Brock gazed at her, waiting for her to go on.
Sky swallowed the prickles in her throat. “I’m not even sure how to tell this to you…I’m a bit ashamed… actually a lot.” Just saying the words made her cheeks burn.
Brock clenched her tiny waist with his strong, firm grip. “Don’t talk like that. You’re beautiful.”
“I have this scar. All along my side.”
Brock’s face didn’t change. He kept looking down at her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
“It’s made it hard,” she whispered. “I don’t like letting people see it.”
“Can I?”
Sky’s breath hitched in her throat. This was it. No going back. Brock had opened himself up to her and she would do the same. She nodded. Slowly, Brock lifted her shirt and pulled it over her head, exposing her stomach and white bra... And the scar. Marring the left side of her torso, Sky could barely look at him as he took it in, but his face never changed. For six years she’d done everything she could to deny its existence. Having it so exposed made it all come back. It ran from the bottom of her bra to her hip, half an inch thick the entire way down. Brock looked at it, not saying a word, not reacting. Sky’s heart hammered away.
What was he thinking?
He trailed his fingers along the mark, following the line down the length of her abdomen. Then he ducked down and kissed it, swearing every bit of her was still beautiful and perfect. Sky swooned. How could she not?
“It’s lovely.” He looked up into her eyes. “It’s a part of you.”
Sky didn’t know where the tears came from, but they fell like a tap had turned on. “I don’t feel that way,” she whimpered.
Brock ran his thumb over the mark, making Sky shiver. It had been so long since she’d allowed anyone to touch her there. “I do. How did it happen?”
Sky bit the inside of her cheek.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “Nothing will change how I feel about you.”
“No,” she quickly answered. “I want to.” She paused, collecting her thoughts and memories. So rarely did she go back there. It had been a few years since she’d seen her therapist, and since then she tried not to think about that night.
Now, though, it all came back.
“I was in my first year at college. It was actually my first month. I’d just gotten to college and I was loving it. There were parties every night, you know?” She paused. Now came the difficult part. “I was a pretty good student. I made straight A’s all through high school, and I studied all the time. I was going to get an English degree and then travel all over the world. Maybe teach. I don’t know…”
She glanced at Brock. His silent attention encouraged her. He was listening—not judging, but just allowing her to be. Encouraged, she went on.
“One night I went to this party at a sorority house. Someone slipped something into my drink. I didn’t know, of course. At least not until I was upstairs in this dark bedroom. I don’t even remember going up there, but there were two guys I didn’t know.”
Brock growled.
Sky took in another deep breath. “I didn’t know what was going on, I was so out of it, but I knew they were taking off my clothes. I tried to fight them, and I tried to scream, but it was like I had no energy left. All I could do was watch it all happen.”
“They… did they…” Brock said through gritted teeth, unable to say the word she knew he was thinking. Sky could practically feel the fury wafting off of him.
“No. They may have, but no. It didn’t get that far. Two of my friends came looking for me. They tried to pull me away. One of the guys had a knife. The police said he was drunk. My friend told me later that he pointed it at them to get them to leave. Kristin grabbed my arm anyway and pulled me, and the guy fell forward into my side. That’s how I got it.”
Sky closed her eyes. Reliving it brought all that searing pain to her body, as intense as the slash of the blade in her flesh. She would never understand why it happened to her. The string of therapists she saw afterward told her it wasn’t her fault, and she was so lucky. Sky didn’t feel lucky at all. It had completely altered her life.
“When I got out of the hospital everyone on campus knew about what had happened. I was too ashamed to go back to school…some people blamed me for letting it happen…I was a mess. I dropped out and came home.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that now, but back then I didn’t see it that way. I was living a nightmare. Coming home made the whole thing go away.”
“What happened once you came home?”
Sky guffawed. “Depression hit me hard. My parents couldn’t afford the reconstructive surgery. For a while this scar was like a weight I’d carry around with me. I hated it. I hated myself for it.”
“You didn’t want any man to see the scar.”