“No one can know,” I whispered into her shoulder. “No one.”
I thought maybe having someone who knew about it might make it just a little better, but I didn’t know what that was going to mean to Rumple. I also didn’t know where we were supposed to go from here. Even though Jeremy had his suspicions, this was entirely different.
“What now?” I asked quietly.
I had turned the car back on, but we were still sitting in the school parking lot. I leaned back in the driver's seat, my fingers clutching the center of the steering wheel. I felt strange—nervous, embarrassed, empty—and I simultaneously wanted to get the hell away from this girl and also hold her tightly and never let go. It was freaking me out.
“I still think you should tell my dad,” she responded—again. “But I'm not going to push it—not now. He has no right to treat you like that.”
“Going to your dad is pointless,” I said—again. We'd gone over a lot of this in the past hour. “I'm over eighteen. What's he going to do? Even if I was still underage, you obviously haven't been around long enough to understand my dad's hold on this community.”
“Then move out.”
“I can't do that.”
“Why not?”
“I just…can't,” I said with a sigh. “I can't do that to him. He needs me. Besides, I don't really have anywhere to go.”
“That's what I thought a couple of months ago,” she responded. “I never would have considered coming to live here before then. I didn't think I had anywhere to go, either.”
“Why did you leave?”
“You lost the bet,” she reminded me.
“I don't care about the fucking bet,” I said, my voice a little harsher than I had intended. “I want to know.”
She glared at me and then looked back toward the passenger window. Her fingers twisted around themselves in her lap.
“You know all my dirty laundry now,” I said. In truth, she only knew a portion of it, but whatever. “Tell me.”
Nicole pulled her legs up so her tennis shoes were on the edge of the seat, which I tried not to let bother me too much. Anyone else and I would have flipped out at the thought of mud on my leather. She took a deep breath.
“This goes nowhere, right?”
“Of course.”
She sighed again.
“My high school in the suburbs of Minneapolis was just like this town—no girls' soccer team,” Nicole said. “I played just for my club the first couple of years, but I wanted to play for the school, too. There weren't enough girls to form a team, so I decided I was going to try out for the boys' team.”
She laughed dryly.
“I honestly thought I'd have some kind of battle on my hands, you know? But they were okay with it. A lot of varsity players had graduated the year before, so they were a little low, and I guess I impressed them. So I made the team, and not too long after the season started, the team captain, a midfielder named Dennis, asked me out. We seemed to hit it off really well and started dating pretty seriously.”
She paused and ran her hand through her hair.
“I'd never really had a serious boyfriend before,” she continued. “He was my first…you know? I mean, we had been dating a couple of months, and it did seem kind of natural. He was really sweet…at least, I thought so.”
I held on to the bottom of the steering wheel, gripping it tightly.
“He said he loved me, and I thought I loved him, too.” She stopped again, and I heard her sniff. I looked over and could see her tearing up a bit. I released the wheel
and reached over to grab her hand, and she didn't protest.
“Go on,” I urged.
“We won our division championship,” she said. “There was a big party afterwards at this other guy's place. His parents were out of town, I think. At least, there weren't any adults there. We were drinking, and I had quite a bit. But then…then Dennis asked me if I wanted to try something else.”