60. Evie
Evie
KIERAN ASHFORD
Hey mini Ellington
you up for company?
EVIE
as long as you don’t expect me to smile, abso-fucking-lutely
KIERAN ASHFORD
never
I prefer you moody and throwing hockey pucks at my face
EVIE
that was one time…
KIERAN ASHFORD
three times
on my way to jog your memory
I’ve never felt so awful in my life.
The passing months—hell, over a year—were nothing compared to this sensation. Rock bottom wasn’t a few months ago, it’s now, with the sound of my father and mother’s voices on repeat as they say I’m unstable, a liar, and need help.
My tear ducts are empty, my stomach disgustingly empty.
Nothing left to shed, not even my dignity.
I’ve tried my best not to tell people, have tried to protect the little version of me that already had so much stolen from her, and now the entire world knows with just one click of a button.
It’s unfair, the injustice of it all threatening to swallow me whole.
Didn’t I suffer enough?
I want to scream at the sky and ask why. Why am I going through this? Why me? Why now? Why this much pain? What did I ever do that was so bad to deserve this punishment?
Why, why, why?
The front door of the cabin opening forces my eyelids open. It’s sometime in the afternoon. I’ve slept nearly the entire day away on the couch, only waking for short moments here and there when Matteo would check on my wellbeing.
But it isn’t Matteo standing in front of the couch with a sad smile.
“Hey, little E.”
I attempt to smile but fail miserably. “Ashford. A pleasure as always,” I croak out.
He snorts out a laugh. “I see you still have some of your humor.”
Dragging myself up into a seated position, I try to flatten my bedhead before giving up. Even my limbs are too tired despite catching up on sleep. “If I didn’t have it, I’d have nothing.”
“You’ve still got fuel in the tank, Evie. You’ve got this.”
“Do I?” I ask, my dead eyes lifting to his.
Kieran Ashford is known for reading people. He can take one look at you and see into your soul. I’m curious if mine still exists because I feel empty on the inside.
Sliding his hands in his pockets, he implores me with his eyes as he says, “Yes you do. You just have to keep going.”
“For how long?” I ask, my tongue sharpening as a spark of anger surges.
“Until he does another interview outside the house he assaulted me in and say he would never touch me? Until page six splashes my face across their tabloids with their headlines telling everyone and anyone what allegedly happened to me? Or should I wait for another hundred thousand people on the internet to call me a liar or ask what I was wearing to tempt my father or call me a slut who deserved it? Should I keep going, Kieran, or is that enough of a picture for you?”
My chest is heaving by the time I’m done. A tendril of guilt slithers through my heart but it’s swallowed whole by the dark void that’s taken up residence inside me.
I expect to see hurt flash across his eyes, but instead, all he does is cock his head toward the front door. “Come take a walk with me.” My brows pull down into a frown before I can smooth it out. I’m about to refuse and he can see that. “Please,” he adds.
Hanging suspended, I stare at Matteo and Caleb’s close friend, someone who I’ve trusted for years despite his old cocky ways.
Sighing, I stand. “I suppose it’s time to get fresh air.”
Kieran smirks. “So stubborn.”
“Have you met my brother?”
“Two peas in a pod,” he says as he opens the cabin door for me.
Squinting at the bright sun shining through the canopy of trees, I step off the front steps, my feet crunching branches. I set off beside Kieran, hating that he was right and that a little bit of the anger is loosening, my muscles seeming to sigh the longer we walk.
Kieran’s silent for what feels like half an hour, the sun dropping lower our only tell of time.
I can feel his gaze slide my way every now and then, as if he’s assessing, waiting for the right time to speak.
Which he will; he wants to say something.
He didn’t drive all this way just to go for a walk with me.
“Want to spit it out, Kieran?”
Pursing his lips, he comes to a stop. “I’m just not entirely sure how to start this conversation.”
That’s not what I was expecting.
Watching him closer than I was, it’s now that I realize that perhaps he wasn’t assessing me after all. Kieran can’t look me in the eye. My heart sinks at seeing his usual confident self stand before me with such nerves.
I can’t help but take a step back. “What is it, Kieran?”
He blows out a breath before putting his hands on his hips.
“I just want you to know…you’re not alone, Evie.
You may feel it, and it’s fucking horrendous what’s happening online, what they’re saying on the news.
My heart breaks for you, but you are not alone.
I don’t want to see him win. I don’t want this to be the thing that destroys you. ”
“He’s already winning.”
Kieran finally looks at me then as he swears vehemently, “No, he’s not. He’s panicking, Evie. It’s why he’s doing what he is because he no longer has control over you.”
“It feels like he’s winning.” Shaking my head, I look off into the distance. “Feels like he already has. He’s taken everything from me already.” Everything that he never should have taken.
“Then don’t let him take any more.”
“Easier said than done,” I murmur.
“Yeah, it is, and I’m being a fucking hypocrite right now but I just…I can’t watch another monster win.”
Confusion fills me at his words.
“I—” His voice cracks before he swallows and tries again. “I had something similar happen to me.”
His words hang in the air as I blink back at him, shock rendering me silent.
Before I can even respond, Kieran peers down at his shoes, putting his hands in his pockets only to rip them out again and fiddle with his fingers.
“It happened at a foster home I was placed in. The dad was…a monster, but if I’m being honest with myself, that was nothing.
By that point I was used to it. I knew how to survive it. ”
I thought I had run out of tears, but somehow, my eyes fill once more.
