Where the Blame Lies(87)
Zach sat up. “Josie,” he said, so much tenderness in his voice, she almost teared up again. She glanced at him, at the way he was still dressed from the top up, his pants still down, his penis wet and sticky in the midst of his black pubic hair. She felt ashamed, unsettled, broken.
“I’m going to go clean myself up,” she said, and though his features were etched with concern, he only nodded.
“The bathroom’s right around the corner,” he said.
Josie closed the bathroom door behind her, standing against it for a moment, wondering if another bout of tears was going to come, but it didn’t. Seemingly she’d cried herself dry. She cleaned herself up and then rinsed her face, wiping the trails of mascara off her cheeks, staring at herself in the mirror for a moment. She still looked like a mess, but she couldn’t bring herself to care right then.
She left the bathroom and returned to the living room where Zach was still sitting on the couch, his pants on, clothing straightened. He smiled at her gently. He was so incredibly striking and she felt a wave of possession, along with a needling embarrassment. She owed him so much. More than she could ever repay. They’d experienced such beautiful intimacy in Tennessee and now she’d messed that up. Would he always have to “manage” her when it came to sex? Love? Her emotions? How was that fair to him? She sat down on the couch, turning toward him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You needed a release. You needed to cry.” He paused, watching her. “Josie, be gentle with yourself. This is not a normal circumstance. You found out today that one of your friends was the man who terrorized you”—his jaw clenched—“got you pregnant, and almost killed you. You found out what happened to him, and to the man you thought was your attacker. Anyone would likely be reeling under that kind of onslaught of information.” He moved a piece of her hair away from her face. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling. You need to get the words out too.”
She let out a sigh. God, he was so good. So understanding. The truth was, she didn’t have words. Not yet. The things she’d learned earlier that day were festering inside her, but unavailable. She could feel them twisting and writhing in some dark corner of her soul—too complicated to unravel easily—and she wasn’t ready or willing to go searching for them. Rape is a crime of violence, not of sex. She still couldn’t connect Cooper with that picture. Rape is a crime of violence. The man who she’d thought was a friend had been the victim of violence too. It still didn’t make what he did even partially okay. He raped me. He tried to kill me. He took my baby. He killed my mother, who I . . . No, she wasn’t able to get all those words out yet. The tears had brought so many feelings to the surface and had helped to some degree. Truthfully, and as much as it brought shame, the sex had helped. “I don’t want to talk.” She gave him an apologetic look. “Not yet. I will, and you’re good to offer me a listening ear. You’re just . . . good, Zach Copeland.”
He studied her, seeming to be looking for a deeper meaning in her words. “Maybe it’s not the time to talk about this, Josie, but”—he sat back, appearing vulnerable, hesitant—“when this is all over, I want to give us a try. I want . . . I want to protect you and love you. I want . . . you.”
Her heart squeezed tightly, and she wanted so badly to say yes, yes, I want to be with you too because she did, but something stopped her, some unnamed fear that also made her want to draw away. She was messed up, so messed up. Still. And all she had at the moment was honesty. It was the best she could offer him. “I don’t know how to be with a man without . . . a sort of desperate grasping. That’s what love’s always been to me.” She turned her gaze away, remembered the high school boyfriends she’d run after, sobbing in the street, humiliating herself when they left her. She thought of the countless men she’d brought home, telling herself it was only a one-night stand and yet desperate with rejection when they didn’t call her again. It was all part of the example she’d been shown, she knew that. She’d come face to face with herself in that dark warehouse. But she was still figuring out how to untwist the wire of dysfunction that was wound so tightly around her. Maybe, in some ways, she was still in chains. Maybe not. She didn’t even know.
All she knew was that she felt that familiar desperation for Zach, the neediness that made her want to cling to him, to lose herself in him, to find a twisted kind of control in his desire for her.
Something whispered inside of her, telling her this was more than that. Deeper, stronger. Urging her to trust him. But the truth was, she didn’t know if the voice was right or wrong, because the voice was her, and she couldn’t yet trust herself.
“I don’t want to ruin this,” she said sadly. And there wasn’t time at the moment to ponder on herself and her age-old neediness when it came to men. Her friend was sitting somewhere dark and cold right that moment, hungry and afraid, and Cooper was out there somewhere, too, planning any number of sick and twisted crimes.
Zach took her hand in his. “I’ll tell you if you’re ruining this, all right?” He gave her a small smile. “I’m not exactly perfect either, you know.”
Josie sat back, her eyes moving over his face, her heart clenching. “Yeah? What’s not perfect about you? Because, honestly, you seem pretty damn perfect.”