Chapter 18: Soft Like Thunder: Chapter 17

MY EYES WERE CLOSED. The words were blurring. I jerked myself awake and tried to focus on the page, but it was no use. I was tired from Helen kicking me out of her dorm before the sun rose so Luc wouldn’t know I had slept over, and my sociology textbook wasn’t even close to interesting enough to keep me awake.

Daniel strolled into the study room just as I was contemplating whether I had enough time to take a nap before I picked Helen up from work.

“Hey,” I greeted.

He took a seat on the couch opposite mine, something brewing behind his sharp features. “What’s up, man? Have a good night last night?”

My head cocked. “Yeah. You?”

“Oh yeah. Spent some quality time with my girl. I told you about her. Elena…”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to jog that memory back around. “Oh, yeah. I think I remember.”

He leveled me with a serious stare that made me uneasy. “I saw you last night.”

“I don’t think so. I wasn’t out.”

“I know.” He chuckled. “I saw you when I went back to Elena’s suite.”

I pounded my forehead with the side of my fist. That was it. Elena was Helen’s roommate—the one who had called me Abby’s boyfriend. Jesus, I had completely forgotten, and I definitely hadn’t connected her to Daniel.

“I didn’t see you.”

“That’s because you were passed out. You had to be so wasted.” He raised his eyebrows, like he was waiting for a good story.

I shook my head. “No. Just tired.” I closed up my textbook and started gathering my stuff. “Speaking of, I’m still tired as hell. I’m going up to my room.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Are you actually with that girl?”

I shot him a glare. “What’s with the tone?”

He lifted his hands, palms up, like he was the picture of innocence. “I mean, if you’re with her, cool. She’s pretty. It’s just…I know how your dad is. I didn’t think he’d like you dating a stripper. Obviously, you know him better than—”

“Helen isn’t a stripper.”

Daniel chuckled again, this time giving me a look that was something akin to pity. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, but she is. She works at Savage Beauties.”

My eyes sharpened. “I know where she works. She serves drinks, not her tits.”

“Maybe some nights, that’s true. But I saw those pretty tits and that very fine ass with my own eyes, man. A bunch of the guys from the house were with me and can vouch if you ask. I get why you’re into her. She’s fine as hell. Very fine. That little heart-shaped birthmark on her right butt cheek is all kinds of sexy—”

My ears were ringing. I hadn’t wanted to believe him, then he mentioned Helen’s birthmark, and I didn’t hear another word that came from his mouth.

My girl had lied to me. She’d explicitly said she didn’t strip. I remembered being relieved I wouldn’t have to walk since that would have been a deal breaker. I’d wanted to believe her because I’d been so hard up for her. I’d her so much, I hadn’t wanted to be disappointed in her. But this…I was in too deep to call this disappointment. Finding out Helen had betrayed my trust, had been betraying my trust all this time…this was gutting.

The assholes I lived with all knew what Helen looked like naked. They’d probably jerked it to the thought of her. Hell, I would have if I’d been there with them. All that hair, those red lips, perfect face, immaculate tits, tear-worthy ass. Helen was a walking wet dream. No doubt she made a pretty penny taking her clothes off on stage.

God, had they touched her? Had she taken money from the guys I lived with and let them put their hands all over her? My stomach roiled violently, sickness swelling in my throat.

Every single night, I picked her up from that place. Had she spent hours teasing other men and grinding on their hard dicks? Most of those nights, I let her grind on dick. No, I more than let her, I put her there because I’d been so desperate to have her.

Before I lost my shit, I strode from the room with a calmness I in no way felt, telling Daniel I needed to take a nap. He was still talking, but I was already gone. The last thing I’d ever give Daniel was a peek at the riot raging within me. He already knew more than enough.

Somewhere in my chaotic thoughts, I latched on to something I’d pushed aside because it had been easier that way. Deacon’s door was open, so I went in without knocking. He was on his bed, laptop in his lap. He looked up, a smile beginning to form, failing halfway there when he got a look at me.

“What’s up?” he asked warily.

“How do you know Helen?”

“Who?” That ass was such a liar.

“Helen? The girl I had to haul out of your room so she didn’t beat your ass.”

“Ahhh.” He nodded as if it was just coming to him. “Helen, the little firecracker townie. She was my weed hookup for a while.”

That jolted me. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t that. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what you think. She sold me weed.”

I had to tuck my hand in my pockets so Deacon didn’t see how tight I’d balled them into fists. “She told you no. I was there when you went into Savage Wheelz. She chased you out with a bat.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, bitch is wild. I approached her all wrong that day. I ran into her at a party last fall. We talked and made a deal. She gave me weed, I sold it to dudes in the house, we split the profit. It went swimmingly until the cops showed up at a kickback right before school started and I had to flush all that beautiful ganja. I didn’t have the money for her, of course. That’s what you walked in on. The little wildcat was quite pissed at me.” His face turned bright red as he laughed at the memory.

