Jaide sat back, watching as the officer pulled a breathalyzer out of his small duffel bag and had Leith blow into it. After a moment, the officer put the device back into his bag. "You're under the legal limit. My rounds will bring me back around this way in a couple hours. I want this car gone by then."
"Yes, sir. We’ve got to get back to school."
"Don't let the girl drive. She’s jumpy."
Leith smiled. "Yes, sir."
The cop got in his SUV and drove away while Leith climbed back into the car.
"I can't believe we didn't get in trouble," Jaide said.
Lieth just shrugged. "Cops here are lenient. People come up here to drink and stay off the main roads. It’s safer for everyone; lots of open fields, not a lot of cliffs to drive off. Besides, he's a fan of our team."
"He is?"
"Yeah, he's been requesting security detail on our games since I've been here, probably long before. Officer Morrison."
"So you know him."
"Yeah, didn't I just say that?"
"Whatever."
" I probably got the alcohol from the bar and then drove up here to drink it. All we probably had before we drove was that one drink."
"Shouldn't we get going?"
"That depends on if your plan is telling Blaize or not telling him. If you do, then we can head back now, but if not we should wait until all the guys are down at breakfast."
"I wonder where he thinks we might be."
Leith shrugged. "We must have told them something or our phones would be ringing off the hook. So do you want to go now or wait?"
Jaide hesitated before making her decision. "I want to wait. But I am going to tell him, just not right away. I don't want to ruin his day."
Leith nodded and leaned back against the door. "Okay then, we wait. We’ve got about half an hour to blow."
Jaide nodded. She couldn't deny that he looked sexy like this. Shirtless, his jeans riding low and nipple rings reflecting the light every time he breathed. He spread his legs wide, one resting on the floor, the other sat on top of the seat, next to her.
She turned to face him, pulling both her legs up against her chest, leaning her back against the door. "I didn't know you had piercings."
Leith looked down and touched one, fiddling with it. "Yep, these are my only ones though. No tats either. I got them when I went with Bhrade to get the latest edition of his tattoo this summer. He dared me to and I meant to take them out but all the girls loved them, so I kept 'em."
Jaide suddenly experienced a flashback.
Jaide clutched Leith's shoulders as he moved over her. She moaned in ecstasy and dug her fingers into his skin. She leaned up and kissed one pierced nipple, playing with the little piece of metal with her tongue a little before biting down, causing him to moan loudly.
She shook her head hard and covered her eyes, ending the memory with a groan.
"What is it? Your headache?" Leith leaned forward, looking at her face.
She pushed his hands away. "No, ugh, I think my memory is returning."
Leith laughed. "Is that a bad thing? What did you remember?"
"Nothing."
"Fine, don't tell me."
"Can we talk about something else? I don't want any more of my memory returning."
"Yeah, sure." He paused a moment, and then said, "Tell me about yourself, what's your story?"
Jaide didn't want to give her story. She never did, but with Leith? She felt almost tempted. Why was that? Why did she trust him? She didn't even fully trust Blaize yet.
"It's cool if you don't want to," Leith said, putting an end to her thoughts.
"No, no, it's cool. But you first."
He nodded. "Okay, that's fair. Let's see, I was born and raised a few hours away. My parents are married but didn't marry until a few years after I was born. Nothing too special. I went to the local elementary and middle school. I get along with my parents fine. We’re just distant, I guess you could say. I'm an only child and I get whatever I want, but I just don't talk to my parents much. They’re never home on breaks, always busy. They pretty much don't care what I do as long as I get decent grades and go to college. I entered this boarding school as a freshmen and I like it here. I've played on the team since I was a freshman. What else is there?"
"Any serious girlfriends?"
"Nothing too serious, the longest was only a few months. Sounds like a kinda boring life, huh?"
"It sounds nice and normal."
"It was, very suburban. Now, your turn. If you want, that is."
"Yes sure, umm, well you know where I live now. I grew up on the other side of town though, and Tremaine’s dad adopted me."
"Yeah, so you've said. Where are your real parents?"
