No matter what that took.
She soon learned that this was just how men were built, and attractive women like herself, like Heather, just brought it out in them. Her first boyfriend to raise a hand to her was Dave, the high school’s star running back, and a steroid abuser to boot. He’d worked her over good when she accidentally caught him using, but she’d learned from Earl how to make up with him after.
Not that all the boys she dated hit her. She’d gotten very good at reading them, at preemptively staving off that sort of aggression. She could dress a certain way, smile at them just so, say the right flattering words, and they’d be happy enough with her to never raise a hand. Always wary of the possibility of being forced, she made sure to be as receptive as possible to men’s needs so there was never a chance. Then she could at least pretend everything was the way it was supposed to be.
Besides, guys got tired of her soon enough anyway. She was beautiful and accommodating, but still, she didn’t usually have much to talk about with them. Brittney didn’t really have many interests guys would care about; she liked unicorns, and romance movies, and sappy poetry, and pink things. Stereotypical? Sure, but she liked it, and none of it made it harder to protect herself, so she didn’t see the harm in it.
College had been more of the same, only with more alcohol flowing around to make it all more bearable. Her mom had become a heavy drinker over the years, too; she got it now. Things were easier if you didn’t really remember things or feel them to begin with. And she hadn’t yet met a guy who found her more interesting sober than drunk.
Then she met DJ. She had really liked him at first. She’d attended his little floor meeting at the start of the school year, and he had a very reassuring vibe about him. He talked about how his job was to make sure all the people on their floor had a great experience, and he’d help any way he could. He’d talked about consent and party safety and all that, and even though she thought he was preposterously naïve about it all, it was a beautiful fantasy, his idea of a man who didn’t want her to be drunk the first time he slept with her, who would stop to ask her for permission, who would care if she said no. If only guys were really like that. She might have even said yes if he’d asked her out, but it was writ large on the tablets of fate that the DJ Swansons and the Brittney Jenners of the world weren’t meant to be.
Then, he’d come into her room one night and shown her he was like the others. He’d beaten up Brayden, pretended to be coming to her rescue but then fucked her just like Brayden had been going to. She hadn’t noticed it at first, that odd way he had about him, how people were so unwilling to contradict him, push back when he said something, refuse him.
In the past seven days, he had fucked his step-mother, step-sister, her two best friends, several other high school girls, and of course, Brittney herself. Often, he’d taken more than one at the same time. He was only interested in the girl’s pleasure when it came to feeling like more of a stud, and had no qualms about marking women as his property around other men. (Sometimes literally, with a sharpie.)
He’d committed countless crimes—theft, under-aged drinking, destruction of property, driving under the influence (for the couple hundred feet he’d made it before crashing the bus, anyway)… Sexual assault and rape, possibly, though of course no girl was willing to be such a bitch that she’d actually say no to him. Perhaps statutory rape, too, and whatever crimes might be associated with the pictures and videos he kept taking as trophies; she thought all those girls were eighteen, but wasn’t like anyone had paused to ask for ID.
The closest he’d come to facing consequences was the two police who’d come last night. Brittney had stood back and watched as he took the male cop’s gun belt, drunkenly waving his pistol around like it was a toy. He stripped the man’s partner and fondled her bare breasts, giggling as she scowled at him before he swatted her on the ass and told her to get the fuck out of his house. She was honestly a bit surprised to see them let off so easily, given what he’d done to Morgan, to Lauren, to that poor girl Taylor.
Presently, he was totally asleep in the passenger’s seat, exhausted by last night’s drunken Bacchanalia. Not that Brittney wasn’t, but he’d told her to drive, so she was driving. She made sure to keep the car at or under the speed limit on their drive back to campus. She wasn’t worried about being ticketed, of course; with DJ in the car, she knew no police officer would hassle them over something so trivial. Or anything at all. After what she’d seen this past week, she was pretty sure he could show them a dead body in the trunk and get off without so much as a warning. She had no worries about protecting him from the police.
Her goal was to protect the police from him.
He was every bit the man that Earl was, and then some. Like she had learned with her step-father, with her boyfriends in the past, Brittney smiled, batted eyelashes, meekly complied with his every request no matter how perverse. She wouldn’t have refused him anyway—some things a decent person just wouldn’t do. Still, she could occasionally keep his attention focused on her, and off of innocent by-standers.
He shifted a little in his seat, blinking sleepily. “Mmf. We there yet, babe?”
She smoothed his hair back, smiled sweetly. “Not yet. Go back to sleep.”
He closed his eyes, nodded, mumbled something incomprehensible, then tightened his grip on the hand he’d left up her shirt squeezing her bra-less breast as he drifted back off. She maintained her adoring smile until she heard the first snore.
It was odd, to feel some miniscule notion of heroism just over letting a guy feel her up, but she felt it nonetheless. Someday, she and her body might be the only one who could protect someone from him. She meant to do just that.