I interrupted his laughter with another question about the woman I thought I knew but was clearly a stranger. “Is she still selling you weed?”

He rubbed his mouth. “Are you kidding? If I see her on campus, I walk the other way. Bitch is crazy. She’d probably brain me with her skateboard. No fucking way she’d hook me up again. That’s why I need your dealer’s number.”

Amir, the dealer Helen happened to know. From high school, she’d said. I now saw what a load of bullshit she’d been serving.

“Not happening.” I slapped the doorjamb. “Good night.”

Deacon called after me, probably with questions, but I was in no mood to answer. Not when I had a thousand questions of my own. No one in this house could put my mind at ease. Nothing could.

By the time Helen came jogging out of Savage Beauties, a sweet smile on her painted red lips, my decision was made. It hadn’t been hard to come to it. If I had been less of a man, I wouldn’t have been here to pick her up. But I wasn’t a liar, and I didn’t go back on my word. I said I’d be here, so I was.

She slid into the car and leaned over the console. I always kissed her when she got in. That was done. I pulled out of the parking lot without looking at her.

“Okay, what’s up?” She turned sideways in her seat, her eyes boring into the side of my head. “I can feel you simmering. Just say it. Tell me now, Theo.”

“When we get to the dorm. I’m not talking while I’m driving.”

“So, there’s something to say? You know you can’t dump me when we’re not really together, right?”

Stonewall Helen was back, and just in time, reminding me this was who we were. Two strangers who fucked. We weren’t the people who fell asleep together on her couch. Not when she had this whole secret life—a life I’d never sign up to be a part of.

“Right.”

She rotated to face the window, leaning as far from me as possible. From my periphery, I could see her ready to flee. Hand on the door, body tense, focused on the outside. It was a long drive, the silence between us so thick it was suffocating. When I pulled up in front of her dorm, I idled at the curb instead of parking in a spot like I normally did. This wouldn’t take long.

“Say it, Theo.” She refused to face me.

“This is done.”

“Okay.” Just like that, her fingers wrapped around the door handle. “Thanks for the ride.”

I could have let her go, but I was too angry to end it that easily. I needed her to understand exactly why I couldn’t be with her anymore. And maybe I needed to drill it in my own head, because lurking on the other side of my anger was a world of regret that this had to end.

“You lied to me, Helen.”

She looked at me over her shoulder. “Did I? And I suppose instead of just dumping me, which again, is unnecessary since we’re not together, you feel it necessary to lay out my shortcomings?” She twisted around to fully face me again. “Have at it. I’m all ears, Theo.”

The full force of Helen’s stunning face tripped me up. She was seething. Her cheeks were aflame, eyes flared and coal black. That only served to enrage me further. She had no room to be angry.

“I point blank asked you if you strip. You said no. You lied.” Her flinch was subtle, but I didn’t miss it. I should have stopped there, but that flinch only pissed me off more. “Tonight, I had to hear one of my housemates describe your tits to me. And he’s not the only one who’s seen you. A lot of them watched you take your clothes off. You really think I want to be with a girl like that? Who -fucking-one of my friends could close their eyes and picture naked?”

A long stretch of silence settled between us. I focused on her black nails picking at her fishnet stocking. She was unraveling them, making a wider hole with each pick.

“Is that it?” I lifted my eyes to her. She barely blinked. “Or is there more?”

“Nothing, Helen? You have nothing to say?”

She rubbed her lips together, and all I wanted to do was reach out and smear that lipstick all over her face with my fingers. I didn’t.

“No.” She flipped her pretty hair behind her back. “We’re done, so no. You don’t owe me anything, I don’t owe you anything.”

“Deacon.”

She nodded once. “Yeah. Deacon. Is that all?”

“Hel—”

Reaching behind her, she threw the door open. And then she was gone, racing up the stairs and disappearing inside her dorm before I could get her full name to leave my throat.

I knew I was in the right, but I didn’t feel righteous. Not after last night. Not after we’d opened up to each other, fell asleep together, tore apart regretfully at sunrise. I’d been thinking maybe this could be real. Maybe I was ready to start something deeper. If I did with anyone, it would have been her.

A bitter laugh clawed up from my chest when I imagined Andrew finding out my girlfriend was a stripper. He’d have a field day with that, revoke my tuition, disown me. Whitlocks didn’t lower themselves that way—barring the time he’d screwed my eighteen-year-old stripper mom in the champagne room without protection. But we didn’t talk about the circumstances surrounding my conception because, like I said, Whitlocks didn’t that.

Even if I was in a position to tell my dad to fuck off, I wouldn’t. Not for Helen. Not when she’d lied, omitted, made a fool out of me. I would never knowingly be with a woman who sold her body to other men. I saw what that did to my mom. I wasn’t interested in a replay.

Helen wasn’t who I thought she was in the beginning. I figured that was why my chest felt like it was being pounded in one spot with a hammer and chisel—disappointment that the woman I knew didn’t really exist.

It couldn’t have been anything other than that.