Chapter 14
GAbrIEL
“Your girl okay?” Julio asks.
I shake my head and he grabs my arm right as I’m about to go after her, forcing me to stop.
“Give her a minute,” he tells me in that zen ‘I know fucking everything,’ tone of his. I love the man like a brother, but with the mood I’m in, we’re gonna do more than have words if he doesn’t let go of me right now.
“What’d you do, man?” Felix asks.
The urge to punch my friend in the face damn near overwhelms me. Why the hell does he assume I did anything? Let alone something that would cause this sort of reaction from her?
“I didn’t do shit, asshole. But thanks for the vote of confidence.” I turn back to Julio. “What do you mean, give her a minute?” I wave in her general direction as if he’s blind to what’s happening right now.
“Give her some space.”
“Are you kidding me?” I shake him off and turn back toward her, but he stops me again, this time moving to stand in front of me.
“She’s having a panic attack.”
“No shit, bro. I have eyes.” I move to sidestep past him, but the fucker shoves against my chest.
“She’s having a panic attack because of us, asshole.
” That grabs my attention. “If you go over there now, you’ll make it worse.
Let her work through her shit. She doesn’t need you hovering.
Besides,” he tilts his chin in her direction, “she’s talking to herself, so it looks like she’s trying to calm down.
Give her a chance to accomplish that without you rushing over there hot and making shit worse for her. ”
I bristle at his words. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.
” I’ve been around her all day. I just fucking kissed her, and she was fine with it.
Into it, even. She got weird at the pool the day I confronted her, but that was different.
She didn’t know me at the time, and it’s not like I was being a ray of fucking sunshine, either.
Even then, she was cautious, but she wasn’t freaking out the way she is right now. This feels wrong. She can’t be freaking out because of me, right? We’re good.
“Yeah, asshole. I do.” Julio shoves me back a step and I knock into Felix when I shift to step around him. Fuck Julio and his bullshit. He doesn’t know what she needs. He hasn’t even met her. Neither of them have.
“Maybe you should listen to Julio, man. She doesn’t look too hot.” Felix rests his hand on my shoulder, his voice is laced with concern.
I want to punch something. Where the fuck is Holt’s face when I actually want to see it?
“I know,” I grind out. “Which is why I’m going to go talk to her if you two will get out of my fucking way.” My nostrils flare, and I glance up to check on Cecilia. She hasn’t moved from her seat but her head is in her hands, lips moving a mile a minute as she voices silent words to herself.
“What’s her story?” Felix asks. “There a reason you’re taking a special interest in the chick?”
I know he’s trying to distract me, but I consider answering him anyway.
The guys know about her. Not her name or even what she looks like, but we’re family, we tell each other everything.
And after finding her that night, wrists slit and sitting in a pool of her own blood, I was fucked up in a way I haven’t been since losing my twin.
It brought back all the memories I’ve spent months trying to bury.
Images of finding my brother—my other fucking half—in a similar position.
Of the cuts that were so deep, I could see bone beneath the streaks of crimson blood.
Of his head drooped to the side, his skin dull and lifeless and eyes at half mast, staring off at nothing.
I was a mess after that. And when I found her much the same, saw her pale skin and her self-inflicted wounds, all of those memories and feelings came rushing back, reminding me of everything I lost. Everything I could never get back.
Shit messed with my head for weeks, and if it hadn’t been for Felix and Julio, I would be back in that dark place where I shut everything off and shove everyone out.
The guys know what finding her did to me. The memories it brought back. And after last week at the Pier, they know shit’s still not okay.
They’re not bad people, but I can already hear the lecture. All the reasons not to get involved. How I need to handle my own shit first before I can help anyone else with theirs. They wouldn’t understand.
Cecilia needs me.
I didn’t save my brother. And it eats at me every fucking day. But I can help her. And I don’t know, maybe saving her, maybe it can help make up for failing my brother in some small way.
“Gabe?” Julio presses.
“She’s been through a lot,” I hedge, hoping he’ll drop it, but of course he doesn’t. Felix is too curious for that. He always has to know everyone else’s damage.
“She was abused?” Felix guesses.
It’s not a bad assumption, but she wasn’t. Not that I know of, at least. Though now that I think about it … I eye her curiously, an idea unfurling in my mind. Is that… I hesitate, not sure how to answer his question, but Julio shakes his head, his eyes contemplative as he says, “No. Not abused.”
