Hanging On (32 page)

Several of the women caught her inattention and stared openly at Drew.

Nudging Danny’s shoulder, she leaned close. “Get him out of here.”

“You done with me?” There were only a few minutes left of the hour, so she could do without him. He frequently bowed out before the session ended. It was a lesson he learned early on. Women knew a good man when they saw one. They frequently hit on him. He didn’t have anything against dating a woman who has been through a traumatic experience, but he wanted these women to see him as a teacher, a resource, not fresh meat.

With his track record, Sophia was glad he refrained. The last thing she needed was for a woman to stop coming because they’d run through Daniel’s three-date limit and lost his interest.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take him up to the loft.”

“Thanks.”

After they left, one of the ladies, Colleen, gaped at Sophia. “Do you know who that was?”

“Yeah,” she said, recognizing the tone of a fan. She had obviously seen his show.

“Figures,” another woman, Angel, snorted. “Someone as hot as Daniel would be friends with someone as hot as Drew Snow.” She sighed. “You’re so lucky, Sophia.”

She was losing their interest. “I’d like you all to practice the punch I used on Daniel. It’s effective, even in close quarters.” Colleen tilted her head to the side and studied Sophia. “Are you going out with Drew Snow?”

Titters of excitement moved through the group. Those who didn’t know about Drew’s quasi-celebrity status were enlightened by those who did.

Sophia wasn’t going to get anywhere with them now. “One minute, and then we drop the subject. Yes, Drew is my boyfriend.”
270

They fired off questions as to the duration and the seriousness of the relationship, and Sophia answered most of them. Exactly sixty seconds from the starting point, she called a halt to the questions. “Let’s get some practice in before time expires.”

Alaina intervened before too long, suggesting Sophia absent herself from the group session because they didn’t want the focus to be on her. She was fine with that.

She wanted to know why Drew came by the studio instead of meeting her at Ellen’s house.

The stairs to Daniel’s loft apartment were at the end of a hallway by the locker rooms. A sign on the door warned people that the door was not part of the studio and that they would be trespassing if they went inside.

The steps terminated in a small landing that had two doors. The first door was to a small storage closet. The actual door to his loft, dead bolts and all, was across from the closet. It wasn’t properly closed.

Male voices carry so much farther than female voices. It’s the increased bass, giving the sound vibration more energy so it could travel farther. It was simple physics.

Something in Daniel’s voice stopped her about halfway up the stairs.

Being a dominatrix, she’d long ago mastered the art of moving quietly about a room. She hadn’t meant to sneak up on them, but that’s exactly what she did. To compound matters, she eavesdropped.

Her original goal had been to see if Daniel was confiding in Drew.

Alaina was definitely under his skin. While he acted like he was okay with the fact their date was a disaster, Sophia knew her brother.

He was out of his league with her. She wanted him to confide in her, but he was reluctant. Maybe he needed a guy’s perspective. Drew certainly could teach Daniel a thing or two about patience and perseverance.

However, they weren’t discussing Daniel’s failed attempt at dating Alaina. They were discussing Sophia.

“You blame yourself.” Drew’s voice was grave, the statement meant to clarify.

“It’s my fault. He was my best friend. We hit it off the first day of school in third grade. All those years, he didn’t look twice at her. Then, Thanksgiving break our junior year in college, he asks me if I’d be okay with him asking her out.”

271

Sophia’s stomach dropped. That sounded dangerously like her story.

Daniel wouldn’t tell Drew about that. He couldn’t betray her like that.

“If I’d told him no, he’d have backed off.”

“You have no way of knowing that.” The voice of reason was carefully neutral, yet every word stabbed at her heart.
He knew.

“I didn’t come home for Christmas break because I wanted to show my parents how grown up I was. If I had come home, that would have been a double date, and nothing would have happened to her.” Daniel’s voice scraped the words, scratching at the old wound to make it fresh. “I failed her. I was supposed to protect her, and I failed.” Stabbing pain pressed behind her eyes. He told Drew the one thing she’d never intended for him to know. Panic compressed her chest, and she couldn’t breathe. Blood drained from everywhere. Pins poked at her fingers and feet. She must have made some sound because the door to the landing flew open.

Daniel stared down at her. The pain in his eyes was no match for the riot inside her.

Her lips moved to form words. Finally, some squeezed out, bringing a few tears with them. “How could you? You had no right to tell him any of that.”

The color drained from his face. Now they matched better. “I…He knew, Sophie. I thought you told him.”

She shook her head in denial, the movement slow and manic. “I can’t stay here.”

She ran. By some twist of fate, her car keys were under the counter displaying the clothing embossed with the studio’s name. She grabbed them on her way to the parking lot.

Drew caught up to her before she made it to the front door. His lips moved, but she couldn’t comprehend the sounds coming from them.

Reaching out one hand, he tried to stop her.

He was no match for her. She’d programmed herself to react without thinking, to never be the silent, disbelieving victim again. She elbowed him hard in the stomach and flipped him over her shoulder, tossing him to the ground.

Her car exited the parking lot before he was able to get to his feet.

272

She drove on autopilot, heading straight for her parents’ house. She would have gone to Ellen’s, but she had company. The last thing Sophia needed was to have a breakdown in front of all those people. Sabrina was already “concerned.” She’d been making more overtures of friendship since her conversation with Drew. He still hadn’t told her what they discussed, and she was too much of a coward to press the point.

The modest, colonial-style house where she grew up had always been a refuge. She was sobbing by the time she rang the bell. Her father’s face fell when he saw her.

