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  I drew in another breath and felt my heart began to settle. “You don’t scare me. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t be with you if you did. I’m… it just caught me off guard.” I tried to smile. “Bit edgy sometimes.”

  He knew that already. I’d gotten skittish during our first intimate encounter, and he’d seen me through a full-blown panic attack at a football game.

  But none of that was because of him.

  It was because of me.

  “Come on.” He tossed my clothes into the basket and grabbed it. “You okay to go back up?”

  I needed nothing more than to get out of that laundry room, where the stuffy air and noise of the washers now pounded at me like a headache.

  Dean kept a distance from me until we were back in my apartment. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water, taking a few swallows as I gathered my courage.

  “I messed up.” I set the glass in the sink and turned to him. “I tried so hard to get away from my mother, to prove I wasn’t like her, and then… then suddenly I was.”

  “What happened?”

  “I… I told you about the perverts who messed with me when I was a kid.” I clenched my hands together, shoved away icy memories. “My mother’s so-called boyfriends. The only good time I had was when we were at Twelve Oaks, the commune in California. But she made us leave again after only a few months, even though I wanted desperately to stay. That was when I left her. That was when I finally thought I might have a chance to be like other girls.”

  The tightness in my heart loosened as I met Dean’s gaze—that of a strong, protective, good man who liked and wanted me in all the right ways.

  “I was a straight A student,” I said. “Never caused a single problem. I went to Fieldbrook when I was eighteen. It was a small college, less than fifteen hundred students. Good humanities and language program.

  “After I moved there, I felt free, for the first time in… well, for the first time ever. That fall semester, I met a guy in my accounting class who was a year ahead of me. An athlete. On the crew team. His name was Justin. He was handsome, popular… and I hadn’t dated at all, so it was flattering when he showed an interest in me.

  “I’d always wanted to do what other girls did. To feel normal. I wanted to go on dates, wear pretty clothes, have close friends, learn how to flirt… but I’d been too afraid, too worried that Stella would find a reason to kick me out. So being at Fieldbrook, I finally felt like I could do all that, now that I was on my own.

  “I went on a date with Justin… he was the first boy I even kissed… then he asked me to a party a few days later. House on the outskirts of town. It was loud, lots of drinking, all that stuff. Can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t try and leave.

  “After a few hours, Justin and I ended up in this tiny laundry room at the back of the house and started fooling around. I’d had two beers, but I wasn’t drunk. It was mutual, and at first, I liked it. I thought… I’d spent so much of my life feeling different, being the strange, quiet girl or being an outsider with my own mother, that it was nice to have Justin’s attention, to feel included and… I don’t know. Wanted.

  “So we were kissing and touching, and…” I had to look away from Dean then, my face burning. “I had my period. I told Justin that when he started getting more aggressive. He… well, he got mad. Thought I’d been leading him on for nothing. I was too naïve to have thought of that… but not too naïve to realize what he had expected from me. That was when I got scared.”

  “Liv…”

  I held up my hand to stop Dean from coming toward me, knowing I would shatter if he touched me.

  “He told me to strip to the waist and give him oral sex. I didn’t want to… but I… the room was really small, and it was hot with all this noise from the party and the thumping bass of the music… he was between me and the door, and I… I felt trapped. I just did what he told me to do so I could get out of there.

  “It… uh, it took me a long time to understand why I went along with it, that I was still being coerced. After it was over, I looked up and saw one of Justin’s friends standing at the door, blocking the only way out. I didn’t know how long he’d been there or how much he’d seen, but it was enough.”

  I fell silent. Humiliation scorched me from the inside out.

  “I can’t remember the other guy’s name. Justin said something to him. I couldn’t hear past the loud music, the ringing in my ears. And this other guy came toward me, and I knew, I knew I’d have to do it again, with this guy I didn’t know at all… but thank God a couple showed up, wanting to use the room to smoke a joint. It was enough of a distraction that I was able to pull on my shirt and get the hell out of there. I got a ride home with another girl. Spent the rest of the night stumbling between the shower and getting sick in the toilet.”

  I could feel Dean’s rage, his instinctive move toward me.

  “Wait.” I backed away. “I was… I didn’t realize what had happened, that I could have reported it. I just tried to put it behind me and crawl back into my shell. Justin asked me out again. I said no. I felt horrible, dirty. Ashamed. I kept flashing back to the time that pervert used me to get off, and my mother didn’t stop him. I felt like I’d let those boys use me the same way, and I hated myself for it.

  “I turned Justin down twice more. He didn’t like that. Told me I had no right to turn into an ice queen, that kind of thing. I thought he’d just move on and leave me alone. Then I found out he had a girlfriend, and that the other guy had told her what happened in the laundry room… well.

  “She left me some nasty messages, and gossip started. It seemed like the whole campus was talking about me within a week. Saying I was a slut, that Justin had paid me, that I’d have done it with any boy. All the horrible things people would have said about my mother.

  “And I hadn’t made any close friends, so no one really knew me. I went from this… this quiet little nobody to… that. The slut who sucked off a guy at a party while another one waited his turn.

