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“Look at what you did to them,” he says, pointing at his buddies as they can barely get off the ground, but I don’t fucking care. Not anymore.
“They had it coming. Shouldn’t have done what they did.”
His nostrils flare. “What now? What are you gonna do then? Punch me too?”
“I’m thinking about it,” I growl, but I’ve lost a lot of energy fighting those bastards.
“Do it then. Show me what kind of a man you are,” he says through gritted teeth.
He’d never call me out like that if I hadn’t wasted all my punches on those guys.
I’d win a fair fight, and he knows that. That’s why he chooses to taunt me now.
But I won’t fucking fall for it.
“At least I’m not the kind who chases screaming girls into the forest and lets his buddies have their way with her,” I bark.
We stare at each other for a moment, and I can almost feel the tension crackling.
He’s daring me … daring me to act.
But I won’t stoop to his level and let him destroy me.
“I should call the cops on you for beating them up,” he growls.
“Fuck you,” I hiss. “Call the cops, then. Do it. You can’t, can you?”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t respond.
Instead, he turns around and walks off into the woods, taking a sip of his drink as if none of this meant anything to him.
“Thought so.” I wipe the sweat off my forehead. “You know what? You’re out!” I yell after him. “Out of the fucking band. You hear me? I don’t wanna see your fuck face ever again!”
He doesn’t say another word, but I know he heard me. Everyone on the goddamn grounds could probably hear me, so there will be gossip going around, and within minutes literally, everyone who follows our band online will know.
But I don’t care.
All I care about right now is protecting her.
Monica.
But where is she?
I spin on my heels and look around, but she’s nowhere to be found.
I take a step in the direction she crawled toward, but my knee caves underneath me, and I go to the ground. My muscles feel tight, and only now do I realize those punches hurt quite a bit. So much that I find it hard to get up. And I stay here with my knees buried in the soil so I can catch my breath. When I look up, I finally spot her, hiding in a tiny alcove of a tree split in half.
My lungs suck in the biggest breath they have ever taken.
I force myself to get up and brush away the pain. When I walk to her, every noise makes her jolt up and down. Every step I take causes her to turn inward toward the tree, into herself, and I realize I gotta take it slow.
She’s shivering, not from the cold, but from the suffering she’s endured.
Suffering I took part in.
Guilt floods my bones as I kneel in front of her and wait. I wish I could say what was on my heart right now, but it feels so heavy. She’s unraveling before me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop the bleeding in her heart.
I try to reach out, but the moment my hand touches her arm, she freezes completely.
“They tried to … to …” she mutters, tears swelling in her eyes. “It almost happened again, just like before.”
Before?
“Did they try to do that to you before?” I ask, frowning, getting angry again from the mere thought of their filthy hands on her body.
She shakes her head, but the tears keep rolling down her cheeks even though she’s barely breathing.
I don’t dare get any closer.
She’s wounded, but not from the fight … it’s her mind.
This isn’t the Monica I recognize.
This is the Monica she’s been trying to hide.
And it finally dawns on me what it meant when Monica was so closed off, why she changed schools, and why Ariane pushed me to stay away from her, telling me that I would only damage her further.
She was already hurt … by someone else.
Just like before.
That’s what all of this was about.
The secret she’s been trying to keep buried all along.
The thing that kept me from getting close.
Someone completely and utterly destroyed her … And it wasn’t me.
But I made it worse.
Michael and his friends made it worse.
Fuck.
I grab her hand and squeeze. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She looks up at me, the pain in her eyes seeping into my soul, cutting me open like an old wound. And she leaps into my arms, wrapping her hands around my neck as if she’s never letting go. The guttural wails that emanate from deep down within her body wreck me, and I kneel onto the ground with her in my arms, just breathing in and out, hoping that I can provide a little bit of solace to the turmoil going on inside her head.
