8 #2
“And they did judge it,” I snapped, my voice shaking hard enough that I hated myself for it.
“They judged my face, my body, every sound I didn’t even remember making.
They argued about whether I looked like I wanted it, whether I looked good enough to deserve it, whether I looked ruined enough to pity or used enough to laugh at. ”
I dragged in a breath that hurt.
“Darian, Maddox, Jerod, and Iver all knew. They all knew, and they still walked those halls like kings while I became a rumor with a pulse.”
Bliss stepped toward me. “Stop, Ay. We know.”
“Stop?” I hit my chest with one trembling hand. “Stop reminding you that yes, you both fucking know?”
My voice climbed, filling every corner of the room.
“You know the truth, and not just the video. You know what it cost me to keep my spine straight. You know the cops were involved. You know there were no charges. No trial. No one dragged into court. No one forced to stand in front of a judge and explain why a girl too drugged to remember her own voice ended up under lights while a roomful of boys raped her.”
The room vibrated with my rage, and Bliss started crying harder.
I kept going because stopping now would kill me.
“You know Darian and his little pack of future felons went back to school afterward like they had survived something.” My laugh broke apart.
“They tortured me. All of them. They made jokes in the hallways. They said my name like it was dirty. Boys who sat beside me in class watched me like they knew what I looked like under my clothes.”
My throat burned.
“Girls we grew up with, girls I shared lip gloss with, spit on me, jumped me, called me a slut, called me a liar, and told stories on my name because it was easier to hate me than admit their boyfriends had watched that video.”
Charm whispered, “Baby.”
“Do not baby me through this.” My voice cracked, and I hated that too.
“I was either a slut or a liar, but never the victim. If I said I didn’t remember, I was lying.
If I said I was drugged, I was desperate.
If I admitted it was me, I was disgusting.
If I stayed quiet, I was guilty. There wasn’t one door in that school that didn’t open into another way to punish me. ”
Bliss covered her mouth, but I saw it in her eyes.
She knew. She had been there. Charm had been there.
They had walked those halls with me, my chin lifted while every piece of me shook beneath it. They had taken on the same hatred for defending me.
That was the problem.
They knew, and tonight, they had still looked at me like I was too much.
“So do not stand there and talk to me like I built these walls because I’m dramatic,” I said. “Do not ask me to care about Easton’s pride before you remember what it cost me to let any man touch me without rules.”
I swallowed against the pressure in my throat.
“I know I hurt him. I know I handled it like shit. I know he deserved better than the way I treated him. He was the most alpha motherfucker I knew, and I cut him down to weakness because I was scared. I know that. I hate that.”
My eyes moved between them.
“But you two do not get to act like my reasons are an inconvenience I should’ve outgrown by now.”
Charm whispered, “We would never.”
“Then don’t,” I shot back. “Don’t make me smaller so he can save face after everything he has put me through. Don’t make me the villain alone when how he treated me deserves my anger too.”
Bliss opened her mouth, but I was already moving again, already past the point where standing in that bedroom with my chest cracked open and my best friends looking at me like they wanted to love me and correct me at the same time was something I could survive.
“I have more than paid the price for what I did to Easton,” I said, turning back to the bag with my voice shaking. “And no part of me cares that I rubbed his nose in it tonight.”
Charm came closer because she always followed quietly when she thought loud would make me bolt. “Ay, where are you going?”
“To my parents’.”
Bliss came all the way into the room. “Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight.” I shoved a makeup bag into the overnight bag. “I’m leaving before I start saying things I mean in a way I can’t take back.”
Charm’s expression went careful. “You don’t have to leave.”
I laughed as I dragged out a sweatshirt. “Oh, I absolutely do.”
Bliss wrung the sleeves of her hoodie between her hands. “We’re sorry. We didn’t see it that way.”
The laugh that came out of me was awful and too close to something broken. “Bullshit.”
Bliss flinched.
“No, don’t do that.” I shoved the sweatshirt into the bag without folding it because folding required a version of calm I did not possess. “Don’t make the wounded face when I’m finally saying the thing both of you know is true.”
Charm’s spine straightened. “We’re trying to understand.”
“You do understand.” I turned on her, one hand braced against the dresser while my clothes hung crooked around me and my whole body shook with everything I had swallowed for seven months.
“You see it as messy, and it is messy. It’s ugly, humiliating, and inconvenient as hell for the whole shiny little found-family hockey ecosystem, but you see it. ”
Bliss’s lips trembled. “That isn’t fair.”
“What part?” I threw another shirt onto the bed. “The part where you love Easton too, so watching him hurt makes me easier to blame because you know the why? The part where your life is tied to the team now and you hate that all of this makes everything awkward?”
I looked directly at Bliss.
“Your fiancé stands beside Easton, and somehow that means you have to find the middle even when the middle cuts through me.”
Her face folded.
“The boys are upset, your fiancé is upset, the whole friend group has a crack running through it, and I’m the bitch with the attitude who called the wounded golden boy dramatic and a beggar.”
Charm’s eyes flashed. “You are not some bitch with an attitude.”
“I know that,” I snapped. “That is why I’m so fucking furious that my best friends keep talking like you forgot.”
Bliss took a careful step closer. “We didn’t forget.”
“You did tonight.” My voice broke, and I hated the sound enough to turn back toward the dresser.
“You forgot when it mattered. You forgot when everyone in that room stared at me like I had finally pushed him too far. You forgot when he made me the target of every ounce of anger he had stored since I hurt him, like seven months of freezing me out, humiliating me, and making every interaction a punishment never happened.”
Charm’s throat worked. “He has been awful to you.”
“Then why am I the only one being asked to hold my ugliness with both hands and apologize for it?”
I spun around, socks clenched in one fist without any idea why I was still holding them.
“Why does his hurt get an army? Why do the hockey boys get to rally around him like loyalty is a religion while my girls stand in my bedroom and tell me he has a point?”
Bliss’s tears spilled over. “Because we love you, and we don’t want this to destroy you.”
“It already has!”
The words tore out so loudly that both women went still.
For one suspended second, the room turned airless. Then my face crumpled before I could stop it, and everything I had held back came up too quickly to swallow.
“He has destroyed me,” I screamed, the sound scraping my throat raw. “He destroyed me, and I let him because I thought I deserved it. I ate shit for seven months.”
My voice cracked, but I kept going.
“Seven months of walking into rooms and letting him look through me, around me, past me like I was something disgusting he had already thrown away. Seven months of hoping that if he got enough anger out, punished me long enough, and made me take it because I earned the first wound, he would finally hear me.”
Bliss covered her mouth and sobbed.