On Solid Ground: Sequel to in Too Deep (42 page)

I shook my head against his warm body and a sob slipped out. I turned my head into his chest and cried.

“Gracie, you gotta tell me what’s going on. This is killing me. Please, baby girl.”

“Jake, it was a rape.” A shrill whimper slipped from my throat, followed by a guttural wail. He squeezed me into him, and I sobbed and choked through the next sentence. “I dreamed I was being raped by a bunch of drunk Sigma Chi brothers. And Noah was the one who held me down.” Jake’s arms tensed so violently, it felt like he would crush me. His breathing became shallow, and he rocked me back and forth.

“But that was a dream. Right?”

“That was. But what the investigators found on those DVDs wasn’t just Noah and I.”

I wanted so badly to protect Jake from the pain that would come with what I had to tell him. But there was no way I could keep it a secret. It would eat me alive. And if I had learned anything this summer, it was that you need to digest trauma as soon as you can, because stuffing it will only make it harder to deal with later.

Jake sucked in a breath and choked out a sob. He knew what I was going to say, but it needed to be said...out loud. I needed to exorcise
this
demon immediately, because it was the biggest of them all. “Jake, the DVDs were a recording of exactly what I had dreamed. Noah must have drugged me or something, because I don’t remember it actually happening.” I sobbed and pounded on his chest. “The investigator said the DVD was a recording of a sexual encounter with one female and five males.”

I felt Jake’s jaw get tense, and I could hear his teeth grinding. I looked up at him, and he opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He shook his head, and tears fell from his eyes. I rubbed his chest and pressed kisses into it.

“It was me, Jake. They raped
me
.”

And with those words, Jake flew from the bed and put his fist through the hollow core door. Blood rushed to the surface of the torn skin on his knuckles. He didn’t say a word, but he paced. Sam slowly opened the door and peeked in.

“Dude, what the fuck?” He motioned toward the splintered hole in the door.

Jake grabbed Sam by the arm and pulled him into the hallway. The door was slightly ajar, and at one point, I saw Sam fall back against the wall and rub his face. For quite some time, their fiery voices and muffled grunts created a threatening clamor that sent chills through my body. Finally, Sam’s voice hovered in volume above Jake’s.

“We gotta swallow this for now, man. If we lose our shit, we can’t be what Gracie needs us to be right now. We need to give her strength by staying in control. We can fuck Noah up later. Jake! Look at me. Swallow it. For Gracie.” Sam put his hand on Jake’s shoulder, and they both nodded then walked into the room. Sam’s eyes dropped, and he spoke his sympathy with no words. I could read it in his expression. He stood motionless with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. Jake slowly lowered himself to sit next to me. He took my hands in his, and he spoke in a voice that could have calmed an angry sea.

“Gracie, you are so beautiful, and I love you so much it hurts. You’ll get through this, and you’re going to be okay. But you won’t do it alone. You’ve got us.” He looked back, and Sam nodded. “Baby girl, this doesn’t change anything. Who you are in our eyes, in our hearts, remains the same beautiful girl we’ve always loved. Now, we’re going to take you down to the station and you’re going to make a statement.”

I nodded. Jake helped me to my feet. Sam walked over, and Jake stepped aside.

“Gracie, you’re my hero.” He threw his arms around me, and we cried.

Sam drove, which was good, because his old car had bench seats, and I needed them both as close as I could get them. Sam kept his arm around me and Jake held tight to both my hands. I cried, my knees bounced, and I bit the inside of my cheek until I could taste the blood.

I walked up the steps to the old brick building flanked by and hand-in-hand with my two favorite men on the planet.

Fifty-five

Becki

I hugged my best friend as tight as I could and I lost it. “Son of a bitch!”

I had been both nervous and excited for this lunch date because of the news I had to tell Gracie. But after what she’d just told me went down that morning, I wasn’t sure how I could tell her
my
news and not throw her for another loop. I didn’t know how she would take it. Lord knows, I’m not one to hold back, but this was big, and Gracie was my best friend. I wouldn’t dream of just blurting it all out at once. I needed to ease her into it.

