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“I’m out,” I tell them.
All four of my roommates are out of their seats. “Oh, hell no, we’re coming with,” Maddox tells me. Not wanting to waste another minute, I don’t fight with him and the five of us pile into my Jeep.
The drive to Blaire’s apartment seems to take forever, and part of that is because I hit almost every red light on the way. The usually fifteen-minute drive takes over twenty and before I have the car in park, I’m already opening my door. The guys follow me as we walk through the parking lot to the girls’ building and as I approach the front door, it swings open, and Emree comes out wearing a pair of plaid button-up pajamas with clouds on them.
She looks behind her into the apartment before saying anything. “She’s in her room unpacking. We talked for a while and she seems okay, but I know she’s avoiding the topic of what happened Saturday night.”
I nod. “Thanks, Em. I’m going to go talk to her. She needs to know what happened.”
Emree opens the door wider to let me and the guys in. As I head toward Blaire’s room, everyone else stops and turns to the living room and takes up both the couches.
Her door is closed, and I lightly tap it before turning the knob and cautiously open the door. Blaire is sitting on her bed in a pair of sleep shorts and a black hoodie, looking down at a textbook in her lap. Her brown hair is tied up in a damp, messy bun on the top of her head and her face is freshly washed, looking brighter than ever.
She smiles as she looks up toward the door, but when she notices me, it is gone almost immediately. “What…what are you doing here?” She closes the book and sets it on the nightstand, replacing it with a pillow that she clutches to herself.
As I enter the room and shut the door, I don’t take my eyes off the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Three days of not seeing her, not talking to her, or even texting has been brutal, and I want nothing more than to go to my girl and scoop her into my arms and hold her tight, not letting go of her all night.
As I walk farther into her room, I gauge her reaction. She follows my movements as I grab the desk chair and bring it to the foot of the bed and take a seat. I lean forward and rest my forearms on my thighs. “You look beautiful, baby.”
Her nostrils flare. “Please don’t do that. You can’t come in here and try to charm me, not after what you did.” Looking down into her lap, she whispers, “You hurt me, Camden, more than I can even explain to you.”
I clench my fists to keep myself from reaching forward and grabbing her, wanting nothing more than to comfort the woman I love right now. “A lot has happened since you left, and I need to tell you all of it. But you have to believe me, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, happened between Chloe and me. I would never do that to you, baby. I love you too much.”
A tear falls from her eyes as she continues to stare at her lap. “I know what I saw, Camden. She was half naked, getting dressed, and your pants were undone. It was pretty obvious what had just happened.”
“Baby, please look at me,” I beg her.
After taking a deep breath, she looks up and she reminds me of the scared, hesitant girl I first met two months ago and everything inside of me breaks. I hate that she feels that way again. The last two months, I have seen a different Blaire come out. One who laughs with our group of friends. Someone who has become affectionate and loves being touched, whether it is something small like needing to have her hand in mine if we’re near or clutching me as I make her see stars in the bedroom. She has opened up more than I think she knows since we met and in a matter of a few days, it seems like that is gone.
While holding her eye contact, I muster up the strength to tell her what happened. “Baby…Chloe, she…she drugged me.”
Blaire’s mouth drops open and her eyes widen.
“She admitted everything Sunday. She was getting tired of me rejecting her and came up with this disgusting idea.”
“Camden…no. Please tell me she didn’t.”
I shake my head. “She tried. Apparently, with the roofie she gave me, I couldn’t, you know…get it up.” Shit, this is harder to tell her than I thought. Her eyes are filling with more tears, and she clutches the pillow tighter as she hangs onto every word. “She overheard me talking about waiting for you to get to the house when you and Em got off work, so she decided to stage it to look like we had hooked up to break us up.”
Blaire shakes her head as more tears fall. She tries to wipe them away, but they’re coming down faster than she can.
I continue to tell her about the events of what went down on Sunday. From when we went to Chloe’s sorority house, to Piper coming to our rescue and telling us everything she heard in the house about how Chloe was going to roofie and have sex with me. Blaire gasps as I tell her that I went to the police and how many of the officers looked at me like I was playing a joke on them because a man reporting an assault is rare, but when Piper, once again, came forward with what she heard, they believed me more. As I tell her about getting blood drawn and having photos taken at the hospital, she squeezes her eyes shut as if trying not to imagine what happened.
When I tell Blaire about the police arresting Chloe and the arresting officer and prosecutor calling to tell me she has been charged and that the dean of our school called me into his office to inform me that Chloe has been expelled, there is hope in my girl’s eyes. She has no more tears, but her eyes are wide as she takes in all the information I have dumped on her.
After I finish telling her about Chloe making bail and how her dad picked her up and took her back home to Miami to wait for her hearing, we sit in silence. Blaire has not said a word and she isn’t looking at me. She isn’t crying anymore either, and I take that as a good sign.
Finally, Blaire turns those gray eyes to me. “Camden, I—” she cuts off and clears her throat. “I don’t know what to say. I just…” Before I can blink, she is off the bed and lunges herself at me. I catch her and wrap my arms around her waist, and she straddles me and squeezes my neck, burying her face in the nook.
She sobs and the sound breaks the dam I didn’t know was ready to burst and I’m crying alongside her. I cry for the sixteen-year-old scared girl who had no one there for her, unlike the people I have now. I cry for myself, because until now I didn’t realize how much this affected me and how much worse it could have been. I cry for the woman I love, the one who has been hurting thinking the man who promised to love and never hurt her, the one she put all her trust in, could do something so horrible and destroy what we have built in the short time we have been together.
We cling to each other, not saying a word, but I feel her love through her body as she runs her hands through my hair, clutching it. She adjusts her body as if she can’t get any closer. As if she needs to be one with me after the short time apart.
After some time, she pulls away and rests her forehead against mine, her hands still tangled in the hair at the base of my head. “I’m so sorry, Camden. I never should have left. It hurts that I wasn’t there for you through this.” Her tears fall to my face, and I bring my hands from her waist to her cheeks, wiping them away. “I should have stopped and listened to you. You would have never done what she made it look like, and I know that in my heart, but my head and emotions took over and the image of you and her wouldn’t leave my head.”
“Listen to me, Gray Eyes.” She lifts her head and stares into my eyes. Hers are slightly swollen and red, and I can imagine mine mirror them. “I love you. I love you so much, baby. Never would I touch, or even think about touching, someone else. It made me sick when I woke up on Sunday and the boys told me what happened. I knew it couldn’t be true, but Mateo explained to me how horrible it looked. It wasn’t until we heard the truth from Piper that I was able to breathe a sigh of relief.”
She runs her nails through my hair. “You should have never gone through this. Chloe is pure evil, and I hope she gets what she deserves. What vile human drugs another like this?” Her eyes drift off and I know she is thinking about the scum who raped her when she was sixteen. I caress her face, trying to soothe her.
