What He Never Knew Read online

  Copyright (C) 2019 Kandi Steiner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written consent of the author except where permitted by law.

  The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Kandi Steiner

  Edited by Elaine York/Allusion Graphics, LLC/ Publishing & Book Formatting, www.allusiongraphics.com

  Cover Photography by Perrywinkle Photography

  Cover Design by Kandi Steiner

  Formatting by Elaine York/Allusion Graphics, LLC/Publishing & Book Formatting, www.allusiongraphics.com

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  What He Never Knew Playlist

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue - The Wrong Game

  Chapter 1 - The Wrong Game

  More from Kandi Steiner

  About the Author

  “We don’t mean

  to hurt each other

  but we do.

  and perhaps

  no matter how

  right we are for

  each other,

  we’ll always be a little

  too wrong.”

  — Beau Taplin

  Sarah

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  That was one story I never forgot from my childhood, the one that warned me against lying. Don’t cry wolf if there’s not really a wolf, my parents would say, or when there is a wolf, no one will believe you.

  It seemed simple enough. And I’d held that story in the back of my mind ever since, weighing the possible consequences of lying. I never said I’d cleaned my room if I hadn’t truly done it, nor did I say I was sick if I wasn’t. That story had scared me honest. I’d learned from it.

  Or so I thought.

  Now, as the twenty-one-year-old version of me, I was sitting on the old, musky floor of my college dorm room in north Florida, tears staining my now-numb face, wondering if the lesson had been lost on me. Because they taught me what would happen if you lied, if you became known as a liar… but they left out what would happen if you were telling the truth.

  It turned out, it didn’t really matter.

  No one would believe you either way.

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  My wolf was not the kind that walked on four legs and hunted in a pack, nor was he the kind who mercifully killed his prey before devouring it. No, my wolf walked on two legs, dressed in the finest suits, and spoke with the elegance of a well-educated man. His hair was black with a touch of gray, though, and maybe that’s why I saw him as a wolf. Maybe that’s why the story I’d heard as a child was all I could think about while my wolf — disguised as my respected piano professor — bruised my wrists and spread my thighs in the same room where he’d taught me to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

  I blinked, unwrapping my arms from where they’d held my knees and letting my legs flop out in front of me. For all intents and purposes, they were the same legs I’d had before. They looked the same, but they felt foreign to me, like someone else’s legs. Surely, it couldn’t have been my own that had been hitched up, spread wide for a man who assured me everything would be okay if I just cooperated.

  I wished I could feel something — anger, sadness, resentment — anything. But it was as if I’d been submerged in the iciest, blackest depths of the Pacific Ocean, like my entire body had seized up, yet I was still breathing.

  I was still alive.

  And perhaps that was the worst part.

  My phone buzzed with a text from my mom, asking when she should expect me home — home being our little two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. As far as she knew, the only notable event yesterday was my last final before winter break. As far as she knew, the only thing on my mind was getting home to her and her holiday cooking.

  As far as she knew, her baby girl was still a virgin.

  I blinked again, shooting back a text that I was loading up my car now, and I’d be pulling in a little after midnight.

  Only a partial lie.

  I would make it back to my mom’s two-bedroom apartment outside of Atlanta a little after midnight, and I was loading up my car — with the very little I wanted to keep. For the most part, I was leaving everything behind. I wanted to light it all on fire, but settled for abandoning it in the hell hole that was my university.

  Up until yesterday, it had been my home. Up until last night, it had been everything I’d wanted as a starry-eyed, music-loving girl who sacrificed going out with her friends in high school just to practice piano. Up until now, Bramlock University was everywhere I wanted to be.

  Now, it was my prison.

  And I knew one thing for sure — I was leaving for winter break tonight, and I was never, ever coming back.

  As if that truth was the last bit of fuel inside me, I popped up off the floor and shot straight into my tiny bathroom. I shared it with my roommate and closest friend, Reneé — but she’d already finished her finals and headed home for break. I knew I’d miss her.

  I also knew I’d never tell her why I wouldn’t be back.

  I ran the shower as hot as I could, so hot the steam fogged the mirror before I could undress. I didn’t bother throwing my clothes in the laundry basket I already had piled high and ready to take care of when I got to Mom’s. Instead, I tossed the ripped leggings in the trash. The skirt, tank top, and sweater quickly followed, and I didn’t so much as give them a second look before I stepped into the piping hot shower.

  I didn’t pull away from the water, even though it burned. My dark, umber skin grew an angry red in protest, my nervous system warning me against injury, but I knew it’d survive.

  If I could survive last night, I could survive anything.

