Chapter 5
FIVE
THE PAST
Ariana
Iwas at Hannah and Payton’s apartment, sitting in their living room, bundled in a blanket. I was still shivering, still unable to fully grasp what had happened.
Everything felt distant. My body ached. My thoughts moved like fog.
But the memory of last night was still fresh, still sharp, filling every corner of my mind.
My mind kept circling back to what the nurse had said at the clinic.
“There’s no sign of penetration,” she said gently. “But that doesn’t mean you weren’t violated.”
I stared up at the ceiling, barely hearing her.
“What happened to you is real,” she continued. “You were drugged, held down, and violated without your consent. That matters, and none of it is your fault.”
I really thought he had done it. I could have sworn I felt it happen.
But even if he didn’t, I still felt ruined.
Christian had violated me. He took something from me that I didn’t give, and I couldn’t get it back.
But the deepest pain didn’t come from him.
It came from Grayson.
I remembered it all. Every second. Every harsh word. Every accusing look.
He didn’t even ask what happened. He didn’t give me a chance to explain. He looked at me like I was nothing.
How could he not see I’d been hurt? How could he believe the worst of me so easily?
He treated the man who drugged and hurt me better than he treated me, even though Hannah said Christian’s left eye was swollen and his face bruised. I hadn’t even noticed. Maybe I was too out of it to see.
But Christian wasn’t the one dragged out in front of everyone.
I was.
“Ari, honey.” I heard Hannah’s voice. It was gentle, soft, trying to reach me. I heard her clearly, but I couldn’t turn my head. My eyes stayed fixed on the space in front of me, blank and distant.
It felt like I wasn’t even in my own body, like I was floating above it all, disconnected from everything around me.
“You need to eat something,” she said.
“We need to report this,” Payton added. He had said it more than once already. “Christian and Grayson both have to be reported. They can’t just walk away from this. Grayson might not have violated her, but he dragged her out of the house while she was barely conscious. That’s assault.”
“Payton!” Hannah snapped. “Stop it. You’re just reminding her again and again.”
“I can’t accept this, Hannah,” Payton shot back, his voice breaking with frustration. “She needs justice.”
“She doesn’t want to report it. She said that,” Hannah said quietly. “We need to respect her wishes.”
“And we just let them get away with it? Let them move on as if nothing happened?”
“Payton,” Hannah said sharply, her voice tight with frustration. “I said stop. She needs calm right now, and you’re making it worse.”
He went quiet for a moment, then said, “How about I go to their place, bring a few guys with me, and slam their faces into the ground? How’s that for justice?”
Hannah hesitated, then said, “That might be a good idea.”
Those words pulled me back to the surface.
“No,” I said quietly. “I don’t want that.”
Payton rushed over and knelt in front of me. “What do you want us to do, Ari? Hannah and I will stand by you, no matter what. They need to pay for what they did. Just tell us. What do you want us to do?”
“My parents,” I said, barely getting the words out. “They’re going away.”
“Yes, you told me,” Hannah said. “They’re going on a cruise right after the party.”
“Don’t tell them yet.”
Hannah’s eyes searched my face. I could see she didn’t agree, but she nodded anyway. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, then lay down on the couch, pulling the blanket up to my chin.
I had been on this couch since last night, barely shifting.
Hannah had offered me the bed in her guest room, but the thought of being alone in a small, enclosed room scared me. Somehow, here in the open living room, even when no one was around, I didn’t feel completely alone.
Hannah held up her plate again in front of me. “Please eat something.”
“Later,” I said on an exhale, then closed my eyes. I was exhausted in every way—mind, body, and soul. Sleep found me almost instantly.
When I woke up, my eyes landed on a phone lying face down on the coffee table. I sat up immediately.
I recognized it by the blue casing and the faint silver initials—G.A.—engraved on the back. Someone had brought it in.
My gaze shifted across the room. A suitcase stood near the front door.
“They packed up all your things,” Hannah said quietly as she appeared and sat beside me. “His sister, Taylor, came and dumped everything in the parking lot. We moved most of it into the guest room.”
