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“Tamsin, you better start talking right now.”
“It was a long time ago.”
He stares at me like if he looks at me long enough he can get inside my head.Then he looks up at the ceiling and I can see his eyes darting back and forth as his hand covers his mouth.His gaze snaps to me and his eyes widen.“That party.Three years ago, right before you changed to online school.That was it, wasn’t it?That’s when it happened.”
My stomach tightens painfully.“Dad…” I don’t know what else to say.I’ve played different scenarios in my head of problem solving for other people.I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I would need to problem solve for myself.That someday I would have to explain to my dad about that party.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”He paces the hallway.“I fucking knew it.I knew I should’ve asked why you wanted to change schools.”He grabs his head in his hands, and I’d sooner rip my own heart out than watch him blame himself.
“Dad, please.There was nothing you could’ve done.”
He storms at me.“Nothing I could’ve done!Are you fucking kidding me?I could’ve found the little punk-ass bitch and had him drawn and quartered.I could’ve made his life fucking hell.Do you know the kind of connections I have?No one…NO ONEfucks with my daughter.”
His gaze moves to Miles.“You knew about this.”
I turn around and can barely look at Miles, but in the brief second I do, his gaze is locked on me, his eyes searching.“Um, yeah, she told me.”
My dad moves around me now, getting in Miles’s personal bubble.“And you found this dirtbag.”
Miles hesitates, but I still don’t look at him.“Yes sir.”
“I’m gonna need those details.It’s time I pay this guy a visit.”
“You’ll need to go through his lawyer and get on his approved visitors list.He’s at a state correctional facility serving a ten-year sentence for statutory rape.”
Everything comes to a stop around me.There is no air, no sound, no breathing.It’s as if I’ve been sucked into a black hole.The trauma of that night hits me as hard as an asteroid hitting earth—destroying every wall I’d built up over the years and months to protect myself.
He did this to someone else.Maybe more than one someone.While part of me wants to know the details—hell, just know his name—another, bigger part doesn’t.There was a reason I’d never tried to find out who he was or where he went after that night.But Miles has blown that reason to smithereens because it no longer matters.Miles found him and looks proud of himself for that fact.
He’s never once bothered to ask me why I didn’t.
And now my dad knows, which feels like a whole other can of worms that has popped open.I don’t know what to do or say or think anymore, so I do the only thing I can.
I turn around and leave.