“Gracie, I am so sorry.” I knew I didn’t need to say anything else. She understood that there was nothing I could say that would make it go away.

“Becki, thank you for always being there for me. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you.” I used my sleeve to wipe away a tear about to drip from her chin.

“You’ve bought me your thanks in alcohol. We’re even. Promise.”

“We need to talk about something else, Becki. I’ve been crying for almost five hours. I need a distraction. And you need to move to the other side of the booth or people are going to start rumors about us.”

I moved and slid my tray toward me. “So, Gracie, you were afreakingmazing last night. I am so proud of you.”

“Thanks, Becki. I wish you knew what it felt like to just let go and do something your soul needs you to do. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s really how I feel.”

“Doesn’t sound stupid at all.” Shit!
That
was my opening. I can’t. Not yet.

“We only have a couple more summertime lunch dates. Are we going to keep doing this in the Fall? Like a whole senior years’ worth of lunch dates?”

“Gracie, we may have to plan different dates for our lunches.” Gracie looked up at me just as she shoved a huge forkful of salad into her mouth. She cocked her head to the side as if to ask where I was going with my comment.

“Huh?” She put her hand in front of her mouth so she could talk with her mouth full without making me dry heave. She knew me so well.

God, I was going to miss her. “Gracie, so last night Calon walked me home. And—”

“Becki, listen, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about him. He’s really got some stuff going on. Stuff he’s trying to work through. It’s not my place to tell you, but—”

“I know about Chloe.”

“He told you.”

“Yeah, and he told me about his feelings for you and that the two of you talked it all out the other night.” I sat on my hands and tried to contain my emotions. The night before, Calon spilled all his proverbial beans on our walk to my dorm. He’d walked me home plenty of times before, so I assumed we were at a comfortable place in our budding friendship, although I’d wanted it to be more. But when our conversation went deeper, it was like we broke through a wall or something that had been holding us apart.

“Oh, good. Becki, I felt terrible. I had no idea all this time he was working with me that he had feelings for me.”

“It’s okay. He actually said that when you two talked the other night, it helped him close the door on that part of his life and start a new chapter. And he’s into me, Gracie. He said he realized he needed to have closure with those feelings so his soul could reach out to someone else when she came along. He told me last night at your show, he felt something between us that he wanted to navigate.”

“Oh my God, Becki...you are one lucky girl. He’s so incredibly intense, I bet he—”

“Shhh, Gracie. I’m trying not to focus on sex.”

I knew what was coming. She dropped her fork, and when she tried to catch it before it landed in her lap, she hit her tray, which dumped her soda all over the table and into my lap.

“Shit! Grab more napkins.” She didn’t take her eyes off me. It was like she was looking at a stranger. I knew why. It was strange for me, too. “Becki, so, you’re telling me you’re not thinking about what it would be like to sleep with Calon?”

“Fuck, Gracie, are you kidding me? I said I’m
trying
not to let my mind go there.”

We gathered up all the wet napkins and piled them on her tray. She pushed both our trays toward the edge of our table. She obviously wasn’t going to finish that salad, especially when I told her the real news.

“So, back to rescheduling our lunch dates. Unless Calon told you he would only date you if you didn’t have Saturday lunches with me, I don’t see how this has conversation anything to do with our lunch dates?”

“Gracie...” I reached across the table and took her hands.

“Becki, stop it. Why are you getting so serious? I don’t like it when you’re serious.” Her face was tense and she had that uncomfortable fake smile plastered across it.

“Honey, look. Calon and I stayed up all night talking. He was telling me about the tour and his concerns—”

“You’re going with him.” Her face fell, and she dropped her gaze to our hands.

“I am.”

Dammit. I wanted her to be happy for me, but I knew the news was just too big. And after what she went through this morning at the police station, I felt like it was unfair to drop this on her today. Gracie didn’t do surprises very well. In fact, she hated them. She squeezed my hands, and when she looked back up, she was smiling.

“Becki, I am so excited for you. This is your first publicist job, and I truly believe Alternate Tragedy is going to be huge, like
really
big. And you’re going to take that ride to the top with them. Not to mention, you might get to finally hook up with your rock star.”

