THE MOMENT the words leave my mouth, my chest feels lighter. It’s like I’ve been carrying around an enormous secret—although honestly, I’m sure anyone can see my feelings flash across my face in neon whenever I look at her—and now I can finally relax.
For a long moment, she just looks at me. I resist the urge to pull her back into my arms. I need her to choose this, to choose me and us. To walk through the door of memory together. No matter how ugly the story is, no matter what she’d endured, I’ll be there at the end, holding her tight.
She has to know that by now. If she doesn’t, then I’ve fucking failed as a boyfriend.
“I trust you,” she says. There’s something fierce in her expression, a touch more of the Penny I’m used to seeing. “I never thought I’d be able to trust anyone like this again.”
I reach out then, pulling her into my arms. She tucks herself against me, making herself small. I tighten my grip around her waist as I brush my lips against her hair briefly. “You can trust me. Take your time.”
She nods against me, sniffling. “I think I fell,” she says. “When I came upstairs. I was panicking, I couldn’t… I hit my head, I think, on your bookcase.”
“I’ll chop it to pieces tomorrow.”
I think I get a smile. I can feel the outline against my chest. “All I could smell was Tropic Blue.”
“What’s Tropic Blue?”
“A cologne.” She sniffles again. “A really shitty cologne. My ex used to wear it all the time.”
“Preston.”
She stiffens in my grip. “Yeah. Preston. But Brandon was wearing it. He was trying to apologize for what happened in Vermont, and he reached out and I smelled it, and it’s like… it’s like I was back there. At a different house party. A different February 18th.” She laughs for real this time, bitter, shaking her head. “I just knew I needed to make it stop.”
The sweater. She must’ve been looking for something to stop the memory, to shake herself out of her panic attack. I pick it up and hand it to her. “Here, baby.”
She looks up at me. Tears still fill her eyes, but her voice is steadier. I brush a stray tear away from her cheek. She buries her nose in the sweater again. I don’t even try to tamp down the rush of possessiveness that I feel.
“Thanks,” she says thickly. “Take it as a compliment, I guess. You smell good.”
“I’m glad.” I run my hand through her hair, untangling it gently.
“Preston filmed me when we had sex.”
I thought I’d braced myself for whatever she was going to say. I was wrong. Her words hit me like a fucking freight train. It’s like she just punched me square in the throat; I can’t breathe for a moment.
Suddenly, it all makes sense. No sexting, no pictures. No video calls when we hook up long distance. The tripod at the sex shop… my face burns. I was an asshole to her without realizing it, mocking her pain. Fucking hell.
Her lower lip wobbles, and fresh tears leak out of her eyes. I force myself to keep looking at her, even though I want to melt into the floor. I don’t know what to say. What the fuck do you say when someone you love tells you something so painful, you can feel the memory and it’s not even yours?
“Sweetheart. I’m so sorry.” I swallow down every curse I wish I could throw at him, an asshole I’d punch out in two seconds if I ever got the chance. “Did he… I mean, was it…”
“No, it wasn’t like that.” She laughs hollowly. “I wanted it so badly. I thought I loved him. I wanted to be that close to him, to share that experience with him.”
“That’s sweet,” I manage to say.
“It was our first time.” She plucks at my shirt with her fingernails. She went to the salon with Mia the other day to get them done; each midnight blue nail has a snowflake on it. “We’d been dating for a while, and it was perfect, you know? I was a figure skater. He was a hockey player. Older, which made me feel special. His team would be on the other end of the ice while I practiced with my crew, and we’d all hang out. By the time we’d been dating for six months, I felt ready to take the next step. He’d had sex before, but I hadn’t, and I wanted to feel that close to him.”
I’m starting to feel faintly nauseous. It makes sense to me that Penny would treat her first time as a big deal. Virginity’s a social construct, sure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry a lot of weight for most people. No wonder she planned out a list she wanted to follow; she needed control over her own experiences since her first time was tainted. “You planned it?”
“Sort of. One night, after a big game, we had a party. His teammate’s parents were on vacation, so we had a house to ourselves. We ended up in bed, and we had sex.”
