Shallow River

I accept the drink with a large smile and suck a quarter of it down in one swallow.

“Pace yourself,” David warns lightly, an amused glint in his eyes.

I quirk a brow and suck down another big swallow. “No can do, my friend, no can do.”

He laughs and leaves me be. David knows I can hold liquor better than any man he knows. He’s witnessed me shit faced and still able to walk a straight line at the end of the night. And Amelia always buying breakfast the next morning because she puked first.

In the back of my head, I know it’d be smart to pace myself. I can’t get drunk because I have to drive myself home. Amelia and David would be more than willing to offer me the spare bedroom, but Ryan would flip if he came home to a missing, liar of a girlfriend. With that thought in mind, I sip slower and gorge myself on the best chicken tacos I’ve ever had.

What Ryan doesn’t know, can’t hurt me.

BLARING LIGHT ASSAULTS MY senses, painting my eyelids tomato red. Slowly, I crack them open, holding a hand over my eyes to assuage the pain.

“What the hell?” I mutter. When my vision focuses, a calm, blank-faced Ryan is standing at the door, his finger nocked on the light switch. I just stare at him, confused by the sudden light and cold look on his face.

It’s early morning, the sun bare

ly cresting over the horizon. Bleariness still muddles my brain, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out something is wrong.

“What?” I snap. I pull a face, smacking my lips in disgust when I realize how gross my mouth feels.

Dragging myself into a sitting position, the blanket falls from my bare breasts. A lift of the blanket reveals the rest of my naked body. A frown pulls at my lips, confused how I got naked. I went to bed dressed in my pajamas.

A quick glance down at the floor solves that mystery. They’re lying haphazardly next to the bed. The strings to my tank are snapped clean from one end. My bottoms are cut in half. Neither of them were torn. I slowly pursue the room, taking note of the scissors lying on the end table, along with a bottle of water that has a white residue at the lip.

The more I see, the more horrified I grow. Hurriedly, I push the blankets back further to see dried semen on the inside of my thigh.

“Did we have sex?” I ask, even though the answer is currently slapping me in the fucking face. I should’ve asked, did you rape me?

Ryan’s jaw ticks. “You mean you don’t remember me fucking you?”

I hate when he answers my question with another question.

I glance toward the water bottle with the suspicious substance dried on the inside of it. He notes my expression. A sinister smile cracks across his otherwise cold face. There’s no other emotion to the action but bitter amusement.

“I don’t need to drug my girlfriend in order to sleep with her,” he says bitterly, guessing my train of thought.

But you do, sweet Ryan.

“It’s Alka Seltzer. I had a bad headache last night from all the drinking,” he explains dryly. The urge to grab the bottle and sniff it is overwhelming, but that would only add insult to injury. He’s already pissed about something. Something that doesn’t have shit to do with my ravaged body or a fucking water bottle.

When I just stare at him, he finally walks towards me until he’s standing at the foot of the bed. The position leaves me feeling vulnerable. I feel at a disadvantage. Naked, scramble-brained and… sore. Very sore.

If it wasn’t for the fire-breathing dragon staring down his nostrils at me, I’d look for bruises.

Calmly, I ask, “Is there something wrong?”

“Where were you last night?”

My heart feels like a stone dropping into a well. It drops so far down, I fear I’ve lost it somewhere in the acidic pit of my stomach. Yet I can feel it pumping at an alarming rate, the adrenaline leaking into my bloodstream.

“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice surprisingly even.

“Don’t play fucking stupid with me, River,” he snarls. He clenches the duvet in his fist and rips it from my body. My attempts to hold onto the blanket are in vain. Instinctively, I cover my naked body, curling my legs against my chest protectively.

“Tell me what the hell you’re talking about, Ryan,” I demand, forcing steel into my spine. It feels like I’ve just emptied a syringe full of jello into my spine instead.

How is that I’ve faced big, scary men since the dawn of my existence, yet this man still manages to put the fear of god in me? He’s much smaller than a lot of the men I’ve gone up against in my life.