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"Okay," I reply, confused. "Can you explain? Because I'm not sure what you mean."
"I'm fucked up." His voice is strained and agonized. "I had a fucked up childhood, and I did fucked up things, and now I'm just all fucked up."
"But what does that mean, Chase? You're not making sense. What does that have to do with me touching you?" I remember all the times we've been together intimately. He's always the one in control. He never lets me touch him beyond a kiss, and every time I've tried, he takes my hands away by pinning them above my head or at my sides. I thought I was doing something wrong, but clearly, something else is happening here.
My dad's fists are ten times harder than Luke's.I recall Chase's words from the wedding.
I think back even further to all the times he came to our house with bumps and bruises. I always assumed they were from hockey and roughhousing with boys. Maybe I was too young and naive to think of it then, but looking back on it now, all the signs were there. The cuts and bruises. Sleeping in our treehouse and then practically moving into our spare bedroom.
Chase was abused by his father.
"Your father abused you," I say flatly.
"Yeah, he did. My father liked to use his fists. He was angry at life and took it out on me, but that's not why I don't like being touched by women."
My heart breaks for Chase. His mother died when he was so young, and it ruined his father, obviously more than anyone ever knew. When his mother died, Chase didn't just lose one parent; he lost both. I want to wrap my arms around him and hold him. I want to make it better, but I don't know how. All the ways I usually show physical affection, hugs and kisses, and just being close to someone won't work with him because he doesn't like being touched.
And that's when I realize what he said.But that's not why I don't like being touched by women.By women. The words echo in my mind over and over again. I put myself in Chase's place and think, mind racing. If I didn't like being touched by men, why would that be? I know the answer immediately, but it hurts my heart even more to even think it.
Oh, Chase.
My throat tightens, and it's hard to swallow, but I have to hold it together. The last thing Chase would want to see on my face is pity. I know because it's the last thing I would want to see on someone's face too. And so, I pick the next best emotion. Anger.
"Anna Munro?" I say the name with a hard voice, as a statement and a question.
"No. Anna added to the problem, but she didn't create it. I was already fucked up before I went to London, and I was well aware of what she was doing when she turned her seduction on me."
"Then who? When? Where?" My stomach roils as I ask the questions too quickly for him to answer all at once. Chase left to play junior hockey right before his sixteenth birthday. If what I think happened—bile rises in my throat.
"It started when I was fourteen." Chase's voice is flat, and the bottom of my stomach falls out. I've never heard his voice so bleak. Lifeless. He leads me to his bed and sits down with his back to the headboard. I sit beside him, legs crossed, careful to give him space but close enough to let him know I'm there if he needs me.
The words that pour out of him crush me.
"She was one of my dad's girlfriends. I don't know if you remember the woman that stayed with us sometimes. She had fake blonde hair, so blonde it looked white, and you could see the roots sometimes. She had those fake nails too. Long and always painted red. To this day, I hate red nails." Chase takes a deep breath through his nose before continuing. "It started innocently enough. A brush of a hand here or there, slight enough that I thought it was a mistake a first.
"Then it would be a hand on my thigh while watching a movie or at dinner. But I didn't think anything of it. She'd drink with my dad, and he would get blackout drunk. I think he was probably using drugs then too. One night, when he was passed out on the couch, she crept into my room with her red nails and red lips and just smiled at me. It was one of those smiles that make your hair stand on end because you know something's not right, but you can't stop it.
"She sat on my bed and just started to rub my cock through my boxers without saying a word. It was the first time anyone other than me had touched my dick. And I knew it was wrong, but I let her do it anyway because it felt good. Sometimes she'd ask me to touch her too, and I would while she'd just keep smiling at me.
"On my fifteenth birthday, my dad barely got through dinner before he was snoring. By that time, I expected her visits, but that night was different. She came into my room wearing one of those loose-fitting sundresses. It was one of those ones women wear in the summer when it's really fucking hot. She closed my door, slipped the dress off to pool at her feet, and stood in front of me completely naked. Then she undressed me and told me to lie back. I barely knew what she was doing before she was on top of me and I was inside her. She fucked me, and I liked it. I let her do it because it felt good, and I was pissed at my father. So pissed that I let his girlfriend fuck me over and over and over again until I hated myself for it. When I moved away, I did it again with someone else."
Anger radiates through my body.Chase was raped. He was raped while the man who was supposed to protect and love him was passed out drunk. The unfairness, cruelty, and wrongness of everything he's endured all this time enrages me. He's suffered in silence alone for years, believing he'd done something wrong. That there was something wrong withhim.
I choke back my fury and the tears threatening to spill over the lids of my eyes. I don't know how to comfort him, and that makes me even more angry. And the reason why I don't know how is because any comfort I show him might make it worse. What I think is comforting might be agony for him.
"I'll understand if you want to leave," Chase says, his voice stripped bare and emotionless. "I warned you I was fucked up, Lily. I told you you'd be disgusted by the things I've done."
I recoil at his words. How can he think I'd be disgusted byhim?He's been the victim of so many injustices that my mind doesn't know where to start or stop. He was a child. He was a vulnerable child who'd lost his mother, was brutally abused physically and mentally by his father, and then repeatedly sexually assaulted by a sick and twisted woman.
And he survived.
He's a survivor.
Somehow, despite everything done to him, Chase has not only survived. He hasThrived.He's become an amazing hockey player and man who donates to charities and gives back to underprivileged youth. He's a survivor who, in his own quiet way, whether he realizes it or not, gives back to at-risk kids so they might not have to endure the same things he did growing up. How could he ever think any of that would push me away? How can he not see that this only makes me love him more?
Because I do love him. I love Chase and want nothing more than to help heal his battered and bruised heart and soul.
Carefully and slowly enough that he could stop me if he wanted to, I place a hand on Chase's cheek. "None of that was your fault. You were abused and raped."