Wordlessly, he pulled her through the door and onto the nearest sofa, holding her as she cried. She was too distraught to speak, to explain anything.

Her father was a big man, but the sight of his daughter crying reduced him to a helpless mass. Sophia hated doing this to him, but she couldn’t help it. She buried her face in his strong shoulder and drenched his shirt. Beneath the fabric, she felt his tension, and she knew his mind automatically went to the worst-case scenario. Behind Sophia, the couch dipped as her mother sat, lending her soothing presence and a box of tissue.

Forcing her emotions under control, she pulled away from her father.

“I’m fine,” she squeaked. She needed to assure them nothing physical had happened.

“David, why don’t you put on some tea?” Anna suggested. She took Sophia’s hand in hers, holding it like she did when Sophia was little.

“Sophia and I are going to the computer room, and we’re going to have some girl-talk time.”

The computer room was her old bedroom. They’d remade it into a catchall room. It now contained their ten-year-old computer that hated the Internet, a bookshelf full of how-to books and abandoned projects, and a futon folded into a couch. They sat on that, and Sophia spilled her guts.

The story was hiccup-filled, convoluted, and probably didn’t make a ton of sense, but Anna possessed a mother’s amazing listening ability that helped her figure out the pertinent facts. Sophia loved Drew, and she never wanted him to know she was raped.

When Sophia finished, she found she had been maneuvered so that she was lying down with her head in her mother’s lap. Maternal fingers fanned through the hair at her temple, soothing the way they’d always done.

273

Sophia felt safe. In the silence, her tears dried.

“I don’t want to lose him.” Her throat was raw, and the words rasped painfully. “I can’t see him again, Mom. I can’t face him knowing he knows.”

Sophia’s heart hurt something awful, but she was cried out. If she looked in the mirror, she would see that her face was puffy and her eyes were pink and swollen.

“Let’s have some tea, Sophie,” her mother said. “I’ll make up the guest bedroom, and you can sleep here tonight. Everything is clearer in the morning.”

Numbly, Sophia followed her mother downstairs to the kitchen, where her father waited. He’d probably heated and reheated the water, wearing a track in the linoleum where he paced. David DiMarco was a hands-on man, a man of action. He didn’t know what to do with himself in situations like these. The family counselor they saw after Sophia’s rape helped him realize it was okay to just hug her.

Still, he needed something to do, someone to blame, a face to smash.

When the doorbell chimed, he left his women in the kitchen making tea to answer it. Sophia expected Daniel. He would easily guess her destination.

Drew followed David into the kitchen. He wore his usual Sensual Secrets T-shirt and jeans. The shirts always stretched tightly over his shoulders and chest, showing off his sexy build. She noticed that, but it was his eyes that held her attention.

They were somber. The determined set of his jaw and the grim press of his lips communicated clear and present danger. He wasn’t going anywhere until he said what he had to say.

Drew set her purse and phone on the island counter. She had forgotten them in her haste to escape. Her father ushered her mother out of the kitchen. The cup of hot water in her hand splashed out, scalding the delicate span of skin between her thumb and forefinger.

Drew took it from her and set it on the counter.

She watched him, wondering why he drove all this way just to make their breakup clear. She waited for the pity or the disgust and revulsion.

It didn’t come.

274

Resting one hand on the counter, he both faced her and blocked her escape. “A successful marriage is built on a solid foundation of trust and honesty.”

She had no idea where he was going with this.

“Sophia, you don’t trust me, and you haven’t been honest with me.” Okay, she got it now. He was explaining why he couldn’t continue their relationship. In her defense, she honestly told him she would sabotage this thing. One way or another, they were doomed from the start.

Not a muscle in his face moved. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was about me that made you need to keep things from me. I wondered if my reputation for playing the field was to blame, but then I reasoned that your reputation wasn’t much better. I wondered if you had a problem with having threesomes, but you’re the one who sets them up. I wondered a lot of things, Sophie.”

He moved one step closer, and she flinched.

“I suspected you were the victim of violence in a relationship ever since that night you freaked out at my house. My mom brought up the possibility that you’d been raped. She told me to be patient. Jonas told me to be patient.

Ellen, in her roundabout way, told me to be patient. You asked me for time and space. I’ve given it to you.”

He took another step. She backed away. That low, husky voice of his was lethal to her well-being.

“But I’m not going to wait forever. That’s one of the reasons I came to pick you up at Daniel’s instead of meeting you at Ellen’s. I knew there was a reason you kept me away from there. I knew there was a reason you don’t talk about what you do there.”

She backed away from his verbal and physical proximity, halting abruptly when her ass crashed into the stove.

“When I saw you tonight, when I heard the way you said the things you said to those women, I knew you were talking about a situation you had experienced. I knew you’d been raped. Things began to make sense. This need you have for control, especially where sex is concerned. You have an incredible fear of getting close, of letting anyone in.” Another step put him inches from her.

“You run away from me any time I get too close.” His head dipped down, putting his lips inches from hers. She wanted him to kiss her, and she

275

wanted him to move so she could run away screaming. “You’ve come so far, honey. I know this is hard for you, but I’m not going anywhere. Not now, not ever.”

She shifted, turning her head away from temptation and closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his face, the face she knew would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. Still raw, her voice was tiny and scratchy, strangling in her throat. “I didn’t want you to know.” A light caress began at her temple and traced her hair back from her face. She wanted so badly to turn her cheek into his hand.