Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (22 page)

She watched him go, and slowly, her jaw
unclenched and she realized she’d been making tight fists with her hands at the
end.
 

Relax, Caelyn.
 
You have to stop freaking out or he’ll
realize this is all a big lie to get him to do what you want.
 
Now, you’re almost there.
 
Just chill the hell out.

But it was difficult.
 
Every atom in her body wanted to revolt
against what was happening and the things she was doing.
 
None of this was natural, it was a total
fight against her nature.

This man had done the worst thing
possible to her, and here she was trying to smooth it all over and give him the
impression that he still had a chance with her.

It was disgusting.
 
It was wrong.

But there was no other way that she could
see.
 
That was the unfortunate
truth, and Caelyn didn’t know what else to do.

A few minutes later, Jayson came back
into the living room.
 
He’d put on a
new shirt and styled his hair, applied some cologne.
 
She recognized the strong scent from the
other night and nearly gagged.

But she managed a weak smile.
 
“Ready?” she said.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he replied.

And then they left his apartment and
headed for the police station.

***

It felt like years had passed, by the
time Caelyn pulled her car up to the curb in front of Jayson’s apartment
again.
 
Every second spent in close
proximity to him was like standing next to an open sewer and taking deep
breaths of toxic, rotten filth.

Her head was pounding, she felt weak and
shaky, and sweaty.
 
But there was
some relief, too, because the worst was over.

“You’ve been quiet ever since we left the
police station,” he said, as they eased to a stop.

“I’m tired,” she said.
 
It was as honest as she could be.
 
“But I’m glad we did that.”

“Me too,” he said.
 
He turned to her.
 
“Caelyn, I…I hope you’re as happy as I
am that we’re giving each other another chance.”

She swallowed, looking at him but unable
to meet his dead, blank eyes.
 
“The
thing is, Jayson, I do need some time.
 
I know you don’t understand, and I don’t expect you too—but I’m going
to need to take some time to myself.”

His expression clouded over.
 
“I don’t get it.
 
How much time?”

“I’m not sure.
 
Right now, I’m staying at my parents’
house and just trying to calm down.
 
They’re not too happy with me…”

“But you want to see me again, right?”

She nodded, barely.
 
“I’ll call you.”

He reached out and grabbed her hand, and
she could once more feel the threat behind his physical strength and the way he
tried to control her body.
 
“Promise
me, Caelyn,” he said, his voice lowering.

“I…I promise.”

Anything to be rid of him.
 
Another moment and she really would
scream.

“Okay,” he said, withdrawing his
hand.
 
“I’m going to hold you to
that.”
 

And then he got out of the car and walked
to his apartment building without looking back.

Caelyn immediately sped off, practically
crashing into a car passing by as she left.
 
Tears were coming and she had started to
shake violently.

It had been an incredible strain to hold
everything back throughout the entire trip.
 
The pressure of returning to the place
where she’d been assaulted and violated, and being so close to the man who’d
done it all to her—and then actually pretending that he hadn’t raped
her.
 
It was sickening.
 

The police station had been just as
bad.
 
The officer had been skeptical
when she’d told him that she wanted to drop the charges.
 
He wanted answers, and she didn’t intend
on giving him any.
 
She simply
continued to state that she didn’t want to pursue the matter, and eventually he
had her fill out the required paperwork and told her she’d be receiving
something in the mail from them in the next few weeks.

When she’d asked him if that would be the
end of the case, the officer had informed her that the state could still decide
to press charges against Jayson on its own, but that in cases like hers where
so much depended on her testimony, it was unlikely that would happen.

Even though she’d wanted to drop the
charges, taking back her truthful statements against Jayson was awful, and it
just felt wrong on so many levels.
 
Jayson deserved to be punished for what he’d done to her, and here she
was, trying to actually help him get away with it.

In a way, she was most disgusted with
herself.

As for Elijah, from what little Jayson
had told her after they’d left the police station, it seemed unlikely that
Elijah would be brought to trial for beating up Jayson.
 
The police seemed to think that the
state of Florida wouldn’t be very interested in going forward with that case on
their own, either.
 

So far, her plan seemed to have worked.

But then why did she feel so sick and
defeated?

Caelyn didn’t know.
 
All she knew was that she had to pull
over to the side of the road for a few minutes before her shaking
subsided.
 
Then she got back on the
road again and drove towards home.

She didn’t bother checking her phone or
calling home because she knew it was going to be bad and she wanted to delay
the repercussions as long as she could.

It was going to be very hard emotionally
to deal with her family after what she’d just been through.
 
She felt like a half-drowned
rodent.
 
Her hair was wet and limp,
her forehead slick with sweat, her palms clammy, her face pale. Glancing at
herself in the rearview mirror, she saw someone almost unrecognizable.

Wow, maybe Deena was
right after all. You look like a crazy person.

And now Deena would get her chance to
tell her just how crazy she looked, because she was turning onto her
street.
 
As she approached the
driveway, she saw all the lights on and the front door was open.

