And if I ever meet that guy, I’m going to rip his fucking head off.”
Caelyn stared back at him, feeling a surge of conflicting emotions. She was angry at him for making assumptions and talking so bluntly about what had happened to her.
But she was also grateful to him. He actually cared enough to be enraged on her behalf.
And then, without warning, the tears came.
Once they came, she couldn’t stop them so she buried her face in her hands and just let herself cry. She was totally embarrassed, feeling like a complete psycho.
She wondered if Elijah was starting to regret his decision to travel with her after all the hysterics and dramatics.
He wasn’t saying a word. He was probably just sitting there and wondering what the hell he did to deserve this crazy girl in his life.
But then, surprisingly, she felt his hand on her back. “It’s all right,” he said, and she felt the weight of his body sinking into the mattress next to her. His hand slowly rubbed her back, and she was amazed that Elijah’s touch wasn’t threatening.
Instead, he was soothing. The warmth from his hand as he softly rubbed her back seemed to relax all the muscles in her shoulders. Caelyn slowly lifted her face from her hands.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, right next to her. He was looking at her with softness and caring. His eyes, she realized, were incredibly kind. How was it that she’d never noticed that before?
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to take care of me,” she told him. “I’m going to be fine.”
“I know that,” he said.
“I just need time to figure out what the hell happened to me.”
“You don’t know?” Elijah said.
She sighed. “I do know. But…it’s confusing. You’re not a girl so you can’t possibly understand what I mean.”
“You think because I’m not a girl, I can’t imagine being confused about my life?”
he laughed. “Shit, I’m confused every fucking day, Caelyn.”
“This is different, though.”
“How so?”
And then, for some reason, she just blurted it out. The truth.
“Because I was raped by my boyfriend, okay?”
Elijah was staring at her as if she’d slapped him. He licked his lips. “Okay,” he said, slowly. “What part of it’s confusing?”
She ran her hands through her still wet, tangled hair. “All of it. Jayson—that’s his name…he was so nice to me the whole time up until last night.” She thought about everything and shook her head, still completely stunned at how quickly it had all changed. “I was a freshman and Jayson is a junior. He approached me in the cafeteria on my second day of school and was just…nice. A total gentleman. He was sweet and funny and totally mature, and I was kind of in awe of him.”
Elijah looked sick. “Yeah, I know the type.”
“I know, I know—you think he’s that typical rich kid that you hate.”
“That’s not what I meant, Caelyn.”
“Well, maybe that’s what I meant. Because, looking back on it, I suppose I’m mad at myself for falling for his act. And it was an act. He was from a good family, a rich family and people on campus knew their names. When I was seen with him, I have to admit that I liked feeling important. I got off on feeling special, like I’d gotten into some exclusive club.”
Elijah smiled a little. “There’s nothing wrong with that. We all want to be special.”
“Maybe.” She sighed. “He took everything slow. We didn’t go out on our first real date for a couple of weeks, and then he asked me to dinner. And he took me to a really nice restaurant in the South End of Boston, and I felt like a princess. At the end of the night, he just dropped me back at the dorms with a little kiss. Nothing crazy, he didn’t even ask me to go back to his place—although I would have if he had.”
“The guy knew what he was doing, Caelyn. He was grooming you.”
“Grooming me?”
Elijah’s eyes turned hard and flinty. She could tell he wasn’t angry with her, though. But she could feel his rage, could feel the tension coming off him in waves as he sat there, looking into the distance. “This is a pattern that he set up, and he was just playing out the script with you. I’m sorry to say it, but there’s no way this is the first time he did this to a girl.”
That put things in a new light. But Caelyn didn’t know what to make of Elijah’s theory, or what she would do if it was true. All she knew was what had happened to her.
“Anyway, we had a few more dates. Each time, he took me somewhere nice, treated me wonderfully, was a total gentleman.”
“And then?”
“And then it changed. I wasn’t even supposed to have a date with him last night,”
she said, remembering how she’d been planning on staying in and studying. “But then, at like nine o’clock, I get a text from Jayson asking me if I want to come over his apartment.
I hadn’t even been there yet. At the time, I thought it was pretty strange. He’d said he was going to a party with some of his friends from the debate team—“