you, it truly just didn’t seem possible to me. I thought you were talking about since you and I had met, and I just knew that wasn’t the case. Knew it in my gut. But then quickly, I started thinking about everything I knew about you, and I remembered how you looked at JT that day you walked up to him at that Sugar Bowl Mixer. That look on your face. You hated him, and I realized . . . you had been raped by him. It had just happened long before you and I ever met, right?”
I don’t wait for her confirmation, but I do lean forward a little closer to her as she stares at me. I don’t think she’s even blinked once during my story.
“I ran out of the condo after you, not five fucking minutes after you left. I couldn’t find you. I went to your apartment and waited forever. I went back to the condo, hoping like hell you’d come back. I finally tracked you down here, and I had to come and tell you how very sorry I am for acting so harshly and not believing you. You have to know I’m going to beg your forgiveness after we talk, but please know this . . . I’ll never forgive myself for what I did. I care about you so—”
“How did you know in your gut?” she asks softly, her first words to me, and I almost shudder in relief just from hearing her sweet voice. It’s like music to my ears.
“Know in my gut?” I ask, confused.
“You said you knew in your gut I couldn’t have been raped by JT since we’d met.”
I hold nothing back, because if Sela grants me with her grace and forgives me, there aren’t going to be any fucking secrets between us. “Caroline was raped,” I say softly, and she gasps in response.
“Oh no,” she says, sitting up slightly and leaning on her arm to peer at me. “Caroline?”
I nod, my heart twisting over the shit my sister’s been through. “I’ve seen the hell a woman goes through right after. You weren’t going through that, so I finally figured out . . . he had to have raped you a long time ago. Not to say you don’t continually live with it day in and day out, but I’ve also seen how the healing can occur, and how you can move on with life. You clearly were doing that too. With me. It just finally made sense that you were talking about sometime in the past with JT.”
She gives a tiny nod and drops her gaze from mine, her fingers plucking absently at the sheet. “It was ten years ago.”
“I am so sorry, baby,” I say, and I bring my hands to rest on the edge of the mattress. My voice cracks, almost deserts me, when I say, “I’m so fucking sorry, Sela. I can’t stand to know you were hurt like that. It’s tearing me up and I want to do something to make you feel better, but I don’t know what to do other than beg you to let me try.”
She drops her gaze again, her brows furrowing inward with consternation. For a moment, I know what I did was so heinous I feel like she just starts to slip away from me, but then her eyes snap back up to mine in question. “Do you really believe me?”
“That JT raped you?” I ask, but I know that’s what she wants to know. “Yes. I absolutely believe you and I’m so fucking sorry that I wasn’t telling you that immediately when you said it. I was just so angry about finding you in my office.”
“But I was in your office. I stole your key, made a copy, and was searching through your office,” she says with a pointed look.
“You forgive me Sela for what I did and you get a fucking pass on my office. In fact, you can look through anything in there you want.”
And Christ above answering my prayers, she smiles at me. It’s small and quite thin, but it’s genuine.
She pushes up further on her arm, leans in toward me. “You hurt me.”
“Yes,” I whisper, my breath now frozen in my lungs as I await her verdict.
“Don’t do it again.”
“Never,” I vow.
“It’s actually a good thing,” she says softly, and her hand slides across the bed to rest on mine. “That you hurt me.”