“Been there, done that.” I knew she was going to scream so I let go of her hands and held my ears. She just stared at me silently. I safely let go of my ears and grabbed her hands.

“
Becki!
” It wasn’t a scream; it was a god awful shriek.

“We didn’t have sex. We just kissed.” I suddenly felt shy and I wasn’t sure what was going on. I was the girl who would blab about how many orgasms I could have in a row and what Shawn did to get me there. I had no shame. I was an open book. But I guess “was” was the key word there.

“Becki, what is that look? You’re freaking me out with whatever your face is doing right now. And you’re not blabbering on about how soft his lips are and what he did with his tongue.” She reached across the table to my forehead. “Are you feeling okay? Who are you?”

“Gracie, I’m feeling fine. Last night, Calon and I connected on a level I wasn’t expecting. You’re going to laugh, but I think there were sparks and fireworks and all that mushy shit. It would make this booth melt if I went into detail about how our bodies reacted to each other, but I don’t want to tell you.”

“Now, that’s a first.” Gracie’s expression was priceless.

“Do you remember the morning you, Stacy, and I sat at the Café and you told us you and Jake had sex?

“Of course, like it was yesterday.”

“Well, when I asked you for the dirty deets you said something that I didn’t understand until this very moment.”

She smiled.

“Trying to describe to you what happened between Calon and I last night would take something away that I’m not willing to give up.” My stomach flipped over itself.

Gracie squealed, jumped out of the booth and back in on my side, and squeezed me so tight, I thought I’d suffocate. I knew why she reacted the way she did, because I felt it, too. We were both about to embark on something way bigger than ourselves, and it was comforting to have someone who got it along for the ride.

“Now, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I’m going to have to be the one to break it up.” My stomach lurched at the sound of his voice. The room suddenly was warmer than it had been twelve seconds ago.

“Calon.” His eyes met mine, and there was a whole conversation just in the way those dark green eyes held me. I don’t even remember getting Gracie off me or standing to walk toward him, but suddenly, I was at his hip, and his arm was around my shoulder.

“Hey beautiful.” He kissed me on the top of my head and squeezed me into him.

I thought my legs would give out beneath me. I was falling so hard for him, and I didn’t want to stop.

“So, you’re taking her from me?” Gracie stood and punched Calon in the arm.

“Nah, was gonna ask you if I could borrow her for a while.” He reached out for Gracie and hugged her into his other side. I never was the sentimental type. I usually brushed that warm fuzzy stuff off, but the realization that Calon and I had been hiding from something that could swallow us whole, simply because of the shit in our pasts, was overwhelming, and because of Gracie, we were taking a huge step together. I lost control of my tear ducts and one single tear got away from me.

“Becki Jane Mowry, are you crying? Again?” She knew my shit, and she knew I couldn’t hold back tears when something triggered my past. She reached out and squeezed my hand, and I was sure she realized she was no longer the only one who knew my secrets.

“No, one of Calon’s way-too-long curls poked me in the eye.” I lied.

“You want me to cut my hair?” Calon pushed me back with his shoulder and looked down at me. Those eyes. I was convinced he could get me to do just about anything with those eyes.

“No. Don’t. Ever. Cut your hair.” I stood up on my toes and kissed him on the lips. A jolt of electricity shot through me, and I could have sworn I truly felt my heart skip a beat.

What the hell?

“Come on. We gotta go if we’re going to make it to LA by Monday morning.” Calon looked at his watch and grabbed the trays from our table.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving.” Gracie put her arm around me and her head on my shoulder.

We had been completely inseparable since we moved to the Knoxville campus. We had been through the ringer together, and although this wasn’t the end of our friendship, it was the end of something. Maybe it was because we did most of our growing up and maturing together, or because the most hellish years of our lives played out since we met. Everything we went through made it hard to even think about saying “goodbye.”

Gracie’s phone rang, and as she turned to take the call I was almost annoyed that she answered it in the middle of our moment.

“Jake, can I—” She stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes bulged and her mouth dropped open.