“The worst was when I lived with my mother. She was addicted to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes…you name it. The drugs were the worst, though. She’d go out of her mind for days and I’d have to fend for myself.”
Kieran tries to clear his throat, very clearly struggling to continue. Giving him the silence and the space to work on it, I take a step closer, trying to let him know that I’m here.
“Her use became so frequent that she ran out of ways to pay for the drugs, so when her dealer came knocking for it…she gave him me.”
A gasp escapes me, my hand flying to my lips.
Kieran lifts his head then, his broken, sad eyes locking on mine. Two people standing in a forest—different stories but the same wounds making us bleed internally.
“I’ve only ever told a small handful of people.
That right now was the first time I was able to say it verbally.
You are far stronger than I ever was. You tried to tell people, you asked for help, and then you were betrayed in the worst of ways.
I’m so angry for you. I’m so fucking angry and gutted for you and what’s happening now…
Evie, I don’t want to see them win because a selfish part of me needs to see someone conquer their monster so that maybe one day I can conquer mine.
” His eyes seem to stare all the way down into what’s left of my soul. “Don’t let the monsters win.”
“I’m so sorry, Kieran,” I breathe. “You didn’t deserve that.”
“Neither did you.”
No, no I didn’t.
“Where’s your monster?”
He shrugs. “I only saw him once as an adult. For all I know, he’s dead now.”
“I wish he would die,” I confess with a whisper. “It would be easier if he did. Then I wouldn’t have to go through all of this.”
“It would be too peaceful for him, Evie. He deserves a far worse fate.”
My eyes begin to burn, my throat tightening. “I’m just so tired. So fucking tired.”
“I know, little E,” he says sadly. “It’s not going to be easy but we’re all here. All of us believe you and we’re ready to help you fight. But don’t let him win. He’s taken so much from you already. He deserves to rot in hell.”
“He does but it doesn’t mean it will happen.”
Kieran peers behind us in the direction we’ve walked as if he can stare all the way through the trees toward the cabin.
“I asked Matteo if I could be the one to tell you something. It was like pulling teeth trying to get him to agree since he wanted to be there for you when you found out.” Turning back to me, Kieran says bluntly without any warning, “There are other people that have come forward, Evie. You weren’t the only one he hurt. ”
My body reacts before I can stop it. My head rears back as if I were struck, my eyes blink rapidly, my heartbeat skyrockets.
“I’m sorry…what did you just say?”
“There are others.”
Again, he’s speaking in that matter-of-fact tone, yet the words aren’t penetrating my brain. They can’t grasp onto my heart because it’s beating too wildly for them to find purchase.
“I-I…that’s…how do you know?”
My mind is whirling.
“Girls from your little league soccer team. Some of the women saw the news and reached out to Caleb’s PR team trying to get a hold of you.”
Shaking my head, a tidal wave of emotions rise, more hurt threatening to take me under. “But he coached soccer for seven-year-olds. They…they were—”
“Young,” he finishes for me. “Very, very young. Like you were.”
My face goes numb, my skin tingling. “I think I might pass out,” I say weakly, my legs turning to Jell-O. Kieran rushes forward, grabbing my forearm to help me sit on a nearby fallen log.
I’m thankful for it because my head isn’t the only thing spinning anymore. My body sways with the revelation.
“How many?” I manage to whisper brokenly after some time has passed.
Sitting beside me, Kieran’s voice grows soft. “So far? Thirteen.”
My head snaps up at the number. “Thirteen?” I hear myself shriek.
“He coached for years, Evie. I think this is just the beginning, and I think your strength in speaking up is going to get justice for so many people.”
Shaking my head, I stand, not wanting to sit any longer, physically not able to as something begins to coarse through my veins. An odd sticky sensation that I can’t shake despite how much I pace.
I feel disgusting. I feel used. I feel…
Turning to the side, I hurl. Kieran’s gentle hands sweep my hair into a ponytail as he rubs soothing circles on my back.
Once I’m done, I stay slightly bent, trying to spit the taste of vomit out of my mouth before straightening and wiping my lips with the back of my hand. “Why did you want to tell me without Matteo around?”
“Because if it were me, I’d want no one around when I screamed.”
Our eyes lock and hold, his story coming to my mind, the utter devastation that was consuming him as he told me his darkest secret, a secret that I’ll take to my grave.
“I would want to know so I could fall apart before standing up and deciding enough is enough and fight.” Kieran pauses, his swallow audible.
“I would want to let the anger consume me enough to help me get through what is undoubtedly going to be the hardest thing I ever face and silence him, because that’s who deserves to be silenced.
Not you, Evie. Never you, or all the girls he hurt. ”
Kieran takes a step forward. “Caleb and Matteo won’t push you. They won’t want to force you to do it.”
“So why are you?”
“Because I regret never going after my monster. I regret never speaking up. I regret not trying as hard as you did. I regret letting him get away and I don’t want to watch that same regret eat away at you.
” His eyes flick back and forth, searching mine as he adds softly, “So let yourself break. Let yourself lean on us, but get that anger surging enough to fight.”
Despite the bone-deep tiredness consuming me, I can feel the injustice of it all, can hear the little girl he hurt within me screaming beyond the door I keep her locked behind.
So standing in the middle of the forest with Kieran’s words ringing through my mind, I open the door for her and step aside. As tears run down my cheeks, I part my lips and scream. I scream for everything that was taken from not only me, but from every other girl.