Following Me(51)

“Hadley will come around,” Devon said softly. She wasn’t sure who she was convincing.

He nodded. “Can we just…talk about something else?” He leaned his head back on the couch.

“Sure.” But she didn’t have anything else she would like to talk about. “What do you want to talk about?”

He was silent, considering an answer. “Why did you leave St. Louis?”

“Uh…” she muttered.

“You said you ran away from your life. What were you running from?” he asked, suddenly staring at her intently.

Devon glanced down at her feet. “I think I’m going to need another shot for that.”

Garrett complied, and the fourth shot of scotch gave her courage.

He slid his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “It’ll be okay.”

She hadn’t realized that she had started shaking.

Devon moistened her lips and then turned to look at him. This was just Garrett. It wasn’t some stranger. He had poured his heart out to her, so she could trust him with her secret. Couldn’t she?

“Well, since you told me a story, I’ll, uh…I’ll tell you one of my own.”

“Alright.” As he straightened some in his seat, he stared at her.

She swallowed and tried to meet his gaze. How drunk was she? Could she do this?

Taking a deep breath, she began. “My mama always told me that once in a lifetime, you are given a chance at true greatness. That you would know it when it happened, and it would be true love at its finest. I believed her.” Tears were already hitting her eyes.

“I wanted greatness, just like my mom. Her greatness is my dad, and they found each other in their music,” she told him. “When it hit me, I didn’t know how I could have ever lived another day without it. I don’t know how to explain it, except to say it was like the universe was suddenly in alignment.”

“So…you fell in love?” he asked, scrunching his eyebrows together.

She could see he was wondering where this was going. She didn’t blame him for his confusion.

“It’s…more than that,” she said, fumbling for the words. “It’s not like fate or soul mates because that makes it sound silly, but it’s a sense of rightness of the way things are meant to be.”

“Alright. I’ll buy that,” Garrett said.

He has no idea, Devon thought.

“Having that with someone opens everything up. Everything is on the table. Trust isn’t even a consideration because there could never be anything or anyone else.”

Garrett shifted uncomfortably.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Devon said.

“I doubt it.”

“Well, tell me,” she insisted. This was hard enough without trying to read him, too.

“Sounds a bit like…obsession to me.”

Devon sighed. “That’s what I thought you’d say. I can’t explain it any other way, so try to be open-minded,” she said. He would need to be open-minded. “I’m not sure when it started exactly, but the sex changed.”

Garrett’s ears perked up at that. “Changed…for the worse?”

She shook her head. “For the better.” Devon bit her lip. When she saw that he was watching, she stopped. She couldn’t believe she was telling this story.

“Not to say the sex was bad before because it wasn’t. It was amazing. In fact, I didn’t believe it could get better. But one day, it was one way, and the next day, I was being held to the bed, forced to comply.”

“What?” Garrett snapped. “Forced?”

Devon nodded. “I didn’t think I would like it. I mean, it sounds really bad. It’s probably why I never talk about it.”

“Isn’t that…rape?” he whispered.

“Don’t use that word,” she said immediately, drawing her knees to her chest. Not that word. Anything but that word. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Okay, sorry. I didn’t mean to say…I don’t know what. Just keep going,” he urged, brushing her blonde hair away from her face.

She looked back up at him, and he smiled. Her mind blurred from the alcohol, and she scooted closer to him. It was better to feel him comforting her through this. “So, after that started, it never stopped. It only escalated. I don’t know if you want details—”

“If it helps you,” he said, allowing her to continue.

She took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “He started getting creative—demanding me to do things at any time or any place, holding me down, sometimes choking me. He would come home to find me in the shower and turn the water to the hottest temperature it would go. He would bend me over into the scalding spray, and we would have sex like that. I remember him waiting for me when I got home from school late one night. He threw me over the hood of his car and told me to be a good girl. We had sex at the end of the driveway under a streetlight. Anyone could have seen us. And I let him.”

Garrett was staring at her with a mixed expression. She wasn’t sure how much she should read into it. He looked really interested in what she was saying. How could she blame him? She was talking to a guy about sex, about a particular form of rough sex that he had likely never experienced. The interest was mingled in there with something resembling disbelief. She didn’t know if that meant he didn’t believe that she would put up with it or he didn’t believe someone would actually do this. All she really knew was that he had adjusted his pants, and Hadley had been right about the size of the contents that lay within.