I gave a small nod. It was the only thing I could do.
And then I let my eyes close again, hoping sleep might take me somewhere else.
When I woke up again, Hannah and Payton were sitting on the carpet in front of me, both watching me with worried expressions.
“Now, Ari,” Hannah said firmly, “if you still refuse to eat, I swear I’ll force it into your mouth. Now open up.”
Finally, I managed to eat a little bread, and Hannah made sure I drank some water too.
I stayed with them for five days. In that time, they took care of me in every possible way, making sure I ate, rested, and never felt truly alone.
Little by little, I started to regain some strength.
Not much, but enough to sit up a little longer, to eat more, to walk a little around the place, and to speak without falling apart.
I asked Payton to get me a new phone number and told him to delete all my chats, all my contacts—except for him, Hannah, and my family—and to erase every photo.
Then I threw the phone case into the dumpster.
The one with our initials on it.
Hannah helped me send messages to my parents and my brother, letting them know about the new number.
Even that, I couldn’t do myself.
It was too damn hard. It felt like I had just erased my entire life.
On the last night I stayed at their place, something in me snapped free. My mind, once shackled by grief and confusion, was suddenly, terrifyingly clear. The fog had lifted, and beneath it, a cold, razor-edged resolve waited for me.
Payton was right. They could not get away with this.
Grayson. Christian. Demi. Even Grayson’s enablers—his parents and that smiling viper, Taylor. There had to be consequences for what they did to me. But not the kind that came swiftly and faded just as fast. That would be mercy.
I wanted their punishment to crawl.
To take root inside their lives like a slow-growing rot, quiet and undetected at first, until it reaches the bone. It needed a strategy. Patience. Precision. I would be methodical. I would be merciless.
My thoughts spun in circles, sharpening with each pass. A plan began to form, ugly, beautiful, and devastating. Then, at three in the morning, I jolted upright, my eyes wide open, like I had surfaced from drowning. The answer was there, pulsing in my chest.
I knew what I had to do. And I knew I was capable of doing it.
I reached for my phone, hands no longer trembling, and dialed the one person I could count on. My brother. Adam.
“Hey, Ari,” Adam answered instantly. “What’s up?” A pause. “It’s fucking three in the morning there. Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“Adam,” I said, my voice cold, clear, and sharp as a blade. “I need you to fly out here and get me.”
“What? Why?”
So I told him. Every rotten detail.
He was quiet for almost a full minute. Then his voice came low, hard with fury.
“Fuck. I’ll fly there now! You wait for me and I’ll—”
“I also need your help.” I cut in.
“Anything. Name it.”
“I want you to introduce me to the Hales.”
A pause. Then, cautiously, “You mean my friend, Stephen Hale?”
“No,” I said, my voice like steel. “His mother. Sandra Hale.”
My love life was never smooth sailing, not like it is for most people.
It was chaos—violent, jagged, unforgiving. A battlefield of betrayals and wounds that never healed right. And somewhere in the wreckage, I gave up on love. I buried the idea of forever.
I only wanted revenge. I wanted them to bleed the way I had. To feel the hollow echo of pain I carried in my chest.
That desire became my purpose. My obsession.
For three years, I lived for it, weaving the threads of my plan with careful hands, waiting in silence for the perfect moment to strike.
My heart turned black.
My mind, a wicked thing sharpened by grief.
And I had no boundaries left to break.
I did everything I had to. No line was sacred. No rule unbroken. I used to think pain was the cruelest thing a person could feel. But over time, I learned it’s also the most honest. Pain reminds you that you’re still breathing, even when you wish you weren’t. It becomes a rhythm, a companion.
And somehow, I came to embrace it.
I let it mold me, let it carve its name into my bones. I wore it like armor, mistaking survival for strength. Each day, I bled a little less, but I also felt a little less. Until all that was left was the version of me the pain had created.
But I learned the truth too late. I realized too late that I was lost.
By the time I looked up, everything was ash.
And I had destroyed the very thing I once wanted to save.
My own heart.