  “I couldn’t walk across campus without someone saying something or looking at me, and this girl and her sorority sisters would send me emails and leave messages… I tried to ignore it all, but I started having trouble concentrating and sleeping. Then I just fell apart.

  “I couldn’t get out of bed. Stopped attending classes. I couldn’t eat. Some people asked what was going on… I got emails from professors, the financial aid office warning me I wasn’t fulfilling my scholarship obligations.

  “But I’d spent so much of my life alone, I had no idea how to reach out for help, to ask for it, even when I started having panic attacks… so I ended up losing the scholarship because I couldn’t keep up academically anymore. Two months later, I dropped out of college.

  “It was the only time I wished I was still with my mother. Wished I didn’t have any responsibilities. Everything I’d worked so hard for… gone because I’d messed around with the wrong guy. I got in my car and hit the road. Exactly like my mother had done.”

  My heart was beating too fast, pulsing shame through my entire body. I risked a glance at Dean. He was staring at the floor, his every muscle clenched with anger.

  “Three days later, I found myself back in California,” I continued. “At Twelve Oaks.”

  A memory of the commune felt like cool water soothing a scorching burn. My breathing was fast and shallow, but I felt lighter, as I always did after I talked about what had happened. Though I’d only ever told a therapist before, telling Dean reminded me that I’d put myself back together. That I hadn’t ended up like my mother.

  “It’s why… why I shut down for a few years, why I hate feeling trapped,” I explained. “I blamed myself. I’d had the sense that if I didn’t comply with what Justin wanted, something even worse would have happened. It was only after Twelve Oaks and enrolling at community college that I started th
inking I could actually get back on my feet again.”

  Dean didn’t look at me. Tension drenched the air around him.

  I swallowed hard. “Dean, I… I haven’t held on to my virginity because of some moral code. I just… I’ve been so afraid of everything. Afraid of what people would say, what they would think of me, what would happen next. I didn’t date for years after I left Twelve Oaks.

  “You’ve been the only man I’ve felt like I could trust. And that first time, when you kissed and touched me, I got scared because I liked it so much. I liked you. How you made me feel, and I… I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do with you…” I dragged in a painful breath. “Dean, why… why can’t you look at me?”

  “What?” He straightened, his eyes blazing suddenly. He crossed the room and reached out to grab my wrists. “I can’t look at anyone but you, Liv. I can’t see anyone but you. I… I’m so fucking crazy about you that it’s scaring the shit out of me.”

  I could hardly understand him through the pounding inside my head. I smothered the shame, fighting to focus on the here and now.

  “I know, Liv.” Dean tightened his grip on my wrists. “I know what it’s like to blame yourself. To be forced into doing something you don’t want to do, then have it crash and burn around you. I’ve known for twenty-five years. And it’s bullshit. You have no reason to feel ashamed. None. Those bastards… goddammit.”

  He stopped and pulled in a breath, as if trying to regain control of himself.

  “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Liv. I don’t think you even know how strong you are. You didn’t let your mother or any of those sick bastards define you. You started a whole new life twice. That takes a courage most people can only dream of.”

  I stared at him. I had never thought of it like that. I didn’t even know it could be looked at that way.

  “God knows,” Dean said, “I haven’t started a new life even once.”

  I loosened one of my hands from his grasp, sensing that his own self-blame was rooted in his family situation.

  “Now you know why…” Tears stung my eyes. “Why I wanted you to…”

  I gripped the front of his shirt, trembling with the urge to confess everything I felt for him.

  “I knew there was more, Dean, I knew it could be good. Not like it was for my mother or… or me. I so wanted to know what… what it could be like… and with you it is. It’s been what I wanted, what I’d hoped for…”

  “There’s more.” He lifted his hands to the sides of my head, tangling his fingers into my hair. “You deserve so much more. I want to give you so much more. Not just sex, but—”

  “You were wrong.” I blinked back a fresh wave of tears. “When you said I didn’t expect anything from you, you were wrong. And I lied… when I said I didn’t want you to fix me… oh, God, Dean. I think I knew you were the only person in the world who could.”

  His mouth came down on mine, swift yet tender. Relief surged through me, diluting my anguish as our bodies sealed together like the pages of a closed book. My hands were trapped between us, and I spread my fingers out across his chest. Warmth collected around us and slid into the frozen places of my heart.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I… I don’t want to be someone who expects more from you than—”

  “Stop.”

  “But I…”

  Dean lifted his head, his hands still in my hair. Our breath merged between us.

  “You don’t need anyone to fix you, Olivia, least of all me.” Dean pulled me closer, his eyes never leaving mine. “Because you’re not broken.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Olivia

  fter I’d told Dean everything there was to tell about me, we became nearly inseparable. As I’d expected, as I had known, he didn’t retreat. He was ever more determined to give me what I’d never had. And one late Saturday afternoon in mid-November, I knew. It was a moment of instinctive clarity, like sensing the exact time to plant a tulip bulb or pick a ripe apple.

