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Or at least that’s what it seemed like. Like he had suddenly turned to stone.
“He… groomed me first. I think that’s what they call it these days,” I continued before I lost my nerve.
Oh, how I ached to look away. To lower my eyes in shame. But I held fast. Held on to Swiss.
“He made me trust him,” I spoke quickly. My voice still was raspy, and I was thankful it wasn’t familiar. So I could pretend it wasn’t really me saying all of this. “He made me think I was safe with him. I didn’t want to have sex with him. He was old and overweight, and he was my stepfather. But I didn’t want to… disappoint him.” I shook my head in distaste. Not in myself, but in a grown man who’d manipulated a girl into thinking she was doing something to make him proud.
“I didn’t even fight him. I just laid there and cried.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, guarding against the memories, the pain. “He whispered things in my ear. About me being a good girl. About it being our secret. About how good I was making him feel.”
The memories came flooding in, so I steeled myself against them by opening my eyes again and holding Swiss’s gaze, not letting his expression penetrate.
“And I just cried,” I croaked. “I knew what sex was. Knew what rape was. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Because I didn’t fight. And rape is when you fight. When you scream. When you do anything you can to make sure that doesn’t happen to you. I didn’t do any of that. And…” I gasped, covered in shame and the filth of the memories.
Swiss was still as a statue, his hands still fisted at his sides, his eyes never letting go of mine. But something was fuming inside of him. His nostrils were flaring, his breathing rapid and shallow.
“And I still liked him,” I whispered. “That sounds insane, I know.” I rolled my eyes hearing it out loud. “But my mother was a cold and cruel woman. She was a former beauty queen. One with big dreams about getting out of the small town she grew up in. She was going to live in New York. She was going to be famous,” I scoffed. “But then she got pregnant with me, and her Catholic parents forced her to marry the man who did that to her. My dirtbag father.”
It was speaking of my mother that made me break, not Hal. Made me succumb to those memories I’d pushed back for almost twenty years.
Her entire bedroom was a shrine to the life I took from her. I still remembered it vividly. The crown sitting in a glass case on her vanity. She polished it daily, even though I was pretty sure it was plastic. Framed news clippings. There were only two of those, but she showed me them weekly to remind me of what she could’ve been if it wasn’t for me.
Perfume bottles littered the vanity, her cheap satin robe, the high heeled ‘slippers’ with the pom poms on them that she’d screamed at me for trying on once.
“My father—I don’t remember,” I said, realizing I’d been silent for a long time, thinking about my mother.
Swiss hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t breathed, it seemed.
He was waiting, for more. Because unfortunately, there was more.
And I’d done it now, made the decision to give him everything. Absolutely everything. So there were no secrets, no lies. Nothing to hide behind. So there was a solid foundation for us to start over. I wanted him to really know me. Know me in a way that no one else did. And in order for that to happen, I had to give him pieces of myself no one knew existed. Pieces that had never seen the light of day.
“She divorced him. My father,” I cleared my throat. “And her parents disowned her. Which meant they no longer helped her out with me or financially. Which meant she had to get a job.”
I folded my arms across my chest, suddenly cold, the weather turning outside. My bones protested at standing for so long, but the hurt was good. Something to focus on.
I took a deep breath and continued. “She quickly discovered that she hated working, yet the only way to stop working while keeping the roof over our heads, food in the cupboards and perfume on her vanity, was to find a man willing to take on a widow with a child who wasn’t his. Our town was small, so there weren’t many of those, and even less of those men were decent, but she made do.”
I licked my lips. “Hal was the third. And he was the only one I liked. The only one who was kind to me. So I didn’t say anything. Because I didn’t want him to leave.”
My cheeks flamed in shame, but I had to keep going.
“I didn’t want to be stuck with my mother. She would’ve found a way to blame me for him leaving. Found a way to punish me. And then she would’ve just found another one. And I couldn’t be sure he’d be nice. Kind. I couldn’t risk him being like number one.”
I shuddered, thinking about the first of my stepfathers. The memories were blurry, muffled with the effort my brain was taking to repress them, but the fear I remembered. It was stark. Curled in a corner as glass rained down on my head.
The fury radiating off Swiss was red hot, but I ignored it.
I had to finish, and I was far from done.
“I dreaded the nights Hal would come to my room,” I rubbed my palms up and down my arms. “I’d tried pretending to be asleep, but he just… did it anyway. The only saving grace was that he didn’t take long. Three minutes and fifteen seconds, give or take. Three minutes and fifteen seconds. I told myself I could handle that. Anyone could handle anything for three minutes and fifteen seconds.”
Sometimes, I realized in horror—something I hadn’t put together until this very moment—I had repeated that mantra when Preston was on top of me, kissing me, apologizing for the fresh bruises on my body.
I shook off that realization, unable to hold the weight of that right now.
“Eventually, I told myself it wasn’t that bad,” my voice cracked. “That I must’ve liked it. If I didn’t, I would’ve screamed, despite my cruel mother. But I didn’t. Luckily, he died of a heart attack on my sixteenth birthday. But I cried when he died too. Real tears. I loved him. And I hated him.”
I laughed without humor. Swiss’s lips were a grim line.
