Breathless 4 (Breathless #4) (6 page)

“Jesus,” I said, barely able to keep my hands on the
wheel. Johnny took a deep breath again.

“I went in to talk to the police; they didn’t know for
sure how many people had been involved. They didn’t have enough proof.” He
laughed bitterly. “As if DNA, as if a girl writing down everything she remembered
— every person who’d…” he took another breath. “I testified against them all.
Everything they’d said — the picture I’d gotten, all of it. They’re all exactly
where they belong, and I hope they’re just as hurt and scared and shamed as
they made her feel — every day. I hope they’re getting it over and over again.”
I heard his breath hitching again and heard him starting to sob.

“I’m so sorry, Johnny,” I said, feeling my heart
aching in my chest. There was no way he could fake something like this. It had
to be the real story.

The tears were streaming down his face. “If I hadn’t
left... No wonder everyone blames me. I even blame me. I should have been there
— I should have been able to do something. I had to leave. I couldn’t go to
school there, I couldn’t take it.” He started to shake.

“Is that why you don’t drink?” Johnny nodded quietly.

“I have to be alert. I have to make sure that never
happens to anyone — no one. That’s…” he shook his head. “I can’t let that
happen to anyone. I have to be alert.” I heard the deep, soul-sadness in his
voice. I looked around; we were on the middle of the highway, but I couldn’t
just leave him the way he was. I pulled over onto the shoulder and parked the
car, leaning across the divider to hug Johnny tightly. He sobbed, holding me as
if he had to cling to something for life itself.

“I’m so sorry I made you tell me all this,” I said,
hugging him and stroking his head. “I’m so — thank you, for being willing to
tell me.” I kissed him on the forehead, on the lips. “I love you so much,
Johnny. I hate the pain you’ve been through.” We held each other in the
darkness, and I barely even noticed the few cars that rushed past us. I felt Johnny’s
sobs starting to ease, and he pulled my face up to kiss me on the lips. I
didn’t even realize that I had been crying, too, until he reached up to wipe my
face.

“I will never let you down, Becky,” he said, kissing
me softly on the lips once more. “Never. You are always — always — safe with
me.”

Chapter
Seven

The next day, I got through my classes, but I kept
thinking about everything that Johnny had told me. We had gotten home late the
night before, and he had told me he was too tired to do more than just kiss me
goodnight. I had to admit that I was more than a little emotionally exhausted
myself, though it would have been nice to be able to get into bed with him for
nothing more than the sake of cuddling. I watched him head off towards the frat
row and dragged myself up to my dorm room where I had the best night of sleep
I’d achieved in weeks.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I was with my
mom. She had hired a private investigator because she’d had some weird
suspicion about my boyfriend, who had been nothing but polite and pleasant to
her. And the PI hadn’t even managed to get the full story. I knew I would have
to talk to her, even though I didn’t want to dredge up any of the sordid
details of what I had heard the night before. But I owed it to Johnny; I
couldn’t just let my parents go on thinking that I was dating some rapist who
got off, when I knew the truth. If he had been willing to tell me about it, I
had to make sure that they understood the whole situation — before they got it
into their heads to do something stupid like say something to Johnny that would
only hurt him more.

I went up to my room as soon as classes were done and
took my phone out. My hands were shaking from anger and frustration at my
parents, from the sadness and horror of what Johnny had told me the night
before. I gritted my teeth, found my mom’s number, and hit the call icon. I
nearly lost my nerve; it was so difficult to even make myself think about what
Johnny had been through, the fact that he couldn’t seem to get out from
underneath such a huge tragedy.

“Becky! Are you okay? You haven’t been alone with that
boy, have you?” My anger flared up.

“I have, actually. And I will be alone with him
whenever I feel like it.”

“Didn’t you pay any attention to what I told you
yesterday? He’s — he’s a monster!”

“No, Mom, he isn’t.” I took a deep breath. “For your
information, I went to the source. I asked Johnny exactly what happened, and he
told me in details that can’t be a lie. He was not one of the people who raped
Claire; he had left the party long before, and he is still beating himself up
for not being there to save her.”

“But, sweetie, that’s exactly the sort of thing…”

“Listen to me, Mother,” I said firmly. “The man I
spoke to last night is still absolutely torn up about what happened to a girl
he loved. He had no part in hurting her — he even testified against his own
friends because he knew that they were involved.” I paused for a moment to try
and let it sink in. “He did everything he possibly could to try and help her,
to save her, and he still blames himself.”

“Sweetie-”

“No, Mom,” I said. “I don’t even want to hear it. What
you and Dad did was incredibly shitty. Who the hell hires a private
investigator to look into their daughter’s boyfriend? I’m not a child. I’m not
an idiot.” I heard my voice rising in volume and took a deep breath to calm
myself. “I have absolute trust in Johnny because he has shown me he’s a good
person. If you were going to hire someone to investigate him, you should have
at least paid someone who knows what he’s doing. Obviously this guy you put on
the case can’t even get his facts straight!”

“Sweetie, I know you’re upset…”

“You’re damned right I’m upset. You nearly ruined the
best relationship I’ve ever had in my life because you’re too nosy to let me
make up my own mind and you hired an incompetent idiot who rushed to a
conclusion without even looking hard at the facts. I’m in love with Johnny and
I trust him, and there isn’t a whole hell of a lot you can do to stop me.” I heard
my mom sputtering on the other end of the line.

“I would suggest,
Mother, that
you see about getting your money back. You wasted it on that stupid idiot when
you could have just trusted me to make a good choice.” I took a deep breath,
realizing that I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was spent. I said a
quick goodbye and ended the call, my hands still shaking from all of the
adrenaline flowing through me. I felt weirdly hot and cold all at once, my
heart racing. I had done it. I cringed, thinking that my mom would probably
have more than a few choice words about my vocabulary, once she got over her
shock. But I couldn’t just let her sit there in her pretentious ignorance and
think such horrible things about the man I loved.

