Page 32 of Deeply Examined

She’s still not convinced, and I’m a terrible man because I’ll do anything to keep her safe—even lie to her.

“Brad was hanging around the stairs, looking up at your door.”

I checked. Brad’s in the hospital, regrettably very much alive, though in critical condition. Turns out, he’s a trust fund baby. Never worked a day in his life, just burns through his inheritance, snorting half of it and spending the rest on women, each bad decision landing him in an even worse apartment. That’s how he wound up in Jessica’s building, one eviction away from rock bottom. What a waste. Now I wish I’d hit him harder.

“I guess my conversation with him wasn’t enough to make him stay away.”

Jessica’s face falls. I’ve got her now.

“I don’t know what his problem is.” Her lower lip sticks out, and her eyes swim with unshed tears. “We went on one date.One!”

I shake my head like I’m commiserating. “Some guys are crazy. I’m sorry you can’t go back there. You understand why, don’t you?”

She sniffles and says, “You’re right. It’s not safe there for me anymore. It was nice of you to get my stuff.”

Tension eases in my chest, making it easier to breathe. She’s not going back to that apartment, I’m sure of it.

Using my chin, I gesture to the boxes. “Make sure nothing got missed.”

She kneels before the first box, her face dangerously close to my dick, which perks up at her nearness.

Crap.Don’t want her to see that.

To distract myself, I think about all the times I got beaten up in high school, like the time my worst bully, Kent, gave me a busted nose in the parking lot. It works, and the erection quickly fades.

Jessica sorts through the boxes, moving clothes and trinkets aside before repacking each item neatly. When her hands pull out an old cheerleader’s uniform, my composure shatters and my dick forgets all about my attempts to calm it. Like Pavlov’s dog, it’s been trained to respond to that ruffled red skirt. It quickly rises, so hard it’s painful. I subtly shift, trying to hide it.

God. I’d love to fuck her in that outfit.

This thought doesn’t help my hard-on. It strains against my scrub pants. I can only hope she doesn’t notice because there’s no way to tame it now. Not without my hand or, better yet, her warm, wet mouth.

“Were you a cheerleader?” I ask, aiming for casual curiosity. Inside, I’m holding my breath, as I wait for her answer.

Her fingers trace the thick sweater that matches the skirt,Jessicaembroidered across the chest in bold red letters. “Yeah,” she murmurs, her voice soft. “All four years.”

There’s no pride in her tone. Instead, there’s a wistfulness, a shadowed kind of sadness that catches me off guard.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I press, brow furrowing.

She shrugs, exhaling a resigned sigh. “I guess. Everyone else sure thought it was great.”

Not the answer I thought I’d get. Again, I probe. “They thought it was great, butyoudidn’t? What didn’t you like about it? All the practicing?”

She lets out a humorless laugh. “I actually liked practice. No. It wasn’t that. It was so much more than just practices or games. It was the pressure—always having to look perfect, to smile no matter what. Worrying about disappointing my parents, my team, my entire school. And the friendships…” She pauses, her expression tightening. “Never being able to trust my so-called friends. Guys wanting to date me not for me, but just so they could say they were with a cheerleader.”

Ouch. That last one hurt. Didn’t I used to daydream about that? About how I’d brag to everyone if she were mine. Was I no better than the kids who used her as a rung in the ladder of popularity?

She keeps going, her voice quieter now, tinged with a raw vulnerability. “Most mornings, I’d stand in front of the mirror before school and practice smiling—praying no one would see how fake it was. How fakeIwas.”

Fuck.

The idealized image of her I’d held onto for years—the girl with the perfect life, the loving parents, the endless friends—disintegrates in an instant. She wasn’t untouchable or flawless. She was tired, lonely, and trying to survive in her own way.

And now, the real Jessica sits before me, bowing her head over that uniform, the weight of her past written in her posture. She’s bruised, imperfect, and heartbreakingly human, and, somehow, I like her even more for it.

They say trauma recognizes trauma, and though I’m still sure my childhood waswayworse, something in her quiet pain calls to me. My hands itch to reach for her, to pull her into my arms and kiss away her sadness.

What the fuck!

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