A. Jackson - When We Met

“Wanna kill him, Misha . . . wanna hurt him for making you feel this way. For making you think you need to be ashamed.”

His words slammed into my consciousness. Images flashed. Me in a position so much like this, my breasts bared and my head thrown back.

I knew what it looked like in the video. Like I was lost in passion, like I’d wanted to be exposed, set on display. Like I was desperate for attention.

But I’d been in pain, both physically and emotionally. It had been my first time and Hunter had just rammed inside me before I was ready, after he’d persuaded me to ride him because he said that was the only way he liked it.

All of those warning bells had been going off, and I knew something was so off, because I didn’t feel loved or safe.

The worst part of it all was that he’d convinced me to let him take a picture. At least that was what I thought it was, because he’d actually been recording me.

A bet that he could get a virgin on top and a picture to prove it.

That’s all it’d been. A joke.

Horrified, I felt like every cell in my body froze, before it began to shake uncontrollably. I fell forward, keeping myself braced on the strength of Darryn’s chest before I crumbled.

I wanted to blink away the image, to assign it to coincidence.

But there was no mistaking Darryn’s words. He said he wanted to kill Hunter . . . for making me ashamed.

Darryn knew. He’d lied to me.

His eyes flew open as if he’d just realized the slip he made. He looked up at me with panic strewn all over his face.

“What did you just say?” I demanded, dread whipping through my entire being, a cold chill biting my skin.

I shivered and did my best to swallow down the nausea that rushed up my throat.

Rapidly, Darryn blinked and shook his head, as if he were searching for something to say.

For an excuse.

Oh my God.

No.

I scrambled in an effort to get away. Darryn grabbed my wrist, trying to yank me back onto the bed, but I jerked it away and fell to my knees on the floor. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me.”

I fisted the edge of the sheet and ripped it from the bed, clutched it to my front as if it could shield me from all the pain that tore me in two. Violently.

If I thought I hurt this afternoon? Or that night months ago when Hunter had stood there, laughing at me, taunting me, telling me I was nothing but a fool?

It didn’t come close to touching this.

I forced myself to climb to my unsteady feet, backing into the wall with the thin sheet crumpled in front of me.

Darryn slowly stood from the bed but stayed there at the edge, his shoulders dropped low as if it would give him some sort of edge, fool me into thinking he wasn’t just as vicious as the rest of them.

“You knew?” I begged through a whisper, praying he’d deny it, all the while knowing if he did, it would be another lie.

His throat bobbed heavily as he swallowed, and he nodded. “Yes.” The word was rough and ripped through my soul.

A cry shot from my throat before I could stop it, and I slammed my hand over my mouth, trying to keep it in.

But there was no keeping this heartbreak from pouring free.

“Misha . . .” He took a step forward. “Listen to me. I knew, yes, but—”

“Just sh-sh-shut up. Shut up!” My voice cracked. “I c-c-can’t believe you’d do this to me. C-c-can’t believe you’d stoop so low.”

“Misha,” he pled, taking another step forward. “It’s not what you think.”

“Did you bet?” My chin quivered with the question.

Remorse made a slow pass through his body, and he shook his head. “No . . . of course not. But I need to be honest with you . . . I was there the first night he made the bet with all the guys.” He swallowed again. “And I was there two days later when he brought the video over. I watched it with them.”

Agony twisted up my face, and I attempted to take a step back, but only backed into the wall. “Y-y-you . . . you were there? You laughed with them? While they made me a joke?”

Was that the kind of guy he was? Just as cruel, just as mean as the others?

“No” flew from his mouth. “Never. The night the bets were made . . . Hunter was drunk, spouting off his mouth like he always does. He started talking shit about how easily he could have this new girl he started dating, claiming you were a virgin. Then he showed us a picture of you and you were so sexy. Beautiful. And I thought there wasn’t a chance that you hadn’t been with someone before. I didn’t believe him. I just thought it was more of his stupid games, so I didn’t give it a second thought. All the rest of the assholes at the party tossed in money, saying he didn’t have a chance with you. It got out of hand . . . all of them started throwing out different things he had to make you do.”

And I could feel my heart crumbling. Splintering into a thousand pieces.

“Two days later, he brought over his proof. I tried to talk him out of it when he loaded the video to that site.” He squeezed his eyes closed. “But once it was there, I couldn’t stop watching it because there was something about you that drew me to you. Then when I saw you out front that day, I knew you were nothing like any of those guys played you out to be.”

I felt so dirty. Filthy. Like I could feel it crawling all over the surface of my skin. I wanted to scrape it away. “Get out,” I said as firmly as I could, feeling my heart cracking a little more. Because I had thought he was different. I had wanted him to be different.

“Misha . . . please. I’m so sorry.”

“Get out!” I repeated. “Get out!” I screamed.

Darryn winced, then backed away. He started for the door, paused to look back at me. “I fell in love with you, Misha. I’m sorry it all started at the hands of an asshole. But I’m not him. And you are definitely not that girl.”

He just stood there. So beautiful.

I wanted to believe him.

But he was dishonest. A liar. And he had made me out to be a fool. Again.

“Go,” I whispered quietly, but there was no question he heard.