Chapter
Eight

A few minutes after I had hung up on my mother, I
heard the room door open. I pulled myself up off of the bed. “Becky!” Georgia
was calling out, and I tried to hurry to leave my room and meet her in the
common area.

“What’s up?” I asked; she looked excited — anxious,
even.

“Have you heard? You have to have heard.” I looked at
her in confusion.

“What are you talking about? Heard what?” Georgia’s
eyes widened. She ducked into her room and brought out her laptop. She pulled
me onto the couch with her and opened up a browser. “Just tell me already,” I
said, losing my patience. I watched as she typed Johnny’s name into the search
bar. What was going on with Johnny? I felt my heart lurch in my chest — had
something happened to him?

“Hold on, it’s coming up,” Georgia said. I gritted my
teeth. If something had happened to Johnny, surely someone would have let me
know. Johnny would have had someone call me or text me, wouldn’t he? A hundred
scenarios played through my mind: car accidents, injuries happening in the gym,
something happening on campus, growing wilder and wilder as I waited for the
page to load. I wished Georgia would just tell me what was going on.

I got my answer in a few moments, even if it felt like
an absolute eternity before the page loaded. The top results were news articles
and as my eyes trailed over the headlines I groaned. “Hockey Star Implicated in
Notorious Gang Rape Case
,
” one said. “Johnny
Steele
Under
Suspicion in Claire White Case. College
Hockey MVP
Under
Investigation.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, no that’s all
wrong.”

“Look, Becky,” Georgia said, opening up one of the
news articles. They were referring to Johnny as an “alleged rapist,” and I
sagged against Georgia as I read the article. It was impossible. It couldn’t be.
I knew the facts of the case, there was no way that Johnny had been lying to
me. I kept reading, as much as it gave me pain; the article said that “new
information has come to light in the investigation of the circumstances surrounding
the suicide of Claire White.”

“Oh God,” I said, bringing my hands to my face.

“What? Did you…did he say something?” Georgia was
staring at me wildly. “Did you
know
?”
I shook my head.

“Johnny told me everything about that whole horrible
thing. He wasn’t involved. I swear to God he wasn’t involved. I can’t believe
he has anything to do with it.” I shook my head again. “I promise you
everything I have, Georgia: Johnny did his best to save Claire, not hurt her.
He wasn’t even there when it happened.”

“I believe you, but what about the new evidence?” I
groaned again and slid down along the couch, burying my face in the pillows.

“My parents are fucking idiots,” I said, barely
lifting my head up enough to be heard. “This has to be about that stupid
private investigator they hired. That’s the only thing it can be. Oh God, I
hate them so much.” I buried my face in the pillows once more. I couldn’t
believe it. Johnny was going to be hounded by this again — and it was all my
parents’ fault, which meant that in some way it was partly my fault. If I
hadn’t let them meet him, they wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to drag a
stupid gumshoe into the situation. They wouldn’t have had him investigated and
this “new evidence,” whatever it was, would never have come about.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe just how
much dating me had brought Johnny so much sorrow; I had failed to trust him. I
had been the reason why he would have to relive the whole horrible act and
everything that he still blamed himself for about it over and over again. It
was bad enough that he’d had to tell me about it the night before, but this
could ruin his prospects. This could get him kicked off of the team for no
reason. My mind was reeling. How could my parents have done something so
stupid? I wanted to call my mom again and yell at her, scream at her that she
was destroying the life of the man I was in love with. I wanted to tell her
that I would never, ever forgive her. I wanted to make her put my dad on the
phone so that I could scream at him, too.

“You’re really, really sure that Johnny had nothing to
do with it?” I took a deep breath and turned onto my side, bringing my head up
to rest on Georgia’s thigh.
It would be
all over the place soon enough,
I realized. I knew that Georgia had to have
heard about it on campus — everyone would be talking about it, there would be
no way to avoid hearing about it from fifty, a hundred, two hundred people I
didn’t even know. But I could set the record straight for my roommate. She
could correct anyone who had the nerve to bring it to her. I told her about the
situation; I didn’t go into as much detail as Johnny had, but I explained that
he and Claire had dated, that they had broken up and she had started to go a
little nuts, leading to her being at the party, drinking — the perfect set-up
for a bunch of predatory assholes. I told her about Johnny confronting his
friends, about him carrying Claire home, about her suicide and his testimony
against the people he had played hockey with, who he had been close to. And I
told her about how he still blamed himself. I closed my eyes. “Okay,” Georgia
said when I finished. “That…I can’t really argue with you. So what are you
going to do now?” I thought about it for a long moment.

“I have to go find him.”

Chapter
Nine

I felt myself starting to panic again and told myself
I had to rein it in. I wasn’t going to be able to do anything for Johnny if I
went off like a crazy person. I found my phone and went into my bedroom in the
dorm and tried to call him; there was no answer. I bit my bottom lip. I could
understand that Johnny was probably getting a lot of phone calls just then. His
phone was probably ringing off the hook. But I had no idea where he might be on
the campus. I tried calling him again; again no answer.

I decided to change tactics. Even if he wasn’t
answering his phone, he might see a text.
Hey
babe, it’s me — I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Get back to me, please?
I found myself pulling up the news on my laptop, reading with my stomach in
knots as more and more articles came out about the situation with Claire White,
about Johnny’s possible involvement, and a rehash of all of the details that
had been published before. The comments sections on all of the articles were
absolutely vile, with people saying that Johnny should have been shot, that no
jury on the planet would convict Claire’s parents for killing him.