"Both dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
Jaide shrugged. "I don't know if this seems totally heartless but it honestly doesn't bother me that they are dead. I never knew my mother. She died before I was old enough to remember."
"How did she die?" Leith asked.
He was prodding. Jaide didn't mind. She felt comfortable telling him. "Murder."
"And your dad?"
"Death penalty."
"Oh Jesus, what did he do?"
"Murder."
Leith was silent for a moment. "Did your dad murder your mother?"
Jaide nodded.
"Wow Jaide, that's really sad."
Jaide nodded.
"But that's not the worst part, right? I mean, that didn't seem hard for you to tell me. There's something else." He tried to meet her eyes but she kept them down.
"My dad wasn't suspected of murder until after I was put into the foster system."
"Then there's a whole different reason you were taken away from him, isn't there?"
She opened her mouth to explain but shut it again, hesitating.
"Only what you feel comfortable with, Jaide.”
She nodded. "I got taken away because my dad wasn't ... very nice." She paused for a moment. "I went to a public elementary school in the area, through 5th grade, but then my dad homeschooled me. But he didn't really homeschool me. All the materials got shipped regularly and he gave them to me, but he never actually taught me. I learned on my own. I didn't have anything else to do."
"What about hang out with friends or go shopping?"
"I wasn't allowed out of the house. I wasn't even really allowed out of my room."
"What did he do while he was at work or something, lock you in?"
"Yes."
Leith's face faltered. "Jaide ..."
"I'm sorry. I'm sure you don't want to hear this." She dropped her head.
He got serious and touched her arm. "If you want to talk about it, then I want to hear it. Okay?"
She nodded. "Yeah ... um, well, like I said, he wasn't nice but he was a respected business man - a store owner, doing well for himself. No one suspected he kept his daughter locked up at home."
"You said he abused you," Leith said quietly.
"I didn't say that."
"You said he wasn't nice. I'm not dumb, Jaide. I can tell by the way you talk about him that he abused you."
She nodded but stayed silent, wishing he would keep talking so she didn't have to.
"Verbally or physically?"
She pulled her knees closer to her chest. "Both."
"There's more," he said. It was a statement, not a question.
"It wasn't just physical abuse it was ...” she took a deep breath. "I was sexually abused, for almost four years." She kept her eyes down, awaiting his reaction. She was proud of herself. She didn't have an overwhelming urge to cry like she used to when she thought about her past.
He still hadn't said anything and she didn't want to look up to see his expression. "It's okay if you're disgusted. I get it. I was raped by my father, and you had sex with me. You have the right to be grossed out."
"If you weren't a girl right now, I would probably hit you."
She looked up, confused. "What?"
"That's the most insulting motherfucking thing I've ever heard. You were raped, so I should be disgusted to have sex with you? You had no control over it Jaide, and I'm unbelievably sorry that that happened to you, but it doesn't change anything. Sorry to break it to you, but you are still as sexy as ever." He smiled. She saw him actually smile.
She couldn't help it, she smiled, too.
"Continue with your life story, please."
"Right, umm, well thinking back, I wonder why I didn't just run away, you know. Jump out the window or something? I just couldn't. I was messed up. It was all I had ever known. Even before he started abusing me sexually, he knocked me around and stuff. I didn't have any friends. I didn't have anywhere to go. I was only outside my house a total of four times in those four years. Twice because I was sick. I had pneumonia when I was 13, and then mono when I was 15. He waited until I was almost dead to take me to the hospital and threatened me that if I told anyone, he would make it worse. Another time was when he had the exterminator over and he locked me in a shed outside all night. And then the day he took me court when the state was challenging him for custody. It was best day of my life."
"And the state got you, right?"
"Yep, and that launched an investigation into my mother's murder. It was originally thought to be an accident, but it wasn't. They reopened the case with new technology and stuff they could use to convict him."
"That's cool."
"Yep. So then I lived in a girls' home for a few weeks. I was messed up though. No one wanted to foster or adopt me. I don't blame them. I couldn't be around people, especially boys. I tried but you know how foster programs are. They are overloaded. They can't give kids the things they need sometimes, especially teenagers."
