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“I was so confused,” El confessed. “I was sure I hadn’t drunk that much, but he convinced me that I had gotten plastered once we’d reached his apartment, and that I had come on to him. When I asked about his story he’d told me at the club of you guys breaking up, he just kind of shrugged it off, saying you two had been in a huge fight, and he assumed it was over. But it all just kept bothering me. So I went back to his place a week later to confront him with more questions.”
“Ah fuck,” Gracen muttered from across the room and began to crack his neck from one side to the other to relieve the tension he seemed to be experiencing.
“This time, I remembered a little more. He offered me a drink when I first showed up because I was acting so nervous. It wasn’t alcoholic, and I still thought I’d just drunk too much the first time, so I accepted because my throat was so dry. And then I really started grilling him about our night together, but things started to get dizzy and blurry. I remember the creepy leer he sent me when he realized what was happening to me. He was like, ‘oh, they’re kicking in, now, aren’t they? Feeling the drugs, are you, Yellow?’”
“Son of a bitch,” Gracen hissed as Yellow shivered in disgust.
He slowly wiped his hands over his face as if trying to scrub out all the mental images he must have going on, and Bella closed her eyes, her lips pressed together tight.
“I was like, ‘drugs? What drugs?’” Yellow went on. “And then I flipped out, realizing he’d given me a date rape drug. I remember trying to run toward the door, but the more I tried to reach it, the further away it seemed to get. Then it tilted sideways, and all of a sudden, he was behind me, right up against me, and I couldn’t seem to go anywhere. I think I was sobbing, but he told me to calm down, and that it was going to be okay, I wouldn’t remember what happened in the morning. ‘Bella never remembers,’ he assured me.”
“What?!” Gracen shouted, spinning to gape at her. “What the fuck do you mean, Bella never remembers?”
He turned to his sister, his lips parted in shock, but she only folded in on herself and started to weep.
“Hey, hey,” I murmured, reaching for her. “Come here.”
She readily crawled into my lap, and I held her close, stroking her hair as she cried.
Her twin just gaped at her in disbelief, before he whirled to Yellow for answers. “He raped Bella too? He raped my sister?”
El gave a small nod. “He probably drugged her more than he ever drugged me.”
Gracen made a pained moaning sound before he covered his mouth and turned away, only to spin back and accuse with flaring, angry eyes, “But we saw you. We saw you the next morning, coming out of his apartment. With your bra…” Swearing savagely, he gripped his head. “Christ, you really did look as if you’d been drugged and raped. There was this wild, horror-stricken look in your eyes, but I thought it was just because you were afraid of Bella.”
“Well…” El shrugged and gave a small hiccup of a laugh. “I was afraid of her too.”
“But what—why—why the hell didn’t you say anything then? We were right there. You could’ve just told her. You could’ve…” He shook his head and swallowed, seeming to lose his train of thought. “We would’ve helped you.”
“I didn’t know that,” El admitted, her eyes filling with tears. “I thought Bella hated me. And besides, I was in shock. When I woke up next to him and remembered those parts, my fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. I couldn’t have told anyone anything at that moment if I tried to. I just had to run and escape it all. I’m sorry, though, Bella. I’m so sorry I couldn't tell you then.”
“It’s okay,” Bella rasped, lifting her face from my shoulder to wipe her nose. “Who knows? I very well might’ve done the same thing in your shoes. I’m not sure.”
“It’s possible I would’ve told you later,” El admitted. “But then I started having nightmares when I was asleep and panic attacks when I was awake. I became bulimic for a hot minute and super depressed, had a touch of agoraphobia and haphephobia. Things got bad for me. And I didn’t want you to have to go through that, too. Since you had already broken up with him, I thought you were safe. You were free from it. You could think I was the bad guy, and just, you know, go on to live the rest of your life in peace without ever knowing what I knew.”
“Except it didn’t quite work out that way,” Bella answered, cuddling closer to me. “My instincts were still aware that something wrong had happened, and my emotions responded accordingly. If it weren’t for Gracen, and then Fox, I probably would’ve gone off the rails completely by now and ended up worse off than you did.”
Yellow nodded, smiling sadly in understanding before she glanced at me, then Gray. “Parker and Gracen really are the best. They’re the two people who helped me through it the most, too.”
Gray’s shoulders deflated, and he shook his head miserably as he shuffled toward her. “I don’t see how I helped you at all. I said some awful shit to you.” Falling to his knees before her, he looked up as if begging for forgiveness. “I don’t know how you can even stand to look at me right now.”
Rolling her eyes, Yellow reached out and ruffled his hair lovingly. “You weren’t that bad.”
“I was an ass,” he muttered, crawling forward to lean against her knees.
“But everything you said to me was to show your support for Bella. You were just being a good brother.”
“And probably hit every trigger you had in the process, too,” he argued, laying his head down on her thigh and sighing. “You should’ve just told me to go fuck myself.”
“Uh, I think I did once,” she reminded him, appearing amused. “In the theater, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” He lifted his face and grinned, nodding over their good times. “That was epic.”
“You two are weird,” Bella announced from my lap, where she was still curled around me as if she might never let go.
When they turned in unison to glance our way, I agreed, “Yeah, they are. But it seems to work for them, so I kind of like it.”
“You want to know what’s weird,” Gracen shot back. “Seeing you two, you know, together. The rest of the family is going to lose their shit when they f
