Laughter comes so hard that I double over and can’t even speak for several minutes. When I finally pull my shit together, I wipe the moisture from my eyes and I look at Caiden. He lifts his eyebrows in a question.
I hold out my hand and he slides the ring onto my ring finger. “You had me a little worried. I wasn’t sure that was a yes.”
“It’s just, I can’t think of a bigger ‘fuck you’ to the world, you know? They yank us apart and send you to jail for loving me, and now...” I hold up the ring and like how it looks on my hand. “I think we should invite Professor Duncan and his high horse to the wedding.”
Caiden’s brow creases. “He did the right thing, Blaire. I was a faculty member and you were underage.”
I shake my head, hating that I even brought this up to ruin our moment. But I can’t help it. I’ve carried all this resentment and anger for so long. “Firing you was the right thing. Maybe even withholding your degree, though I think that part was really just him having a hissy fit. But he never once asked how I felt. He never asked me if I wanted to report you to the police. He just assumed I was a na?ve little girl who’d been played by a person in a position of authority. He projected all his shit all over me.”
Tears begin to stream down my face as the real root of all my anger burns to the surface. Suddenly his face is all I can see, and it’s not Professor Duncan.
Caiden tries to hold me and I shove him back. “He decided what you were doing to me was rape, but where the fuck was he three weeks later? No one fucking saved me from Nate! He raped me and I…” I drop my head when a sob hitches up my throat, choking off my words. “I kept going back,” I say weakly. “Every time he touched me, it killed another piece of my soul. And I let him. Over and over and over.”
I see the animal in Nate’s face as he pins me down. I see the possessive look in his eye and I know he hears me when I say no. I feel him, grasping tighter, pounding harder when I try to push him back.
I feel the toxic swamp mud oozing through my veins again. I feel poison, like Blake’s apple.
This time, when Caiden pulls me off the sofa and into his arms, I let him.
“I’m so sorry.” He crushes me to his chest. “Christ, Blaire, I knew something had happened to you. You weren’t the same after…” He presses his face harder into my hair as he shakes his head. “But I just assumed it was me…what happened with us. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
I manage to gradually pull myself together and wrestle out of Caiden’s arms, feeling suddenly stupid. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”
He lets me go, but his eyes stay on mine. “It does matter. Blaire, you need to get help…talk to someone who knows about this shit…someone who can help you figure out ways of dealing with it.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He slides onto the sofa next to me and lifts my face so I’m looking into those storming blue eyes. “I think you need to. Jesus, Blaire. You’ve been carrying this around for so long. It’s eating you alive.”
I bolt off the sofa when my stomach suddenly turns into a volcano. I make it as far as the tile floor of the bathroom before its acid contents erupt out of me. I collapse onto my hands and knees and wait the waves of nausea out. It’s several minutes later that my puking turns to dry heaves, then finally trails off.
It feels like my body’s trying to puke out my entire year with Nate. Every touch was poison and I feel it burning my insides on its way out.
When I become aware of my surroundings again, I realize Caiden’s on the floor with me, holding my hair back. I sink into his lap and he pulls me close, not even caring that I’m covered with puke. “I love you, Blaire. We’re going to get through this. Let me help you.”
My whole body seizes and I curl into a ball.
Let me help you.
That shouldn’t sound terrifying. But it does.
I’ve never let myself need anyone. I learned to take care of myself when I was young, and then I took care of Marcus too. But maybe Caiden is right. Maybe the point of life is not to get so lost in the bullshit that you lose sight of what matters.
Caiden matters. We matter.
I don’t have to be alone anymore. I can tear down my walls and let someone help me. I can let Caiden help me, because there’s no one I trust more.
I sink deeper into him, right there on the steaming, puke-covered floor, and tell him everything. I open up my mouth and my greasy black soul spills all over him.
“I let myself believe he didn’t hear me say no. I let him…” I cringe and trail off. “Every time we were together I felt him rape me all over again, so I just shut down and stopped feeling anything. I turned it all off and just pretended not to exist.”
He doesn’t flinch or pull away when I give him the details—of the rape and everything after. By the time I’m done, the apartment’s dark, but Caiden is still here, holding me. His grip on me is as tight as it started, as if he understands that my greatest fear is him letting go.