, Avery, it will never be nothing. It
will always be something. BIG somethings that I’ll always want to
know about.
A shiver raced through me. Even the tone of his damn text message got to me.
Me:
J
Get back to your friend. I’ll catch you later.
After eating a good chunk of that ice cream and watching a lame comedy, I decided to go to bed.
Apparently my sappy button was fully charged tonight.
I realized I was practically standing guard over Bennett’s purity; his damn virtue. And I needed to cut that shit out. Just because I couldn’t have him—at least not according to his conditions—didn’t mean
that nobody else could, either. So why did the very thought of him being with Rebecca—with any girl
really—make it so fucking hard to breathe?
When I heard the knock at my door, I closed my eyes and made a silent wish that it was Bennett
and not Bennett all at the same time.
As soon as I pulled the door open, he said, “She’s thinking about transferring her credits and
coming to school here.”
“So she can be closer to you?” I moved aside to let him in.
His dark-wash jeans and messy hair didn’t go unnoticed. Had Rebecca’s fingers been in that hair?
“Who knows? Not sure I care,” he said, and the heaviness in my chest lifted. “Anyway, I told her
I’d show her around campus today. So, I did.”
“And where is she now?” I sat back down on my couch.
“On her way home.” He sat next to me. Close enough that our knees touched. “It’s only a thirty
minute drive. She could commute here for classes.”
I stared at the TV infomercial. “And stay at your place whenever she needs to crash.”
He elbowed me gently. “Avery Michaels, do I detect a certain tone in your voice?”
I arched an eyebrow. “What tone?” I was so full of shit, and he knew it.
He turned to face me. “Five words or less: How did you feel when Rebecca opened my door?”
I fumbled with the remote. “I felt nothing.”
“Really?” A crooked grin draped his lips. He wasn’t letting this go anytime soon. “Let me see if I
can help you out. Maybe the same way I felt when I heard how Oliver talked to you at the shop, or when
you were standing at the door in your pajamas, with
Rob
.”
Heat splashed across my cheeks.
“And how’s that?” I mumbled.
He inched closer and fused his eyes to mine. “Surprised . . . curious . . . PISSED . . . jealous, jealous, jealous.”
“You’re bending the rules. That’s six words.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I thought I’d let you borrow one.”
I felt an electric current coursing through me. “Why?”
He smirked. “If you can’t say it out loud, then I’d be helping you out.”
My fingers fisted the blanket.
All at once he grew serious, his eyes large and sincere.
“Why
did
you stop over tonight?” His voice was soft, like a caress.
“I . . . I owe you an explanation for the other night.”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “I scared you, and I’m still sick about it.”
“You
did
scare me,” I said, and his head dropped. “But not in the way you think.”
He looked up at me. “How, then?”
“The way you were talking to me.” I took a deep breath. “It brought up some memories I had
locked away.”
“Shit.” He rushed his fingers through his hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, Bennett. It’s not like I thought you’d hurt me,” I said and then cleared my throat. “Actually,
I’ve never felt safer with anyone else.”
His breath hitched in the back of his throat. He raised his fingers to touch me, but then dropped his
hand. “You
are
safe with me, Avery.”
“It’s an idea I need to get used to.”
He nodded and then sat back, waiting on me. He became so still. As if he’d dissolved into the
furniture, afraid to even stir the air. Afraid I’d changed my mind about talking to him.
“When I was sixteen, my mom had a boyfriend named Tim, who was a cop.” When I looked at
Bennett, his eyes were wide and intense. “I always got the feeling he was checking me out or looking at
me in a different kind of way. The way he should be looking at my mom.” Bennett put his fist to his lips, but remained silent.
“He took an interest in me—in my schoolwork, my activities—he tried to build my trust. When I
started dating Gavin, my first love, Tim acted strange. Almost jealous.”
Bennett reached for my hand and I offered it willingly, even though I was ashamed of what I would
tell him next. Revealing this to him was like stripping the nerves from my body one strand at a time.
Painful, nearly impossible, and scary as hell.
What if he didn’t believe me, either?
I shook those thoughts away. He was not my mother. And he certainly wasn’t Tim.
There were few people in this world I trusted—and Bennett was quickly making the short list. He
had somehow embedded himself beneath my skin, made me feel secure and protected, and here I was
telling him one of my deepest, darkest secrets.
The flip side of telling him was that it felt necessary. Because saying it out loud made it more real.
