I wrap my hands around the steaming mug. “You’re really stepping up your hot chocolate game.”
“You have the effect on me,” he murmurs. “Making me want to be better.”
“You don’t need to be better. You’re already the best person I know.”
“And I feel the same way about you, but I get the feeling that’s not how you feel about yourself. Not about some things, at least.” He stretches his arm across the back of the couch, angling himself toward me. “You don’t need to change anything about yourself to get someone like Krissy to like you, Jennie. You’re so much better than people like that.”
It’s something about me that doesn’t make sense. Not to people like Garrett who know me, and not to myself. I’m not a follower. I’m perfectly fine to carve my own path, and I don’t want to give up my personality to fit in with anybody. So why do I crave acceptance so much?
“I think I just want to feel like I have a space in this world, people that love me for me.”
“But you do,” Garrett argues.
“Not really. Everyone who’s important in my life came through Carter.”
“So? I mean, I get it. But finding them because they found Carter first doesn’t mean they don’t love you for everything you are. I know for a fact Olivia and Cara feel so lucky to have you. Do you doubt that?”
I think back on the way Olivia cried over my job offer, the thought of me moving across the country. How, just like my mom, she wants me to follow my dreams but wishes I could do so right here, next to her, our family. I think about Cara, so easily swayed to keep our secret from not only Carter but her own husband. The way she gave my hand a squeeze and whispered as long as you’re happy in my ear before she danced back to the party.
“They got two Becketts for the price of one, Jennie, and so did I. We all love you for the person you are, not for who your brother is. I’m sorry anybody ever made you feel like all you brought to the table was being Carter’s sister. That’s simply not true.”
I take a sip of my hot chocolate to let his words settle, to feel the love he says is there, to let myself believe it. When I move the mug away, Garrett chuckles.
“What?” I swipe at the corner of my mouth. “Whipped cream?”
His palm curves around my neck, hauling me closer, and his lips touch the tip of my nose. When he pulls back, his tongue flicks out, licking the whipped cream from his lips. He sits back, patient, waiting, smiling.
I take a deep breath and jump.
“Kevin was my boyfriend in high school.” My only boyfriend. “I don’t even know why I liked him. Maybe I was being shallow. He was cute, popular, and the captain of our football team. Everybody loved him. I thought I was so special when he started pursuing me. It was shortly after my dad died, and I think…maybe I was missing some of the love I’d lost. Everything was hard. My mom was barely functioning, and Carter was hardly in the country. I knew I wasn’t alone, but I felt that way a lot of the time. Kevin made me feel seen, and he cared about me.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Or he acted like he did.”
Garrett’s jaw flexes, fists clenching. He’s thinking the same thing Carter did—that Kevin was taking advantage of me, the way my grief rocked me to my core. I can see it now clear as day, but I couldn’t then. Carter and I got in too many fights about it to even recall.
“Kevin wanted to have sex, but I wanted to wait. I didn’t feel ready, and I was intimidated. He was experienced, and he’d even been with some of the girls in older grades. He said he was okay with waiting, but it didn’t stop him from asking me every single time we were alone. By the time senior year rolled around, all I felt was pressure. Pressure to skip classes, to drink with my friends, to have sex like everyone else, to just…fit in.”
A sharp pit of pain roots deep in my chest, each breath shallower than the last. Garrett’s fingertips skim the back of my neck, easing the tension enough for me to breathe.
“Kevin started dropping hints that he was getting bored, that he could go somewhere else to get what he wanted. The me now would’ve told him to go fuck himself and get lost, but the me back then was too afraid to be alone. He had a big party one night while his parents were away, and everyone was pressuring me to drink.”
Fire flashes in Garrett’s eyes, angrier than I’ve ever seen, and I don’t blame him. I was and still am within my right to decline alcohol. Nobody needs an excuse to avoid it, but that alcohol stole my dad from me was more than enough of a reason. That my friends didn’t respect this should’ve been enough of a red flag.
But the worst part of all?
“It was a couple days after the anniversary of my dad’s death. Carter was on a ten-day road trip, and I was just…struggling. I was tired. I wanted to forget.” Garrett slips an arm around my waist, tugging me into his side, and I lay my head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what I drank. It smelled like gasoline and burned like fire. I went upstairs with Kevin, and we were fooling around on his bed, and I told him I wanted to have sex.”
“You didn’t want to,” Garrett speaks for the first time. He looks at me, a soft understanding that coasts my face. “You didn’t want to have sex. You just wanted to feel something else. And he took advantage of you feeling that way.”
Many years separate Garrett now and Kevin then, but this man beside me is exactly that—a man. A real man. What I felt last night is what I felt all those years ago. I wanted to feel anything other than the anger, the hurt, the betrayal, so I offered up the last bit of my body to Garrett in hopes he’d take those feelings away, help me feel something else.
And he said no.
He saw my struggle and instead of taking something he wanted, he gave me what I needed. Patience, compassion, connection. With one simple action, he reinforced what I already knew: that I could trust him.
“It felt like it went on forever. He said he wanted me to feel good. At the time, I thought it was sweet, that he just wanted to make sure my first time was pleasurable.”
My throat constricts, and my eyes sting with tears begging to fall. I don’t want to let them. I’ve given Kevin far too many.
“It started to feel good. I was…” Heat floods my face, clawing its way to the tips of my ears. “Getting vocal. Making noises.” My vision blurs and Garrett presses his lips to the crown of my head. “He flipped me over suddenly and right before he pushed back inside me, he told me…he told me to scream for them.”
“Them?”
Tears tip over the edge of my lids and free-fall down my cheeks as I’m flooded with memories, as I tell Garrett about the way the door to Kevin’s bedroom sprung open just as I called his name, how half of the football team stood on the other side, phones pointed at us while they laughed and cheered Kevin on while he finished. The way Kevin smacked my ass when he was done, told me it was no big deal, how he left me there to clean myself up, and then watched me leave while he stood in his kitchen, drinking beer and laughing with his friends.
I slap at my cheeks, trying to swipe my tears away, but it’s no use. They keep falling as I tell him how Kevin wouldn’t return my calls the next day, how I walked through the halls at school on Monday and listened to my own moans being played back to me from everyone’s phones, how I found my boyfriend standing at his locker with his arm around my best friend, all the people I had considered friends surrounding them, laughing at me.