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Her face is a study in horror and disgust, and I know then and there, I’ve lost her, too.
NINETEEN
MAGDALENA
Idon’t see Hendrick when I look, unable to stop myself, at the bedroom door, but I feel him.
The whole place vibrates with a storm of tension, all of it wrapped in and over itself. Knotted and tangled.
Jac’s story is horrifying. It’s more horrifying than what he said. Because the nightmare stuff for that poor girl is in what he didn’t say.
He made some strong allegations, framed as fact. Not the rape, but about Hendrick. And it looks damning for Hendrick. It doesn’t fit the man I’ve been fucking. I know people make excuses and I’m not. I know real monsters lurk in all kinds of wrappings, pretty and ugly ones. The fact it doesn’t fit Hendrick doesn’t make him innocent.
It doesn’t make him guilty.
I go back to what he told me about Jac, how he gave up everything in his life to protect Lili.
They don’t sound like the words of a sadistic rapist.
It also doesn’t make him innocent, either.
As always, there are sides to stories. And Jac and Hendrick have hated each other over this for ten years, and it sounds like neither one has talked to the other.
Now that…
That fits them both.
One thing I don’t get is why Jac came and told me this, what angle he’s playing.
Maybe he isn’t playing an angle, but people don’t tend to bound up to someone and randomly unburden themselves. And certainly not Jac.
Then again, both have their reasons, I just can’t fathom Jac’s. He’s a man who does things by shouting the reasoning and then backing it up with an all-star band of words and actions.
Like his apology attempt.
With Hendrick, he seems to explain agendas, or just avoid them. Quietly, patiently, evenly pitched. I know why he said what he said about Jac. It was a warning and an explanation, the aftermath of seeing my bruises and perhaps his hand in that. Not physically, but by way of their cold and deadly war with each other. Me in the middle.
When he told me the story about how Jac loved Lili, how Jac gave up joy and a normal childhood to protect his sister, it was a strange moment for all the things he didn’t say, but it was also clear on what he was saying.
Not an excuse, but an explanation for why Jac is Jac and perhaps that Jac didn’t mean to hurt me. But he did hurt me, no matter how much I liked it. It went too far and could again. Best to get out, to walk.
There was a lot there.
This? The Jac story? There’s a lot there, too. I just don’t know what Jac’s agenda is.
“MG?”
“Yes?” I still have the gun, and Jac has his hand on the door, but he doesn’t open it. “You could ask me to stay.”
If Hendrick weren’t here, I… My body throbs, that addictive lavender and leather of him with its honeyed center curls around me, warming me from the inside out. I want Jac. I want Hendrick. And I don’t know what to do.
“You hurt me, Jac. A bad past doesn’t give you the right to do that.”
“I—”
I lower my voice. “I like itrough. I don’t want people calling the cops.”
“No one called the fucking cops. And you like it rough, like you just said.”
