Author's Note: Thank you to all who have read, reviewed, or put this story on alert. I've been so amazed by your response and hope to hear more from you.

Oh yeah, so we saw in episode 3x01 (The Purple Piano Project) that Rachel drives a Chevy, but I don't remember seeing her drive before then so in this story, which takes place last season, she does not have a car.

"You had sex with Rachel even though you knew she wasn't ready?" Kurt accused harshly as he bursted into his brother's bedroom.

Maybe if he had taken a second to knock or look around he would have noticed Puck sitting on the carpet in front of Finn's bed playing X-box.

Finn dropped his controller and scrambled to his feet. "What? No! Who told you that?" he demanded from Kurt.

"Whoa! You banged Berry?" Puck asked having instantly lost interest in the game at the mention of Rachel and sex.

"I said I didn't! What the hell, Kurt? You want to tell me what's going on here?" Finn shouted.

Deciding there was no way to rewind time and make Puck un-hear what he said, Kurt continued on with the lecture he had planned. "I thought you said Rachel was upset about last time and obviously not into it, I thought you were so broken up over not stopping her, so tell me why you thought it'd be a good idea to have sex with the girl who cried the last time you touched her? And without a condom, no less! Come on, now that's just stupid!" Kurt scolded. "No offense, Puck."

"Wait, what?" Puck asked getting up from the carpet now, too, and glaring at Finn. "What the hell did you do to her, man?"

"No, it's not like that," Finn explained. "We didn't have sex. She's barely talked to me since everything that happened the other night."

Puck moved his eyes from one boy to the other. "What happened the other night and what'd you do to make her cry?"

"Nothing!" Finn insisted, although he wasn't entirely convinced of it himself. "And this is really none of your business, Puck."

"Well, I'm making it my business," Puck challenged, stepping into Finn's personal space. He recalled his conversation with Rachel on the bleachers a few weeks ago, and how she thought having sex with Finn would have kept him interested. He swore he'd punch Finn in the face if he found out Finn was the one who put those thoughts into her head, or played on her doubts for his own benefit. Rachel might have been kind of a prude, but it was her decision to be a prude, and Finn shouldn't be telling her otherwise.

Finn threw an annoyed look at his step-brother before addressing the angry mo-hawked boy staring him down with a sigh. "We fooled around a little the other night and she freaked out on me, that's all. I didn't do anything to her and we didn't have sex." He hated defending himself over the blow-job incident because he still felt guilty about it, but he didn't want Puck knowing that.

"What do you mean freaked out?" Puck asked skeptically. He had been with his share of virgins and while they required a bit more finesse, he had never had a girl freak out on him.

Finn decided to ignore his friend's question. He really didn't want to describe how Rachel had robotically gone down on him to a guy she had hooked up with in the past, so instead he turned back to Kurt. "What's going on, Kurt? Who told you we had sex?"

Kurt crossed his arms over his designer jacket and considered his next move. He didn't want to sell Rachel out, but if she was having sex with someone who was not Finn then his step-brother deserved to know. "Rachel," he admitted.

"But why would she do that?" Finn didn't understand. Why would Rachel want people to think they had sex? She had always been proud and outspoken about her decision to remain abstinent, too outspoken, in fact. Just about every guy at school knew Finn wasn't getting any and they gave him hell about it, but he didn't care because he loved Rachel and was willing to wait however long she wanted to. Even if the wait was until she was 25, but he sort of hoped that wouldn't be the case because he really wanted to have sex with Rachel. And when they finally do have sex he hoped it wouldn't resemble the incident from the other night, because he never wanted to see Rachel like that again.

"Maybe we should finish this discussion in private," Kurt suggested eyeing Puck. Kurt was seriously starting to regret marching into Finn's room in the first place. Sure, he wasn't happy with the thought of Finn pressuring an obviously distressed Rachel into having sex, and yes, it kind of stung when he thought Finn had shut him out, but the situation was growing increasingly complicated. Apparently he had not only inadvertently exposed Rachel as a cheater, but he did so in front of Puck and probably caused Finn more pain and humiliation than necessary.

