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“Sure.”
“Earlier, what you said about loving someone but hating them at the same time… If you weren't talking about Cole“—she pauses—“then who?”
I freeze.
A chill colder than the night air creeps its way along my spine, memories I try to keep hidden sneaking out of their dark corners to scream inside my head.
I don't want to talk about this.
“You don't have to answer,” she says, reaching for my hand. “But I just... Is it your daddy?”
“What?” I gape at her, shaking off her touch. “Why would you say that?”
“I don't know.” She shrugs with a self-consciousness I'm not used to seeing from her. “Forget I said anything.”
But I can't.
Because somehow, despite the silence I've kept regarding what happened six years ago, despite me being away for so long, despite the lies I've allowed to be spread about me for the sole purpose of keeping the truth hidden, she's seen through it all.
She's seen the truth—or at the very least, a portion of it. But still, that's enough. That's too much.
“Look…“ She reaches for me again and this time, I let her. “I shouldn't have asked. It's none of my business. But whomever you were talking about, whatever memory it is that has put that fucking devastated look on your face, I'll listen if you need to tell someone, okay?”
I'll listen.
Those two words have a bigger impact on me than Leighton could ever know.
If only the person I'd confided my darkest secret to six years ago had listened, maybe things wouldn't have turned out the way they did.
Maybe Cole wouldn't hate me. Maybe home would still feel like home. Maybe I'd be able to grieve the death of my father without the razor-sharp memory of the way he'd failed me at the time when I needed him the most.
Six Years Ago
My phone is ringing.The sound hurts my head, but I don't make a move to answer it. I don't know where it is. It's relentless, ringing and ringing. It starts. It stops. It starts again.
The ringtone is some jarringly cheerful Carly Rae Jepsen throwback that Cole set on my phone a while ago, thinking he was funny.
Cole.
The thought of him has my barely dry eyes spilling fresh tears.
How can I face him after betraying him so deeply? How can I ever expect him to look at me the same after knowing what I’ve done?
I can’t.
It’s a fact that shatters the already broken pieces of my heart into a million irreparable shards of glass. Just imagining the look in his eyes and the disgust on his face is enough to turn my stomach even more than it already has.
I can still feel the man’s touch on me, the putrid stickiness of his hands as they grabbed at me, vicious and cruel. How his nails dug wretchedly into my scalp as he held my face to his groin, starving me of oxygen until I could hardly see through the acidity of my tears. His semen is still stuck to the ridges in my throat, determined to stay locked inside despite the number of times I’ve made myself throw up today, fingers shoved deep into my mouth.
The phone rings once more and my head thunders at the sound.
Crawling across the hotel room, I dig through the pile of vomit and spunk-stained clothes for my phone. I don't even look at the name of the caller before I pick it up. I just want the noise to stop.
“Hello?” The word is a near-silent croak.
“Thea?”
I sniffle. “Daddy?”
