41. Lilah
41
LILAH
I couldn’t even look at Rafe on the way home.
Didn’t want to.
Matt’s words rang in my ears: you disgust me .
They were the words that hurt the most. I’d been away from my mom for too long to be brainwashed by her religious fanaticism, her belief that any human being who didn’t live according to her values was lost to the devil.
But hearing Matt say I disgusted him, hearing the conviction in his voice, it almost broke me. It hit the core of my shame, the belief that I was broken.
Dirty.
Up until the last couple months, there had been exactly one person in the world whose opinion had mattered to me, and that had been my brother.
And I disgusted him.
Rafe pulled the Jeep into the underground garage and turned off the engine. “Are you okay?”
All that was left was the truth. “Not really.”
I got out of the car and climbed the steps leading to the house, then continued up the staircase to my room. I was glad Nolan and Jude weren’t home, glad I wouldn’t have to worry about either of them — or both of them — knocking on my door to check on me. It was nice, the way they worried, but I didn’t want to explain what had happened and I didn’t have the energy to reassure them that I was okay.
Rafe could be a dick but he wouldn’t come after me in a situation like this. Maybe it was because he was the king of licking his wounds in private, or maybe it was just because I was starting to suspect feelings — his and everyone else’s — scared the shit out of him, but he’d leave me alone, give me the space I wanted.
I closed my bedroom door and lay down on my bed, replaying the moment with Matt. Under his anger had been humiliation. He’d been told the truth not by me but by someone who would lord it over him at school when high school probably wasn’t any easier for him than it had been for me before my nudes scandal.
What were they saying to him? That everyone had seen his sister’s tits? That his sister was a slut?
I was surprised to find it didn’t bother me. The kids at Blackwell High felt like kids in a movie or TV show, people who didn’t really exist.
But they existed for Matt, and I knew all too well how miserable they could make him on an everyday basis.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted him.
I’m sorry .
I waited but no dots appeared and I wondered if he was in the closet, if my mom was making him pray because he’d left the house without her permission, because he’d stayed with his whore of a sister and the three devils who’d corrupted her not once but twice.
Only this time, I’d chosen it.
And the worst part of all? The worst part of all was that even now, even sick with worry about Matt and swimming in shame, I didn’t think I’d take it back.
What did that say about me?