"No way, Hummel," Puck interrupted. "If this chump is taking advantage of Rachel I need to know so I can beat his face in. Now spill."

Finn groaned in frustration. "I'm not taking advantage of Rachel. She's my girlfriend!"

"Doesn't mean you get free reign, buddy!" Puck countered hotly.

"I said we didn't have sex!" Finn yelled back. "Kurt, just tell me what the hell is going on here!"

Kurt took a deep breath and launched into the story. "Mercedes and I ran into Rachel this afternoon on the bus."

"Rachel doesn't take buses, she thinks they smell funny," Finn said, a faint smile on his face as he remembered the conversation he had with Rachel that led to that revelation.

"Well, she did today," Kurt replied with a suggestive raise of his eyebrow. "Probably because she didn't want to ask anyone to drive her out of town to get Plan B."

Finn's features contorted into an expression of confusion. "Plan B? Why would she need a plan B? Wait, what was her Plan A?"

"No, you idiot, Plan B is the morning after pill. Girls take it when they've had unprotected sex to keep from getting pregnant," Puck said.

"Why would she need that? You can't get pregnant from oral sex, can you?" Finn asked nervously. "Miss Holiday said..."

"You got a blow job from Rachel?" Puck cut in, incredulous.

"No, Finn, you have to have actual sex to get pregnant," Kurt explained mildly.

Finn nodded. "Right, that's what I thought, so why would Rachel need that back up plan pill or whatever?" he wondered aloud.

"She must be having sex with someone," Puck answered with a shrug. "Hey, don't look at me! I didn't do it," he quickly added, raising his hands in a show of innocence.

Finn's head was spinning. Rachel was cheating on him again. He had thought they were in a good place together. He had thought they were over all the bullshit of the past. He had thought they were doing better. But she was having sex with some other guy. He felt like smashing something.

"Jesse! I knew her doing that play with him was a bad idea!" Finn exclaimed as the image of Rachel with Jesse seeped into his mind. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, found Rachel's name and angrily punched the call button. It rang six times before going to voice mail. He tried four more times before tossing the phone onto his bed. "She's not picking up! Forget this! I'm getting some answers for myself." He started rummaging through the pile of clothes on his bedroom floor.

"Where are you going?" Kurt asked. Finn was acting like a madman, a very disorganized madman, because apparently he couldn't find whatever it was he needed.

Finn stepped into a pair of sneakers and pulled on a hoodie from the pile of dirty clothes. "I'm gonna go pummel Jesse St. Jerk," he seethed. "I bet he's doing this just to mess with what Rachel and I have. He doesn't care about her."

"I'm with you, dude," Puck declared, slapping his friend on the back. "I said I'd have your back from now on and I do." Sure he would have kicked Finn's ass if he still thought the quarterback had mistreated Rachel, but now that he knew that wasn't the case, Puck was back on his side, and it didn't hurt that he sort of always hated Jesse St. James anyway.

Finn nodded and the two left a very confused Kurt behind.

Rachel snuggled into her bed under four layers of thick blankets after taking a second shower when she got home that afternoon. It wasn't particularly cold in the Berry house, but there seemed to be unyielding chill in her bones, just like there seemed to be an unseen layer of dirt she couldn't wash off her skin no matter how many times she showered. There was a virtual mountain of homework waiting to be done on her desk, but she couldn't find the energy to care. Her whole world was unraveling, the last thing she was worried about was homework. Kurt and Mercedes now knew she had had sex, but fortunately they didn't really know with whom. She had taken the pill as soon as she got home, and now all she wanted to do was sleep and not think about what it would have been like to carry that monster's child.

Her cell phone chirped with the arrival of an incoming text message and Rachel stretched out lazily to grab the device from her nightstand.

"Rachel, is everything okay? You looked really upset last night. Please call me."

The number looked vaguely familiar but wasn't attached to a contact in her phone so there was no name.

