Harder (Caroline & West #2)(71)

I pass her the plate, and she tips the diced celery in, along with the pickle, salt, and pepper.

“How was your lawyer thing?” she asks.

“Horrible.”

“What was it like?”

“They asked me every question fourteen times, and most of the time I wasn’t allowed to answer. When I was, I had to say whatever one thing I’d rehearsed with the lawyer, and then Nate’s lawyer would say something to make it sound like I was a crazy slut.”

“God.”

“I know. But it was exactly the way my dad told me it would be, so I knew what to expect.”

“Does that help?”

“What?”

“Knowing what to expect?”

I shrug, because the cry-pressure is building behind my eyes, and I should be tougher than this. I am tougher than this. “It just turns out that when smart, rich guys in suits spend hours asking you questions designed to make you feel like a crazy slut, it’s really hard not to start feeling like a crazy slut.”

“You’re not a crazy slut. We don’t even believe in sluts.”

“I know. But it’s still hard. It’s, like, superhuman difficult.”

“Did you cry?”

“In the car on the way home.”

“But not in front of the lawyers?”

“No, but only because we took two breaks so I could pull myself together.”

“Can’t you get out of doing this?”

“Only if we withdraw the suit.”

“But you’re not thinking about that.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m thinking about it.”

I haven’t let myself think about it.

But I keep hearing what Frankie asked me. So you were a victim, but you don’t want anyone to know?

It feels wrong.

I’ve always believed I could do whatever I put my mind to, but if I want to get into law school with my sex pictures on the Internet—if I want to get through law school and out the other side, to practice and advocate for social justice, to run for office and become a legislator and change the world for the better—what do I have to do to make that happen?

My dad says this is what I have to do. Push through the suit. Wear the Jane Doe straitjacket.

I’m not so sure anymore.

At the long table to our left, a big group of students bursts into laughter.

I have to swallow, because my throat hurts. I wonder if I’m coming down with something.

“Caroline?” Bridget reaches across the table to cover my hand with hers. “Why are you doing this when it makes you so unhappy?”

I swallow again.

My throat aches, and my eyes fill with tears.

I don’t have an answer.


I wake up in the dark. The clock reads 2:48 a.m.

West is plastered against me, and he’s way too hot. The air in his bedroom is dry from the space heater running in the corner. I have one nostril that’s completely blocked, and the other is so desiccated I can only inhale a thin stream of overwarm oxygen.

There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep.

When I try to wiggle out from under his arm, it tightens for a second. “Where you going?” His voice is husky with sleep.

“Just out to the living room.”

“You need me to rub your head?”

It’s my favorite way to fall asleep—West’s fingers rubbing circles over my scalp. “Maybe later. I have to pee anyway.”

“Come back soon.”

“I will.”

After I visit the bathroom, I stop in the kitchen for a glass of water, then pad out to the sofa. I wrap myself in the ratty afghan on the couch and sit in the dark.

Untethered, my mind wanders.

I pluck at the holes in the ratty old blanket, which I suspect West’s grandma must have knit in the 90s. It’s got the color palette—maroon and forest green.

In the bedroom, I hear West turn over, rustling the covers.

I think about the depositions. How terrible they made me feel.

I curl into a ball under the blanket and close my eyes.

A spring creaks.

Seconds later, a telltale floorboard groans, and then I hear water running in the bathroom.

By the time he comes into view, I’m sitting up again.

He’s got nothing but boxers on, which seems crazy for December, but West’s internal furnace runs hotter than mine.

He scratches his stomach. “Scoot over.”

When I do, he sits down sideways and positions me between his outstretched legs.

“Pillow.”

I hand him one. He sticks it behind his head, wraps me in his arms, and leans back, pulling me down with him, my body wedged between the couch and his skin, my head resting in the nook beneath his shoulder.

He feels good.

He smells good.

It’s so good being with West.

I wish I could explain to my dad—to anyone who thinks I don’t belong with this man—how I feel in moments like this one. Moments when the rightness of the two of us expands inside me, pushing out against the walls of my chest until what I’m experiencing is so much more than I can put in words.

Gratitude. Satisfaction. Contentment.

I don’t know how to say it. There isn’t any way. There’s just this big, blissful feeling that I want to spend the rest of my life in.