The Hardest Fall

Her name spilled from my lips, but I didn’t think she heard me. Neither of them did.

I stepped through the bookshelves and was on the guy in a few seconds, though it felt like several minutes had passed. I gripped his shirt and yanked him away from Zoe. Startled, he lost his balance and stumbled back. Before I could catch her, Zoe fell to her hands and knees, coughing and crying.

I was down on one knee before her friend could get to her.

“Who the fuck are you?” the guy roared, coming at us, but I ignored him and pushed Zoe’s hair away from her face.

“Are you okay? Baby, talk to me—you okay?”

She grabbed my arm and lifted her head, her free hand covering her throat. “Yeah,” she gasped, her voice rough and barely audible. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m fine.”

I helped her up and her friend took over.

The guy was still spewing shit, shouting and cursing, but I heard not a single word. My senses dulled and all I could focus on was this fucking bastard who had dared to put his hands on Zoe.

As I walked toward him, I took in his bloodshot eyes, twitching hands, and noticeable restlessness.

In three steps I was on him and none of it mattered. I punched him right in his nose and heard the satisfying crack. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the girls run out of the small room, but my only focus was on the bastard holding his bloody nose.

Shoving at his shoulders until I had him against the wall under the high windows, I reached for his throat. He managed to kick my legs once, his fingers grasping my shirt.

“How does that feel, you son of a bitch,” I whispered, slowly tightening my grip. “Does it feel good?”

He made a pathetic attempt at pushing my face, but he was much smaller than me and I slapped his bloody hand away with no trouble.

So focused on the guy, I didn’t notice Zoe hitting my arm until she was begging and shouting at me to let go.

“Dylan, Dylan, please. You’ll get into trouble, please stop. Dylan, let him go.”

I pushed the guy away in disgust and he groaned, coughing and wheezing, his face a dark red. “My head is pounding. I can’t think, I can’t think,” he said as he moaned, coughing between words. He held his head in his palms and kept mumbling on the ground.

Disgusted, I let Zoe pull me away.

Kayla was back and we had more than a few onlookers, mostly students who had filtered into the library. The desk lady was at the door, a phone clutched in her hand as she spoke to someone hurriedly. Campus police would arrive any second now. Gritting my teeth, I turned to Zoe and cupped her face, trying my best to control my breathing. She looked so scared as her eyes welled with tears, and she already had dried tears on her face. How late had I been? What else had he done?

Fuck.

My hands were trembling. “Are you okay?” I asked, my voice coming out harsher than I’d intended. “Did he do anything else?”

She shook her head and blinked, causing the tears to finally slip out. Looking down at her, I wanted to take it all back and wake up early before she could take a step outside the apartment’s door.

When I looked back, the guy was on the ground, hitting the back of his hand against the wall.

He just kept muttering the same thing over and over again: “Kayla, what did you do? What did you do?”

Kayla sat down in one of the chairs and starting sobbing uncontrollably.

Zoe’s eyes flashed with anger.

“He raped her, Dylan,” she whispered, bringing her attention back to me. “We need to do something. He raped her.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Dylan

It took hours for the cops to let us go. They took Kayla to the hospital, and Zoe begged me to take her to her friend. How could I say no to her ever again?

It was seven PM when we finally walked through the apartment door. Kayla had been taken to the hospital where Jared’s mom was a nurse, and once we’d gotten there, Zoe had called Jared. As shocked as he’d been, he was at our side in no time. When it was time to leave the hospital, I couldn’t convince Zoe to let Kayla leave with Jared and his mom; it took a private conversation with Jared’s mom to make that happen.

Like two strangers, we hadn’t spoken a single word to each other on the ride back to the apartment. Ever since we’d made it out of the library, Zoe had been holding it together with a very thin thread that I was pretty sure was about to snap at any second.

“Zoe…” I started when I closed the door and leaned against it. We were finally alone, and she was already moving away from me.

She stopped, and her eyes drifted my way.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

I sighed as I watched her shuffle toward the bathroom. The door opened and closed then a few seconds later, I heard the rushing sound of the water.

Feeling tired in my bones, I threw my keys toward the living room, not caring where they landed. I gave her an entire minute, not because I thought she would ever call out to me, but because I needed to make sure she was okay and a minute was as long as I could make myself wait.

Skipping a knock, I opened the door and closed it without a sound. The mirror had already fogged up from the steam, but that wasn’t what had my attention. I had already heard Zoe’s sobs the second I’d pushed open the door, before I’d even stepped in. Dragging the shower curtain open, I stared down at her curled up body sitting under the stream of water. She was wracked by sobs so badly that for a second I considered taking her back to the hospital just so they could give her something to calm her down, but that would’ve meant staying away from her and letting other people touch her, and I didn’t think I could do that, not that day.

Reaching over my head, I yanked off my shirt, decided to keep my sweatpants on, and stepped in next to her. Crouching down, I put my hands under her arms and lifted her up. Thinking it was going to be hard to force her to accept my help, I was ready to argue with her, but I should’ve considered the fact that she might actually want me there.

Her clothes were still on, plastered to her trembling body. As I studied her face, I couldn’t tell the tears from the water raining down on her. Despite the sadness and anger written all over her face, she looked so damn beautiful. Hands gripping her elbows, she stood motionless in front of me for a few seconds as I tried to come to terms with what I was feeling whenever I looked at her, and then with chattering teeth, she finally spoke. “It—s c—old.”

It wasn’t—the water was burning hot—but I accepted her thinly veiled invitation and stepped into her, gently rounding my arms around her. Without any hesitation, she rested her temple against my chest and I felt her arms around me, hugging me back. Then the sobs came back with a vengeance and she broke my heart. At first, I was holding her as gently as possible, my arms just under her shoulders, scared I’d hurt her in some way, but then it all changed. The harder she sobbed, the closer I wanted to get to her. My arms drifted lower as I bent and wrapped them tighter around her waist. When she was standing on her toes and holding on to me as hard as I was holding on to her, I eased my hold and let my hand sneak up over her wet t-shirt to hold the back of her neck.

“It’s okay, baby. Cry all you want,” I whispered, water dripping from my face. “I’m right here, Zoe. Just hold on to me. I’ll be right here. I’ll always be here.”

I straightened a little, my left hand holding her neck, my right arm tightly wound around her waist. She shuffled closer, still on her tiptoes, almost stepping on my feet. Barely a minute had passed when she clawed at my naked chest and pressed in harder. Both of her arms went over mine and around my neck. If you could’ve stepped into that bathroom with us, you wouldn’t have been able to tell which one of us was holding the other tighter under the water. I bent my knees and gathered her even closer, dropping my head against her shoulder.