Rachel texted back. "Who is this?"

The response was almost immediate. "It's Shelby. I'm worried about you."

With that she threw the phone back onto the nightstand in disgust. Rachel had exchanged numbers with Shelby when they first met over a year ago, but she had deleted the woman's number after Shelby told her she didn't want a relationship. She assumed the dozen incoming calls she received after that were from her mother wanting to express renewed interest in her life, but now it was Rachel who wasn't interested. She didn't need Shelby poking around in her business when she already had a myriad of people she had to keep the truth from.

A round of frantic knocking on her front door disturbed Rachel from her cocoon of blankets. It was relatively early in the evening so neither of her fathers were home from work yet.

"Kurt?" Rachel greeted in surprise when she pulled the front door open to find the boy panting hard on her porch. She combed her fingers through her wet hair and brushed some strands into her face to hide her now obvious black eye. Earlier that morning she had told her fathers she had gotten the injury when a teammate accidentally elbowed her in the face while rehearsing a complicated dance sequence for glee club, and although the men looked displeased, they believed her. She had yet to sell any of her friends such a lie because she hadn't needed to, but she knew she'd have to come up with something else for those friends in Glee.

Kurt raised a hand to let her know he needed a minute before he could talk.

"Did you run here?" she asked, clearly confused by his appearance.

"No car. Needed to talk to you. Finn and Puck know about Jesse. You didn't answer your phone," Kurt panted out breathlessly.

Rachel's eyes raised at the mention of her past and present boyfriends. What could be so important that Kurt ran two miles to her house to tell her? And clearly she had been wrong about all those incoming calls she ignored being Shelby.

"Come in." Rachel led Kurt up to her room, afraid one of her fathers might soon come home and disturb their conversation. "Now would you care to tell me what's so urgent that you ran across town to speak with me?" she asked as she closed the bedroom door behind them.

Kurt took a few deep breaths to slow his still racing heart and helped himself to the gold star plated glass of water on Rachel's nightstand. "I confronted Finn about having sex with you. Considering his description of your demeanor during your last sexual encounter and your general weirdness recently, I thought he might have taken advantage of the situation, of you. Puck happened to be there at the time and overheard the whole thing."

Rachel's eyes widened in panic. "Kurt, you didn't!" she cried. "You promised!"

"I was just trying to look out for you," Kurt told her. "I know you haven't been yourself lately, and I didn't like the idea of Finn using your insecurities about Quinn to get into your pants."

She started pacing the room nervously and muttering to herself. "Oh God. I can't believe this is happening. Everything is ruined. What am I going to do?"

"You can start by coming clean about your relationship with Jesse," Kurt suggested. "You're not ready to have sex with Finn, but you'll do it with Jesse?"

Rachel frowned. "What? I'm not having sex with Jesse! Where'd you get that idea from?"

"Finn and Puck seem pretty convinced of it," Kurt answered. "Who else is there?"

"No one!" Rachel huffed. "And what do you mean they're convinced?"

"They're on their way to find Jesse right now. And there's obviously someone, Rachel, you don't take those pills for any old reason," Kurt reasoned, sounding slightly exasperated. He had no idea why Rachel was being so difficult. She was clearly caught in a lie. He took a seat on her bed and waited for her to come clean.

Rachel ran her hand through her hair absently, pushing the dark wet locks back from her face in the process. "Why did everyone have to get involved in my life? Couldn't you all just go back to not giving a damn about me?" she snarled at Kurt. There had been a time where Rachel would have jumped at the opportunity for attention from her glee club teammates, but this was definitely not that time.

"What happened to your face?" Kurt asked when he spotted the deep purple bruise framing her eye and cheek bone. He stood up and approached Rachel to inspect the mark.

"Dance injury," Rachel supplied a little too quickly, slipping away from her nearing friend.

"I thought you put your dance lessons on hold while you're doing the play," Kurt said.

Rachel didn't balk. "It was from a dance in the musical."