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  I’d waited to shower, because that’s what they always told you. Don’t shower after being raped. They give you a whistle at freshman orientation and a list of what to do if it ever happens to you, as if it’s as simple as getting lice or the flu. Here’s how to remedy that rape, my child. Take this pamphlet.

  I laughed out loud at the audacity of it all, finally used to the water as it spilled down my bare back. That whistle they’d given me was buried somewhere in the bottom of my desk drawer. If I’d had it, would I have been able to get to it, to blow it loud enough that someone would have heard?

  But I shook that thought away, because it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.

  I did what was right.

  I took all the proper steps.

  I didn’t shower and I went to the music director and I told her my story.

  I showed her the bruises and relived every torturous moment while she pressed her lips together with a sympathetic bend in her brows, nodding as I replayed the assault.

  And then, she grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and told me it was best to keep this between us.

  This.

  As if this was referring
to something like a little white lie I was keeping from my roommate, or to something I’d walked in and witnessed her doing wrong. Let’s just keep this between us, Dr. Chores had said. These are strong allegations, and you will have a lot of rough years ahead if you follow through with them. Go home tonight and think about what you’re saying, and more importantly, about who you’re saying it about.”

  Because my wolf wasn’t a wolf in the eyes of Bramlock University.

  In their eyes, he was a god.

  He was a piano legend, a blessing to our music program. Thank God he’d wanted to retire in Florida, they’d say, since that was where our university was. And how could it possibly be that such an accomplished man with so much respect could ever do something as horrendous as rape his student?

  As the water started to run cold, I felt the soreness from my wolf between my legs. That’s something else they don’t tell you about in those stupid rape pamphlets. No one tells you that, when you’re a virgin, rape doesn’t just feel like an invasion. It feels like you’re being ripped from the inside out, like your assaulter is splitting you in half. And I guess, in a way, he had. Half of who I used to be was still there, somewhere, but the other half?

  I didn’t even know who she’d become.

  My eyes watered, the dream I’d have of giving myself to a man I loved one day shattered like a fragile tea cup thrown carelessly against a cement wall. I curled in on myself, as if I could shelter myself now, as if I could protect what damaged goods still remained.

  As if anyone would want them, even if I could.

  That soreness between my legs was enough to drive me insane, that constant reminder of who had been there. I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to touch, didn’t want any more proof of what had happened. Instead, I deftly reached out a hand to shut off the spout. I pressed my back against the cold tile wall and slid down until I sat again, my knees against my chest, my hands in my wet, wild, and curly hair.

  I didn’t know what I expected.

  All the words they say make it sound so easy. You get assaulted? You tell someone — and everything will be okay. But if there was one thing my father taught me before he died it was that actions speak louder than words. And the actions when it came to rape cases were loud and clear.

  The victim was rarely believed. When she was, she rarely won in court. When she did, the attacker rarely got a sentence. When he did, he rarely served it all.

  The truth was there was no winning — not when you’d been raped. Not when the first man to ever touch you did so without asking permission, without kissing you first, without telling you he loved you.

  On that cold, wet, tile floor of my dorm room shower, I realized my home had been full of monsters all along. I’d just never seen them before. And now that I had, there was no going back.

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  But I vowed to myself that I would not be the girl who let the wolf win.

  Reese

  My boots crunched the old, dirty snow with every step I took down Charlie’s parents’ driveway toward my car. My hands were shoved in my pockets, eyes on my feet, but my head was still inside that house.

  My heart was still inside that house.

  I’d long surrendered to the fact that I was a masochist. What other man in his right mind would keep contact with a woman and her family after she blatantly rejected him? Charlie had been my best friend’s little sister when I was younger, but she’d always been something more. We both knew it. And when life had brought me back here — back to Pittsburgh and back to her — I thought we’d finally have our chance.

  It didn’t matter to me that she was married, not when I saw how miserable she was. But I was the stupid, selfish, cocky son-of-a-bitch who went after a married woman thinking there was no way she couldn’t choose me.

  It turned out, her husband wasn’t going to let her go without a fight.

  And fight we did, Cameron and I. For months, we fought for that woman’s love, for her heart, and in the end, he won.

  Right then and there, I should have let go.

  I should have moved to a different city, or a different state altogether. I should have blocked them out of every facet of my life — starting with Charlie. But instead, I watched her from a distance at the school we both worked at, wishing she was mine, wishing there was someway to change her mind.

  I would never act on it, of course, and I’d made that vow to both myself and to her. I loved her, and because I loved her, I respected her decision. If Cameron was who she wanted, if he was who made her happy, then that was all that mattered to me.

  At least, it was… until I noticed Charlie’s stomach rounding, growing, and heard those two words from her lips.