He nodded, then stepped out my door.

Misha

Indy jerked the covers down. Bright light burned my eyes, and I grappled for the end of my comforter and dragged it back over my head.

“Come on, get out of bed, you have got to stop moping around,” she said.

I groaned a little more, securing the blanket tight around my body. “No. And I’m not moping.”

I was pretty sure the act of “moping” required walking, and since I’d basically been confined to my bed for the last seven days, I could swear none of that had been going on.

Indy yanked the comforter back just as hard. “Yes, you are moping, and yes, you are getting out of this bed. It’s been seven days. Enough already.”

So maybe Indy and I dealt with our pain differently. She went out, partied it out of her system.

I wallowed in it.

“It’s not enough when it still hurts.”

Sympathy softened her face when I reluctantly peeked up at her. She ran her fingers through my tangled hair. I hadn’t washed it in days. “I know, sweetie. But I can’t let you stay in here any longer. It’s unhealthy. Besides, the big game is tonight and Courtney wants all of us to come into Gruby’s. Her friend Amber has a table reserved for us and everything. It’ll be fun . . . take your mind off him for a while.”

I was certain it would most definitely not be fun, and even more assuredly it would do nothing to rid my mind of what plagued it.

Darryn.

I loved him and hated him, those two emotions all balled up into a big old mess of emotion that sat like a gloomy lump right smack in the center of my chest.

I still couldn’t make sense of it, why he would lie, other than the truth that he was playing the exact same game Hunter had been. I couldn’t believe he even knew him. Associated with him. They’d been friends. That in itself felt like the worst kind of betrayal. That every time he’d held me . . . kissed me . . . just months before he’d been sitting around a table with Hunter while he plotted the demise of my innocence.

“Come on, babe. Get up. Take a shower. You’ll feel so much better after you do. I promise we won’t stay long, but I can’t let you lie around like this any longer. You wouldn’t let me do it, so unless you want me to drag your ass out of that bed by force, you need to get up.”

I tossed the covers aside. “Fine.”

Indy grinned. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”

Uh, yes, it was. She had no clue.

My entire body ached when I rolled over to the edge of my bed and placed my feet on the floor. I gathered a change of clothes and headed to the bathroom. I turned the faucet as hot as it would go and let the tiny room fill up with steam that I breathed in, hoping the warmth could chase the cold from my soul.

I stayed in the shower for too long, until my skin was red and shriveled and I had a very irate roommate pounding on the other side of the door.

“I didn’t pull you from one hiding spot to let you sneak off to another. Get out of the shower. We’re leaving in five minutes.”

Shaking my head, I turned off the faucet and climbed from the shower, toweled off, and halfheartedly dressed.

Ha.

Halfheartedly.

Not even close.

None of my heart was in this.

But I guessed I had little choice in the matter.

Indy banged at the door again.

I went back into my room and shoved my feet in a pair of boots, glancing out at the waning day through the slats in my window. The sky was filled with winter clouds that had taken over Michigan the last two days, the approaching twilight just as dreary as I felt.

I hauled myself out of my room and downstairs. “Fine, I’m ready.”

Chloe, Indy, and I pulled on jackets and filed out the door onto the sidewalk. I struggled to keep up with them as they chatted and laughed, feeling none of the excitement that poured from them as they talked about the game going on tonight and how cool it was our football team was so close to winning the championships. Tonight’s away game would be broadcast live on cable, which of course Gruby’s would be playing proudly tonight.

Rain threatened and teased, spitting little droplets of water that chilled me all the way to my bones. Warily, I peeked up at the sky, my face immediately pelted with stinging dots of frigid water.

Great.

It had just started to really rain by the time we made it to the sports bar. We rushed inside with our heads ducked, pulled our wet jackets off, and shook them out as we stepped up to the hostess station.

Amber, Courtney’s friend, saw us from across the room, and she wove through the overflowing crowd, the dim-lit room so thick with bodies that people stood along the walls and gathered in groups around tables.

“There you guys are! Courtney has been waiting for you.” She grinned and grabbed some menus. “Come on, I have you in my section.”

We followed her, and I kept my head down, no longer feeling that ease that I’d so foolishly given myself over to in the last two months, thinking that no one here knew my face. It’d only been proven last week by the jerk who’d accosted me outside my building. All week I hadn’t made it to class, unable to face what was waiting for me outside the doors. If someone confronted me about it again? I wouldn’t know how to survive it.

But Indy was right. I couldn’t just keep hiding. That was the girl I’d been my entire life. Always seeking out the places where I felt most comfortable. Taking paths with the least risk. Doing everything in my power to shy away from anything that would make me nervous or apprehensive.

No doubt what I was feeling now was much more than just unease.

This was physical pain, pain that had been inflicted cruelly, everything about it unfair.

But what could I do short of running back to my parents?

That was no longer an option.

I settled into one of the barstools at the high round table, and accepted the menu from Amber. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” she said, “just let me know what you guys want. The kitchen is pretty backed up since it’s so busy, but I’ll try to get a rush on it.”

Mumbling another quiet thank-you, I turned to study the menu. I hadn’t eaten in days, and my body felt weak. Tired. I knew it was about time I started to pick up the pieces and took care of myself.