Break My Fall (No Limits) (20 page)

“It’s my fault
,” I said. “He did this after that conversation the other night.” I started to put my hands up to my face, but Drew took hold of my wrists, stopping me.

“Look at me,” he said. “This isn’t your fault. You had every right to
say what you did. You didn’t do this. He did.” His eyes were full of sincerity. This wasn’t something he was just saying to make me feel better. He meant it. “Hey.” He lifted my chin with one finger. “We’re going to handle this. Believe me. Didn’t your parents hire a lawyer for this? Maybe they can get him to do something.”

“Yeah
, but they said there wasn’t anything they could do other than try to get the pictures taken down and that probably wouldn’t work because they could be duplicated on other sites.”

“But that was before your name was attached to them, right?” He turned toward the laptop again, pulling up the browser and typing my name into the Google search box. When he clicked on
Google Images, several pictures popped up. The ones Kevin had taken. Drew clicked on one, and it took him to a porn site. My pictures were on that page, along with my name and my school email address.

Drew looked at me. “
These were all posted in the last two days.”

That matched the timing of the incoming emails. Whether Kevin had posted the pictures back in May was now a moot point. He was the only one who would have done it after that conversation the other night.

I reached for the laptop, grabbed the lid and slammed it shut. Drew yanked his fingers back just in time.

“I’m sorry
,” he said. “But we had to check.”

“I know. Sorry.”

I didn’t want to see them and I didn’t want Drew to see them. I didn’t need to add embarrassment to the guilt I was already feeling.

As I thought about how my love for Kevin had turned into scorn, I wondered what he had been feeling to make him do something like this to me. There was a chance—albeit small—that he’d been telling the truth about Kim finding those pictures on his phone and posting them herself. But there was no way it wasn’t Kevin this time.
How could someone who had professed to love me so much do something so hateful?

Drew stood, pacing the floor for a moment. “
He’s posted them on forums along with your name and email address. This has to be harassment or some kind of crime. This is different now.”

I picked up my phone off the coffee table
.

Chapter Twenty-Two

When my dad answered, I started crying again and I could barely get the words out.

Drew took the phone from my hand. “Mr. Austin?”

He introduced himself as a friend of mine, and explained what was going on, then listened for a moment.

“They’re new emails,
and from what I could find, new postings as well.”

I could hear my dad’s voice through the phone, but not what he was saying. Drew mostly said “yes” and at the end of the conversation, he said, “Yes, sir. I will.” Then, “Here she is.”

He handed the phone back to me.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“Don’t apologize.” I detected an unfamiliar level of anger in his voice. “I’m going to call the lawyer and tell him what’s going on. This has gone too far. I’m also going to call the police and see if this is enough to get them off their asses.”

He was angry like I’d never heard him before. I didn’t want the police involved. I just wanted this to go away. Stop forever. But I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t say anything.

“This Drew…” My dad’s voice trailed off for a few seconds. “Good friend of yours?”

I knew where he was going with this. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“You’re sure.”

“Completely.”

He paused, then said, “I’d feel better if you were with a girlfriend.”

“Dad, please.”

“Sorry, Leah, but you have to understand how worried I am about you.”

I looked at Drew. He was standing in front of the window, looking out into the backyard. With the sun rising a
nd shining through the glass, his figure was a silhouette. It was almost as though he was on guard.

“You don’t have to worry about him,” I said to my dad.

“I hope not because I asked if he would stay with you until I called back.”

That’s what Drew’s “Yes, sir” response had been about. He was going to be here for a while.

.  .  .  .  .

Drew sat on the couch next to me
, draping his arm around my shoulders. I leaned into him, resting my head on his chest.

“I’m so sorry this is happening to you.”

“Me too.”

Even though I knew Kevin wouldn’t come to Charleston, I still needed to feel safe, and Drew provided that. With my ear flat against his peck, I could hear his heart beating and his breath as the air moved in and out of his body. I wanted to sink into him and never leave.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my call with Kevin.”

I felt his head tilt toward mine, his lips lightly touching the top of my head. “You didn’t have to.”

“How stupid of me…” My voice trailed off, but he didn’t say anything. There was something I wanted to say, something I’d wanted to say out loud to someone for a long time, and I think Drew could tell I needed to say something and that I needed a moment. Finally, it came. “It’s like being cyber-raped.”

