12. Rae
12
RAE
H avana Nights looms on Collins Avenue in Miami, an art deco monument. I’m at the bar early to set up.
I need this gig in order to make my case for Wild Fest. Most of all, I need the line of partiers to vote for me. Normally, I wouldn’t ask for that kind of help, but I’m desperate. So, I hired someone to make graphics encouraging my fans to vote.
The club is full, Harrison talking to the owner and some patrons in one of the VIP booths. Of course he made himself at home.
The crowd is mostly people who want to escape for the night. I give them every ounce of my focus, sweat and attention.
I catch Harrison’s eye once, and I’m rewarded with a long, smoldering look of appreciation that adds to the high of being onstage.
When he finally turns away to speak with someone, I notice another man in the adjacent VIP booth watching me over the rim of his drink. Unlike his buddies, he hasn’t averted his eyes once in the last two songs.
I play my mind out. At the end of my set, I sneak a look at the voting for Wild Fest on my phone as I duck offstage.
Twenty-third. It’s a minor blip. But people can vote more than once. Ten times in a twenty-four-hour period, technically. Which means every person in line for selfies is that much more important.
“Two minutes,” I shout to security before ducking out back.
I need to catch my breath before heading back in.
The alley is a reprieve—no cooler than inside, but I inhale deeply anyway.
I’m going over what went down in my mind, reliving it with a breathless smile in this moment of privacy until movement at the mouth of the alley draws my attention.
A large, dark form.
Harrison.
I start to call out, but as he comes closer, I realize it’s not Harrison.
This man’s coarse where Harrison is sleek, jerky where he’s smooth.
“I was watching you in there. Making everyone want you.”
He wedges up against me, and I can’t breathe. My heart explodes.
“I thought you were someone else,” I manage.
“Come on. You want this.”
Really fucking don’t.
There’s a chance to lunge under his arm and run for the street, but I’m a second late and his hand goes around my throat and cuts off my air.
I grab for his wrist, fingernails digging into his skin. He flinches but doesn’t let go.
An icy sheet of fear slices me in two.
It’s not like what happened with Mischa. I was freaked but knew someone was only a breath away.
This is dark. No one is here.
The sounds of the party are distant, and no matter how strong I am on the inside, all that matters is this man’s grip.
“Miss?” security calls into the alley from way too far away.
I can’t speak, can’t breathe. I wave my hands, trying to signal.
“Hey!”
The man pulls back, and I shove at him and duck away, staggering down the alley toward the club entrance.
My surroundings are a blur. I trip inside, looking both ways, and find my way back to the green room.
I press my head between my knees and gulp air.
I need space.
“Raegan. Are you all right?”
Harrison’s voice comes from above me, but I don’t look up.
“What the hell happened?” he barks but not at me.
“A man approached her outside. Seems it triggered… this.”
Security radios the manager, whose voice I hear a moment later.
“I’ll take it from here,” Harrison says.
I’m swept into the back of a car, the leather seats worn yet too formal for the rawness eating me from the inside out.
I want to scream.
I want to die.
I wrap my arms around my knees and do neither.
* * *
Harrison
She’s gone.
Raegan is gone, and the woman curled in the back of the limo is someone I don’t know. Her cheeks shine with tears, her dark lashes blinking rapidly as she stares at the floor.
“Did he hurt you?” I ask, trying to keep my voice low and calm for her benefit. Inside, I’m enraged and worried.
She shakes her head once.
He might not have hurt her, but he scared the hell out of her.
Management said they’d captured the man and that he didn’t have a weapon. Which means he terrified her with his body or his words.
She’s swaying with the motion of the car, and I lean forward to tell the driver to keep driving. It seems to be helping, or at least not hurting.
“Raegan,” I say when I return to her, kneeling on the floor so I’m beneath her. “This happened before.”
She doesn’t answer.
“At my club?” I barely force out the words.
A slow headshake.
But my negligence did this—worse than this—to other women. Regret is heavy in my gut, a roiling grief that won’t relent.
“A long time ago,” she says at last.
She’s so fucking young now. That someone met her years before, wanted her, hurt her—it makes me murderous.
“I don’t talk about it.” Her grip on her knees tightens.
My fingers dig into the seat upholstery to keep from ripping the roof off the car. “If you tell me now, I won’t ask you to again.”
I need to know what happened. I can’t stand her keeping secrets, not only because I’m used to having full information, but because they’re eating her alive.
Her glassy eyes scan the street beyond the window. “I don’t want you to look at me differently.”
What the fuck?
“There’s nothing you could say that would change how I look at you.”
Her gaze finds mine, and it’s full of fear. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She takes a slow breath. “It was sophomore year, and my brother was having a party with some friends from campus. My parents were gone for the weekend. There was a guy from his class—older, preppy, good looking. Like my brother, he’d gone to our high school, and a lot of the girls had a thing for him. I thought I did too. Until I didn’t.
“We were under the deck outside, drinking. He kept saying I wanted it, and I kept telling myself maybe I did, but it wasn’t true.”
