the horror part of her story, and I swallow against the bile building up in my throat.
When she finally looks at me again, her eyebrows are drawn inward in frustration. “Then I don’t remember much of anything. Bits and pieces. Tiny flashes of images, sounds, smells.”
“I don’t need details,” I tell her softly. Begging her, perhaps, not to tell me the details.
“But you do,” she argues simply, and doesn’t give me room to argue back. “There were three of them. I can’t remember a lot, but I’m sure there were three.”
“Sela,” I whisper. A simple statement of remorse and pain that three men violated her. This was worse than I ever could have imagined.
She pins me with a direct stare, her chin coming up higher in a pose of absolute defiance of the horror that befell her. “The first one took my virginity. I was so out of it I don’t even think I felt pain, but I remember him grunting on top of me. The next one wanted me to suck his dick, but was afraid I’d bite him, so he raped my ass.”
“No,” I wheeze out, the air burning my chest as it’s expelled.
Her chin goes higher. “Then JT was on me while someone else held me down. I remember panties stuffed in my mouth so I couldn’t scream, but honestly . . . I didn’t have the strength to. I just laid there . . . and took it.”
I hunch over, hands to my knees ,and stare at the floor as I swallow hard . . . willing myself not to scream or throw up.
“I only have flashes . . . snippets of scenes. He pulled out of me, removed the panties, and came in my mouth. Put his hand over my nose and mouth and made me swallow it. That is one of the clearer memories.”
I lurch upward, the room spinning and my vision going dark for a moment until I become focused on the front door to the condo. I bolt toward it, snarling, “I’m going to fucking kill him. Going to beat him to a bloody pulp.”
Sela flies off the couch and steps in my way, hands coming firmly to my chest. I look down at her, see the strength and resistance in her eyes, and my hands clap to her wrists. Not in an effort to push her away, but with burning need to pull her into me. My arms wrap around her upper back and I hunch my shoulders so I come protectively around her.
“I’m going to kill him,” I whisper, my throat burning and tears stinging my eyes.
“No, you’re not,” she says softly, her own hands moving to my lower back and pressing in. She rubs slow circles, willing me to calm down. But all I can imagine is my fists pummeling into JT’s face, until his nose breaks, then smashes, then becomes obliterated until he starts to drown in his own blood. I’m going to hold my hand over his nose and mouth and I’m not going to let up until his lungs suffocate with blood.
“Calm down,” she murmurs, rubbing harder at my back. “You need to hear it all.”
“I can’t,” I croak out, sniffing in deeply and blinking my eyes to clear the wetness.
Sela leans back, far enough so she can look up at me. “Let me get it all out, Beck. You haven’t heard the worst.”
“I can’t,” I implore her. Because it will only fuel me to come up with something even more heinous to rain down on JT’s head.
“Please.”
“Sela.”
“Please, Beck,” she says, then wraps a delicate hand around my wrist. She leads me to the couch, and my leaden legs don’t move for a moment, so she pulls on me harder. I follow numbly and she pushes me down onto a cushion, crawling right onto my lap to straddle me. My arms encircle her lower back automatically, hers going to my shoulders as she looks down at me.
“Somehow I got home. JT put me in a cab, paid the driver, I suppose. I was out of it, not really sure what happened to me . . . just those flashes that I described to you. I was starting to feel pain; I had bruises starting to form and while I was still stoned and drugged, I had this sort of deep understanding that I had caused this to happen.”
My body tightens but she continues, not letting me rebuke her for the blame game again.