Free Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males by Kelly Favor, Locklyn Marx

little bit, thinking it might slow him down.   Only the exact opposite happened.   He put his weight on me and pushed me
back onto the couch, and then he started groping me, putting his hands all over
me.   Finally, I got scared and said
I wanted to stop.   He ignored
me.   I said it louder and then he
got really rough.   He ripped my
panties off and put his fingers right into me.   I was crying, telling him to stop, and
he told me not to fight it…and then he eventually just stopped responding.”
    She realized she was
shaking violently now, as if it was happening again, this very instant.  
    Elijah looked
slightly alarmed.   “Caelyn, relax,”
he said.   “Relax.   No one’s going to hurt you again.”
    “How do you know?”
she said, her voice almost a whisper.
    “Because, I’ll kill
anyone who tries.”
    She nodded, still
shaking violently.   “Thank you for
saying that.”
    “Is it bothering you
that I’m sitting so close right now?”
    She looked into his
eyes and shook her head.   “No.   I know you wouldn’t ever hurt me.”
    He smiled a little,
but then his smile faded.   “Tell me
the rest.   I can take it.”
    Caelyn looked away,
drawing her knees up to her chest and putting her cheek against her knees.   She closed her eyes.   “From there, things just progressed
fast.   I think I might have blacked
out a little bit.   It crossed my
mind that I might die—that Jayson was totally insane and he might kill
me.   His eyes weren’t normal, they
were dead.   He wasn’t seeing me, he
didn’t care that I was crying and begging him to stop.   He just kept going.   He raped me.   I don’t know how long it lasted.   I just know that afterward, he acted
like nothing had happened.   He got
up and went to the bathroom and then he came back and started watching the
movie again.   I told him I was going
and he said he would text me tomorrow.   I just said fine, because I wanted more than anything to get out of that
apartment and away from him.”
    She heaved a deep
sigh, opening her eyes again, as if coming out of a trance.   “Once I got back to my dorm room, I
realized that I couldn’t stay there anymore.   I didn’t want to see Jayson ever again,
or even the school itself.   I wanted
out of Boston.”
    “Why Florida?” Elijah
asked.
    She smiled then.   “I’ll show you.”   She climbed off the bed and fished the
postcard out of her purse.   She got
back on the bed and handed it to Elijah, who saw it and grinned.  
    “This is cute,” he
said.   “But I still don’t get why
you decided to go here.”
    The card was a
picture of a sandy white beach with a beautiful sunset.   Palm trees waved in the distance.   At the top edge of the card, in colorful
letters, it said GREETINGS FROM BEAUTIFUL SARASOTA.   She turned it over and showed him the
flip side.
    Hey, Alicia!   Wish you were here—maybe Spring Break? Love, Mom.
    “My roommate, Alicia,
got this from her mother a couple of weeks ago.   She couldn’t care less about it.   She actually tossed it in the trash and
I found it.”
    “I guess her and her
mother aren’t that close,” Elijah said.
    “I guess not.   Ever since I found this card, I couldn’t
help but look at it.   I ended it
putting it in my room on my dresser, and every night, I looked at it and pictured
myself away from everything, walking on that beach.”   Caelyn laughed to herself.   “When I got back to the room last night,
I knew I was leaving.   But I wasn’t
sure exactly where to go until I was in the middle of packing and that post
card caught my eye again.   That’s
when I realized.”
    Elijah raised his
eyebrows.   “That’s quite a story you
got there.”
    “Yup.”   She nodded, pushing a few strands of
hair out of her face.
    “Why not go to the
police?”
    She flinched.   “I just can’t.   His family is wealthy, very
connected.   I know he mentioned
something about relatives who are judges and lawyers.