The streetlights fly past the window, but I don’t bother to look out. I’m numb to everything but the woman in front of me.
“Did he rape you?”
The voice sounds like mine, but I don’t remember forming the question.
“Yes.”
I die.
A piece of my soul shrivels up, but my heart keeps beating because she keeps talking, and I need to be here for her. With her.
“There are parts of the night I remember, and others I don’t. I woke up in my bed. I was…” She swallows. “I was sore.”
Fuck . “He slipped something in your drink.”
A nod. “I went over it a hundred times. That’s the only thing I can come up with. I remember not wanting to be part of it. But the party was thirty feet away, and I didn’t scream. I didn’t do anything.”
“Did you report him?” My voice is even, as if listening to what she’s saying doesn’t make me feel as if I’m being burned alive.
None of it matters. I’m focused on her.
“I went to the police station but couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t tell my parents, not at first. But the burden got to be too much to keep it inside. I struggled in school. Couldn’t sleep. Stopped eating. When I admitted to my parents what happened, they fought over what to do about it. My mother wanted to have him charged and expelled from school. My father disagreed.”
If my teeth clench any harder, they might break. “How is that possible?”
“It’s not the way it sounds. The guy was from a connected family. My dad didn’t like seeing me hurt, and he thought reporting it would hurt me more. He tried to fix it in his own way. Got me a new computer. A synth. I wasn’t able to do anything productive, so I threw myself into making music.
“It was something I could do when I couldn’t do anything else. I’d spend hours working on tracks. Mixing and mastering. I didn’t need to act a certain way. I didn’t need to feel a certain way. I could put my headphones on and drown out the world. Hell, sometimes I could even drown out my thoughts.”
My chest is raw, scraped down to my ribs.
I wanted to know her.
I didn’t expect this .
“When I stopped going out to parties, my supposed friends decided I wasn’t interesting anymore. The one person who believed me and didn’t leave me or make me feel like an outcast was my cousin, Callie.”
I hate that Rae suffered that kind of torture, and I hate that she kept this to herself. No wonder she doesn’t trust anyone to take care of her.
“I have one more question.” My voice is surprisingly even considering I’m a second from burning down the world. “Who was he?”
Before she can answer, her phone buzzes. She glances at the notifications.
“Fans are pissed I didn’t stay for selfies.” She curses. “I needed those extra Wild Fest votes. Did you know you can vote ten times in a twenty-four-hour period?”
It’s totally irrelevant given what went down. But it’s not irrelevant to her. She’s focusing on something she feels she can control to block out the grief. I know what that feels like. I did it after my parents died, channeling every part of me into building an empire.
I grab my phone and navigate to the Wild Fest page. “Here?”
She presses her lips together, nodding. “But you have to create an… account.”
Her voice trails off as I complete the signup. Then I vote for Little Queen, one time after another.
When I’m done, I tuck the phone away and look up to find her watching me. In her dark eyes and pressed-together lips, I see a semblance of Raegan returning.
“I’d like to stay with you tonight,” I say. “I’ll sleep on the couch. The floor. Whatever makes you feel safest.”
“I don’t need that.” Rae exhales heavily, and her feet descend toward the floor on either side of me.
My chest contracts as I take her in, a long sweep. “I do.”
* * *
Rae
When we get out at the mid-rise boutique hotel, Harrison lets me go first. Not because he’s being a gentleman. Because he’s concerned. It’s written on every inch of his handsome face, every tense line of his body.
I told him a secret I never meant so share. One I buried so far down it hasn’t seen the light of day in years.
And we can’t go back.
Tonight was my chance to make a statement that I’m worthy of Wild Fest. But by this time tomorrow, there’ll be a ton of comments about how I left without saying goodbye and no more votes.
Nothing was gained, and it feels like something huge was lost.
The elevator gets to my floor and the doors slide open, but he doesn’t move.
I brush past him. “You should go.” He planned to stay in Miami for longer, so he booked a penthouse on the ocean a few miles north of the one my gig secured for me. “I’m going to take a bath and go to bed.”
“I’m not leaving.”
My hands clench into fists. “I mean it. Fucking leave.”
“You were right,” he says from behind me, and I pause near my door. “Tonight changed something between us.”
My eyes squeeze shut. This is what I was afraid of. Our relationship has been filling a void I’d told myself didn’t need filling.
And now it’s over.
I reach for the key and slip it into the lock.
“I understand why you don’t let people in. I can’t promise to make up for all of them, Raegan. But I’ll fucking die trying.”
The raw confession as he steps toward me has my heart thudding against my ribs.
I let go of the key and turn slowly, the carpet soundless under my feet.
He fills the hallway in his dark suit. Somewhere along the way, he lost the tie. The blue of his eyes is like a stormy sea. His throat works, his scent washing over me as he closes the distance between us.
I trust him more than I ever thought I would. But he’s asking for more. To be let in when I’m vulnerable, when all I want to do is shut out the world.
I reach for the key once more, pushing in the door before pausing.
“You can sleep on the couch.”