Kurt followed as Rachel escaped to the other side of her bedroom, where she made quick work out of re-folding the clean laundry on her desk. "There are no dance numbers in the show, you made me read it with you six times," he disputed knowingly. "It's straight singing."

"I meant it was from a dance in glee club," Rachel amended. "Sorry, I just get mixed up with everything I've got going on right now," she laughed nervously. Maybe if she hadn't been so nervous she would have realized that excuse wouldn't work because Kurt had been present in all Glee rehearsals since his transfer back to McKinley.

"We haven't been working on any choreography in Glee. Besides, I think I'd remember someone punching you in the face during practice," Kurt said dryly.

Rachel tossed the sweater she had been compulsively folding and unfolding back onto the desk in anger. "Will everyone just leave me the hell alone!" she screamed viciously. She felt like she was losing her hold on the situation, but then again she doubted she had ever really had ahold of it to begin with.

Kurt was taken aback by Rachel's tone. She had always been loud, but she had never lashed out so angrily before. Kurt had never seen her so raw with rage. It took a moment, but the pieces suddenly started to fit together and the completed puzzle horrified Kurt. "Rachel, what's going on?" he asked warily.

"Nothing," Rachel said quickly.

"No. Something is going on...something you're trying to hide," Kurt insisted. He gestured towards the bruise on her face. "How'd you really get that? Did someone... "

"Kurt, don't," she interrupted, the tears burning at her eyes. "Please, leave it alone." She walked around her bed and sat on the edge of it so that she was facing away from Kurt. She couldn't look at him right now.

Kurt tried again. "Rachel, were you…"

"Stop it," she pleaded, cutting him off before he could say the word.

"Rachel, you can tell me. Just tell me what's going on," Kurt pressed.

Rachel shook her head. "No. I can't."

Kurt took a deep breath and came around the bed to sit beside her. "Did someone hurt you?" he finally managed to force out, deciding to forgo his original choice of verb because it was just too awful to connect that word, that act, with Rachel.

"No!" Rachel snapped angrily. "Just shut up! Ok? Don't!"

"Rachel, please just tell me it's not what I think it is. Tell me or I have to tell someone," he said, grasping her hand in his.

Rachel pulled her hand from Kurt's hold instantly and shot off the bed. "What? Why? You can't do that! Why are you doing this to me?"

Her anger once again shocked him, but Kurt was undeterred by the outburst. Someone was doing something to Rachel and he needed to find out. "Who is it?"

"I can't," Rachel said solemnly.. "No one can know."

"At least tell me how long it's been going on for," Kurt pleaded. He needed to know something to confirm his suspicion.

"Stop it." Her voice softened as her resolve weakened. Thoughts of what she did with Mr. Ellis, of what he did to her, consumed her every waking moment, even her dreams were occupied by the man, and she desperately wanted to unload some of that burden, but the risk was too great. Not only would her shame become public, but her friends and family would be disgusted by her. Telling Kurt the truth would not alleviate the weight of her guilt, it would only further alienate her from those who loved her when they realized how unworthy she was.

Kurt rose from the bed and stood level with his friend. "Rachel, how long?" he asked calmly.

"Kurt, stop. I can't!" Rachel shut her eyes tight and shook her head from side to side as her tears spilled onto her cheeks.

"How long has it been going on, Rachel?" Kurt repeated, his voice remaining calm and even. If he could get just the tiniest bit of information out of her, she wouldn't be able to deny it any longer, and he might be able to get her to open up about whatever she was going through.

Rachel felt her resolve slipping even more. "Kurt, please."

"How long?" he asked again.

"Kurt," she warned tiredly. It wasn't that she didn't want to tell him, she couldn't.

"Just tell me how long it's been going on for," Kurt urged.

"I can't."

"How long?"

"A few weeks," Rachel finally admitted, her eyes cast downward as she practically whispered the words. She was somewhat shocked that she had revealed so much, but it felt like the truth was eating away at her from inside and she just had to get it out.

