Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
hawk
“What are we doing here tonight?” Kendra asked, her eyes wide as I took a seat at the end of the couch. I patted my lap, and she kicked off her shoes, placing her feet in my lap as if this were something we had done many times before.
Everything with Kendra felt like that. Easy. Natural.
“Hanging out?”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Hawk. Do you often have women over and make them soup and sandwiches at—” she looked at her watch—“practically midnight?”
“Only when those women dealt with the madness that is flying into Logan Airport.” My answer was a poor deflection, and her deadpan stare called me out on it.
“Okay, fine. I’ve been here for nearly two hours, and we’re still dressed.”
“Did you come over here to fuck me, Kendra?”
“Isn’t that why you asked me?”
Her round eyes met mine, pupils dilated as she swallowed nervously.
“I asked you here because I wanted to feed you—”
“Bullshit.”
I shook my head, frustrated with all the men who might have taught Kendra, only to expect a fuck when invited back to their home.
But no, she might not remember what she said that night, but I knew something fucked up had happened to Kendra, and I wanted to know her before we ended up in bed together.
I wanted her to trust me to share that part of her when she was sober.
As it was, I felt like I had read her diary and invaded her privacy.
“What’s eating at you?” I asked, not letting her avoid the discomfort. I got the feeling that Kendra was used to distracting from the tough conversations with sex.
She shrugged and stared at the fireplace, licking her lips. She was unsettled, nervous. “We were flirting, right? Did I get that wrong?”
“Yes, we were flirting. No, you didn’t get that wrong.
I like you a lot, Kenny. You’re all I’ve been thinking about since the first time we met.
At work. You know, the place where I’m your boss.
And while I’ve checked with HR, and we don’t have any policies that forbid this, I know well that the line is gray and blurry. ”
“I’ve seen your dick, Hawk. I think the line has been crossed, no?”
Every time I attempted to bring a level of seriousness to the conversation, Kendra tried to deflect with a joke.
“You’re not used to this, huh?”
“What?”
“You’re not used to having a man see more in you than what you look like. Fuck, Kendra. Those losers at the bar, you could run fucking circles around them. Neither of them deserved an ounce of your attention.”
I pressed my thumb into the arch of her foot. Her eyes blinked, and her lips parted. A breathy gasp let out that sent a surge directly to my dick. Fuck, I was going to need every last bit of control I possessed to get through this night.
“Do you find me attractive?” Hadn’t I just said this?
I grabbed her foot and pressed it against what had become a painful erection. “What does this say?”
“Oh.”
“Wanting you is not a question. And if this were something I thought was casual, my head would have already been buried between your thighs, and you’d be screaming your way to your fourth orgasm.”
She clenched her thighs together in response.
“So, you’ve thought about it?”
“I’ve fucked my fist to that image almost nightly. For the rest of the nights, I imagined you swallowing my cock.”
“But not sex?”
“It’s all sex, Ken. But if you mean penetrative sex, I haven’t done that in ages. Years.”
“What if you trust the person? I have an IUD.”
I shook my head. “No. At this point, it’s been so long that I’m good without it. Yes, I have serious trust issues, but that’s no longer the barrier. I’ve decided that it’s something that is going to be reserved for a committed relationship.”
“What do you mean by a committed relationship? Are you saying not until you’re married?”
“No, but it would be with someone I could see myself with long term. You know, if I found someone who wouldn’t make me anxious if I found out she got pregnant accidentally.”
Kendra again averted her gaze towards the fireplace.
“I mentioned I was pregnant once before.”
I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
“Yes, you miscarried.”
“I told everyone I had an abortion.”
She continued to stare off into the fireplace. The silence hung between us, and I let it.
“I lied because the situation had been so entirely out of my control that I wanted to regain something. I needed that.”
Her gaze shifted to mine, and the light mood had grown heavy.
“Ken—”
She interrupted me. “Why do I feel like I can tell you anything?”
“Because you can.”
God, I wanted to know everything. I wanted her to tell me everything she’d already told me, but sober, and on purpose.
“I’ve never even told my sisters.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Hawk. I went through my entire childhood with them following me around and idolizing me. And it turns out that it was misplaced. I wasn’t anything special in the end.”
“You are special, Kendra. Fuck. Who hurt you? Who do I have to kill?”
I didn’t consciously mean to use the word kill, and her eyes flared when she heard the word. But her reaction was interest, not fear. She’d fought so many battles on her own, would she ever be willing to let someone help carry the weight?
“Who it was isn’t important. I’ll take that to my grave. He’s not worth jail time. Especially if it’s you doing the time.”
“Then tell me what you can. You’ve told no one?”
“Well, the Dartmouth Police have a rape kit on file. But that’s only because the hospital ER nurse encouraged me to file it, just in case I changed my mind.”
It took everything in me not to respond. This was her time to talk, and I owed her that.
