Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(80)

Lizzie had always fantasized that Chris was misunderstood, just like her. She daydreamed they’d find each other and talk and connect over being the pariahs of their small, dumb town. That he’d see her and he’d like her and he’d accept her exactly as she was.

Stupid.

“I’d known for a while that I wanted to lose my virginity to Chris. We’d been flirting and tiptoeing around it for months, and I was ready,” Lizzie said, a tear reopening in her na?ve little heart.

“One weekend, a few weeks before high school graduation, my parents went out of town, and Ryan and I threw a party. He was already home from college for the summer, and he was able to buy us booze and stuff.”

She could still feel the energy of the night. The gentle warmth of an early summer darkness, clouds of cigarettes and marijuana and freedom mixing into a heady cocktail of pretend maturity. Lizzie had felt wise and womanly that night, on a mission to enter some new secret club with her body. She wanted to feel wanted.

And the way Chris’s eyes followed her, she knew she was. She’d pulled out every trick teen magazines had taught her—flirty glances, tinkling laughs, arm touches, and eyebrow arches.

“I’d been drinking, getting up that liquid courage. And he had asked me to dance—turns out he was a terrible dancer. That should have been red flag number one, huh?” she said, trying to cut through the growing tension in the way Rake looked at her.

It didn’t work. His eyes sharp and brows pinched together, and Lizzie pulled her hand away, locking her fingers around the metal links of her box spring.

“After a few songs, he asked me if I wanted to go up to my room to talk.” She sent a sardonic glance at her mattress. “Talking was pretty much him squeezing my tits and asking me if I wanted to fuck—very romantic and subtle. I gave an adamant yes, picturing orgasms and sensual touches and laughter and cuddles after. In reality, he laid me down on the mattress, rolled a condom on, pushed my skirt around my hips, then jackhammered me for about three and a half pumps until he was done. It was like I didn’t even need to be there. It hurt like a bitch too.”

Lizzie could still feel the heavy press of his sweaty body against her, hear the grunt he’d made as he finished. She remembered thinking it was odd that she could feel so empty with another person that close to her.

“He pulled out, took the condom off and tied it up, then looked around my messy room for a minute—like he was trying to figure out what to do with it—then just tossed it on the bed next to me and walked out. I stayed in my room the rest of the party, staring up at the ceiling.” Lizzie’s breath rattled around her aching chest. “I don’t really know what I had expected. I guess just something more. To feel wanted or—or I don’t know, appreciated.”

Loved. You had wanted to feel loved.

The words were like a sharp jab to her psyche, and she pushed the thought away. Lizzie had wanted her body and her brain to be desired. For someone to see her as she was and think she was enough.

“But for some reason, that hurt me so badly. Like I wasn’t a person, just this mess.”

Lizzie was quiet for a few moments, praying she would eventually build a callus over the way the memory still cut her.

“My parents came home the next day, the place was still trashed, and of course they put most of the blame on me. And Ryan let them. He was always such a little shit.” She turned, giving Rake a sad smile. He looked like she’d punched him in the gut. She went back to staring at her mattress.

“I still went to school on Monday expecting things to be different. For Chris to care. For feelings to be there.” She let out a deprecating laugh. “But he ignored me. I went up to him at lunch, and he looked right through me. I’d never felt so invisible. My mom had looked through me before, when I’d been ‘too much’ as she likes to call it. But this hurt worse. I think because I thought he had really seen me … Obviously I was wrong.”

Lizzie wanted to reach into the void of time. She wanted to grab that sweet young girl with her heart on her sleeve and hug her. Comfort her. Hold her like she needed to be held. Tell her things would hurt, but she’d survive the pain.

Lizzie felt Rake’s finger brush her cheek, and she realized she was crying. Soft tears for that young girl who had thought her body a gift and had seen it transformed into something disposable. She nuzzled closer into Rake’s touch. After a few quiet moments, she continued. She wanted to get it all out. She wanted the poison to leave her.

“The worst part of it all, though, was how my mom reacted.”

Rake’s touch turned firmer, protective—his fingers weaving into her hair and holding her head, his palm a rest for her cheek.

“I was a wreck after that. I had my mom come pick me up from school. Good ole Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria keeping me on brand.” She shot Rake a knowing smile, his lips a tense line as he watched her. “She came and got me, and I told her everything. Told her about the sex and how he’d treated me…”

Lizzie’s throat burned as she spoke, pain slicing through her as she remembered sitting in the passenger seat, tears streaming down her face as she’d confessed to her mom—as she’d reached out for any source of comfort she could find. Any validation that would make her feel okay. For a woman she loved to tell her she was worthy of all the affection she so desperately craved.