Chapter 13 #3
“It’s ugly.” My eyes flick down to my stomach.
“What he did. That’s probably the hardest part, the part that doesn’t make sense is why?
Why did he do this? Why did he choose me?
He treated me like he wanted revenge, but all I ever did was lie about my age.
I was stupid. I shouldn’t have done it, but I thought it was cool.
Going out with an older guy, and I knew he wouldn’t want anything to do with me if he knew that I wasn’t even legal.
I… I was stupid. I wanted to belong to someone.
I wanted to have someone and something just for me for the first time in my life. ”
“Fucking Viking, he should have been there for you. They both should have been there for you.”
“No. I can’t blame them. My mom might not be a very good mom, but she has her own demons.
She found out she was pregnant after she’d broken up with my father.
He agreed to pay child support when she told him, but she was basically alone.
She never had any family, not really. She ran away from home when she was sixteen and made her own way.
I guess, all those men she kept dating, I guess she wanted something of her own as well. ”
Gage’s eyes darken dangerously, but the light in their depths is like a candle flickering in the darkness, soft and alluring and more powerful than a room full of lights.
“She had something of her own. She had you.”
I have to squeeze my eyes shut to stem another tide of tears.
I have no idea where they’re coming from.
I haven’t cried in a long time. I was afraid that if I started, I’d never be able to stop, and it seems like I was right.
I have an ocean locked up inside of me and it’s spilling over the barricades I’ve built, even after the furious storm abated.
“It still wasn’t her fault. I made my own choices.”
Gage’s hands grip my shoulders, so roughly that his fingers dig into my skin right through my cardigan. He shakes me. Hard. My neck snaps back and forth and I nearly bite my tongue in half. My eyes fly open and I stare at him, shocked.
“No. None of that was your fault. None of it. It didn’t matter how old you were.
He was a sick bastard who took something he had no right to take.
He drugged you, raped you, and left his sadistic mark on you.
He should have been put the fuck down. Who knows how many other women he’s harmed.
Fucker probably tortured animals as a kid. ”
His words leave me ice cold inside.
In all the years that I’ve thought about what happened.
In all the years I’ve spent fighting, trying not to remember, I never thought about that.
About what he could have done because I never told a soul.
About how many other women there might have been.
Victims, just like me. Women who are too ashamed to tell someone.
Anyone. Ashamed because they were raped.
Ashamed because they don’t know what happened in those black hours of stolen time.
Ashamed because they were branded, made an outcast and an undesirable with that single word inked so roughly and crudely into their flesh and into their souls. Ashamed. And afraid.
“You- you don’t understand,” I stammer, tears clogging my throat.
I swallow hard, determined to get the words out.
“You have no idea what that fear is like. Fear that he’ll find you.
Fear that if you tell someone, anyone, that he’ll come for you.
That no one can protect you, not even the police.
I didn’t want my father or brothers doing something stupid and going to jail for the rest of their lives because of me.
I’d had enough stolen from me already. But more than that, more than the shame, I was afraid.
Afraid that he’d go to jail for a couple years.
That he’d get off. That he’d come for me, and no one would be able to stop him.
To keep me safe. He’d already proved that he could take and take and take, take everything I had and everything I was… ”
“Your family would have kept you safe. The police—”
“You don’t know that!” I shove away from Gage, breaking his hold on me. “You don’t know that at all!”
I watch his throat bob as he swallows. All the muscles tense up, the veins throbbing around his Adam’s apple. “You might have been alone then. But not now. Not now, Ami. Now, you have me. You could have a family. A real family. If you wanted it.”
I stare at him dumbly, hardly believing that he’d extend an offer like that. The Riders. I know that they could find the bastard. That they could make him disappear. That even if they didn’t, they could make him pay for what he did and keep me safe.
“I can’t,” I whisper, thinly. “I don’t want to think about him.
I don’t want to remember. What I want… what I want is to forget.
” I sweep my tongue over my bottom lip, my heart hammering wildly when I think about Gage pressing me up against that wall, pinning me with his powerful strength.
It should have terrified me, but it didn’t.
It thrilled me, especially after what happened to me, but it didn’t.
It made me feel powerful. Like a woman. A real person.
Before I even know what I’m asking, I hear the words, falling from my own lips.
My tongue. My mouth. “Can you make me forget, Gage?”