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Leaning down, he kisses me. Hard. As if he’s afraid I’ll disappear. My hands snake up his arms and grip his bare shoulders. One of his hands leaves my face and descends, tightening around my waist and pulling my body flush against his. He’s not wearing a shirt and I can feel the heat from his body against mine through the thin shirt of his I wore to bed. He groans into my mouth, and his tongue glides across the seam of my lips, tangling with mine when they meet. I can feel him hardening against my stomach and while the thought of that alone would have scared me before, I know Camden wouldn’t use sex forcefully with me. He cares about me, and I think sex with him would be like what I read about in my favorite romance novels. Magical.
There is one more thing I need to confess to him, something I’m embarrassed about, but I know Camden won’t judge me for it or see me differently after he knows. At least I hope not.
Pulling away, I catch my breath. Looking into his eyes, they are brighter right now than I’ve ever seen them. Lust is evident on his face, and I smile at the fact that I do this to him. Me, the girl who has been too closed off to form any relationship with a guy for years. The girl who has no experience and, until meeting him, had only ever kissed two boys.
“I need to tell you one more thing.” Worry crosses his face and I grip the back of his neck, reassuring him that I’m here. “I like you, like a lot. More than I thought I ever would. But I need you to know, I’ve never…had sex.” I consider myself a virgin since my first time was stolen from me. While some may not come to that same conclusion, I don’t care. I have never willingly had sex with a guy before.
Camden kisses me on the lips. “Did you think that would scare me off? Baby, finding out my girlfriend is a virgin only means it’s going to be more special between us because you’re choosing me for something important.”
“Girlfriend,” I squeak out. I vaguely remember him saying it earlier when he was angry over hearing what happened to me, but I didn’t think anything of it. Hearing him say it again, my heart flutters.
“Yeah, Gray Eyes. Girlfriend.” He laughs and I can feel it through my body with how close we still are. “I haven’t done the whole ‘girlfriend’ thing in a long time, and even then, I don’t think I was that great at it, but this feels right.”
“Yeah,” I tell him, squeezing around his waist and leaning my head against his chest. “This feels right.”
“How about you let me take you out to breakfast? I have a team meeting this afternoon, but I’m yours all morning.”
“That sounds perfect,” I tell him. He kisses me on the forehead, and I get dressed in his bathroom in my clothes from last night while Camden gets ready in his room. The rest of his roommates must still be sleeping because the house is quiet as we leave. Emree’s car is also gone now.
As we drive to a local breakfast spot he says is the best, I get lost in thought. For so long I have worried about what would happen if I opened my heart like this and let people in. I have been scared that someone would hurt me again like Harvey did, like my parents and friends did. I now know I hadn’t been living for myself. There will always be bad people in the world, but there are the good ones, like Camden and Emree, and even Camden’s roommates, who make up for all the bad.
23
CAMDEN
Blaire was raped.
The top of my foot connects with the soccer ball as I kick it into the goal.
My girlfriend was fucking raped.
Kicking another ball, it soars through the air and makes aswishsound when it lands on the back of the net.
I can’t get the words out of my head. They’re running through there over and over, and I thought coming out to the fields and letting off some steam after our meeting would help, but it is having the opposite effect.
Blaire was raped. At sixteen. A fucking child. She had no one, not even her parents, there for her. I can’t imagine a tiny, scared Blaire going through that and having no one to turn to. While we were at breakfast, she told me some more about what happened after she was raped. How even her friends chose that douchebag’s side because of his precious status in their small-ass town. Small towns suck for that reason alone. If you come from an important family, they don’t give a shit what you do. Like rape innocent girls.
“Fuck!” I shout, landing another blow into the last soccer ball in front of me.
“Whoa, man, what did those balls ever do to you?” Maddox says from behind me. I thought he left with everyone else an hour ago after the meeting.
“Nothing,” I grumble. He starts jogging over toward the goal.
After kicking back the balls that have been collecting in the net, he comes back over to me. “Want to tell me what has you taking your anger out on our equipment?”
Maddox is my closest friend, but I don’t know about telling him what Blaire told me. Although I trust him, she confided in me when I knew it was harder than anything else. But I need to talk to someone about this.
“Blaire told me something from her past this morning that really makes me want to smash some stuff.” That’s the most I can tell him without breaking the trust she gave me.
My best friend studies me without saying a word. “She was assaulted before, wasn’t she?”
“How—”
“Something I overheard her say to Emree last night when I went out to the truck. She kept repeating ‘it almost happened again.’” Shaking his head, Maddox drops the back of his head. “Gotta tell you, man, I was really hoping I heard that wrong because fuck, someone as sweet as her shouldn’t ever go through something like that. No woman should.”
“She was raped. It happened four years ago. She was only sixteen, man.” God, saying the words out loud hurts.
Maddox’s eyes widen. “Shit, Camden, I hoped it wouldn’t have been something like that.”
