Chapter 20: The Reveal
Mia looked at them. At Lucy, who had pushed off the lockers and was walking over, her water bottle dangling from her fingers, her grin so wide it looked almost painful. Lucy met her eyes and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
You got this, that nod said. Give them a show.
And Mia, who had spent twenty-two years being the good girl, the sweet cheerleader, the one who made the squad laugh and kept the peace and never caused drama, felt something shift in her chest.
Three days. Three days since Jake had painted her in his cum and held her like she was the only anchor in a storm. Three days of smiling at her phone like a fool, of tracing the marks on her skin every time she got in the shower, of replaying the way his voice had broken when he'd said her name, over and over.
She wasn't the same girl who'd walked into that dorm room.
She grabbed the hem of the waffle top and pulled it over her head in one smooth motion.
The fabric rustled over her hair, over her shoulders, and then it was gone, tossed onto the bench behind her. She was in her sports bra now, maroon and gold, and the marks the girls had caught a glimpse of before were now fully visible.
Scratches. Deep red lines raking across her ribs in neat, parallel arcs, like someone had dragged claws through her skin. They wrapped around her sides, curving from her back toward her sternum, the lines thick and slightly raised even now, days later. On her shoulders, a scattering of smaller marks, some little more than pinpricks, others forming crescent shapes where nails had dug in with force.
But the girls weren't looking at her ribs now. They were looking at her back, or what they could see of it over her shoulders, the deeper tracks that disappeared beneath the line of her sports bra.
"Turn around," Joanna breathed.
Mia turned.
The sports bra left most of her back bare, and the scratches there were a different beast entirely. They weren't neat little lines; they were long, ragged furrows that ran from the center of her shoulder blades down to where the fabric cut off at her ribcage. A dozen of them at least, some still discolored with healing, others faded to pale pink but still visible. They crossed and overlapped each other in a chaotic pattern, a map of desperation drawn in skin.
"Holy shit," Cassie whispered.
The silence was absolute.
Rachel moved first. She stepped close, close enough that Mia could feel her breath on her shoulder blades, and she reached out with one finger to trace the longest scratch, from the top of her left shoulder blade all the way down to the edge of her sports bra.
"He held you from behind," Rachel said softly. "You were on your hands and knees, weren't you?"
Mia's throat tightened. She didn't answer, but she didn't need to. The scratches told the story.
"No," Alyssa said, shaking her head slowly. "Look at the angles. They come from the top down, curving inward. That's hunched shoulders. That's him on top."
The girls exchanged glances.
"Both," Cassie said finally, a note of awe creeping into her voice. "She's got both."
Mia felt her pride swell, unbidden, in her chest. She'd been worried about how they'd react, whether they'd judge her, whether they'd think she was slutty or reckless or out of control. But the looks on their faces weren't judgmental at all.
They were impressed.
"Okay," Joanna said, her voice a little breathless. "Okay. Take off the bra."
"What?"
"You heard me. Take it off. We need to see."
"You do not need to see—"
"Mia. There's a hickey on the side of your ribcage that I can see from here. And I saw another one on your shoulder blade. And if I squint, I think there's one on your collarbone that you're actively trying to hide with your arm. So yes. We do need to see."
Mia looked at Lucy again. Lucy had taken a seat on the bench across from them, her legs crossed, her chin propped on her hand, the picture of casual entertainment. She raised her eyebrows and took a long, deliberate sip from her water bottle.
Mia laughed. She couldn't help it. The ridiculousness of the situation, the sheer absurdity of being stripped for inspection by her entire squad in the middle of a locker room, hit her all at once, and the sound bubbled out of her like champagne.
"Fine," she said, reaching behind her back. "But you guys are all buying me lunch this week."
She pulled the bra over her head and let it fall.
It slid down her arms and dropped to the floor, and Mia kicked it aside with her foot, standing bare-chested in the middle of the locker room, the fluorescent lights making the pale skin of her torso glow.
