A dozen washers and dryers lined the narrow room, the yellow glow of fluorescent lights overhead. Several of the machines were running, the washers making sloshing noises, the dryers rotating with the tumble of clothes. No one else was there, and I put my basket on the table and started taking out socks and T-shirts.
I was in a somewhat meditative zone, focused on sorting the colors. Any noise was muffled by the rhythmic sound of the machines. I didn’t hear Dean enter the room, didn’t even sense his presence. All I knew was that two big, male hands suddenly slid around my waist from behind. Fear hit me hard and fast.
My heart jammed up into my throat. I yanked myself away from him and bolted, only to find myself trapped in the corner.
“Liv?” Dean backed off, shock and dismay flaring across his face. “Liv, I—”
“Wait…” Goddammit. I held up my hands and tried to take slow, even breaths.
I was there again, back in a laundry room with boys I hardly knew, music and laughter pounding through the walls, dizzy from the noise and the smell of beer.
They were big, both of them. One of them stood near the door. I’d known even then that I was trapped, even if I had gone into the room willingly, even if I had fooled around with the blond boy who had looked at me the way no one had before…
“That… that scared me,” I stammered.
“Liv, I’m sorry.” Dean dragged a hand down his face. “I never want to scare you.”
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 na?ve to have thought of that… but not too na?ve to realize what he had expected from me. That was when I got scared.”
“Liv…”