His hand squeezed my shoulder, this time more than a gesture of reassurance. It almost felt like a reflexive response. Maybe out of anger at Kevin. Or maybe it was Drew holding me closer, tighter, never wanting to let go.

“I would never compare it to real rape,” I continued in my crying voice. “I knew a girl who was raped when we were in high school. It’s not the same. But this is about as close as you can get to it. He has all the control. And I was stupid enough to give it—”

“Leah,” he
said, cutting me off, “you can’t blame yourself for him being a shithead. It’s his fault. No two ways about it. You need to put the blame where it belongs.”

He was right, but it was one of those “if only” situations where, in hindsight, you see all the po
tential for disaster, but while you’re in the moment you couldn’t possibly have known, and yet you still blame yourself.

“
It could be a while before your father calls back.” Drew moved a little, making me sit up. His hand still on my head, he guided my gaze toward his face. “Let’s go somewhere. Get you out of here for a few hours. It’ll be good for you. Free breakfast at a hotel?” The barest hint of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

I let out a little laugh,
and it was enough of a release to make it feel like someone lifted a truck off my back. I needed a little humor, something to break the tension.

“Wait.” I stood. “Instead of free breakfast at a hotel, how about right here?” I went to the kitchen,
opened the cabinet and grabbed the box. I walked over to Drew with it behind my back and when I stood in front of him, I said, “These?” I showed him the box of Apple Jacks.

He gave me a full smile. “Perfect.”

I went back to the kitchen, got the half-gallon of milk out of the refrigerator, two spoons, and…then I remembered I’d packed all but one bowl. I brought it over to the coffee table. “We’ll have to share.”

“You can have the bowl.
” He picked up the milk and tilted it over the top of the box as if he were going to pour the milk in. “I’ll eat right out of this.

He stopped when he saw that I wasn’t laughing at his joke. We ended up sharing a bowl.

.  .  .  .  .

We made a pact that neither of us would talk about what was going on until my dad called back. We were going to relax, get my mind off of what was happening, and take it minute by minute.

Drew sat on the couch and I reclined with my head in his lap, looking up at his face as he told me stories of his travels. I knew he had spent a couple of years globe-trotting, but he’d never said much about it until now.

I should have felt bad about falling asleep as he talked, but the exhaustion combined with his low, smooth voice sent me into a state of rest that I desperately needed.
When I woke up, still in the same position, Drew didn’t seem offended by it at all.

“How long was I asleep?”

He shrugged. “A little more than an hour.”

“That’s it? It felt like longer.
I’m sorry I fell asleep while you were talking.”

He moved a lock of hair from my forehead with his fingers, as he shook his head. “You needed it.
And, hey, now I know I possess the cure for insomnia.”

I managed a smile.
“I didn’t sleep through my dad’s call, did I?” I asked, knowing I probably hadn’t slept through it ringing, and surely Drew would have stirred me out of my sleep.

Drew shook his head again, but didn’t say anything.
His eyelids looked heavy, his eyes hooded by them as he looked down at me. It was not a look of fatigue, but rather a solemn, serious expression.

I reached up and put
my hand on his chest. “Thanks for being here. I guess I got lucky that you were already over here checking on your grandparents.”

He just stared at me, his mouth forming a tight line. “I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t?”

Drew sighed, looked up, straight at the wall, then back down at me. “I was coming to see you. I needed to talk to you about something.” He went silent.

“About what?” I figured it was likely that he was going to apologize for how things had gone the night before. Maybe also for not calling or texting me to see how I was doing after leaving so upset.

“When you were sleeping, I convinced myself that with everything that’s happened this morning, I wouldn’t bring this up. It might be too much right now. But…I can’t do that. I have to tell you. There are things you don’t know about me, things I’ve never told anyone. But I want to tell you.”

I felt a lump in my throat so I swallowed hard, wondering if this was going to be more bad news. With the way the day was going so far, might as well pile it on.

“I was on the soccer team at UVA.”

My hand was still on his chest and I kept it there. “Okay…” I wasn’t all that surprised that he had been on the soccer team. He was athletic, and I’d seen him dribbling that soccer ball earlier in the summer when he came up to me at the outdoor showers. I’d seen the soccer balls on his boat.

