Her Secret Life

His words put her in a whole other place. Unfamiliar. Uncomfortable. “You think I’m sexy?”

She should be clamming up. Crossing her arms as she’d done with Bo earlier in the week when he’d come toward her. The thought of him touching her, or even looking at her in a sexual way, had practically had her screaming and running for the hills. Literally. She’d taken a drive up the mountain by her home. Parked. Looked down at the beautiful huge homes in that part of Beverly Hills.

And she’d known.

“My sexiness nearly got me raped. And maybe killed,” she said. “And I can’t figure out how to live with that. I suddenly hate my body. And...” She started to cry.

“No, Kace, the fact that some teenagers have a serious problem nearly got you raped. Read statistics. You’ll see that rape isn’t really about sex. It’s about a need to control. And it doesn’t just happen to beautiful women...”

His arm came around her shoulders and then her waist, and he helped hold her up as they walked. She looked toward the ocean, wondering what life had in store for her now.

Afraid of what happened, but of what was to come, too

.

“I broke up with Bo this week.”

His fingers gripped her side a little tighter as though he knew the fear raging through her.

“I... Just the thought of... He touched me and I...”

Who was she going to be if, because of one careless walk on the beach, she could no longer tolerate the opposite sex? Or having sex?

Bo had asked if she thought the incident had made her frigid. He’d been kind. Trying to understand.

She’d had no answer for him. She’d just known that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with him.

“You didn’t think maybe you should let things ride for a week or two, a month or two, until you get everything sorted out?” Michael asked as they came to a stop about a foot from where the sand became wet from the waves lapping gently to and fro.

She’d kind of had the sense that he didn’t particularly like Bo, or rather, hadn’t liked him for her.

“We both know that it takes time for the effects of trauma to settle, for you to get true perspective...”

“So I won’t cut my hair.”

“I was talking about Bo.”

“Maybe I acted too soon. All I can tell you is that I had to do it. When the attack happened, I didn’t even want to see him.” She turned to look up at the man she had wanted to see. “Don’t you think, if he was the man meant to be my partner for life, I’d have needed him most in that moment? Instead, I just kept thinking about what the news of the attack would do to him, how he’d react. Even wondered if he’d still want me, knowing what those boys did to me.”

Michael’s grip tightened again. He turned her to face him, holding both sides of her waist in his hands. “He did not dare tell you that.” She’d never heard him use that tone before. “If he dared to insinuate that...”

For the first time in almost a week, Kacey smiled for real. A smile she felt inside. She reached up to cover his lips with one finger. “Of course he didn’t,” she said. “He was actually quite concerned, and sympathetic and tender.”

She believed Bo had genuine feelings for her. She’d been fond of him, too. More than any other man she’d dated.

“My point was...I realized that for whatever reason, he didn’t instill a sense of confidence within me. It was more a sense of me needing to be what he needed. I know, knock me over the head with a brick, right. It takes me getting attacked to see that I don’t love him enough to marry him.”

She didn’t really love him at all. She cared about him.

For a while, she’d quite enjoyed having him as an exclusive sex partner. But the last few times he’d tried, she’d had one excuse or another to put him off. She’d invited him to sleep at her place. She’d cuddled and made out with him. But she’d lost interest in sex, thinking it was just...her whole life change thing. She’d figured her physical desire for him would return. Until that week, when she’d been unable to bear his touch at all.

“You ready to walk down the beach?”

She stared at Michael, at the glint in his eye, the steady way he met her gaze, at the jawline that seemed to hold such strength.

She’d never told him she wanted to walk down the beach. Only that she’d wanted to walk “on” the beach. Which was what they’d done.

“That’s what you need, isn’t it? To return to the scene. To be there without them.”