  I hadn’t had a shift at Jitter Beans, so I’d spent the day at Dean’s apartment, both of us doing very little. He worked some, I studied some. I watched a movie. He read an architecture journal. We ordered out for pizza, watched funny video clips on the Internet, played backgammon.

  Backgammon.

  I almost smiled. Despite evidence to the contrary, we were not incompatible. Not at all.

  I put my book aside and looked up to find Dean watching me. He was sprawled out on an easy chair with a sports magazine spread over his thighs and his bare feet on the coffee table. He was all rumpled hair, intent gaze, hard-edged stubbly jaw.

  My heart thumped. I sat up slowly, smoothing my skirt over my knees. Delicious tension tightened my belly.

  “Dean.”

  “Right here.”

  He knew too. For an instant, he just looked at me. Something indefinable passed across his features before he pushed to stand.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Breath in my throat, heart hammering, I crossed the room until I was standing in front of him. He didn’t speak for a moment. He looked at me with those dark brown eyes, so gentle, so reassuring, that I wanted to melt right into him. He slipped his hand beneath my chin and lifted my face for a lovely, feather-soft kiss that made light shimmer through me.

  He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I tentatively slipped my hands underneath to touch his skin. Warm, muscled ridges. Oh, he felt so good. Everything about him felt unbearably good and right.

  I tilted my head back to look at him. He’d waited a long time for me. His gaze searched mine.

  “Thanks for waiting,” I whispered.

  “My beauty,” he said, “I’d wait for you forever.”

  He took my face in his hands and kissed me again, with a delicious glide of his tongue across my lower lip. I opened my mouth to let him in, and then it was a deep kiss that tasted of pent-up urgency.

  I felt one of his hands fumble at my neck, tug at my ponytail. I reached back to unfasten the clasp and let my hair fall loose. Dean skimmed his hands into the long strands and angled my head to deepen his kiss.

  You’d think that after nearly three months of keeping our attraction at a slow burn, we would have been in a hurry, but he was determined to take it slow. For my sake, I knew. And I was so enraptured by his intoxicating kisses that I just wanted them to last until the end of time.

  He touched my breasts, stroked the nipples through my bra, causing shivers to ripple through me. Our mouths met again and again, his hands sliding over the top of my clothes, my fingers moving restlessly over his back to the waistband of his jeans.

  Then he eased my skirt up and pressed his hand between my legs. The warmth of his palm burned through my underwear. I curled my fingers reflexively around his wrist, pushing my hips forward. He muttered something under his breath, then reached around to stroke my rear and lift me against him.

  It was exactly as sexy as it sounds. I wrapped my legs around his waist and bent my head to kiss him as he managed to get us both into the bedroom without tripping over anything. I felt the heat of him clear through the denim of his jeans. I started to writhe against his crotch before he’d even lowered me to the bed.

  He looked down at me, a faint smile on his lips and his eyes hot. I twisted to unfasten the zipper of my skirt and pushed it to the floor. He reached for the fly of his jeans and flicked the top button open.

  That was when I got anxious. My throat went dry and I closed my legs. I was breathing hard and my heart pounded with wanting him, but sudden fear froze every muscle in my body.

  Dean paused. His eyebrows drew together. “Okay?”

  “Yes.” My voice quavered a little.

  He stopped unfastening his jeans and put his hands on my bare legs. Slowly he stroked my thighs fro
m my knees to the hem of my shirt, never reaching far beneath it. I relaxed a little under the gentle rhythm of his touch, but nerves still knotted my stomach.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “If you need me to—”

  “I know. I know.” I tangled my hand in the front of his T-shirt.

  He stroked down to my knees and back up again. “You’re nervous.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. It didn’t make a lot of sense that I was nervous now when I was so comfortable with him every other way and when we’d done some very sexy, intimate things already. But I was.

  “So am I,” he admitted.

  I wasn’t sure I believed that, but then I noticed his hands were unsteady as he moved them farther up my thighs. I swallowed hard.

  “I don’t want to mess this up,” I finally said.

  He laughed, a low, rumbling sound. “Beauty, if you had any idea…”

  He moved to caress my inner thighs. I flushed when he brushed against my damp panties—no denying that evidence—but he didn’t ease his fingers beneath the elastic.

  “Take my clothes off,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I pushed myself onto my elbows and gazed at the bulge in his jeans. I wanted to see him completely naked, and if I were undressing him, he wouldn’t be undressing me. Yet.

  I pulled my shirt back down over my hips. Dean sat beside me on the bed and waited for me to drum up my courage. My hands started to shake as I took hold of his T-shirt and tugged it over his head.

  His chest was so beautiful. Muscled, defined, the ridges of his abdomen warm beneath my touch. I put one hand against his chest and pushed him to lie on his back. Then I cupped my palm around his erection. He shifted.

  I glanced at him. He was watching me with that anticipatory gaze that made my blood pound. Anxiety twisted through me again, but because I was in control I knew it wouldn’t overwhelm me. I lowered my head, and a curtain of hair fell across either side of my face—concealing Dean from my view and, hopefully, me from his.