  I’m pregnant.

  My stomach sank at the memory, and it slid all the way down to the icy driveway when I added in the news I’d received today. Because as hard as the hit was when I found out she was pregnant, it never could have measured up to what I would feel when she told me the child wasn’t mine.

  Daisy wasn’t mine.

  Eighteen long months had passed since the day Charlie walked through my door and told me she was staying with Cameron, and all that time I had wondered if that child in her belly was ours. When Daisy was born, it was too much for me to bare. I bit down my pride and went to her husband and I begged him to let me be a part of the child’s life — even if just as a distant “uncle.”

  And because Cameron is five times the man I am, he’d agreed.

  All this time, I’d wondered. All this time, I’d thought maybe…

  And today, Charlie had quieted my thoughts. She’d had a paternity test, and Daisy was Cameron’s.

  The door to my old car creaked when I opened it, and I ducked inside, ears ringing once the door was shut and I was alone in the too-silent vehicle. I shoved the key in the ignition, but didn’t start the engine. Instead, my hands fell to my lap, and I stared at the steering wheel as if it were to blame for everything.

  Then, I beat the shit out of it.

  Screams ripped from my throat as I lashed out, fists flying, and only the sound of a knuckle cracking and the horn ringing out stopped me. I gripped the wheel with both hands, chest heaving as I tried to school my breaths. My eyes fluttered shut, and I loosened my grip, running one hand back through my long hair before I let out a heavy sigh.

  That was it.

  The last thing tying me to Charlie turned out not to be a tie at all. She wasn’t mine, she hadn’t been for a long time… maybe not ever. But it wasn’t until that moment, until that final blow, that I really, truly believed it.

  I’d still had hope.

  I’d still thought there was a chance.

  And underneath it all, I was trying to hide the pathetic fact that I wasn’t anywhere near being over her or moving on.

  A year and a half, and she was still all I thought about. A year and a half, and she was still all I wanted.

  My phone dinged with another notification from the stupid dating app Charlie had convinced me to get on and I tore it from my pocket, deleting the app and all the messages that lived inside it with two taps of my finger.

  I let my head drop back against the head rest, and my heart squeezed painfully inside my chest. I was surprised I could even feel that ache anymore, surprised it hadn’t ebbed in any way as the months stretched and life marched on. I wondered if it was just a permanent part of me now, if there ever was a time I’d move on from Charlie Pierce.

  The possibility that Daisy was mine had been my final tie to her. I didn’t have an excuse to hold on any longer…

  And yet, I couldn’t imagine ever letting go.

  Five Months Later

  Sarah

  The Kinky Starfish.

  My fingers rolled around the crystal hanging from my neck as I stared at the neon sign, the white script elegantly dancing around an artistic pink starfish. Uncle Randall was making jokes with the employee valeting his car, and he was still laughing when he slid up beside m
e, hand folding over my shoulder.

  I flinched away, and my uncle’s brows bent together before he dropped his hand back to his side.

  “Well, this is the place,” he said, eyes following mine up to the sign. We were both quiet for a long moment before he glanced at me again. “You know, you really don’t have to do this. You don’t need to work while you’re here. Just, focus on the reason you came, and—”

  “I have to work,” I interrupted. “I need to continue saving and I’m also going to pay you rent.”

  “You’re not paying us rent,” Uncle Randall said, almost as a laugh. “That’s absurd.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” he said, pulling me to the side so the other patrons of the restaurant could pass. His hands framed my arms, and I flinched again. “I know you have that same strong will as your mother, and I love that about both of you. But, please, Sarah — don’t worry about paying us rent. If you want to work and save up money, that I understand. Put the money you would pay us toward your savings, instead.” He smiled. “We are just tickled to have the time with our niece. We don’t get to see you near as often as we’d like, and we’re just happy to help you pursue this dream of yours.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Uncle Randall raised one thick, white, caterpillar eyebrow, as if he dared me to try to beat him on this. We both knew I’d lose in the end.

  So, instead, I let out a heavy sigh and nodded.

  “That’s my girl,” he said. “Now, let’s go inside and I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

  He trotted off in front of me, and I tucked my hands into the pockets of my coat before following.

  In my eyes, Pennsylvania had always been a winter wonderland. Uncle Randall was my father’s only brother, and he’d stayed here with their parents while my dad had gone south, attending university in Atlanta before entering the political circuit there. We’d visited Pennsylvania for nearly every Christmas, especially when my grandparents were alive, and I had memories of sledding with my dad and making hot cocoa with my mom. It was our getaway to a Christmas land, away from the southern heat and humidity.