Drew took a deep breath. “I never played again after the crash. Not because I couldn’t, but because I didn’t want to. It was that time in my life when everything was changing. When I was looking at everything differently. I was dropping out of school, so obviously soccer was over. My closest friends were my teammates. We did everything together. None of us were in frats, but the soccer team was its own brotherhood, I guess you could say. There was nothing that could break that bond. Other than abandoning each other. And even though I didn’t see it that way at the time, that’s what I did. I deserted them. I lost all of my best friends.”

He was silent for a moment, letting that sink in.

“Didn’t
you see them a few weeks ago? The bachelor party?” As I was speaking the words, I suddenly started to feel worried that maybe he hadn’t gone to see them. Maybe it was a cover story for where he had really gone and whatever he had really been doing, and he was about to confess.

I felt relief when Drew nodded and told me the rest of the story
. “Yeah. I was invited, and I decided to go because I hadn’t seen them in several years. I thought it would be a chance to make amends. Maybe we could move on. But it wasn’t like that.”

“That’s why you didn’t go to the wedding.”

He looked down at me. “Right. The bachelor party getaway was awkward. I felt like I didn’t belong, and nobody really made any effort to make me feel otherwise. But I stuck it out, anyway, and stayed until everyone else left.” He let out an almost imperceptible laugh. “But big deal, right? I abandoned the team when it mattered, but I stayed till the end for some party.”

I rubbed my palm on his chest, trying to ease his tension, but I felt the muscles tightening still.

He shook his head. “When I left school and the team, I couldn’t see what I was doing. But now I do. They were pissed, and still are, and I can’t say I blame them.”

I didn’t know what to say, and it was clear to me that he wasn’t finished, so I didn’t break his train of thought.

“There was a girl,” he said.

My stomach turned and I took in an involuntary deep breath, feeling somewhat jealous. Bizarre, perhaps, but that’s what I felt.

“We’d been together for about a year and a half. We were both juniors. She ran track. I was planning to go to law school, and she was going to med school. So we were set to have this perfect life, probably a couple of kids who would be star student-athletes. After the plane went down and my outlook on everything changed, she didn’t understand. And I didn’t care that she didn’t understand.”

He shifted in his seat a little. I lifted my head so he could get comfo
rtable, then laid it back down.

Drew looked at me and held eye contact as he continued. “Everything I told you that day in the restaurant, about how I see life and how I like to live it…all of it was true. But I left something out. I know who I am. I have no doubts about that. I actually like who I am. I don’t say that in a conceited way. It just is what it is and I accept it.”

I smiled, thinking that I liked who he was, too.

“But,” he said, “
the flaw in all of this is that after what happened—the soccer team and my girlfriend, more than the crash itself—I can’t deny that I’ve been living with a cynical view on people. On relationships. And it’s all been because of one thing: I knew I couldn’t trust myself.”

Hearing that sent a bolt of fear through my body, and I felt my eyes widen a little.

Drew put a hand under my back. “Sit up, please?”

I sat up and he guided me to sit next to him, turning himself toward me so he could look me in the eye.

“I don’t live a normal life
, whatever that is. You already know that. I’ve never taken anyone on any of my trips. I’ve never told anyone half the stuff I’ve told you. But like I said in the restaurant that day, the first few times I saw you, I saw the walls. I saw that you’d gone through something that changed you. I just had no idea what it was. I’m sorry you’ve been hurt, but I’m not sorry it brought you to me.”

He reached up. His fingers touched my neck. His palm was against
my cheek and his thumb stretched up toward my ear, lightly stroking it.

“I couldn’t trust myself before I met you. But now I know I have to.
Because of you. I came here this morning to tell you that I can’t stand the thought of you leaving.”

My eyes flicked back and forth between his, almost unable to believe what I was hearing, and for a brief moment I wondered if I’d really woken up from that little nap and maybe this was all a dream.

“You…are you saying you’re coming? With me…to Tampa?” I stammered as my throat tightened at the onset of tears, but the words came out.

“No.”

I’d been on the verge of happy tears, but when he answered me, I felt the smile fall from my face. “Then what?”

“I was going to go with you. I had it all planned. I’d been thinking about hiring a nurse to live here in the carriage house, someone to look after my grandparents. And I could always take a trip up here once a week to see them and make sure everything was okay. But now… You realize what changed with those emails, right?”