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She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, but the expression on her face is unreadable. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.” Suddenly, her eyes widen with horror. “Oh god. You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”
Smirking faintly, I shake my head.
She breathes a sigh of relief. Probably because she didn’t want to make out with someone else’s boyfriend, but maybe a little bit because she senses that I’d make her mine regardless, and she’s not up for all that drama.
Her instincts about me haven’t been terrible so far.
“When I see something I want, I take it,” I say to confirm her suspicions. “Doesn’t matter what’s in the way.”
“That’s hardly reassuring,” she murmurs.
“I’m not trying to reassure you.”
“Then whatareyou trying to do?”
I shrug. “Just being honest with you.”
She looks back at me over her shoulder. “Why do I feel like that’s a privilege you don’t always offer people?”
I smile. “Because you have very good instincts.”
She doesn’t smile back. “Why me?” she asks soberly.
“Just feel like seeing how it goes. Now, tell me about this other guy.”
A frown flickers across her face. I catch sight of it before she focuses her attention on searching for clues, but really, she just wants to avoid my gaze. “I told you, there’s no guy. I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Not that guy. The one that made you hate kissing.”
“That is… incredibly personal and none of your business.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Frowning, she looks back at me. “I’m not going to dredge up my past traumas for your amusement, Silvan.”
“Wasn’t looking to be entertained by them. Just trying to understand you better. Bad breakup? Cheater? Just a terrible fucking kisser? What’s the deal?”
“It wasn’t a breakup because I never actually dated him. We were friends. Or I thought we were,” she mutters, looking down.
“Until?”
Her gaze snaps back to me. Anger glints in her eyes, but I know it’s not really for me. “Until we went to a party one night without our other friends. He was all over me, and I didn’t like it, so I left. But he’d been drinking, and I was supposed to be his designated driver. He called me at two in the morning asking me to come back, threatening to get behind the wheel and drive over to my house if I didn’t. I was used to him being… pushy when he was single and we hung out while he was drinking, but I didn’t want him to kill himself or someone else driving drunk, so I went back.”
I don’t need to hear the rest of the story to know that was a mistake.
“Did he rape you?” I ask bluntly.
She stares at me, wide-eyed and aghast that I would use that word. “No!” she says, her voice rising in pitch. “I mean… That’s… not what happened. He just wanted to get in my pants and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Sounds familiar.
I consider her words. “And did you let him?”
She hesitates for a moment, then shakes her head slowly. “No, but he wouldn’t stop, and I was afraid he was going to… Things happened that I didn’t want to happen, and afterward, I felt so gross. I couldn’t take enough showers to feel clean. I wanted to scrub all my skin off. Then to make matters worse, he must have realized he’d messed up once he was sober because he decided to get ahead of it. Told our friends we’d hooked up, and I’d been into it, but then I got all weird afterward. He made it sound like I just…” She stops talking and shakes her head. “Anyway, I stopped hanging out with all of them after that. Istopped hanging out with everyone. That’s why my mom made me come to this stupid party.”
That last bit causes my eyebrows to rise. “You live with your mom?”
She shakes her head. “Not technically. I wanted a chance to live on my own when I started college, so I’m staying in a dorm, but I have three roommates and we all share one bedroom. It’s difficult. So more often than not, I spend the night at home with my mom anyway.”
