to do something about it. I’m already making fists in the sand, the anger running through my blood hot and fluid.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says tiredly.
“It does. Tell me who it is so I can go and kill him myself.”
Finally she looks up and meets my eyes. “Not if I kill him first.” Our eyes are locked, and in our stare, I can feel everything she’s feeling. How serious she seems. For her own sake, I hope she’s not. Then she looks away again at the horizon. “The first time it happened, it took me by surprise. I was too shocked to feel anything, and then after I felt nothing but shame. In a way, he seduced me, and even when I said no, it sounded like I was saying yes. The second time”—she takes in a deep breath—“the second time I said no again, and that time he hit me.”
It feels like I’m about to crush this fist of sand into glass. “You don’t have to tell me this,” I say through grinding teeth. If she keeps going on, I might end up punching something.
“I want to tell you, Pascal. I want you to know. I want you to understand. And I’ve never told anyone before. I need to tell someone, and you’re the only one I trust in this whole wide world, this world that only wants to hold me down. And yet you’re there, holding your hand out for me, trying to help me up. I know it shouldn’t be you. It really shouldn’t be you. But here we are.”
I press my lips together and wait for her to go on.
“He hit me, but he did it in such a way that no one could really tell. After that, I knew what I was up against, and I did everything I could to avoid him, but sometimes that was impossible.”
“When was this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says again, and now I know that it does matter, at least to her. “I know you want to play hero, Pascal, but this has been my story and mine alone for so long, so trust me when I say it really doesn’t matter. Please.”
“Okay,” I say quickly, nodding to show her I’m dropping it.
“He was brutal, and he took pleasure in it, like a fucking psychopath. He tortured me with fear, and he only inflicted pain and suffering. He ruined me, over and over again, and it was only later that I realized I had to be the phoenix, that I had to rise out of the ashes. I told you I have issues, and these are my issues. I . . .” She exhales shakily. “I don’t know who I am without them, you know? It’s been my identity for so long.”
“So I take it they never caught him?”
She shakes her head.
“Why didn’t you press charges?”
“I was too young and . . . I figured it wouldn’t work. He’s the type of man who would get away with it. Besides, I didn’t want to go to trial. I didn’t want to be put on a stand and have to look him in the eye and relive it. I didn’t want the world to know my shame.”
“You must have told your mother?”
She nods. “I did tell her. And she didn’t believe me. I laid myself bare and admitted the truth, and she looked the other way. After that, I had no choice but to leave her.”
“Is that why you suddenly left us? You couldn’t be around her anymore?”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, turning her head slightly so that her wet hair falls over her face, obscuring it from view.
“My father told me that you left because you had issues, that some traumatic experience happened to you once but he didn’t know what it was.”
She goes still at that. I swear she stops breathing.
“Did he have any guesses?” she asks quietly.
“No. None. But he also said he was only guessing. You never opened up. I can understand why.”
She’s breathing again. Her back rises and falls with deep breath after deep breath, like she’s doing a breathing exercise.
I know I shouldn’t touch her, especially after everything she just admitted to me, but I feel like if I don’t, she’ll move further and further away from me. I can feel the connection between us severing somehow.
I get to my knees and slide over to her, gently placing my hand on her back. She flinches slightly, and goose bumps erupt on her skin.