There was a collective intake of breath.
The hickeys were everywhere.
They dotted her chest like a constellation, a series of dark, faded purple marks that circled her left breast and disappeared beneath the curve of it. One sat high on her sternum, just above the hollow of her throat. Another on the side of her ribcage, a perfect oval the size of a thumbprint. There was one under her arm, of all places, a mark so deep it was still dark enough to look fresh.
And on her right shoulder, right at the junction of her neck and her deltoid, the biggest one of them all, a bruise that had faded to a sickly yellow-green at the edges but was still dark at the center, a perfect impression of a man's mouth.
"Jesus," Joanna said faintly.
"Who is this man?" Alyssa demanded, but her voice had lost its teasing edge. There was something real underneath it now, something almost like awe. "Mia. Who the hell is this man? A vampire? Did you sleep with a vampire?"
"Maybe I did," Mia said, and the flippancy felt good. She turned, giving them a full view of her back, the scratches and the additional hickeys she'd barely noticed herself in the mirror that morning. There was one just below her shoulder blade.
"Oh my God," Rachel said, and even she sounded rattled.
"Okay, pants," Cassie said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Pants. Now. I need to see what else."
"You really don't—"
"Mia. Pants. Now."
Mia sighed, but it was a put-upon sigh, a performance. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of the sweatpants and pushed them down. They slid over her thighs, her knees, her calves, and pooled at her feet in a soft heap of fabric.
The silence that followed was almost reverent.
The bruises on her hips were the most striking. Two perfect, symmetrical handprints, one on each side, dark and clear against the pale skin of her pelvis. The imprints of fingers, the curve of palms, the unmistakable shape of a man's hands pressing in hard enough to leave a lasting mark. They sat right at the jut of her hip bones, where a man's thumbs would land when he gripped her and held her steady.
"His hands," Joanna breathed. "He left his hands on you. Literally."
"He was... enthusiastic," Mia said, and this time the smile that spread across her face wasn't something she could contain.
"Enthusiastic," Cassie repeated, shaking her head. "You call that enthusiastic? Honey, that's not enthusiasm. That's a man who lost his goddamn mind."
"He did," Mia said, and there was no teasing in her voice now. The memory of it, the raw ferality of it, the way Jake had looked at her like she was the center of his universe, washed over her again. "He definitely did."
"Was it... was it good?" Alyssa asked, her voice small.
Mia met her eyes. "It was the best thing that's ever happened to me."
For a moment, no one spoke.
And then the interrogation started in earnest.
"Okay, okay, okay," Cassie said, practically bouncing on her heels. "I have a thousand questions. First of all, was he big?"
"Cassie—"
"Don't you Cassie me. I know you know exactly what I'm asking. Was. He. Big."
Mia felt heat rise to her cheeks. She looked away, at the lockers, at the floor, anywhere but at their eager faces. "He was... not small."
"'Not small'?" Alyssa's voice pitched up. "What does that mean? On a scale of one to ten, what are we talking?"
"I'm not giving him a rating, that's degrading."
"Fine. Fine. On a scale of one to 'I can feel it in my throat,' where are we?"
"Can we talk about something else?"
"Mia. No. We can't." Cassie stepped forward, taking Mia's hands in hers, forcing eye contact. "Honey. You walked in here looking like you got mauled by a bear, you just showed us a body covered in handprints and hickeys that even I, a woman of culture and experience, have never seen the likes of, and you expect us to just let you walk away without giving us every single detail? That's not how sisterhood works."
"It's not," Joanna agreed fervently.
"Okay," Rachel said, settling into the conversation with the detached air of a moderator. "Let's do this systematically. Hand size. You've got his handprints on your hips. That tells us something. But we need finger length. Reach. When he held you, did you feel like he was gripping, like, a lot of you? Or was it just, like, a casual hold?"
"It was..." Mia paused, searching for the word. And God help her, she felt her thighs press together involuntarily at the memory. "It was a lot. He has really big hands. His fingers wrapped all the way around and then some."
