Chapter 29 Lex #3
I need to get very real with her, need to paint the picture in vivid color, and spill my worthless guts until she truly understands. Closing my eyes, I dip my chin and put it all out there. There’s no other way. “You want to know why I didn’t kiss you back that night?”
Silence howls in the space between us.
When I find the courage to glance back up, I watch as her face changes, eyes glossing over with memory, with pain. She shakes her head like she doesn’t want to know.
But she needs to.
I take a step forward, pushing aside my shame, my defenses, my mental blocks.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I did want to, just like I wanted to up on that stage.
That moment at the party fucking haunts me, but when I said it was instinct…
it was. You caught me off guard, in an embarrassing moment of disrepair, because the first time I was ever at a party, a woman I trusted—who was a second mother to me—violated me.
” My neck burns with indignity. “On my seventeenth birthday.”
Stevie frowns, lets the words hover between us as she tries to make sense of them. Then the color drains from her face, turning her ghostly white.
A hand flies up to her mouth.
Memories flood me.
A dark room. Loud, pulsing music seeping through the closed door.
I hear a lock click.
I’m slumped over on a velvet love seat, barely coherent as alcohol tries to take me under.
Bianca has been feeding me drinks all night, promising me a future filled with stardom and twinkling lights.
Treasure and gold. She’s been attached at my hip, acting weird.
Almost flirty. I must be misreading the signals.
It’s the tequila. It swirls through my bloodstream, clouding my thoughts.
The room tilts, going in and out of focus. “Not feeling so great,” I mumble, slouching sideways before dragging myself back to a sitting position. I blink across the room as Bianca’s silhouette draws closer. We’re in her bedroom. Candles are lit. I need to sleep this off.
Raven-black hair spills over her shoulders as she peels a sparkly gold slip dress off her body. It pools around her feet like a liquid halo.
My eyes narrow through the dimly lit room, her shape distorted. “What are you…”
“It’s okay, Lex,” she whispers.
She’s naked, only wearing a pair of lacy underwear. The world spins around me while her words slur into background static. This can’t be right. I’m imagining things, getting confused.
Her promises twist into something more sinister. “I’ll take care of you.”
She’s always taken care of me. She’s been kind, nurturing, my safe place.
But I think she’s talking about something else. Something I’m too fucked up to understand right now.
Bianca crawls into my lap, presses her mouth to mine. My throat closes up, my heart free-falling. I feel my hands start to shake, my stomach flip-flopping.
“Think of all the things we can do together, Lex.”
She breathes the words against my lips while I choke on her double meaning and her Rose Chérie perfume.
Her tongue plunges into my mouth, hands roaming as she removes my shirt and unlatches my belt buckle.
I’m frozen, immobile, blindsided.
“No…” My eyes roll up, panic going to war with tequila and confusion. “I don’t want—”
“Shh, it’s okay.” Her palms frame my face as she tugs my bottom lip between her teeth with a sensual hiss, then swivels her hips in my lap. “You’re so talented. So beautiful. Just imagine the doors I can open for you, the experiences I can give you. You want that, right? I know you do.”
Stevie stands before me now, a tear tracking down her cheek.
Her lips quiver as she processes my words.
My skin swelters, feels like it’s melting, while my chest heaves with staggered breaths.
“She was forty-two years old,” I say, stuffing my hands in my pockets to keep them from trembling.
“She told me she’d take me on as her client, become my new agent.
She wanted to be the person who made my dreams come true.
She had more power, connections, a swiftly growing business.
She worked with adult actors and A-list celebrities and could take me to that next level.
So she propositioned me.” I swallow hard, choking back the memories. “Betrayed me in the worst way.”
When my own mother had turned cold, Bianca was warm, a constant presence in our household. I think I needed that—a maternal figure, guiding me, believing in me.
Then I was on the cusp of adulthood while she was making waves as Hollywood’s biggest up-and-coming female agent. Because of her friendship with my mom, I had opportunity at my fingertips. A gateway, an in . Something most people would kill for.
And she used that.
She stole something from me that night.
My head lolls to the side as I sluggishly bat her away, trying to escape, trying to make sense of the fact that someone I consider a family member—someone I’ve trusted since I was five years old—is trying to fuck me while I’m drunk and underage.
“Get off me…” I mumble, dodging another kiss, shoving her hands away when she reaches for my zipper.
“Relax, will you? I’ll steer you around the curves.”
She lowers herself between my legs.
I choke. Sputter. Want to puke.
Her hand slides into my pants. Curls around me.
Shock debilitates me.
I watch her face twist, her brows bending. Rejection. Revulsion. “What’s the matter, Lex? Do you play for the other team?”
I hardly remember what came next.
I managed to stumble from the room without my shirt, my belt hanging loose, while Bianca called after me and partygoers gasped and stared as I shoved my way through crowds and puked my guts out in the front yard.
I woke up the next morning in the back seat of my car with a thumping migraine and a sick feeling crawling beneath my skin.
Loss. Betrayal.
I was changed. Irrevocably. Eternally.
It absolutely kills me to say these things, to voice the words out loud, but I force myself to keep going, to let Stevie see the raw truth of it.
“I’m sorry for pushing you away that night,” I tell her, squeezing my eyes shut.
“But when you kissed me, I froze. I didn’t know how to separate the moments, the tangled feelings, and I was trying to explain it to you, but I just… ”
The shock in her eyes fuses with pain.
With guilt.
She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“All I could feel was fear. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t stop it from ambushing me and taking me back there.
I wanted to kiss you… Christ , I did. But that part of me…
” My fingers clench tighter, nails digging into my palms. “It’s broken, Stevie.
” I press a finger to my heart and open my eyes. “I’m broken.”
She steps forward, more tears spilling down her face. “Lex…I–I didn’t know,” she stammers. “I never would have—”
“Don’t apologize,” I whisper back. “I just need you to understand why I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be that night, and I really need you to understand why I’m fucking begging you to stay away from West.”
“Okay.” She nods, wide-eyed and stricken. “Okay. I will.”
I swallow and mutter quietly, “Good.”
We stand there, face-to-face, a few feet between us, the realization of all the things I just confessed slamming me in the chest. I’ve never told anyone that before.
Not a single soul. But now she knows, now she sees the deepest, darkest parts of me, and I can’t take it back.
I can’t erase the pictures unfurling in her mind, the same nasty, vile thoughts that keep me up at night.
Niggling panic pinches my gut as my pulse starts to race and sweat lines my brow. I grip the inner linings of my pockets, my hand clamping around the pack of cigarettes.
Stevie studies me, takes a small step forward. Her hand lifts like she wants to touch me, comfort me, maybe give me a hug.
But she second-guesses it, wraps her arms around her body, and hugs herself instead. Her eyes dip away, head lowering, as another teardrop makes a glittering pathway down her cheek. No more words are said as she inhales a breath, drops her arms, and moves around me toward the staircase.
I turn and watch her go, the pit in my stomach stretching, pulsating, hollowing me out.
Regret.
Regret that I’ve made her believe I can’t be touched, not when the cameras are off. Not when we’re alone, just me and her, dangling on the other side of the lie.
But I think that’s all I needed.
A hug.