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He pales. “You were raped?”

My eyes fall closed. I don’t know. I don’t know if I can call it rape. It wasn’t like something you see in a TV movie. I wasn’t grabbed by a guy in a face mask and dragged into the woods. I don’t know what to call it.

“Sometimes you go along with things because you know fighting back is useless. I was smaller than he was, and I knew he wasn’t going to stop so I just—” I shrug. I gave in. That’s all there was to it. I’d like to claim now that I’d fight, but I probably wouldn’t. I’ve seen how that works out too.

After a moment, he reaches for my hand. “So it was just the one time?”

“No,” I reply, my teeth grinding. He still thinks he’s the one who deserves to be consoled, reassured. He wants to believe that I’m gently used, at most.

“More than once doesn’t sound like rape to me,” he says, releasing my hand once more.

I grit my teeth. “I never said it was.”

“You couldn’t have been all that unwilling if it kept happening. Did you even try to stay out of the guy’s path?”

My shoulders sag. This would be so much easier if I actually believed I was innocent, if defending myself didn’t feel like a lie. If you say, “No” to someone, again and again, but you sometimes responded to what he did, can you still claim you weren’t at fault? I don’t know. “You know nothing about it,” I whisper.

“Then tell me who it was!” he shouts. “Tell me how you possibly couldn’t have avoided this guy.”

It feels like the end of everything. This is a closely guarded secret, the thing I hate about myself most. I’m not sure I trust Danny with it, but I’m not sure I trust anyone with it.

“Because it was Justin.”

He goes completely rigid.

“Your stepbrother?” His mouth falls open, his voice cracking with disgust. His reaction is exactly why I never tried to tell people after that first failed attempt. When your own mother, the person who’s known you longer than anyone else, suggests you’re a liar or brought it on yourself, you know better than to continue looking for a sympathetic ear.

I nod and he stares at me. “Isn’t he…isn’t he, like, in his late twenties? That’s not even legal.”

A miserable laugh bubbles inside me. “Neither is forcing someone to have sex with you after she says, ‘No’, Danny.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” he demands. “Why didn’t you tell, like, your mom, or a counselor or someone?”

My eyes sting. I knew this part would come.

“I did tell my mom, and she accused me of making it up. And I didn’t tell anyone else because I figured I’d get blamed for it, just like you’re blaming me now.”

I wait for him to deny he’s doing it. He doesn’t.

“Was it going on when—” He stops, flinching. “Was it going on when we were dating?”

He’s asking if I was cheating on him. Was there more I could have done to stop it? Maybe. I can’t claim to have exhausted every resource…I expected the worst of anyone who might have helped me, and I still do. But the possibility will always exist that I could have stopped it if I’d just done things differently. I’ll never know for sure.

“I didn’t want it,” I whisper. “He was trying to pull me out of the house and I was doing my best not to go when he dislocated my shoulder. I did my best.”

I have to swallow to avoid a crack in my voice. I’m not going to beg for his pity. I don’t want to trick him into feigning forgiveness he doesn’t feel.

He stares at me for one long moment. His mouth opens to speak, but then closes again. He shakes his head and walks inside alone. By the time I follow him, he’s already gone to his room.

I stare at his closed door, feeling emptied by shock—both that I told him, and that it went so badly. I thought he might be the one person who’d be able to see past the ugliness of it all. The one person who’d pull me against him and say, “Oh, Juliet, I’m so sorry that happened.”

If even Danny can’t forgive me for it, who the hell ever will?

* * *

Danny leaves for school the next morning, telling me he’ll call. “I know we need to talk,” he says. “I’m just not ready.”

But he doesn’t call. For three nights, there’s no word from him and even Donna’s pondering aloud at the silence.