"Heavy?"
"Like, he could probably crush a beer can with one squeeze, if he wanted to. But he wouldn't, because he's actually really gentle most of the time. He just... gets passionate."
"Passionate," Alyssa repeated, savoring the word. "Okay. Passionate. Got it. What about the dick? Size? Girth? Measurements? We need a full profile."
"Mia groaned, covering her face with her hands. "I'm not giving you his measurements."
"Then describe him!"
"He's not a landscape, Joanna."
"Then describe the experience! Was it a struggle? What was the angle? Did you feel it in your stomach?"
Mia dropped her hands from her face. The girls were watching her like hawks, all of them leaning in, the locker room forgotten. And despite herself, despite the heat rising to her cheeks, she found that she wanted to talk about it. She'd been sitting on it for three days, replaying it in her head, texting Lucy in teases and fragments. But Lucy knew the whole story now, and there was no mystery in telling her.
These girls didn't know anything.
And that made it fun.
"I'm not going to lie," Mia said slowly, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "It was... a lot. It was a lot. And he knew what to do with it."
"Okay, so it was a brainless fuck, but a hot one?"
"No." Mia's voice was firm. "It wasn't brainless. At least it wasn't at first, for the first couple."
"The first couple?" Cassie pounced on the word like it was a fumble she'd recovered on the one-yard line. "The first couple? As in, there was more than one? As in, there were multiple?"
Mia felt the trap close around her. She'd walked right into it, and she knew it. The grin on Cassie's face was the grin of a woman who had just been handed the winning lottery ticket.
"I mean, there was the first time," Mia said, trying for casual and landing somewhere around flustered. "And then there was... another time. And then, you know, in the shower there was, it was sort of—"
"The shower," Alyssa breathed. "There was a shower component. Oh my God. This is already the best story I've ever heard in my life and we're only two sentences in."
"I didn't say shower. I said—"
"You said shower. You absolutely said shower. I heard it. Joanna, did you hear it?"
"I heard it," Joanna confirmed, nodding solemnly. "Clear as day. 'In the shower there was.' She said it."
Mia pressed her fingers to her temples. "I'm being ambushed."
"You're debriefing," Rachel corrected. "There's a difference. Ambush implies surprise. You walked in here with hickeys the size of dinner plates and you expect us not to ask questions? You're a public figure, Mia. You're head cheerleader. Your body is essentially a public document."
"I hate all of you."
"No you don't. You love us. We're your support system. Now sit down and spill." Cassie grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her down onto the bench, and the others followed, crowding in around her like she was a campfire and they were all freezing.
Rachel produced a bag of trail mix from somewhere in her gym bag and held it out to Mia like a peace offering. "Start from the beginning. The storm hit. You were stuck. Where were you?"
"At a friend's place," Mia said, "we've known each other for a while," Mia said, shrugging. "The storm just gave us time to, uh, catch up."
"Catch up," Cassie repeated, grinning. "Right. I catch up with my grandma over coffee. You got handprints on your hips from catching up."
"Yeah, now do you want the story or not?"
The girls scrambled for seats, a flurry of gym bags and water bottles. Cassie pulled her legs up crisscross on the bench, Joanna huddled against Alyssa's shoulder, and Rachel leaned against the lockers behind them, arms crossed, trail mix in hand, the picture of a prosecutor settling in for a long confession.
"Okay," Cassie said, her voice brimming with barely contained glee. "From the top. The storm hits. You're stuck. He's a friend you've known for years. Start talking."
Mia took a breath, letting the moment stretch. The trail mix sat in her lap, a small comfort against the weight of five sets of eyes. She picked out a peanut, ate it slowly, and watched them lean in like synchronized swimmers.
"So it's like, day one of the storm, right?" Mia said, settling into the story. "I'm at his place, because we were supposed to study. He'd made this big deal about how he was going to actually get work done this time, and I was supposed to hold him accountable."