Stripped (Stripped #1)(45)
Author: Jasinda Wilder

I get home, and I shower and put on clean clothes. I fumble my way through an essay on the use of lighting in Schindler’s List. It’s a poor essay, as my thoughts are scattered at best. Finally, I give up and close the cheap, refurbished laptop. I should have taken the money. I’m honestly terrified of going back to the club now. I’ll jump at every shadow, see a ra**st in every customer. The horror of what I experienced was drowned and buried by the raw intensity that is Dawson, but now that I’m alone, it’s rushing back.

I put on a movie and try to watch it, try to distract myself, but even stupidly brilliant comedy like Black Sheep can’t keep my thoughts away from the hiss of that awful voice, the cruel steel of hands stripping me, crushing the air from my lungs. Panic becomes hysteria, which in turn becomes hyperventilation. I duck my head between my knees and try to focus on long, deep breaths. I’m on the floor, sweating, shaking and sobbing.

Lizzie finds me like this. “You okay, Grey?”

As questions go, it’s kind of stupid. I mean, I’m clearly not okay. But this is Lizzie, and she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But her presence forces a layer of calm over my panic, and I’m able to work my way back up onto the couch, wiping at my face and sniffling. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

She frowns briefly, then notices the movie playing on the TV, the medium-sized flat-screen Lizzie got for Christmas last year. “Oh, cool. I love this movie. Chris Farley is hysterical.” She plops down next to me, oblivious.

We watch the rest of the movie in awkward silence. Well, awkward for me. Lizzie spends most of it watching while texting. I should be getting ready for work right now. But yet, I’m not. I’ve never been late, never missed a day, never called in sick, even when I had the flu. When the movie is over, Lizzie half-heartedly works on some kind of science homework, and I finish my essay. Lizzie doesn’t notice that I’m not going to work. I feel like Timothy is going to burst through my door any moment and demand to know where I am. Or someone from the university is going to knock on my door and demand that I go back to Georgia.

Nighttime slowly rolls around, and I’m a mess. I’m jumpy, hungry, confused. I miss Dawson. I’m worried I’ve alienated him forever. I’m worried he’ll never give up on me and something will happen that I won’t be able to undo.

Eventually, I go to bed earlier than I have ever before in my teen and adult life. I lie in bed, dressed in a long USC T-shirt and underwear, and fail to sleep. I fail, because I think of Dawson. I don’t think of his anguished eyes when I refused his help, or his angry pose on the balcony. I don’t think of his rage-fueled driving. I don’t think of his nearly naked form as he changed into a pair of shorts.

I think of his hands, roaming my body. I think of his fingers inside me, creating pleasure I didn’t even know existed. Under the cover of my thin blanket, I slide my own hand down between my thighs, under my underwear, and I touch myself. For the first time in my life, I touch myself to find pleasure.

But my touch is cold and lifeless, compared to the memory of his hot, strong hands on me, and in me. I give up and try to remember how it felt.

I dream of Dawson when I finally fall asleep. The dreams take me to places that make me sweat in my sleep. I wake up throbbing between my thighs and panting, with an image of a totally naked Dawson crawling across a bed toward me.

Shadows obscure the parts of him I’ve never seen, but in the dream, in the waking memory, I can all too well imagine his lips on my breast and his hands on my hips.

However wrong, the dream leaves me desperately wanting it to be real.

Chapter 12

“What?” My voice is more than a little hysterical. Several students in the Office of Financial Services waiting room lift their heads from their phones and notebooks to stare at me in curiosity. “What do you mean, it’s been paid?”

The woman on the other side of the counter stares at me like I might be a little slow. “I mean…your balance has been paid.” She taps at her keyboard, then looks back at me. “In fact, tuition as well as room and board have been paid. You have a zero balance. An escrow account has been established as well, it looks like.” She’s a small woman in her mid-thirties, pretty in a frizzy, harried kind of way.

“A what?”

She frowns at me. “An escrow account. It means there is money available, ear-marked and arranged for auto-debit, for the remainder of your degree. For dorm costs and your food plan as well, it looks like. I didn’t know you could do such a thing, honestly.” She gives me a tiny, tight smile. “Someone likes you, Miss Amundsen.”

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

“It’s very simple, really. Someone has paid for the rest of your education.”

“I’m sorry if I’m coming across as stupid, I just—I don’t understand who would—who could—” I cut myself off, because I do know. I close my eyes slowly and try not to either cry or explode. “Thank you.” I whisper the words and turn on my heel to leave the office. Once out, I just sit in the Rover.

The leather is cool under my legs, and cold air blasts my face. It’s hot as anything outside, but the Rover gets icy in moments. The Rover has satellite radio, and I’m addicted to it. Musically, I’ve come to like everything, even hip-hop and pop, but my southern roots come through in my love for country music. “More than Miles” by Brantley Gilbert starts to play. This song, god, it’s tones from home, my home as it once was. I have a memory of riding in the front seat of Mom’s BMW, windows down and the wind tangling our hair as Tim McGraw blasts from the speakers. Mom loved Tim. Dad didn’t approve, since it wasn’t, like, Steve Green or Michael W. Smith or Steven Curtis Chapman, but it was always our secret, on the way home from dance class or during errands around town.

The song ends, and a female DJ comes on, chatters momentarily, and then breaks my heart. “Goin’ way back for this one, y’all. This is the ever-delicious Tim McGraw with ‘Don’t Take the Girl.’”

Mom’s favorite song. I bawl uncontrollably, and I let myself miss her, really miss her, for the first time in months.

When I’m done crying, I have to do something, or I’ll fall apart.

If I still have a job after being a no-call no-show Saturday and yesterday, my shift will start in about twenty minutes. If I don’t go, Dawson has won. He’s paid off my tuition, room, and food plan, basically leaving me with no reason to work.