Page 95 of Sinners Reunion

I go and sit beside her, very much ashamed.

“Oh, so all of you have allowed yourselves to become human piñatas?” I ask.

“I’ve never shoved anything like that inside myself,” Eve continues, “but I dated a woman whose ass was like a Mary Poppins handbag. One time, she shoved sprinkles in both holes, and when she came, it looked like confetti.”

“Whatever happened to Silo?” Kindra asks.

Eve shrugs and pulls her marshmallow from the fire. “Last I heard, someone slit her throat and tossed her body into the ocean. She’s never been found.”

“Then how do you know her throat was slit?” I ask.

“Oops,” Eve says with a devilish grin.

Frankie clears her throat. “Enough about us. You said you needed to run something by the girls, and we’re all dying to know what it is.”

“Yeah, are you planning to confess your love for King?” Cat asks, her eyes gleaming with hope.

Quinn nods and looks at me. “That’s my vote too. Seeing you two together has given me so much inspiration for my next book. Second-chance romance is such a fun trope.”

“I hate to rain on the romance parade, but that’s not quite it,” I say. “It’s a little less fun than that. It has to do with something that happened when I was much younger, before I met King. I was raped.”

Eve lowers her s’more from her mouth. “Who the fuck plans to tell their friends something like this over s’mores? This calls for liquor, honey, not sweets.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I say. “Well, it’s not okay that I was raped. That part is pretty awful, but I’ve come to terms with it. King helped me work through a lot of my pain, and so did therapy.”

“If that happened to me, I think killing the bastard would be the only form of therapy I’d accept,” Kindra says with a shudder.

Quinn nods. “At the last retreat, my biological father tried. It certainly felt good to kill him.”

“And I thought my story was traumatic,” I say. “Yeesh. Your dad?”

“He watched my cam show for months. Aven’s helping me work through the baggage. But this isn’t about me!” Quinn flails her hand in my direction. “How did King help you work through it? Seems like having him humping your leg all the time would be the opposite of what you needed.”

My heart hammers a bit harder against my chest. We’re coming up on the exit, my last chance to bail before pushing ahead and telling them everything.

I press my figurative foot to the gas and hold on tight.

“Before we get to how King helped me, we have to go back to the bit where I tried to kill myself.”

The words hang in the air. The women look at me, and as my gaze meets every pair of eyes, I search for judgment. I find only understanding and innocent curiosity.

“The assaults started when I was young, and they continued until I was a teenager. The boy worked for my father, and when I told my parents what was happening to me, they told me to keep quiet. They said it happened all the time, and it wasn’t a big deal. Boys have urges, and girls are meant to satisfy them.”

“Fucking sick,” Kindra groans.

“The problem was . . . I had urges too.” I look into the fire, unable to meet their eyes now. “I would orgasm when he raped me. I liked the way I felt, but I didn’t like who made me feel that way.”

Eve’s hand lands on my thigh, and she gives it a squeeze. “That had to have been so confusing for you. Are you sure you’re okay to talk about this?”

“I’m okay to talk about it. It beats the hell out of pretending it never happened. But thanks for asking.” I place my hand over Eve’s and squeeze right back to let her know I’m really okay. “It was confusing, especially once I ran away from home and realized that wasn’t how it was supposed to be. When I learned there were men who loved women in ways that were healthy, I felt so dirty. Like I could never have that because I’d been used up.”

“That’s when you decided to kill yourself,” Cat says.

“I didn’t know how to rationalize who I was. Once I understood my parents were wrong and that what happened to me was a violation of my body, I couldn’t meld that with the part of myself that felt pleasure during the intrusion. I thought I was broken.” I take a deep breath. “So I went out on a fishing vessel, and when we were far out at sea, I jumped. After that, I don’t remember much. Pretty much sank like a stone since I can’t swim.”

“They didn’t come back for you?” Frankie asks.

“No. To this day, I don’t remember my rescue. I just recall waking up in a facility and being asked to join a suicide study.”