Leith nodded. "But you did get adopted."
"Yeah, Tremaine actually caught me stealing from his car. I would walk around public parking lots and check doors to see if they were unlocked, looking for money. I only stole from expensive cars because I figured they could afford it. Tremaine had a BMW and it was unlocked. I was going through his wallet when he caught me. I tried to get away but he grabbed me and I freaked. Back then, I didn't do any touching. I couldn't handle it. It had only been a few weeks.
"He knew right away I needed help. Even though he barely knew me, but he talked his dad into setting up a meeting at the foster agency. Sam wanted to adopt me right away but he wasn't an approved foster parent. He was a single dad with a teenage son. It just didn't look good on paper and it would take months to get approved. But Sam had money. He called in some favors and had me adopted legally within three days. It was amazing to me. I still don't understand why they did that. I was a psychological wreck. But I got better. It took time and I still couldn't handle public school but I loved to read, and they got a really good homeschool program going for me. Tremaine helped me, mostly." She paused. She had been talking for a while.
"And then happily ever after?"
"Almost. There was one more crucial player. I was comfortable around Tremaine and Sam but not strangers, not at all. I think it actually made me a little worse at the prospect because at the girls' home, I was forced to be around people so I coped, but at Sam's house I could be alone if I wanted, so I backtracked a little. And then, I met Mason and everything changed. He was my brother's friend. My brother didn't have friends over to the house a lot because of me, but I ran into him by accident and I acted the same as I did with all strangers. I was terrified. But Mason wouldn't have it. He forced me to be around him at first. He didn't give up, and soon I wanted to be around him. Eventually I wasn't afraid of people anymore. Once I was pretty much back to 'normal', I wanted him to have sex with me, to see what it was supposed to be like, you know? He thought I was crazy at first but I convinced him. We did it once and got addicted. He was my best friend and fuck-buddy all wrapped into one. It was great."
"That's why you’re used to having sex whenever you wanted. You and Mason had tons of sex."
"Pretty much. The end."
"Well I'm glad everything is alright for you now."
"Me too."
"How many people have you told?"
"What do you mean?"
"About your past with your father? How many people have you admitted it to, like you just did with me? Blaize?"
"Oh, um, no. I told Blaize that my father wasn't nice but I never gave any more details than that. I don't know how much he has assumed. Tremaine knew the general stuff but I never really opened up to him. Just Mason. Mason knows every detail. He had me talk about it. It helped a lot even though it was incredibly hard. Sometimes I think he knows me better than I do."
"So I'm only the second?"
"Yep."
"Why haven't you confided in Blaize yet? You guys seem intimate enough."
"Honestly, I don't know. I just don't. I don't know if I can trust him yet, not completely."
Leith looked confused. "But you could trust me?"
"Yeah. I don't know why, I just do."
Leith nodded slowly. "I know why."
Jaide looked at him dubiously. "Oh?"
"Yeah, it's because we had sex. I mean, you had sex with Mason and you opened up to him. You had sex with me and you opened up to me."
"But that doesn't really make sense. It could just be coincidence."
"It's not, and it does make sense. For a long time in your life, sex was something terrible. That will never go away. There will always be that grain of doubt that sex could go back to that again. It's like the last frontier for you. When you have sex with a guy and he doesn't hurt you, then you know you can trust him completely. It's probably a subconscious thing. You don't really know that it's happening."
"Wow, that does make sense."
"My dad's a psychologist," Leith shrugged. “It rubs off, that way of listening.”
Jaide yawned. "Should we get going now? What time is it?"
Leith looked at his watch. "Yeah, we could get going, if we make a quick pit stop." He climbed into the front seat and turned on the car. Jaide followed.
"What pit stop?"
"We still got 10 minutes or so. I need caffeine to manage this killer headache."
They buckled their seat belts and pulled onto the highway. After five minutes of a steep downgrade, they were back in town. Leith pulled into the drive through of a small coffee stand. He was still shirtless and Jaide still hadn't found her pants.