"Damn it, Rachel! Why didn't you say something sooner?" Kurt demanded angrily. He wasn't angry at her, he was angry at the situation, and at himself for not figuring it out sooner. It all made so much sense now. Rachel's sudden attitude change, the evasiveness, the incident Finn described. How had he not known something was off with her.

"I couldn't. You wouldn't have understood. You don't understand," she explained.

Kurt tilted Rachel's chin up so that he could look her in the eye. "Rachel, please, just tell me who it is so he can't hurt you anymore."

Rachel shook her head and ducked her eyes once again. It felt like Kurt was looking right through her, like he could see her in Mr. Ellis's office and it was humiliating.

"Then I have to tell your parents or the cops," Kurt said plainly. "I won't let this go on."

"No! You can't!" Rachel launched herself at him wildly and grabbed his shirt in her fist. "Please, Kurt, please don't do this. Please! It'll ruin everything. Everyone will hate me, they'll all know how disgusting I am...please, I'll do anything you want! Just don't do this! No one has to know. I've been doing good. I've kept it a secret. I-I'm fine. Ok? I'm fine! You don't have to tell. There's nothing to tell. Please, please don't tell anyone! Kurt, you can't do this! Please!"

Rachel's pleas rapidly deteriorated into a frenzied sobbing that caused her to gasp for air as her chest heaved with labored breaths.

Kurt gaped dumbly at his distraught friend. He wasn't prepared to see Rachel break down like this, he wasn't prepared to deal with this at all. "Ok, just calm down, Rachel. You need to breathe, sweetie," he tried to sooth her. "It'll be ok. Just try to breathe." He didn't promise he wouldn't tell, but he decided to stop pushing her at the moment. "Come on, let's lay down."

He maneuvered them both onto the bed, Rachel never releasing her grasp of his shirt in the process. Kurt positioned them so that her head was laying across his chest and her petite body was cradled in the nook of his left arm. He was able to feel her breathing start to even out as she settled down. Eventually, Rachel's body stopped trembling completely and Kurt sighed in relief.

"I'm just going to text my dad and let him know where I am before he adds another month to my car ban," Kurt said after a short stretch of silence. Rachel didn't react so he took her lack of protest as permission and used his free hand to pull his cell phone from his pocket and send out a quick text message. He did text his dad, but not before he sent out a brief message to Finn and Puck calling off their beat down of Jesse. He didn't elaborate, he simply told them to trust him, that Rachel definitely wasn't sleeping with Jesse, and promised to explain later before turning off his phone. He didn't want to be bothered by their questions while he was with Rachel.

They laid together quietly for a few more minutes. Kurt wanted to avoid a repeat of the scene that had just played out between them and was unsure of how to broach the subject again without pushing Rachel to an emotional breaking point. Rachel's cell phone began to ring and beep and Kurt took the incessant noise as a sign that Finn and Puck received his text message and were directing their questions to her now that he was unavailable. When Rachel didn't move to answer the device, Kurt glanced down to see that she had fallen asleep. He reached across her body with his right hand and grabbed the phone from her nightstand, turning it on silent before placing it back. When his arm grazed Rachel's breast in the process she whimpered and stirred against his chest. Soft cries of protest passed through her lips and tore at Kurt's heart.

He shook her awake softly, afraid that she was slipping into a nightmare. "Rachel. Rach, wake up. It's just me. It's Kurt."

Rachel's eyes snapped open suddenly and she frantically pushed herself off Kurt's chest and scrambled away from him. "Kurt," she exhaled when she realized who it is that was on her bed. She studied him for a moment and Kurt knew she was recalling the events leading up to her impromptu nap.

"I was hoping it was just a dream," she said as she stood up from the bed. "I wish it was all just a dream." She crossed the room to fidget with some perfume bottles on her desk. "Kurt, thank you for coming, but you don't have to stay here." She loved Kurt, but she couldn't stand being in the presence of someone who knew the truth, someone who knew what she was.

Kurt crawled forward so that he was sitting at the foot of her bed. "Rachel, I'll stay all night if you want. Hell, I'll move in if you just tell someone what's going on. Someone who could help you."

