If You Need Me: The Ashford Legacy, Book 1 (11 page)

She repositioned the straps of her dress, but there wasn’t much she could do about the cool tickle of his fluid on her thighs. “Maybe. You could be here auditioning for the part of my sex slave, for all I know.”

“How am I doing on that?” he murmured, drawing her close again like he couldn’t get enough.

She kissed him, loving how natural it felt when her mouth was on his. “You’re hired.”

He laughed out loud and squeezed her once more before stepping back and pouring a cup of water from the sink. “I have a question…”

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said when he handed the first cup of water to her. “What’s the question?”

“I was wondering if you might consider—no pressure, okay?—walking with me to the beach.”

The water went down her throat like a lead weight. “The w-what? The beach? My God, Kyle, it’s like…four-fifths of a mile away.”

She set her cup down, suddenly feeling sick, and went to put the groceries in the fridge so she wouldn’t have to look at him. She was going to lose Kyle Ford. She knew it now. This was how it was going to play out: he’d make her fall in love with him and then when he saw her agoraphobia was real, he’d drop her like a bad habit.

“That’s not so bad, right? You’ve gone two blocks just on your own.”

Her cheeks were hot, her heart pounding. She scrubbed her hands over her face. “Why are you doing this? I thought you understood.”

“You were doing so good, Ray. You beat every challenge. Help me understand.”

“What do you mean help you understand? Look it up in the DSM-5 under ‘Panic Disorders’. Reading about it didn’t do crap for me, but if you’re so curious—go for it.”

Kyle put his hands palms-up. “I’m not trying to upset you, sweetheart. I won’t force you to do anything you aren’t ready for, okay?”

She breathed for a minute, trying to get control of the panic—panic that he’d leave her if she couldn’t go outside…panic over the hell that awaited her if she tried to change to keep him. “Okay.”

“I know there are some subjects we’ve steered clear of. My family. Your agoraphobia. But I was wondering if you could tell me when it started.”

“Sure. I was fifteen.”

He nodded. “So it wasn’t like you were born this way—you can actually remember the year you started feeling it?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess some people are born this way. I mean, it’s not like I was a major extrovert at fourteen. But no, I remember it.”

“Can you share what happened?”

She squeezed her arms tighter around her middle. Only people from her past knew what had happened, and most of those people she’d left far behind. And now here was Kyle, acting like he wanted to understand her, like he wanted to be part of her life in some long-term way. It was hard to say no to him after how vulnerable he’d been with her in their lovemaking.

“It’s really simple, actually. I was fifteen. It was toward the end of my sophomore year in high school. I’d been absent because I was sick, and I needed to make up some lab work in chemistry. I planned to ride my bike to school super early, before most of the other classes even opened.”

Kyle leaned back against the countertop, his knuckles going white at his sides. “And you never made it.”

She shook her head, but the rest of her was shaking now, too. “No, I made it. I locked up the bike and was walking down an empty hall toward the science building, and the next thing I knew, my head hurt so bad and I was being dragged into the boys’ bathroom.”

He swallowed, his face pale. “You don’t have to go on.”

“That’s it, Kyle! That’s the whole story! Some senior boy hit me in the back of my head with the butt of a hunting knife and dragged me into the bathroom. Carter was just coming out of the last stall, and I remember staring up at him from the floor—he had toilet paper sticking to his bloody lip. When he saw me, he went ballistic. The other boy didn’t even get a jab in with his knife before Carter was punching him. When the guy finally fell, Carter came to check on me. He said later that he saw the blood in my hair and he was scared. But the guy who attacked me got away. As soon as Carter turned toward me, he took off.”

She was crying now. She felt so stupid. So fucking stupid. “I wasn’t raped. I didn’t have to go to the hospital. The guy never returned to school—and neither did I. I couldn’t. My mom homeschooled me for the final two years of high school. My bachelor’s degree in English is from an online university.”

She sucked in a huge breath, and let it out again as a sob. “I’m pathetic, right? You know how many people get mugged in America every year? Thousands. And most of them go on with their lives just fine.”

“What was his name?”

“Brody Martin. Though I imagine he’s probably using his middle name now, too. I asked my parents not too long back, but thankfully, nobody’s seen him around.”

“And Carter? Why was he there that morning? Why the bloody lip?”

“The split lip was courtesy of his father, and I hate to say that wasn’t the first time Tuck Halston hit him. You know what’s horrible? All I can think about is if Carter hadn’t been there that morning…hadn’t had that busted lip or if he’d left the bathroom just a few minutes sooner…I don’t know if I’d even be here today. How selfish is it to be thankful my friend got hurt?”

“How could you call that selfish? You don’t think any man who has the privilege of calling you friend wouldn’t gladly endure more than a fucking bloody lip for you?”

“I’m not a very good friend. I didn’t even know his dad was sick.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Carter was a senior that year, and he joined the military right after graduation. I bet he was the only person who wanted out of that town even worse than I did.”

Kyle came to her and wrapped her in his arms so tight, she knew that for the moment she was safe—he wasn’t going anywhere. “You’re too hard on yourself,” he said. “Jesus, Rayna, you don’t know what that boy might have had planned. I can’t even consider what could have happened to you.”

“You know the worst part?” she continued, stuck somewhere between this world with Kyle and the one back in high school. “I never heard Brody coming. I didn’t get a prickle on the back of my neck. I didn’t hear the scrape of his shoes before he struck. I didn’t wake up that morning and think anything was going to be different about that day. And now I can’t walk outside without feeling like someone’s going to sneak up behind me and my life will be over before I even know I’m gone.”

“I’m no doctor,” he said, “but it almost sounds like you have post-traumatic stress.”

She pressed her face against his bare chest, and her breathing started to slow. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. To tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit what people label it—I just know how it feels. Being outside is like waiting for the invisible guillotine to drop.”

