“After that, he started touching me more inappropriately. If we sat next to each other, he’d put his hand on my leg—not too high, but well above my knee. There were a few times his hand would brush over my chest, but he always played it off as an accident.”
“How long did this go on for?”
She shrugged, but ended up giving me an answer anyway. “Maybe six months. Eight. I don’t remember for sure. It was before my seventeenth birthday when it progressed into something more.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll never forget it. I was wearing a tank top—the kind with the thin straps and built-in bra—but I had a light sweater over it because the room was chilly. He asked if I was cold, and when I told him I was all right, he made a comment about my…my nipples being hard.”
Hearing that made me grimace—not only because it was repulsive of him to have said, but because it reminded me of the morning I’d made a comment about being able to see through her shirt. And now that I thought about it, she’d been wearing the same type of tank top she just described from that day. There was no way I could’ve known, but that didn’t do anything to stop my need to turn back time and handle that situation differently. Other than embarrassment, she hadn’t acted freaked out. She’d even come back into the room and had fallen into easy chatter with me. However, it didn’t change the regret I felt over it.
“There was another time when he took my hand under the table and put it over his groin. It was hard. I’d never done that before, so I froze. I didn’t pull my hand away or tell him to stop. I just sat there while he made me touch him over his pants and listened while he told me I had done that to him.”
“Were you dating him at this point?” I wished I could’ve swallowed my question. The last thing I wanted her to believe was that I felt his actions were justified if they were in a relationship—because that wasn’t at all what I thought or meant.
But it didn’t seem to faze her. “He wasn’t really my boyfriend. I mean, we didn’t date or do ‘couple’ things. He told me I was his, and that meant I wasn’t allowed see anyone else. I only called him my boyfriend so no one would think I was single—not that I had a line of guys trying to date me. Most of the boys at school referred to me as ‘Stevie’s best friend.’ I doubt they even knew my name.”
“And this possessive behavior started when you were sixteen?”
“Yeah…I mean, he made his intentions pretty clear before then, but that’s when it stopped being glances and started to become more.”
“How much more?”
“He’d touch me between my legs if we were sitting at a table where no one could see.”
“Were you okay with that?”
“The first time he did it, I’d asked him to stop. I told him it made me uncomfortable. But he just said it was because I was inexperienced and that I’d learn to like it. He said all girls liked to be touched, and if I didn’t, then there was something wrong with me.”
The need to find this motherfucker and slaughter him burned hot within me.
“The day after my seventeenth birthday is when we had sex for the first time.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I felt the need to. “It was…consensual, right?”
“I didn’t want to, and I told him that.” Her voice lowered, yet she refused to drop the bravado. She was either incredibly strong, or I was making a bigger deal of this than she was. I couldn’t tell. “But he promised me it would feel good. He said he would stop if I didn’t like it. I told him it hurt, and he said that was normal, that I just had to give it a minute. Then I cried, and he said I was too tense, that if I just relaxed, it would get better. After a few minutes, he was done, but then he got mad.”
“What the fuck was he mad about?” I couldn’t contain my anger and immediately regretted it when she flinched. All I could do was reassure her with a gentle squeeze on her knee, which I prayed didn’t make things worse.
She blew out a stream of air and straightened her posture as if preparing herself to testify. “He was mad because I’d made him do that.”
“Do what? I don’t understand. He said you made him have sex with you?”
“I don’t want to say it, Cash. You’ll hate me.”
“Why would I hate you?” The longer she dragged this out, the tighter my chest became.
“Because your wife cheated on you.”
“He was married…” It was more of a realization spoken aloud.
“Yes, and I guess he hadn’t given it any thought until that moment. I remember thinking everything he’d done prior to that day had been considered cheating—making me touch him, him touching me, his comments…all of it. But I guess in his eyes, none of that counted.”
“I could never hate you, Jade,” I whispered, but she refused to meet my gaze.
I tucked my finger beneath her chin and tilted it, needing her to look at me. When her eyes met mine, I was almost silenced by the vibrancy in them. I still wasn’t sure what all her ex had done to her, but I could see a strength within her most wouldn’t possess in her shoes.
Jade was a fighter.
“So he blamed you for his infidelity…but it didn’t make him stop, did it?”
She shook her head, and I could tell this was starting to wear her down. Yet she didn’t shut down. “It took a month, but it happened again…and then again…and again. Each time became more frequent. After a while, he stopped getting angry when it was over. He continued to blame me, saying it was my fault he couldn’t keep his hands to himself, but rather than use his anger to intimidate me, he resorted to guilt and manipulation. To be honest, I’m not sure which one was worse.”
I didn’t know who this asshole was.
And unfortunately for him…
Jade had unknowingly chosen a killer to confide in.
My question burned the tip of my tongue until I asked, “Why don’t you do anything about it now? That’s statutory rape at the minimum. Can’t you go to the authorities and let them do something about it?”
“No,” she whispered with a slow shake of her head. “The statute of limitations ran out the day I turned twenty-two.”
Hearing that made me so angry my hands shook. “There’s nothing that can be done?”
“No. There’s nothing I can legally do. Even if I decide to say something, having Aria as proof, I have no evidence to back up any claim of it happening before I was an adult—no one knew, because he’d made sure of that. And now, he could say it only happened that one time and make me out to be the bad guy.”
“What about when you left him? Why couldn’t you do anything about it then?”
“Same thing, Cash,” she said with a deflated shrug. “I was nineteen—a legal adult. I don’t have anything to show that it had happened before I turned eighteen. The only proof I have of any kind of relationship with him is Aria. But that doesn’t mean anything because she was conceived when I was nineteen.”