48. Lilah
48
LILAH
“Promise you won't be mad.”
We were sitting in the living room later that night, the fire burning low. I’d hoped to keep my visit with Detective Rodriguez a secret, but I hadn’t thought about what would happen if I actually learned something.
Then she’d asked me about the Greek island of Folegandros, and no matter how hard I tried to tell myself to leave it alone, I just couldn’t.
“What the fuck…?” Rafe said, running a hand down his face. He was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, the spot he always took when he wanted to be as far away from me as possible, looking menacing as he held the fireplace poker like he was a king and it was his staff. “ Promise we won’t be mad ? What are you, five?”
Okay, I deserved that one.
“I’m just saying, I have something to tell you and I want you to hear me out before you say anything.”
Nolan, sitting next to me on the sofa, squeezed my hand. “We’re not going to be mad, sweetheart.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rafe said.
“It’s okay,” Jude soothed on the other side of me. “You can tell us anything."
“I went to see Detective Rodriguez today.” I said it fast, wanting to get it over with, and continued with the important part before they could stop me. “I went to see her and she told me about an island in Greece called Folegandros. I think it has something to do with Imperium Fratrum, and… and I think we should go there.”
For a few seconds, I thought that maybe I’d had a stroke, that maybe my words had come out as gibberish or in Mandarin or something, because the Bastards just stared at me.
Then Rafe stood, holding his head in his hands while he paced. “Why the fuck would you talk to the cops?”
“I kept you out of it,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mention any of you. I just… I thought maybe she might tell me something. Something about the stuff at Aventine and with Piers Cantwell. something that might help us figure this out.”
“ Us ?” Rafe turned on me, rage transforming his face, and I caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like when he’d been in the SEALs, how terrifying he must have been to anyone on the other end of his gun. “There is no us . This is your fucking crusade. I’ve said since the beginning that we should leave it alone, but these fuckers” — he gestured at Nolan and Jude, still sitting on the sofa — “had to be fucking knights in shining armor.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.” I’d barely said it when I changed my mind. I stood to face him. “Actually, you know what? I’m not sorry. Why should I be sorry that I’m trying to find out what’s happening to a bunch of girls no one seems to give a shit about? Why should I be sorry for trying to get back to my life, a life I fought for, a life that was taken from me by a bunch of guys? Again?”
All the color drained from Rafe’s face. I didn’t even dare look at Nolan and Jude, but mostly Nolan, since he was still the only one who’d actually apologized for what they’d done to me.
For a split second, I was sure I saw shame on Rafe’s face, in the downturn of his mouth, the way his gray eyes turned a shade darker.
Then his features hardened into granite. “It was high school, Lilah. Get over it.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. “Get over it? Get…” I’d started pacing, my stomach turning, my heart thudding so hard I could almost hear it. “Get over it?”
I spun on them. All of them.
“You have no idea what you did to me! No idea what… what my mom did to me, what I… what I did to myself.” I tried to stifle the sob that rose in my throat but didn’t entirely succeed.
Nolan looked confused. “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”
I thought about taking it all back, telling them it didn’t matter, forcing myself to smile and say Rafe was right, I should just get over it.
But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t smile and pretend.
Not this time.
“I tried to kill myself, okay?” I shouted. The sob tore free of my throat. “I was humiliated and ashamed and then my mom, my religious freak of a mom, took me out of school and made me pray for fucking hours in a closet.”
“Lilah…” Nolan reached for me.
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
Jude was staring at me in horror, like the reality of my confession was just now sinking in.
Tears streamed down my face, my breath coming in wracking sobs. “I was never popular, I’ll admit that, but you turned me into a fucking joke. You turned me into a pariah, not just at school but at home too. Except at home it was worse because there was nowhere to hide, so I just decided…” I could barely breathe I was crying so hard. “… I decided there was no point being here, that I didn’t want to be here if it meant seeing people from school laugh at me when I was at the store with my mom, if it meant knowing my little brother was going to find out, if it meant spending my life praying for forgiveness to a vengeful god who saw me as a sinner while the rest of the world saw me as a pathetic loser.”
“Lilah…” There was pain in Jude’s voice, in his dark eyes, but I didn’t care about his pain.
I couldn’t afford to care about his pain when my own had brought me to my knees. I wanted them to feel my pain.
“You’re going to hear this.” I stared Rafe down and was almost gratified to see that his face was red, his gray eyes wide, like he was standing on a beach waiting for a tsunami that was only inches away from wiping him out completely.
“You’re going to…” I tried to breathe around the sobs wracking my body, tried to make sure they could understand what I was saying. “You’re going to listen. Because I want you to know that the night I took a bottle of pills, I thought of you, every one of you. I remembered how flattered I’d felt when you paid attention to me at the party, when you took me out to Rafe’s car. I was drunk — and let’s face it, probably drugged, because of Brandon Miller — but I was fucking flattered . And when I took those pills the night I decided to end my life, I thought of you. I wondered what it would be like to have someone really like me and I knew I would never, ever know. I was too broken by then, too damaged, a joke. Who was ever going to want me? Who was ever going to love me?”
I thought I saw tears in Nolan’s eyes and Jude’s expression was pained, but Rafe’s face had become unreadable.
“When I woke up, I was in the hospital, and you know what? I was sorry. I was sorry it hadn’t worked, sorry Matt had found me, that they’d gotten me to the hospital in time to save my life.” The tears were still flowing, but I’d stopped sobbing at least. “Then I was transferred to Oak Hill. I was there for a month, in therapy, on medication. My head was clear for the first time in… well, maybe ever. I knew I had to get away from my mom, start fresh. Except I had no money, no one to ask for help.” The past felt close now, those dark days when I’d been more alone than I’d ever been in my life, when even Matt couldn’t help me. “It took me two years of part-time jobs to save enough money to get that shitty apartment you saw, and another three to save up the money I’d planned to use to get my brother away from my mom. Half of that’s gone now, paying rent for a place I can’t even live in because of Vic and Mr. Suit, and I’m… here” — I gestured at the great room — “in this beautiful house, where it’s always warm, where there’s always enough food, sleeping with two of the guys who ruined my life and trying to figure out how fucked up I have to be to do that. So… no.” I glared at Rafe. “I’m not going to ‘get over it,’ but it must be nice to say that to someone like me without an ounce of self-awareness about the fact that the thing I’m supposed to ‘get over' happened because of you.”
I turned and hurried for the stairs. It was all just… too much. The past, the present, and my future more ambiguous than ever.
But I’d done it, I’d told them everything.
I hoped they choked on it.