Free Close: A New Adult Thriller by M.H. Young

from crying. I was not going to break down. I refused. I swallowed away the fear of what I was going to tell him.
    “He raped me,” I said.
    There was silence on the other end of the line.
    “And don’t dare ask me if I’m sure, okay?” I warned him.
    “Oh my God...Laura...I....I,” he stuttered.
    “The police are going to want to talk to you.”
    “Uh, okay,” he said. “Listen. I’m sorry about asking you if you were, y’know...”
    I wanted to accept his apology, but I was still angry. The damage had been done. We had never really felt like a couple, and if I was going to be with someone then I wanted it to be a man rather than a boy. I needed someone who would be there for me when things got rough, and right now was about as rough as my life had been.
    “I just wanted to let you know,” I told John.
    “I’m sorry, Laura. I really am.”
    “Me too,” I said, ending the call.
    I was almost falling asleep when I Kish knocked at the door. “Hey, Laura, you awake?” she whispered.
    I threw back the sheet and padded to the door.
    “Sorry, didn’t know you were in bed,” she said, wearing that same sympathetic look she had before.
    It didn’t bug me as much as it had done. After all, if our situation had been reversed, I would probably been the same. If you knew that one of your best friends had been hurt like that you were hardly going to be cracking jokes.
    “Come on in,” I told her.
    She squeezed through the door, and gave me a hug. “How’d it go?”
    We sat together on my bed. I told her about the interview. I didn’t tell her about Drew showing up afterwards, and the moment we’d had. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. It still felt shameful to me, like somehow because of what Bentley had done, I should be chaste, or somehow sexless. I did tell her about my conversation John, and she was suitably outraged.
    “He asked if you were sure? What an asshole!” Kish said. “I hope you broke up with him.”
    “I don’t think there was anything there in the first place,” I said. “I think I just liked having someone around.”
    “Well, you’ve done the right thing. He was a loser. If it hadn’t have been for him getting in that dumb fight, we would never have ended up back at that guy’s place.”
    I didn’t argue with her. But I didn’t agree, or rather, I didn’t want to start thinking like that. What if this hadn’t happened? What if we’d gone to another club? What if I’d had the flu and hadn’t been able to go out? What ifs and woulda, coulda, shouldas didn’t help you in life. You had to deal with what was thrown at you. You didn’t have any other choice.
    “You said anything to your mom?” Kish asked me.
    Kish had only met my mom once, but she loved her. She didn’t talk much about her own parents but I got the impression that while they’d giver her lots of stuff, that hadn’t included a lot of love. I had been lucky that way. I’d never questioned, not even once, how much my mom loved me. The only problem I had was that sometimes it crossed from love to being over-protective.
    “I don’t know if I will. I mean what good would it do?” I said. “Drew told me that I wouldn’t be named so unless I actually told her then she’d never find out.”
    “They’re definitely going to arrest him then?” Kish asked.
    I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
    I told her about the pretext call. When I’d finished, she said, “Oh my God, Laura, you’re so brave. I could never have done that. No way.”
    She grabbed me for a hug. I could still hear the sneer in Bentley’s voice. “ Look at who I am. Then look at who you are. I could have had any girl in that club. No one’s going to believe you. ” The thing that scared me was that he was probably right. Even if Drew did arrest him, why would a jury take my word over his? You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that the rich got away with stuff just because of their money. They played by different rules