She wipes a tear from her cheek. “Yes, you do. You didn’t see the look on your face when you saw that letter. You hated me right then.”
My brows furrow. “I didn’t hate you. I was mad at you. Madder than I’ve ever been, but I could never hate you.”
“If you didn’t then, you’re sure going to now.”
I pull her into my lap, draping her stiff limbs over my legs and tucking her face into my neck. The words pour out of me, drawn by her tears and her fear and the constant need to keep her here, close to me. Where she belongs. No matter what. “There’s nothing you could ever do to make me hate you, Sofie. I’ve loved you my whole life and I don’t expect I’ll ever stop.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew,” she whispers brokenly.
“Try me.”
“I slept with Damian,” she says, followed by a pregnant pause. “But I didn’t want to.” She can barely get the words out and when she does, they’re so quiet I have to strain to hear them.
My breaths start coming more quickly and my arms vise around her. “You didn’t want to?” I repeat.
“He attacked me that day when I came back from New Orleans.” Her head drops forward, her dark hair curtaining her face. Behind, I hear her sniffle and it makes me pull her closer.
“It wasn’t consensual?”
She shudders. “I tried to fight him, but he had a knife.”
Nausea is a greasy roll in my stomach, but I force myself to stay calm, even though my control is paper thin at best. “Start from the beginning.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“You’ve pushed it down for so long, you need to talk. I’m just going to listen. I’m right here. Let it out.”
“I left the gym to go home and change. He must have let the air out of one of my tires because I had a flat when I came out and he offered to help me change it. I thought, you know, he’s your friend. I thought I was safe with him.”
“What did he do?”
She swallows audibly. “I went to pop the trunk for the spare and he came up behind me, dragged me to the back of the gym and through the back door.” She pauses and I rub her shoulders, down her arm. “There was a storage room down that hall, one that was full of old mats and equipment. He pushed me down on them and…”
“He raped you,” I say.
She nods into my throat. I sense there’s more to the story, but I don’t push her about it anymore, also sensing she’s had enough, more than enough. Her muscles twitch beneath my hands and she’s gone limp against my chest. “What made you come here today?”
“Jack, please, I don’t—”
“Last thing, baby, you can do it. Then we’ll take you home, get you cleaned up.”
Her fingers clutch at the thin jacket she’s wearing, tugging it more securely around her waist. “He’s here. In town.”
Fucking bastard. No wonder he looked so goddamned smug. My arms tighten around her slim body for a second, then I force them to relax. “Has he done something since you’ve been back? He’s been harassing you this whole time?”
“No,” she hurries to clarify, “no. He hasn’t bothered me since…since that night. I think he was in jail. He just wrote me…letters.”
I fill in the blanks. “That’s what you were so fired up to get from your mom’s. Letters he’d written?”
“He sent the first one the day after. I found it on my car when I…when I went back for it. The next time he gave it to Rafe, though he doesn’t remember that now, thank God. That’s when I knew I had to leave. I didn’t want him near my family, Jack. I didn’t want his ugliness to touch them, too. He found out where I lived in college, it freaked my roommates out so I had to move. He always knew where I was. I didn’t know what to do. When I came back every now and then to check in, see the boys or Livvie, I’d leave the letters at Mom’s because I wasn’t sure what else to do with them.”
“God, Sofie.” All this time. All this time and she’d been terrified of a man who I thought was my friend.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice almost nonexistent.
Forcing myself to keep my touch gentle and my voice level, I say, “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
“I should have told you sooner. Should have gotten help.”
I tip up her chin and look into her watery eyes. “You did what you had to do. I don’t doubt that at all.”
There’s a moment there where she looks up at me and it’s like she wants me to kiss her and I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my life. But it’s not the right time, couldn’t make a worse time if I try, so I lift her to her feet.
“Let’s get you home,” I say.
“Jack, there’s more—” she starts, but I cut her off.
“Later. You’ve had enough for now.”
And I don’t know if I’m capable of handling more without hunting down the man himself and taking vengeance into my own hands.
Present
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Rafe asks as he climbs into Jack’s truck. Jack had called their friend’s mom on the way from the gym to let them know we’d be by early to pick them up.