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“I never wanted you to find out what really happened that night,” he began, his voice breaking. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to know what they did to him…he wouldn’t have wanted you to have to live with it.”
I swallowed hard. As much as I’d tried to prepare myself for this moment, I knew that such a thing really wasn’t possible.
“There was this spot on the outskirts of the base. It was where the equipment that needed to be repaired was kept. At night it was pretty isolated so Trace and I used to meet up there when we wanted to be together.”
“The army didn’t know you two were together?”
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still in effect back then. We both would have been discharged if they’d found out we were gay. Trace didn’t want to meet up that night because he was worried some of the guys in his unit had started to become suspicious, but I wanted to see him because we hadn’t had a chance to be together since he’d proposed to me a week earlier.”
Ronan used the back of his bandaged hand to wipe at his face. “Neither one of us heard them sneak up on us. There were five of them.”
My heart sank as I realized what was coming.
“Two of them grabbed me. Trace was holding his own against the other three, but he gave up when one of the guys put a gun to my head…I was so scared that I didn’t do anything. I didn’t fight back, nothing.”
“Ronan-”
“Don’t, please. I have to get this out now or I never will.”
I nodded.
“They started beating him and he let them. I begged them to stop but they just kept kicking and hitting him until he stopped moving. I thought the whole thing was over but then they came after me. But they only hit me a few times. Then one of them pulled out a knife.”
I stifled a moan as I remembered the cuts on Ronan’s chest.
“He could barely talk but he kept trying to goad them so they’d go after him again.”
“He loved you, Ronan. He would have done anything to protect you.”
Ronan managed a nod. “It seemed to go on forever. Every time I thought it was over, they just tried something new. But then this one guy…the leader, he kept asking Trace how he liked taking it up the ass. And then he asked him if he’d take anything up the ass.”
Ronan began sobbing and I pushed back from the chair and dropped to my knees in front of him and gently grabbed both his hands and dragged them to my chest and held them there.
“They raped him with a fucking pipe,” he let out with a hoarse cry. I could feel my own hot tears streaking down my face and dripping beneath the collar of my shirt, but I ignored them and pushed to my feet. I sat down next to Ronan and dragged him up against my chest.
“I’m so sorry, Seth! I couldn’t stop them! I couldn’t save him.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered as I dropped my lips to his head and just held him as tight as I could. His tears soaked through my shirt as he wrapped his arms around my middle and let out heart wrenching sobs. It took several minutes for him to quiet enough so that I could be sure he heard me when I said, “Tell me the rest.”
He shook his head violently against me. I leaned down and skimmed my lips over his forehead. “I need to bear this burden with you, Ronan.”
Several long seconds passed before he started speaking again. “Trace stopped moving after that, but he wasn’t gone yet. They…they made him watch.”
I felt like my insides were being ripped out with every word that fell from Ronan’s lips. “He had to watch them do the same thing to you,” I whispered.
Ronan nodded against my chest. “I kept wishing for it…death. For him, for me. After a while, I didn’t feel anything anymore and I thought I was dead. I could see both of us lying like broken dolls in the sand. I saw the man who’d hurt Trace leaning over me, holding me down. I could hear his buddies laughing. I saw my body jerking and the blood pooling beneath me as the man who’d cut me used the pipe on me. I saw Trace’s outstretched hand reaching towards mine. Close but not close enough to touch. And then it was over and they were gone and I knew he was gone too. Then death finally came for me too.”
“What happened after that?”
“I woke up about a week later. They’d put me in a medically induced coma to give my body time to heal. They’d had to perform surgery to fix the damage the pipe had done. I was in the hospital for a month.”