And would help clear the shadowy corners of my soul. At least, I hoped it would.
My breaths came out in sputtering gasps. Was I brave enough to do this?
“Hey, Avery, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything.” He tucked a stray piece of hair behind
my ear. His scent wrapped around me like a warm blanket.
“Yeah, actually, I do. If not for you, then for me.”
He nodded in understanding as his fingers grazed my cheek.
“Tim and Mom drank a lot together and I wondered sometimes if he was trying to get her drunk
enough to pass out.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Tim started coming into my room in the middle of the
night. It began innocently enough. He’d feign being drunk and crash next to me, or he’d just rub my
back or stroke my hair. I never had a real dad, so in some twisted way, it felt kind of nice. Like maybe
something a real dad would do.”
Bennett was holding on to my hand for dear life, anticipating what I’d say next. But his face
remained neutral. “But then things changed. He started talking dirty to me. I was a . . . a virgin, and he found that out
just by . . . by touching me. And I became afraid of him. He had this way of threatening you while
keeping a calm voice and a straight face.”
“Fuck, Avery.” Bennett jumped up and started pacing. “I want to kill that bastard.”
Hearing him say that gave me the courage I needed to go on. He
did
believe me, and deep down I
had always known he would. I was just too chicken to admit it. I waited for him to get over his initial
shock. He took a few deep breaths and then sat back down. “I’m sorry. Please, I want to hear the rest.”
“I had this great boyfriend, and we were getting serious. I wanted my first time to be with Gavin.
Not
Tim.” Bennett cringed and I felt my pulse becoming more erratic. “I mean, I knew he’d be taking
something I wasn’t offering. He’d be stealing it from me. So technically, he wouldn’t have been my
first
.”
“Fucking scumbag,” Bennett mumbled to himself.
“This one night, I had a feeling Tim was going to make it happen. My mom got sloppy drunk and I
heard him telling her stuff about me. That I was dressing like a whore and that my boyfriend was a loser.
He was setting the scene, turning my mother against me. I knew she’d never believe me over him,
anyway. She was blindly in love with him.”
Bennett squeezed his eyes shut, anticipating the rest.
“So I hid a pair of scissors under my mattress. When he came into my room that night, I acted like I
wanted him to be there, so I could catch him off guard.” I gulped in several breaths to keep my voice
steady. “When he was really . . . getting into it, I reached for the scissors. I could have killed him,
Bennett. And damn, I wanted to. But I told myself I was only going to scare him.”
“God, Avery,” he grunted. “He could have overpowered you. Used the scissors on you instead.”
“I knew that going in,” I said, tears burning my eyes. “But I was willing to take that risk over
getting raped.”
I watched as Bennett’s chest moved up and down in harsh breaths. He cupped my cheeks, his eyes wide, fear coursing through them.
“I told him in a calm voice that my boyfriend had found out about us. And since Gavin’s father was
the mayor, he was threatening to tell him.”
When Bennett’s eyes locked on mine, I saw something different there. Something like admiration,
or maybe respect. Maybe for the sixteen-year-old girl who had taken matters into her own hands. Who
knew at that point she’d be completely on her own.
I was in awe of her, too. For being so brave—so self-possessed. It was one of the reasons I still held
on to her values, her ideals, her beliefs, so fiercely now.
“I told Tim that if Gavin hadn’t heard from me by midnight, he was going to tell his father
everything. And that stunned the hell out of him.” My tears had spilled over, and I couldn’t wipe them
away fast enough. “And I used that opportunity to stab him in the arm. I didn’t go deep, but deep
enough. And I warned him to never fucking touch me again.”
My body started shaking, and Bennett pulled me onto his lap, his strong arms bracing me from
behind. He covered us with the blanket and held me while I sobbed and trembled and relived that night
in my memory.
Getting it out again after all of those years felt like a release.
It was liberating and terrifying all at once.
“I am so sorry that happened to you.” Bennett kissed my head and whispered my name again and
again, until finally there were no tears left and I sagged into his chest.
“You’re so strong. So brave,” he whispered. He lifted me from the couch, and my arms cradled his
neck. “Let me take care of you tonight.”
He carried me to bed, gently pulled back the covers, and then tucked me in. He sat near the edge
and stroked my head. “I can stay until you fall asleep.”
I felt safe and calm when Bennett was around, and I didn’t want to be alone tonight.
