Close: A New Adult Thriller (8 page)

Twenty-Six: Drew

I woke to the sound of my cell ringing on my nightstand. Laura didn’t wake. I untangled myself from her, grabbed the phone, and, stopping for a second to pull the sheets up over her, headed into the living room.

“Yeah?”

I’d been waiting for this call. It was Vasquez. They’d pulled in the football player I’d seen at Harper’s place for questioning, and he’d dimed out his buddy.

“What’d he give you?” I asked Vasquez.

“Pretty much everything. Names, places, dates.”

I fist-pumped the air. This was what he’d been hoping for. In exchange for his cooperation, we were prepared to cut him some slack. He’d likely not even have to do time. Lucky for him, because some white frat boy sitting on the mainline in prison was going to have his sexual horizons seriously widened by the other cons.

“It could get a whole lot better too,” said Vasquez.

I waited. I could sense the excitement in her voice.

“According to the State’s star witness, Harper was in the habit of recording the assaults,” she said.

I closed my eyes, and thanked God. If we could get that kind of proof, we’d be golden. Laura might not even have to testify. There was a chance that in return for a reduced yet still substantial sentence, Bentley Harper might plead guilty. If you were looking at fifteen years plus, then serving seven looked pretty good when the DA offered it.

“We have a warrant to search his beach house,” said Vasquez. “You in?”

I hesitated. More than anything I wanted to see the look on his face when we showed up, but Laura was asleep in my apartment. If we’d skirted close the line before, this morning we’d obliterated it entirely. If it got out that I’d just slept with her, I’d be in a world of pain. That was why I’d asked to be moved from the case.

“I’ll be there,” I said, killing the call.

I went back into the bedroom. Laura was starting to wake. I leaned over to kiss her. She was smiling, her eyes still closed. “I have to go,” I told her.

She grabbed my hand, and tried to pull me down onto the bed. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her back up. The warmth of her body felt so good, but I really did have to go. But I didn’t want her to think I was running out on her.

“I’m glad that happened,” I said.

She looked at me with those soft brown eyes. “Me too.”

“Stay here as long as you like. I’ll call you later.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

I didn’t want to say anything about the call from Vasquez. I didn’t want to break what we had built over the last few hours.

I got up, and crossed to the gun safe next to my dresser. I pulled out my holster, put it on, checked over my gun and holstered it.

Laura watched me. She didn’t ask me to stay. She wasn’t clingy like other girls might have been. There was a certainty to what had passed between us that didn’t require any kind of post mortem. We were together. It didn’t need words.

Twenty-Seven: Laura

I could smell Drew on the pillow I had tucked under my head. I rolled over, still sleepy. I would get up in a minute, but first I wanted to savor the warm glow I felt all over my body. I hadn’t had many moments worth holding on to recently, so I didn’t want to let this one go.

The last thing on my mind when I’d come over was for something like this to happen. But I didn’t regret it, not for a single second. And I wasn’t going to allow myself to feel guilty about it later.

The difference between Drew and anyone else I’d met (apart from the fact he was a man in a sea of boys) was simple and unobtainable, all at the same time. It was only now that I realized, apart from the usual teenage crushes, that before with boys I’d had to talk myself into liking them. They were good looking, or popular, or the kind of person my mom would approve of (or not).

With Drew it was different. I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to persuade myself. It was just there, that close to indefinable attraction that might only come along once in a lifetime. The fact that it had come along at the wrong time was too bad. I wasn’t going to let what Bentley had done take even more from me than it already had.

I wasn’t stupid. I already knew what people would say if they knew I had slept with Drew. After all, I was a victim. That was my label. That was who people would want me to be; injured, violated, soiled sexless.

Rape was supposed to function like a bereavement. You were expected to grieve for your loss, hide yourself away, and shun any kind of sex. You had lost something, and that something, as far as I could tell, was innocence.

Before that night at the beach house, I had probably seen it that way too. It was almost like there was a point’s system. Virginity got you maximum points of the victim scale that slid all the way to promiscuous. How you were dressed, or how much you’d had to drink, or whether you were wearing make-up, or whether you knew the person who’d assaulted you, were all factors in the blame game.

But I couldn’t live my life being the person society wanted me to be. Or, I could, of course I could, but I wasn’t going to. Bentley had drugged me and raped me, and because of that I had met Drew.

Good had come from evil. A man had hurt me, and a man was healing me. To push Drew away, to deny what we had, would be more of a sin.

THE END

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