The Pretend Boyfriend 2 (The Pretend Boyfriend #2)(16)
Author: Artemis Hunt

She creeps up to rest her head on his chest.

“I believe you,” she says.

“About being baggage?”

“No. About when you said you didn’t do it.”

“Guilty until proven otherwise.”

“Tell me what happened.”

He tells her in hesitant bits and pieces, leaving nothing out. Theirs has always been an honest, no-holds-barred relationship. If she wants details on another woman, he’d tell her. He has nothing to hide, even from her.

“And here I thought you were coming back to the Galois,” she says, a little pensively. “I was hoping we’d go back to my place to screw.”

He laughs. “And here I thought you had met some dishy phantom and you were screwing him in an abandoned section of the opera house.”

“I don’t do things like that.”

“You should.” He strokes her hair. “I do.”

“Screw phantoms?”

He sighs. “I knew there was a comeuppance in there somewhere.”

“Brian, why are you scared? You didn’t do it.”

“I blanked out.”

“Did your blood results come back?”

“Not yet.”

“If you blanked out, then you should be technically passed out. You wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

“I don’t know,” he says guardedly. “I just don’t know.”

She stays silent for a long while. She strokes his chest, taking care to avoid his vicious scratch marks. She likes cuddling up to him, he knows. Staying in bed with him in the afterglow of their lovemaking. Talking to him. Skin to skin. Body warmth to body warmth.

After a spell, she says, “Why do you say that, Brian?”

He hesitates. He wonders if he should tell her. But maybe that’s why it happened. Because he never told anyone. Shit happens when you keep it all quashed up inside of you like a big bug.

He swallows.

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“That I would just be like . . . my father.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because . . . ” He pauses. This is so hard. So very hard. Harder than he thought it would be.

“Brian, did something . . . happen to you?”

She is treading very cautiously here. She is still stroking his chest, but her gestures have slowed down, as if she’s afraid to snap him out of his current pensiveness.

“When I was ten, my father came home one night. Drunk. My mother wasn’t around. I was acting out again. Refusing to do something he told me to do. I don’t know why I did those things then. Maybe some part of me wanted his attention, and it was the only attention I got from him those days. So he took out his belt, as he always does. He made me bend over the kitchen table and push down my pants.”

Brian pauses, the familiar twitch of pain that he has tried so hard to block out returning at full force, like a thundering gale.

“He whipped me, like he always did. But that night, there was something more. Maybe he was more drunk than usual. Maybe something happened to him at the bar. Maybe he wasn’t even conscious that he did it. But he took a . . . a . . . ”

He falters, unable to continue. Sam is very still on his chest. She has stopped stroking him. Her right hand tightens around his forearm. She is willing him to continue. Or maybe not. It may be something she wants to hear . . . and not hear.

He breathes. “It was a . . . ”

He’s too ashamed. He can’t go on.

“It’s OK, Brian,” she whispers. “You don’t have to say it. D-did he rape you?”

“Not with his dick. No.”

He’s relieved he has gotten most of it out.

“Did you tell your Mom?”

“No. I was too embarrassed. And part of me blocked it out, so for years, I wasn’t sure it really happened.” He takes a deep breath. “But I made sure I grew up quickly. I ate and ate and started taking self-defense classes. I grew tall and huge, so that he would think twice about touching me again.”

“Did you ever confront him about it?”

He senses the strain in her voice, the way she holds her muscles all taut on top of his body.

“Yes. I did. Ten years later, when I came home from college. It never happened again, of course.”

“And?”

He can taste the bile in his throat. “He doesn’t remember. He f**king doesn’t remember anything. Not even the beatings. Anything. He claimed I made the whole thing up. And some part of me wondered that too . . . if I’d dreamt the whole thing. If I’d hallucinated it. I was a very messed up kid.”

His breath is hot within his chest.

“Now I’m afraid I’m turning into him. Maybe that blackout is the start of everything. Maybe it’s all genetic. I thought I could hold my drink, and for a long time, I did. But I’m not getting younger.”

“Brian.” Her tone is urgent. She raises herself on her elbows to gaze into his eyes. “You are not your father. You didn’t do it.”

She is so beautiful with her hair mussed up like that. He wants to stroke her face, but his arm is all bunched up.

He says, “How sure are you? My father wasn’t always this way. I was told . . . a long time ago . . . that he was a very benign man. Then he got into drink, and it all went downhill from there.”

“You are not an alcoholic.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”

It’s true. This entire incident has jarred him. Shaken him more than he can ever imagine. Everything he thought he had known about himself has now been turned upside down and inside out. He feels as if he has been laundered.

“You did not rape that woman.” Her eyes are shining with some indefinable emotion. She squeezes his forearm hard. So hard that he can feel her grip on his bone.

“They think I did.”

“We’ll prove them wrong.”

“How? The evidence seems to allude that I did it. It doesn’t look good.”

“I don’t know right now,” she declares, “but we’ll find a way.”

He hugs her to his chest.

“I’m not in the right mind to think about anything,” he admits.

“You’re tired. Get some sleep.” She kisses his chest, and then she raises herself up to kiss his mouth.

A strange sensation suffuses his chest, spreading all the way around and about in fragments. He can’t describe it, but it’s as if his heart has decided to melt into a puddle which is now seeping everywhere else. His gut tightens. A choke enters his throat.