And still I spilled like an overfull pitcher, the memories pouring out of me like bitter water. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder even, I think, than living through it the first time.
When I was young, when it was happening, it had all been coated with a feeling of unreality. Like Alice tumbling down the looking glass, where nothing was quite what it seemed. I embraced the feeling, embraced the disconnect and the alienation, because as long as I didn’t focus on it, didn’t think about it, didn’t acknowledge it even while it was happening, then it wasn’t real. Then it wasn’t happening to me. It was happening to some other little girl, or better yet, to some long forgotten doll that nobody cared about at all.
That’s how I got through every disgusting press of his lips against my mouth.
Every glide of his fingers over my skin.
Every painful slam of his body into my sex, my mouth, my ass.
Telling Ian—watching his eyes, his face, his hands as the words tumbled out of me in a rush—was so, so painful. Opening up is anathema to me, but I went there for him. I laid out every painful detail of what had happened to me for one night only. Because he matters…and because any man getting involved with me, really involved, deserves to know why I’m as messed up as I am. They deserve to know who I am, and what I came from.
He listened to every depraved thing I said without a word of protest. And when it was over, when there was nothing left to tell, he cuddled me close.
Stroked my hair.
Held me through the long, dark night.
He’s holding me still. And while there’s a part of me that loves him for it, there’s another part that wants nothing more than to get away. I’m raw, my body flayed open so that even the feel of his skin against mine is too much.
Everything is just too goddamned much.
He shifts in his sleep, pulls me closer. It’s the straw that breaks my back, that has me wiggling out of his embrace and tumbling onto the floor in my haste to get away. From him, from me, from the words I’ll never be able to take back.
I crawl away from the bed like a thief, pausing—breath held—every time he so much as shifts or sighs. I feel like an idiot, or worse, like the basket case I’m so afraid of becoming, but I can’t bring myself to wake him up.
I can’t face him. Not yet.
I don’t take an easy breath until I’m in the kitchen, far away from my bedroom and the man sleeping in my bed. But even the kitchen is tainted. By the confessions I made last night, and by the brooch lying discarded on the counter. Her brooch.
I still have no idea how it got in my hair. I fixed my up-do myself for the party, fastened a small diamond-and-onyx clip over the twist. How that clip got changed to this brooch—the Belladonna’s brooch—I don’t have a clue. Ian is the only one who had access, the only one who dared touch my hair.
And yet I don’t believe it was him. I won’t believe it. Not when he held me so tenderly last night. And not when he looked so shocked when he found out what it was.
No, it wasn’t Ian who did this to me. Wasn’t Ian who called the gardeners and had them tear out my father’s English garden. And it sure as hell wasn’t he who snuck into my house and left my bathwater running. When that happened, he didn’t have a clue where I lived.
So, who then? The question circles my thoughts as I make myself a cup of coffee heavy on the milk. I wrack my brain, trying desperately to come up with an answer other than the one I am so afraid to contemplate. The answer I’ve spent two days running from and refusing to acknowledge.
But nothing else makes sense. No one else had access. No one else had opportunity.
Only me.
God, just thinking it makes my skin crawl and my stomach churn. I don’t want to believe it’s possible, but what else am I supposed to think? What other answer can there be?
Suddenly, the walls are closing in on me and this house that has always been my sanctuary feels like a prison. I can’t do this right now, can’t be here right now. I can’t face Ian with everything that I told him lying between us like poison. I have to get out, if only for a little while. I have to think.
I have to breathe.
Grabbing my keys from the bowl where I keep them, I let myself into the garage without bothering to change out of the nightgown I wore to bed last night. To do that I’d have to go back into the bedroom and that’s not going to happen. I know I’ll have to face Ian eventually but not yet. Not now.