“What if—”

“Kyle.” She cut him off and lifted her head to stare up at him. “Stop trying to fix me. You’ve done so much already, but it’s been hard for me—harder than I let on.”

“The challenges are making it worse?”

“No, not worse. But do you have any idea how flipping proud I am of that penny I found? It may as well be gold bullion. Don’t take that victory away from me by pushing me to the next step as though that one wasn’t good enough.”

“I swear that’s not what I’m trying to do, Ray. Or—hell, I don’t know. Maybe it is. I just want to try one more thing. That’s it—
one
. I promise. And after that I’m just going to enjoy you indoors for the rest of our days.”

She didn’t believe that one more challenge would be enough for him or that he could really love her if she stayed like this forever, but hope was a seductive bitch.

Her hands felt numb, and she was losing the feeling in her toes altogether.
“One.”

His arms around her shoulders jerked a little like he was surprised or maybe excited. “Really? Okay. Do you own a swimsuit?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t get out enough to need a suit.”

“That’s okay. Go change into shorts and a tank top. I have some board shorts in my bag.” At her look, he laughed. “Come on, I couldn’t come to California without trunks, right? Just in case.”

“It’s four-fifths of a mile, Kyle. You’re just setting us up to fail.”

He squeezed her shoulder and steered her in the direction of her room. “Get changed and I’ll fry us up some eggs. At the very least, I’m going to strut down the hall and back with the prettiest girl in Santa Barbara on my arm.”

Twenty minutes later, they were standing on the ground floor of the apartment building, and Rayna was oozing sweat from every pore. Wearing her trench coat might have helped her feel more tucked in, but it was almost ninety degrees outside, and there was no way she could get away with a heavy coat on a day like this.

When they stepped onto the street, Rayna’s feet involuntarily dug into the sidewalk. Kyle grasped her shoulders and stepped in close. “Okay, are you ready to give this a try?”

“No,” she mumbled, looking around for the nearest trash can in the event that she puked.

“This is what’s gonna happen—I’m going to be glued to you the entire time, like this.” He hugged her from behind, and she leaned into him, loving the feel of his thighs snug against her rump and his chest pressing into her shoulders.

“My hand isn’t going to leave this spot.” When he cupped the back of her head, she flinched. But after a moment, it felt right. It felt safe. “No one can touch you with my body here, right? That’s six feet two inches of possessive male behind you who’s not gonna let anything happen to his girl, okay?”

When she nodded, leaning more of her weight against him, he continued. “Let’s do this. Ready?
Go.
”

And when he stepped forward with left arm secured over her rib cage and his right hand cupping her nape, Rayna laughed. “Oh jeez, you can’t be serious. We look ridiculous!”

“No, you look hot in those little shorts and every guy on this street wants to be me.” The hand that was protecting her head slipped lower and gave her ass a pat before returning to its station. “Anyway, people will just think we’re in love. And people in love are allowed to look silly.”

And she did look silly, with a big goofy smile plastered across her face and Kyle plastered to her back as they struck out, heading west down the street.

She blinked the sweat out of her eyes and tried to relax into Kyle’s grip. After a few minutes, the sights became clearer, the little details of the city streets that she’d missed when she’d ventured out alone for a challenge. Her favorite Chinese food place wasn’t really that far away, was it? She saw the young man who usually delivered her food behind the counter like he was just getting set up for the day.

He caught her staring and waved. “Good morning, Rayna! Out for a walk today?”

“Good morning,” she replied, feeling Kyle’s warm hand against her hair and forcing herself to draw a deep, cleansing breath. Her feet were moving. They’d gone four blocks now—her personal record—and her feet were still moving toward the ocean.

A young couple was walking toward them with their arms intertwined and their hands in the other’s back pocket. They didn’t seem to have a care in the world. “See?” Kyle whispered in her ear. “We don’t look any different than them.”

Rayna smiled as the couple passed. Every face she saw told her a story. The wrinkly, sun-weathered face of an old homeless man. A mother kneeling down on the sidewalk to wipe sunscreen across a little girl’s pink cheeks. A set of rowdy teens zipping past on their skateboards like they’d happily run her off the sidewalk. Kyle’s arm tightened over her ribs, and she relaxed her head back into his palm just a fraction of an inch.

On the next street, she spied the mother lode of flowers, and her mind went back to the Gerbera daisy sitting in the coffee cup on her table and how Kyle had rewarded her for finding it. Buckets filled with colorful, fragrant blooms lined the walls outside of the florist’s shop. If she could ever walk here on her own, she vowed her little apartment would never again go without a vase of fresh-cut flowers.

“You’re doing great,” Kyle told her, and she brought her hand over her stomach to cover his and squeezed. This man meant everything to her. No other man had ever cared about her as much as Kyle Ford.

Her heart rate kicked up when they began to round the last building on the street leading to the boardwalk. Her body was wired, yet exhausted, so saturated with stress hormones it was like she’d traveled thirty miles through the jungle instead of less than a mile down the quaint city streets. And when they stepped past the corner of the offices and the ocean view rose up before her, she stopped, causing Kyle to bump into her from behind.

“There’s your water, Ray,” Kyle whispered in her ear. “You made it.”

“I made it,” she choked out, and with the tears obscuring her vision and Kyle’s hand on her nape, she stumbled forward like a corpse back from the dead as she headed for the beach.

When her feet hit the shore, she forgot about Kyle’s hand for the moment and dropped to her knees, splaying her fingers in the sand like it was soil from the motherland.

Kyle watched her, his smile larger even than hers, and after a while he reached his hand down to her. “Come on. We’re not done yet.”

When she paused and stared up at him, he laughed and scooped her up in his arms, running toward the water with her cradled to his chest.