I frown. “You don’t think so?” It would make sense. If she’s been abused, beaten even, it would explain why she shrinks in on herself like that. Why guys in particular intimidate her, but I’m relieved to hear him disagree. I don’t like the idea of anyone hurting her.
My relief is short-lived when he shakes his head again and says, “She’s freaking out the way Allie did after you know what went down. If I had to guess, your girl’s been raped.”
Ice cold dread shoots through my veins and I snap my gaze toward him.
“You don’t know that,” I snap, rejecting the idea immediately. That can’t be it. The thought alone makes bile rise in my throat.
A voice inside my head argues that maybe we do. I think back on everything I know about her. Everyone she’s mentioned or had any interactions with that I can think of, and my mind zeroes in on one person in particular.
Austin Holt. That fucker. Who did he cover for?
My mind is reeling.
After what Allie went through— “Fuck!” I spin away from my friends, hands fisted at my sides.
“Fucking fuck! That sonovabitch.” I kick the pavement.
How did I miss it? It was right there, standing in front of me this entire time.
I know what slimy bastards the guys Holt hangs with can be, but this— “I swear to god, I’m going to—”
“Gabe!” Felix grips me by my shoulders and shakes me like he can knock some sense into me, but all it does is serve to piss me off more. “Calm the fuck down. What the hell are we missing here, man?”
How the fuck did I not see this? I asked him. Point blank. I asked the fucker if she was raped. I was joking. Sort of. But shit, the signs were all there. That asshole damn near spelled it out for me, but like the idiot I am, I ignored it.
He wanted me to doubt her. To think she was easy and asking for it. With all this #MeToo stuff in the media, it’s made a lot of dudes paranoid. I’ve never really understood why. It’s not hard to tell if a girl is into you or not, and if she says no, it’s fucking no. Plain and simple.
Holt tried to make it sound like it was revenge. Like Cecilia threw around accusations to get guys in trouble when they didn’t do anything wrong. He made her out to be a cleat chaser with a bruised ego.
But you can’t fake the reaction she’s having right now. Someone hurt her, and I’m betting Holt knows exactly who it is and he’s protecting the fucker anyway.
Felix gets in my face again, but I shove him away, needing a minute to wrap my head around this revelation.
“What the hell, man?”
I grit my teeth and stare at my two best friends, concern and confusion filling their expressions.
They need to know. I’m not going to let that asshole get away with this.
If Julio is right. If someone r…ra— fuck.
I can’t even say it. Goddammit. I’m so pissed with myself.
I look to the girl who’s been consuming my thoughts since we first spoke in the hallway, and all I can think about is what she must be going through.
Has she told anyone? Has she tried to get help? How has she been coping with all of this?
By the look of her current freak out, she hasn’t been.
Shit.
I need Julio and Felix’s help for what comes next. They’ve always had my back. Whatever needs to be done, I know I can count on them. We’re ride or die. Familia to the bitter end.
“Holt knows.” My words are strained, anger still riding me in lightening hot waves.
“Holt said she threw around rape allegations this summer to get some of his buddies in trouble.” I thought I had beef with him before when he acted like she was his, like he had a claim on her before practice today, but no.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and count to ten.
This isn’t petty jealousy. What he did — “I’m going to kill him.
I swear to god. If I find out he had anything—”
“What?!” Julio and Felix say in unison.
I clench my teeth. This is so fucked up.
Julio knows without me needing to say the words.
“You think Holt knows who her rapist is? That he’s protecting him?
Assuming we’re right in our assumption that that’s why she’s freaking out right now?
” I can tell he doesn’t want to believe it.
Hell, I don’t either. But it makes perfect fucking sense.
I nod. “Yeah. I do.”
“Holt can be a royal prick sometimes, but to be that loyal to someone…”
He’s not wrong. I love my boys. Would do anything for them and they’d do anything for me.
But rape is a different story. Julio and Felix both have sisters.
This kind of shit is inexcusable. I replay the entire conversation we had back in my head.
He said she tried to get his buddies in trouble.
But he also said she threw herself at him.
He had her, too. Did he— The more I think about it, the more pieces start falling together.