Breakable

‘Maybe I did a hammer-fist strike and bloodied his nose before he could do all that gruesome mummy stuff to me,’ she said, and I laughed. When she leaned towards me, I couldn’t resist kissing her forehead, carelessly inhaling. Damn.

‘Text me when you’re done this afternoon?’ I said, stepping back.

Jacqueline: All done. TROs filed. He can’t come within 1000 ft of either of us.

Me: Good.

Jacqueline: Heading to my solo performance. Wish me luck!

Me: You won’t need it. You have magical fingers, remember?

Jacqueline:

I always knocked on the back door of the Hellers’ place before entering. Charles and Cindy had never been as demonstrative as my parents were, but you could never be too sure. I didn’t want to traumatize all of us by walking in on them when their kids were out and they thought they were alone.

Heller answered the door. ‘Landon, everything okay?’

Landon. I sighed. ‘Yeah. Great. I wanted to talk to you about … Jacqueline.’

His eyebrows rose, and then he smirked. ‘Come on in. I’m just making up my final exams for next week. My graduate students will loathe me by the time they finish.’ He rubbed his palms together, far too entertained by that thought. Undergrads almost always loved Heller. Graduate students thought he was Satan – but the ones he mentored knew their shit.

We sat at the kitchen table with a couple of beers.

‘Two things. One, I need to fill you in on my relationship with her …’

He braced himself. ‘Okay.’

‘I told you I’d known her before I became her tutor, as Lucas. What I didn’t tell you was how we actually met.’ I took a breath. ‘She was assaulted, outside a frat party on campus. I … stopped it. She didn’t want to report it.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ He pushed his laptop aside and leaned his elbows on to the notebooks spread over the table. ‘She was assaulted by another student?’

I nodded.

‘Why wouldn’t she report it? He’s undoubtedly dangerous –’

‘I’m … not done.’

He fell silent, frowning.

‘Charles, I stopped it before – before it went to the level of anything she could prove, physically. No bruising and no –’ I ground my teeth – ‘no penetration. The guy is a member of her ex’s fraternity. You know how those guys can be – they’d either not believe he did it, or they’d smear-campaign the shit out of her regardless. I couldn’t make her do it, though honestly, I didn’t try all that hard. So maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I hoped that beating him bloody would deter him. It didn’t.’

‘Oh, God. He did it again.’ His words were a statement, not a question.

‘Yeah. He raped another girl.’

‘What the –’

‘She’s reported it, and so has Jacqueline. And so did I.’

‘Is he out on his ass?’ His eyes blazed. ‘I don’t want that little prick prowling around my school.’

My lips twisted. ‘Rumour in PD is that administration will let him remain through finals week, if he only comes on to campus for his finals, and a member of his frat is with him at all times when he’s there.’

‘That is bullshit –’

‘Innocent until proven guilty, Charles.’

‘I know. I know.’ He sighed heavily, as frustrated as I’d been. ‘I just – I think of Carlie, and it makes me so f**king furious –’ He stopped.

I ran a finger over the scar inside my left wrist, and neither of us spoke for a moment.

‘Jacqueline and the other student filed temporary restraining orders today. He can’t come within a thousand feet of them, on or off campus, or contact them in any way.’

He nodded, and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking: Not good enough. But it was something.

‘You said there were two things?’ he prodded.

I sucked on the ring in my lip, and he noticed. I had an unforgiving tell. I couldn’t keep from worrying the damned thing when I was anxious. I took a deep breath. ‘I want to see if the … um, student/tutor separation can be lifted now? We want to hang out tomorrow night. After I give my review. At which point my tutoring duties are sort of done …’

He angled one brow. ‘Hmm. Does she live in the area, or will she be leaving campus during winter break?’

‘Leaving.’

‘Ah, well. I’d suggest that you not go fully public until after the exam next week. But a little covert hanging out –’ He aimed a devious grin my way. ‘I suppose you two are capable of that.’

He thought Jacqueline was about to become my girlfriend – or already was. Furthermore, he looked thrilled at the prospect. I didn’t have the heart to set him straight.

Jacqueline was jittery during dinner. I made pasta, which seemed to impress her, again – but I figured she was nervous about what had happened last time. There wouldn’t be a repeat, but I couldn’t exactly tell her that without sounding like a dick. Hey, remember how I wanted to stop last time? Well, this time, I’m not stopping until you’re done screaming my name.

Yeah, no.

After I loaded our plates into the dishwasher, I pulled her closer and pretended to give her an impromptu self-defence lesson – taking her hands and pinning them behind her back. ‘How would you get out of this hold, Jacqueline?’