Chapter 5 #2
I felt a little of my courage dissipating, and sucked in a deep breath. No. I couldn’t let this go. I couldn’t let myself fail now. Not when I was finally strong. Not when, for once, I felt like I wouldn’t dissolve if a man looked at me.
“Please,” he whispered, and I turned again, looking down at him, shocked and surprised to see tears coursing down his cheeks, to hear his breathing so sharp and raspy. He was broken, but did I do that, or did he?
“Why are you crying?” I asked dumbly, and he huffed a surprised breath, shaking his head.
“Because I can never undo it. I can never go back to that night and s… stop them. I can never undo asking you out that night. I can never undo seeing you walking down the street and wishing I could know you. I… I can never undo falling for you, and destroying your life in the same… moment.”
Falling. He said falling for me. He was breaking apart because of my words, or what had happened, maybe both things.
Before it happened, I thought I was falling too.
He was fun, sweet, and had me giggling so often.
He’d do romantic things, like turning up with a drink for me while I worked, or meeting me for lunch, just to spend time.
He brought me flowers on date nights. Even that night…
the memory of those flowers; bright yellow daffodils, because he said they were as sunny and bright as me.
I’d never been able to look at the spring flowers since then without a shudder of memory.
He’d done it to be sweet, but he’d destroyed something else I loved, by tainting them with that night.
But then, I was starting to realise that no matter how much I’d hated him for the rape, he hadn’t caused it. He hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t supported it or cheered them on. He’d been screaming at them, just like I’d been. He’d been begging them to stop. He’d broken with me.
I felt my legs wobble, and I dropped onto the dusty ground beside him, landing hard on my knee, and rolling to lean on my buttcheek.
“Are you hurt?”
I rubbed my knee through my jeans and sighed.
“Won’t I always be?”
He hadn’t moved, but my stumble had placed me right beside him. Not close enough to be touching, but close enough that he could reach out and touch me. For some reason, it didn’t terrify me, but maybe that’s because he had the good sense not to try.
“You didn’t make them do it,” I said softly, knowing my words were the truth, even if it was a fact I’d refused for so long.
“I didn’t stop them either.”
“You couldn’t. I could hear you, you know. While they were doing what they did, while I was doing my best to disassociate from their uh… assault, I could hear you. You screamed. You yelled. You begged.”
He dragged a hand down his face, muttering a low curse.
“It didn’t do any good. It didn’t prevent anything.”
His eyes were desolate as he gazed at me, tears still giving them a glassiness that told me this pain was as fresh for him as it was for me.
I went through something nobody should ever have to go through, but didn’t he suffer too?
Wasn’t he stuck having to watch them hurting me, powerless to stop them?
Maybe that’s what it was for both of us.
Being powerless. Having our power taken from us.
Taken by people he thought he could trust, while I trusted him to keep me safe.
“You’re still here,” I said finally, because that part still surprised me. Not this moment, but this place. This club. This life.
He glanced at his biker friends and nodded, his eyes lowering as he turned back to me.
“I don’t understand how I didn’t leave. It wasn’t that I wanted to stay, or that I liked or trusted anyone here anymore.
I was just… lost… it was my home, it was the place I’d chosen, and I had nothing else.
Nobody else. I’m a coward. I’ve had to come to terms with that, but I will always wish you hadn’t been tainted by my weakness.
That’s what happened. I was weak. I’m still weak.
I’m still fucking here,” he whispered gutturally, flicking dust up as he lifted his hand and gestured.
“It’s different now,” I said idly, eyeing the amassed biker guys again.
The old guys, the ones who lived in my nightmares and my panic attacks, those guys would have dragged me back in there to hurt me.
Instead, this Club President had been gentle and kind, he’d called a woman over to help me, and he now kept way back, letting us talk.
The other bikers were nosy, sure, but they were staying away.
“Sophie said they’re good people. Maybe I needed to hear it from another woman to know. She suffered at the old club too.”
He nodded. “Women were their favourite prey, and I was too stupid and weak to do anything.”
The president guy had moved quietly over, joining his wife, easing her into his arms and kissing her head.
He offered us a friendly look.
“We have chairs, you know.”
My lips twitched as he grinned, and beside me Ghost chuckled, and then we stared at each other, surprised to find any humour in this moment.
In this life we’d found ourselves in. It wasn’t resolution, or even anything beyond a spark of lightness, but we embraced it.
Suddenly it didn’t chill my blood to be here, or to be around him.
Maybe it’d never be more than right now, but I think it healed a little of the wound inside. A tiny part of it.
“Chairs would be nice,” I said finally, and that’s how we ended up on two foldout chairs just inside the open gate, a coffee in hand, and no nosy bikers hovering, except for the president and his wife sitting outside his office with the baby. Our chaperones. My protectors, maybe.