She slammed the perfume bottle she was previously rolling between her hands onto the desk. "No one can help me, Kurt! So just drop it!"

"What about your fathers, don't you think they'd want to know that someone's been abusing their daughter?" he asked, hoping the mention of her dads would get through to her. "Wait, it's not them, is it?" he asked after considering the possibility.

"No, of course not." Rachel was so calm in her dismissal of her fathers as suspects that Kurt didn't question it. "And I can't tell them, Kurt. It'll break their hearts if they found out what I've been doing. What I am."

"What are you?"

Rachel swallowed hard and dug her foot into the carpet covering her bedroom floor. "Sick. Disgusting. A slut," she mumbled, Mr. Ellis's voice clear in her head.

Kurt grimaced at Rachel's harsh self-image. "You're none of those things, Rachel," he pointed out firmly. "How about Mr. Schue or Miss Pillsbury? You trust them, don't you? We can go to one of them and they'll help you."

"Yes, I trust them, but Kurt," she started hopelessly, "you don't understand." She shook her head. "Can we just drop it? Go back to before? I was doing ok pretending it wasn't happening. Let's just go back."

Kurt stood up and went over to sit on the edge of the desk beside her. "You weren't doing ok, Rachel. You've been quiet and edgy, you pushed yourself to go further with Finn because you didn't know how to respond to his advances, you're lying to your boyfriend and your friends, and sneaking around to get emergency contraception. None of that is ok. None of that is you."

"Please Kurt, don't make me tell," she pleaded desperately.

Her begging broke his heart and Kurt couldn't help picturing Rachel begging some nameless abusive bastard to stop hurting her.

"I won't," he assured her. He wasn't going to make her tell, but that didn't mean he wouldn't. "I should get going soon," he added remembering that there were two very angry and confused teenage boys awaiting his return. "I'm kind of grounded. And you should probably rest some more. You zonked out on me pretty quickly before."

Rachel nodded shyly. "Sorry. I haven't gotten much sleep lately," she admitted.

Kurt gave her a sympathetic smile. "Come on, I'll lay with you till you fall back asleep."

"You don't have to do that."

"Maybe I just like napping with you," he said with a grin before flopping down on top of her comforter. Rachel joined him after a moment of hesitation, but didn't cling to him like she did before. Kurt threaded his fingers through hers and felt her squeeze his hand tightly before turning to face him and shutting her eyes. Fifteen minutes later she was once again asleep besides him. He waited almost half an hour to see if she'd have another nightmare, but once he was certain she was in a peaceful sleep, he gently untangled his hand from hers and quietly retreated out of the room. Knowing her cell phone was still on silent, Kurt sent her a text message telling her to call him when she woke up, no matter what time.

Kurt considered finding one of Rachel's fathers and telling them right then what he had learned, but he couldn't find them when he went downstairs. After peeking into the kitchen and living room and not spotting either of the men, he decided it'd probably be best to get some more information before he brought it to her dads' attention anyway. Rachel had denied her fathers involvement and Kurt believed her, so if she remained sleeping through the night, she'd be safe till at least tomorrow. That gave him a little time, but not enough.

As he walked out of Rachel's house, Kurt texted Mercedes and asked her to pick him up at a diner nearby. He had started to formulate a plan and decided to enlist Mercedes as an ally. While he waited in the parking lot for Mercedes to show up, he used his cell phone's internet service to do some research about Rachel's situation. He had never dealt with something like this and wasn't quite sure what to do. But he knew whatever he did end up doing would upset Rachel, at least initially, because he certainly wasn't going to keep her secret. As much as he valued Rachel's friendship, he valued her well-being more and was willing to incur her wrath if it kept her safe.

Mercedes arrived after about fifteen minutes, her cheerful smile a stark contrast to Kurt's somber mood. He absently discussed Beyonce's newest single with her during the drive, unwilling to reveal the real reason why he called her just yet. When they arrived back at his house Finn and Puck were waiting for him in the living room.