Her stomach tightened and churned and she
felt sick all over again.

“Oh God,” she whispered to herself.

Getting Jayson to agree to drop the
charges and going to the police station was just the beginning of it, Caelyn
realized.
 
Now she would have to
face down her whole family and deal with their anger and accusations.

It was almost too much to bear after
everything else she’d been through so far.

But then, she thought of Elijah—the
way he’d been so calm as they’d led him off in handcuffs, knowing what was in
store for him.
 
If he could face the
prospect of months and months in a tiny prison cell, then she could face her
angry parents.

Getting out of the car, Caelyn geared
herself up for the blowout of all blowouts.
 
She could already imagine the screaming
match she’d end up in with her mother, and Deena would probably join in to pile
on.
 
Caelyn’s father might try and
play referee as he sometimes did, or maybe he’d finally even be fed up enough
to gang up on her as well.

Her stomach was churning with anxiety as
she pulled open the front door and walked inside the house, ready to be berated
and attacked.

But strangely, it didn’t happen.
 

She saw her mother and father sitting at
the kitchen table.
 
Her father was
eating peanut butter and crackers and paging through a magazine.
 
That gave her heart a little pang,
because he’d been snacking on peanut butter and crackers forever, it
seemed.
 
He hardly even glanced up
at her, just shoved another cracker in his mouth and chewed.

Her mother was on her iPad, probably
playing Angry Birds or something.
 
She looked drawn and tired.
 
She looked at Caelyn and her expression didn’t even register any
emotion—no anger, no concern, nothing.

“Hey,” Caelyn said, slowly coming
forward.
 
She felt like she had
stepped into some weird hidden camera show.
 
Her parents were supposed to be pissed
off, yelling and screaming and demanding answers.
 
And where was Deena?
 
Deena should have been standing there,
gloating, as she watched her older sister get reamed out.

But none of that was happening, and
Caelyn was thrown.
 

“Put Deena’s keys on the counter,” her
mother said, looking back at her iPad once more.

Caelyn did as she was told.
 
“Sorry I took her car.
 
The thing is—“

“We don’t have any interest in having
this discussion with you right now,” her mother interrupted.

Caelyn stared at her.
 
“Why?
 
What’s going on?”

Her father began spreading peanut butter
over a cracker, slowly, like a robot.

“Nothing’s going on, Caelyn,” her mother
said, her voice tired and faint.
 
“Now just go upstairs.
 
We
can talk tomorrow.”

“This is really weird.
 
I don’t understand why you’re acting
like this.”

Her mother didn’t bother responding, she
just went back to her game.
 
Caelyn
could hear the little noises coming from the iPad as her mom’s hand swept back
and forth across the touch screen.

She looked at both of her parents, and a
feeling of unease overwhelmed her.
 
It would have been better if there had been screaming and yelling, she
realized.
 
At least that would have felt
real, and honest, and normal.

This silent treatment thing was anything
but normal.
 
She’d never seen her
parents act that way, and it gave her a sense of dread, like there was
something awful coming her way.

But there was nothing to be done about
it, so Caelyn simply walked upstairs.
 
She stopped outside Deena’s room and heard music playing faintly inside.

Deena was singing along to a Lady Gaga
song.

Caelyn smiled, imagining her younger
sister dancing around and pretending to perform for an audience, like Caelyn
had seen Deena do when she was a little kid.

When Deena was eight or nine, she’d
practically worshipped the ground Caelyn walked on.
 
She’d been cute and eager to
please.
 
So much had changed since
then, and Caelyn wanted nothing more then to be able to walk into Deena’s room
and talk to her about everything that had happened recently.

Part of her honestly considered knocking
on the door and saying she wanted to talk.
 
But things between them had gone much too sour, and besides, Caelyn had
stolen Deena’s car.
 
She didn’t
think it would be very likely that Deena would suddenly decide she wanted to
sit around and braid each other’s hair and talk about boys.

So Caelyn finally just went into her own
room, closed the door and sat on her bed, feeling frighteningly
alone—really alone—for the first time.
 
In just a few days, she’d managed to
screw up her school life, her romantic life, and now even her family didn’t
seem to want much to do with her.

She wondered if this was how it
started.
 
Sometimes, she walked by a
homeless person or saw someone wandering through a convenience store talking
aloud to themselves, and she wondered what had brought them to that point.

You could assume that it was drugs,
alcohol, mental illness caused by a genetic condition—but maybe it was
just life.
 
Maybe you really could
screw things up so badly that everyone you cared about turned their backs on
you and the whole thing crumbled like a sandcastle.

She didn’t want her parents to hate
her.
 

She’d always been the good kid, the
responsible one, the girl who could be counted on to turn in her assignments on
time.
 
Now it all seemed to be
changing so fast, and she didn’t know how to make it go back to the way it was.

Caelyn went to her computer and logged
into her email, and got another pang in her chest when she saw a message from
Cambridge College.
 
It was just some
generic email about making sure that student cars had their parking stickers
prominently displayed to avoid being reported by campus police.