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She slides across the bench seat, slipping into my lap sideways, letting her feet rest in her side of the seat.
Cupping my face, she says, “Don’t think I regret a second of what I did with you. I vowed a long time ago to never let a man inside me until it was my choice. Until it felt right. Everything about you and I was the highlight of tonight. If I could, I’d do it all over again.”
“I mean, that could be arranged,” I tell her, slinking my hand over her thigh and squeezing before letting go, letting endorphins rush her.
She whimpers, leaning her forehead against me and letting the wave of pain mixed with pleasure rush through her.
“You know what I meant,” she growls.
“Mhm, I do.” I smile.
“It defined my life, that night, and I don’t even remember it all. I want the facts, I want to know what his memories hold, and I can’t explain why I want them. I want the truth. And I want to know how he covered it up.”
“Do you want to ruin him?” I ask her, and something flits through her face, but only briefly.
“I don’t know yet,” she admits.
I scoff.
“I know that sounds crazy. I should want to ruin him, right? But he didn’t ruin me. It might be a fucked-up way to look at things, but the money I was paid with put me through college and put food in my belly and a roof over my head. My life took a bad turn and a good turn from that point on.”
“Who paid you?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Some lawyer came for Mr. Stanner. At least, I assumed that’s who he was for. He told me some long-lost relative had died. I knew it was bullshit. I knew they were covering up what happened. But admitting they knew about me and what happened, was admitting to the incident altogether. I’m not stupid. I also wasn’t about to fight him in court when my only shelter had burnt to the ground. Even now, it’s charred beyond belief inside. No one’s ever repaired it.”
Her truth sends shockwaves through my center. Anger wells at what she’d gone through. The knowledge she’d been in that house that night because she had nowhere else to go, and Emery had done what he’d done all for some kind of sick, twisted fun, makes me want to sink my fucking blade into him. I’m not all too sure I won’t in the end. But she deserves her answers. If it’s what she needs, it’s what she’ll have.
I’m still not sure what called me to her like a moth to a flame, but I’m too fucked-up to look too far into it. I want her, and whatever I have to do to have her is what I’m going to fucking do. I only hope I don’t stain her as darkly as I’m stained.
Watching her tonight with the paddles in her hand, screaming as she let go of a piece of the pain she’s been carrying for years. Pain that I’m not all too sure the staining process hasn’t already begun.
“What do you remember from that night?” I ask, at risk of her shutting down.
She swallows, slipping a hand around my neck and squeezing lightly as if to ground herself to reality before diving into the memories.
“I remember hearing him come into the bathroom, and I shifted. It was stupid. If I’d have held still, he wouldn’t have known I was there. He ripped the curtain back, and I stood up. When we first came face to face, for a fleeting moment, I thought he was going to be kind to me. There was something there between us. There was always this spark. I had a massive crush on him at school. Every girl did. But I was dirty, malnourished, and in tattered clothes. Of course, he wouldn’t want me, right? But then, he wanted me. But the moment turned where I didn’t want him anymore. I wanted to get out of the bathroom alive. The last thing I remember is him punching me. I taunted him, teased him to make him hit me.”
“Why?” I ask, breaking her out of the memory before she got too deep.
“Because I wanted to not be a part of it. I didn’t want to remember. Now, it’s all I can fixate on. I knew there were people in the house, many of them. I could hear them drinking and shouting. But I didn’t know he was there, and I thought if I kept quiet...Sometimes I wondered if I was hating the right man. If it was Emery. Yeah, he was there when he knocked me out, but when I came to...” she trails off, eyes vacant as she searches the files in her brain for the images from that wretched night.
“What? When you came to, what?” I coax.
“It was Conner who woke me. He was sweating and...”
“And what, Carina?”
She looks at me. “I didn’t realize it until tonight, for obvious reasons. He smelled like sex.”
The admission dashes through my brain, bouncing off every fucking synapse as it does.
“Do you think they both...” I can’t even get the rest of the question out. The lengths these two used her makes me fucking sick to even think about it. I reach up and turn her face toward me, kissing her, mainly to shake us both out of the icy claws of the past’s grasp.
She pulls back. “I don’t know, and that’s what bothers me. I need to know.”
“And then they pay?” I ask.
“What would you do to them?” she asks.