“I had ended it with him earlier that week. We had been together all semester, and he had gotten a little controlling. It made me uncomfortable.”
She removed her legs from my lap and turned to face the fireplace. Her hands were in her lap, and I gave her the needed space. Her body shivered, and I wondered if I should stop her. Hold her?
“I was just supposed to stop by quickly and pick up my things. I thought his roommates were there so that I would be safe. But they had gone home for the weekend.”
She looked at me then, eyes wide as saucers, and she watched carefully as she dropped the next bomb.
“He locked me in his apartment and raped me. He kept me there for the entire weekend, and he raped me repeatedly, Hawk. And when he was done—he said he’d tell me when we were done, not me—he tossed me out. He tossed me out like a bag of trash.”
She watched for my reaction, her eyes searching. And, fuck, I was so afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.
“I was a mess, physically and mentally. And I needed to go to the ER to make sure nothing was broken. I’m not sure why I didn’t get the morning-after pill; maybe my record said I was on birth control?
I didn’t tell them much. I couldn’t. Shit, outside of my therapist, you’re it.
I booked the abortion within five minutes of the positive pregnancy test and was devastated when I miscarried.
Because that abortion was the only thing I felt I controlled around the entire situation. ”
I moved towards her, unable to keep the physical distance between us anymore.
“Can I?”
“Can you what?”
“Can I hold you?”
“You don’t think any less of me?”
“Why would that even cross your mind?”
“Well, there’s more. In the aftermath, he threatened me with photos from our time together. Videos of us in the act. Our sex life was colorful, and there were things he did that weekend that weren’t out of the norm for us. Things I had at one time consented to.”
“Ken, did you consent when he kidnapped you and raped you?”
“No. I know that. I knew that then. But I didn’t want to be dragged through the mud. He was respected at the school. And all he needed to do was to send off one of those photos or videos out there, and my credibility would be gone. Reputation? Gone.”
“Nothing came of the rape kit?” I wondered how that man hadn’t been caught when his DNA went into the database.
“I never pressed charges. And I guess there was no match.”
I wanted to know how she let herself trust men after that? How did she show up and date men and not carry that fear around with her?
“But to answer your question, no, I don’t think any less of you. I think more of you.”
“The answer is yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, you can hold me.”
I pulled her into my arms and scooted awkwardly until we were both spread out on the couch, her back pressed up against my torso. She leaned in to me, and we just stayed there.
“How do you even begin to trust again after what happened?”
She gave a wry laugh. “You act like I’ve found a way to do that. I’ve told my therapist and you. That’s it.”
“And you’ve been with men afterwards?” I asked before thinking. “Shit. Sorry, don’t answer that.”
“Hawk. Stop. I need your honest questions and reactions here. Don’t ask me only what you think is the correct thing.
I can’t have you treating me like a victim.
Yes. I have been with other men. At first, it was part self-destruction, but then it was how I regained myself.
I always loved sex, and I wasn’t going to let him take that away from me. ”
“You’re so—”
“Don’t say strong, Hawk. That implies that women who can’t heal are weak. Everyone handles it differently. This is my story, and mine alone.”
We lay there quietly for a bit when I heard a little snore. She had fallen asleep. I shifted her in my arms and carried her to my room.
“Hey,” I said when she started to wake. “Do you need anything from your bag?”
“Toothbrush. Can I steal a sweatshirt?”
“I have a spare. Of both a toothbrush and a sweatshirt. Do you want to sleep with me, or alone?”
“Not alone.”
I showed her the en suite bathroom and found a spare toothbrush for her.
“I’ll be right back with a sweatshirt.”
I returned with a Minutemen sweatshirt—not one of the new ones, but one that I had worn for years. It wasn’t just broken in; I had lived in it. It was my favorite sweatshirt. And in that moment, I wanted her wrapped up in me—in my arms, my clothes, my sheets.
She inhaled the scent when I handed her my shirt.
“I hope this means nothing to you. You’re not getting it back.”
“If I told you it was my favorite?”
“I’d say sorry, but you shouldn’t ever trust a woman with your favorite shirt. And I’d remind you, you own the team. Get another one.”
And then she shut the door in my face. I went to the bathroom in the spare room, changed, and got ready for bed. When I returned, she had started to turn back the covers.
“What side?”
“I don’t really have a side. I kind of starfish in the middle.”
“Of course you would take up the entirety of a California king bed.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, it’s not a surprise, though. Everything about you is so big. So, it doesn’t surprise me that you take up space while you sleep.”
I picked a side and plugged my phone in on the nightstand. She followed my lead and claimed the other side. Once we were both in bed, we lay on our backs and stared up at the ceiling until I broke the ice, rolled onto my side, and pulled her into me.
“Is this okay?”
“Mhmm.”
The mumbled assent was the last I heard from her. Her breath had evened out quickly, and she was sound asleep.