Chapter 27 #2
He swallows it down again, the rising tide of those feelings. The unwieldy shape of his affection for her.
“I’m still not used to it,” he says. “That you can just casually mention something like being on wikiFeet. It feels sort of like you lived a hundred lives before we met.”
“Does it bother you? The age difference?” she asks, and he wonders if she’s thinking about the joke he made last night.
“At first…yes. It made me nervous,” he admits, pressing his thumb into her heel. “I didn’t want to feel like some dirty old man coming on to you.” This makes Ramona groan-laugh.
“I assure you, you’re not.”
“I don’t think about it much anymore, if I’m being honest. What about you?”
She shakes her head. “Ten years feels like nothing when I think you understand me better than most people.” His heart swells at that, and he thinks, this.
This is the moment. But she looks deep in thought, like there’s more she wants to say.
“So much happened when I was younger that I didn’t understand. I think I’m still processing it.”
“Like with your parents.”
“Right.” Gently, she pulls her feet away, tucking them under her knees. Her expression has hardened. “There’s…something else I’ve been trying to work through.” Another pause. “Do you know Zander Parrish?”
His brow furrows as he tries to place the name. There was that billboard they passed while leaving LA—he remembers the way Ramona stiffened next to him. “The actor, right?”
“And my ex-boyfriend. We met on the set of Greta and dated for three years.” A sense of unease works its way up Nick’s spine. “He was my first…most things.” She gives a wave of her hand, letting him fill in the blank. “Are you okay with the details?”
The unease climbs higher, but he nods. “If you are.”
She tightens her fist in the ends of her hair. “We broke up when he was twenty and I was nineteen, and I never heard from him after that. His career went in a different direction, and he was always with some hot singer or actress or model. Pretending he was the coolest guy in the room.”
“I’ll go one-star all his movies on Letterboxd,” he says, and she lets out a choked-sounding laugh that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“You know what, he probably reads those. Always a bit of an ego.” A lift of one eyebrow. “Then again, I guess I’ve had a little of that, too.”
Nick isn’t sure if he can make it through the rest of this conversation without touching her, so he lifts a hand to her knee and waits for her nod to confirm it’s okay.
“You probably haven’t heard, since they’ve done a pretty stellar job of keeping it out of the mainstream media, but a couple months ago…
someone on the set of his new show accused him of sexual assault.
Said she was dressing him in his trailer and he forced himself on her.
” Ramona takes a deep, shaky breath that just about turns him inside out.
He rubs circles on her knee. “At first I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it, because I haven’t spoken to him in years.
And we were practically kids when we got together.
“But I think—I think the same thing happened to me. I didn’t have the words for it back then.
Didn’t realize it could happen if you were already in a relationship.
If he supposedly loved me as much as he said he did…
then he couldn’t have done something like that.
” Her eyes are red and glassy, and when she blinks, a few tears slip down her cheeks.
She doesn’t even seem to notice. “I didn’t want to, that first time.
Maybe a lot of it is blurry, but I distinctly remember that. I told him to stop, and he didn’t.”
Heartbreak and fury swell up inside him, so all-consuming that for a moment all he sees is red.
“Ramona. Honey. I am so fucking sorry.” He needs to hold her.
Needs to make it better, somehow, even though he feels utterly powerless.
His arms come around her and he folds her into his chest, stroking her hair.
He hopes to fuck he never has to meet this sorry excuse for a human being, because he really doesn’t want to go to jail for what he’d do to him.
“I believe you. What you’re telling me happened—I believe you. ”
This makes her let out another choked sound, as though she didn’t realize she needed to hear those three words.
“It kept happening, a few more times after that. I’d tell him no, and it wouldn’t matter.
I’d push him away, but he was stronger. Eventually I just got tired of fighting it,” she says, and he clutches her tighter as his heart keeps shattering.
“He didn’t use a condom. Never did, actually.
Just pulled out, told me not to worry about it.
Miracle I never wound up pregnant, with the shitty sex ed I had on set. ”
Nick has never been more hell-bent on justice. “So he’s about to go on trial, right when the show is coming out?”
She pulls back to give him this hollow, pained look, and all at once he understands.
Of course he isn’t on trial, because of course this town gives second, third, hundredth chances to men like him.
“There’s no trial, Nick. They buried the whole story.
Completely wrote her off. And I could come forward with what happened to me…
but I don’t know what to do.” In her lap, she wrings her hands.
“If I make some kind of statement, they’ll eviscerate me.
They’ll comb through all my relationships and legally decide that I’m a slut, and none of what I’m saying matters.
It’ll be, ‘Why are you doing this now? Why didn’t you say something when it happened?
’ And ‘Are you sure you want to try to ruin his career with this?’ instead of the far worse risk of him ruining literal lives.
But if I don’t say anything, and he does it again and gets away with it?
I don’t know if I could live with that.”
He thumbs away her tears, hating how brutal this system is and wishing he had the answers. He’s never been one for violence, but right now the most sensible solution is to find Zander Parrish and punch him in the throat. Lock him up so he can’t hurt anyone else.
He pictures Ramona at eighteen, powerless and doubting herself, and it just about rips him in half. It’s both a devastating heartbreak and a profound honor that she’s trusting him with this. He wants to be worthy of every ounce of that trust.
“I wish I could tell you what the right decision is,” he says as he rubs her back. “Whatever you choose—I support you.”
“Thank you,” she says softly, voice cracking. “I’ve never told anyone before. I don’t want it to change how you feel about me. For you to think I’m weak, or fragile.”
Weak? She’s further from it than anyone he’s ever met.
“No. It makes me want to vandalize every single one of those billboards. It makes me furious at everyone who ever tried to help you and failed. But you…” He trails off, tucking a strand of wild hair behind her ear so he can clearly see her face.
“I’m not sure if anything could change the way I feel about you. ”
“Then I probably shouldn’t tell you about the ritualistic sacrifices.”
“Better not,” he says. “I don’t want to be an accomplice.”
When he kisses her, he tastes the salt from her tears and wonders how this girl could be anything but strong. Pure grit. The kind of person who digs her claws in and fights.
“I think you might actually be the bravest person I know,” he says.
What he means is, I love you.
He almost says it—has to hold himself back—but he doesn’t want those words to be tied to her dark memories. So instead he just pulls her closer, desperate not to let her go, and hopes that it’s enough.