Kickin' It (Red Card) - Rachel Van Dyken Page 0,41

would take longer to break me and laughed at how easy it was—how easy I was.” Tears spilled over my cheeks. “And then he left me alone with all the evidence of what we’d done still on my body. He shut the door. And the next day I was called into the assistant director’s office for behavior issues with my coach and sent to therapy. I found out later that he was sleeping with the therapist and three other girls from the team, and when I approached the AD about it weeks later I was too late, he’d beaten me to it. Erik made up stories about how I’d been sending him love letters, how I was obsessed with him, how I got angry when I didn’t get my way.”

“That fucking bastard!” Matt rose to his feet. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t I tell you?” My eyebrows shot up. “Are you serious? Since when has anyone ever been on my side? Believed me? Plus, it’s not like I could go to anyone and say it wasn’t consensual, because it was! I still did it! I still let him—” I looked down at my shaking hands. “I still let him touch me, take advantage of me, see? It’s better to be angry. Fear only makes you do stupid things you can’t come back from. At least anger gives you the power back.”

Matt hung his head and grabbed my glass, filled it up again, handed it back, and asked, “Is there more?”

I snorted. “Oh yeah, the jackass pursued me the rest of the season . . . constantly cornering me, taunting me. I rejected him every time. I talked to the AD again and one of the girls from my team, but they believed him over me. He’d poisoned the well, and whenever people saw us together they assumed the worst, that I’d done the cornering, the seducing. And the morning of the championships, he—” I hugged my arms around my waist and tried to tuck myself away from the world.

Matt chugged his drink and pulled me into his embrace, surrounding me in his protective warmth, rocking me back and forth as my teeth started to chatter.

“It was raining,” I whispered against his chest. “I ran back into the locker room, the game wouldn’t start for another two hours. He was waiting. He pulled me into his office, called me a cunt and numerous other things. I stood there and took it, asked to leave, and he—he hit me when I refused to have sex with him.”

“He hit you?” Matt’s voice was so on edge I wasn’t sure if I was safer out of his arms or in them.

“Yeah. He tried to pull my shorts down, I kicked him in the shin, ran out of the locker room with him chasing me literally onto the field, and when he called me a slut in front of the entire team, I lost it. I just . . . punched him. I didn’t care who saw, didn’t care that it would ruin my entire life, because in that moment all that mattered was that he’d feel the same embarrassment and pain he’d caused me. The media was already camped out, they saw it all.”

Matt rocked me back and forth. He ran his hands over my hair, and then he said something I had no idea I needed to hear until that moment.

“I believe you.”

Chapter Eighteen

MATT

She sagged in my arms like she’d been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and I felt like the biggest dick in the universe for not seeing it sooner.

The way she hated being backed into a corner.

Her fear of darkness.

The way she lashed out.

Her behavior toward men in general.

I should have seen all of it.

From her attitude to the way she carried herself, I should have known. I was better at my job than that, not that I was trained to notice those sorts of things, but I’d still like to think I should be better. I’d let my own anger at my attraction turn me into someone I didn’t even recognize.

And now I just felt guilt and a hell of a lot of shame that I’d possibly made her feel even worse about herself when all I wanted was to take all the pain and humiliation away.

“I feel guilty for not telling Willow,” she said against my chest, her breath warm, her body hanging on mine like she couldn’t stand on her own two feet