She flicks her eyes up, as if to gauge my reaction. I just rub her arm soothingly. “Did you realize it then?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “He hid his phone. I didn’t know until a couple weeks later, when I found out he was showing it to everyone he knew. I loved every moment, and I thought it was secret and special, and meanwhile all his friends were laughing about what a slut I was. He did it on a dare.”
What the actual fuck. My grip tightens on her to the point she squirms. I force myself to take a deep breath and relax. “A fucking dare?”
“Let me finish,” she interrupts. Her voice wavers, but I nod. “Eventually, it wasn’t just them watching it, it was our whole school. People would try to deny it, but everyone saw it, even my friends. I broke up with Preston, but then my dad wanted to know why, and I just… I couldn’t tell him. After Mom died, things got distant between us, so I didn’t even know how to tell him. It was too embarrassing. They saw everything, Cooper. The whole thing, start to finish.”
She pauses. I hug her close, rubbing her back soothingly.
She takes a deep breath, then says, “He found out right before my short program at Desert West. It was the first competition of mine he went to in ages. Someone told her mom, who told him. He tried to confront me about it, but I had to go perform. I had a panic attack in the middle of my routine. That’s how I tore my ACL. I fell and crashed into the boards.”
She’s speaking in a matter-of-fact tone, like she’s explained this before and needs the distance to get through it.
“What happened? Please tell me that fucker is in jail.”
She shakes her head. “We pressed charges, but nothing ended up happening except him and a couple of the guys getting kicked off the hockey team.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“But honestly, I didn’t even… care,” she says, hesitating. “About what happened to them, I mean. I just hated that everyone thought I was some… some slut, for putting myself in a position where I allowed myself to be filmed. Someone even came up to my dad in a restaurant and told him he’d never have let his daughter do that. Preston’s parents talked shit about us to anyone who would listen.”
“But he supported you, right?”
She takes a deep breath. “Yeah. But it wasn’t the same, you know? Not that it had been in a long time, but I tried to keep it from him, and then suddenly I had this huge injury, and whenever we went somewhere in town, people stared, and I wasn’t… I wasn’t his little girl anymore. Everything was different. It even affected things at his job at Arizona State—one of his bosses’ grandsons was on the team. They didn’t renew his contract, so he got the job at McKee and moved us to Moorbridge for my senior year of high school. It took us so long to get to where we are now, and then I almost fucked it up anyway in Vermont.”
I pull back so I can look her in the eyes. No wonder she was so adamant about our arrangement being a secret at first. She didn’t want her dad to judge her, even if it meant keeping another secret from him. “Sweetheart, I’m so—”
She wipes her face quickly. “Don’t,” she says. “We should get back to the party.”
“We’re not going back down there.” I kiss her forehead softly. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But it’s your birthday party.”
“And I don’t give a fuck about the party when you’re hurting.” I stroke her face. “What do you need from me? How can I help you?”
“I don’t want to think about it anymore.” She grabs at her dress, lifting it up. “I want to forget it. Give me the last thing on the list, Cooper, please. I need it. I need you.”
She tries to pull the dress over her head, but it gets tangled up around her elbows. I tug it down gently. We’ve both been drinking, and we’re in my closet, and as much as I’d love to be that close to her right now, I can’t. Not when she deserves more. I shake my head.
“But I trust you,” she whispers.
“I know,” I say. I know how hard it was for her to admit all this; I can see it in her eyes. Telling me about her mother was hard, but this was harder, and it required a level of trust she hadn’t given a guy since Preston, and now we both know how that turned out. “I know you do, baby. So let me keep showing you that you can trust me. We’ll do this when we’re sober and we’re both ready, really ready, okay? I promise.”
She plasters herself to me, hiccupping. “You said you loved me.”
I squeeze her tightly in answer.
“Do you still?” Her voice is barely audible. “Did I fuck it up?”
“No, baby. You didn’t fuck up anything.” I rock her in my lap. Here, away from the party and the rest of the world, feels like my one shot at getting her to realize just how deep my feelings are. “I love you, and I’m not going to stop.”
“I want to say it.” She digs her fingernails into my back. “But every time I try, the words fall apart.”
My heart thuds. I do want her to say it. I want her to say it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But she just gave me a huge piece of herself, and I can’t push. I need to trust that it’s coming, however terrifying it is to wait.
“You take your time,” I murmur. “I’ll be right here.”
