jacket and pulled out a worn leather journal, dropping an envelope and a few receipts on the floor, and opened it to the middle. The pages were ink-stained, dog-eared, and covered from top to bottom in my loopy, teenaged scrawl.
All of the oxygen in my lungs escaped in a whoosh, and the room was suddenly stiflingly humid. When I opened my mouth to speak, the words clumped up in a ball, and I had to clear my throat before I could go on. “Listen, I—”
“How could you keep something like this from me?” Gabe grimaced as he spoke, making it look painful.
My heart sank to the bottom of my stomach like a boulder, and I wrapped my arms around myself. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to keep it a secret. My mom—”
“Your mother was wrong.” His voice cracked, and it became clear to me that he’d been crying. The sight of him so upset rattled my insides. “Dead wrong.”
“I know she was,” I whispered. “I trusted her judgment. I-I thought that if we told you, you’d go after Cameron. And if your parents found out, they would come unhinged and try to have Cameron sent to jail, and—”
“And that would have been a bad thing?” Gabe gaped at me. “You guys let him go free! You let me stay friends with him all this time! Do you understand how messed up that is?”
“Of course I understand.” My voice shook. “It happened to me, remember?”
For the briefest of seconds, his expression softened, and I thought for a moment that he was going to hug me. I was out of luck. “I know it happened to you.” He paused and looked around. “Is there water running?”
“Oh!” I darted to the bathroom and turned off the water in the nearly overflowing bathtub. When I returned to the living room, Gabe was sitting on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
“Gabe?” I said, approaching him. Goose bumps covered my arms, and the boulder in my middle grew even heavier.
“I just don’t understand how you could have kept it from me for so many years,” he said. “Is this why you changed?”
I covered my face and choked on a sob. This was becoming much too raw to deal with. Gabe had officially chiseled away at my protective outer layer, leaving all of my emotions naked and exposed. “I just…wanted to pretend it never happened…I wanted to…move on with my life…I…”
He shook his head. “I would have helped you through it. I was in love with you.”
“It was because you were in love with me that I didn’t want to tell you.” I used my sleeve to wipe the tears sliding down my cheeks. “I didn’t want you to look at me different. I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
Gabe glared up at me, red rimming his eyes. “You’d rather let me think that you’d cheated on me, rather than let me know that you were raped, Vi?”
“I was seventeen,” I said, my throat tight. “I was just a kid. I—”
He finally moved to touch me, sliding off the couch to stand in front of me. His arms around me felt like a key sliding into a lock and turning effortlessly. My throat relaxed, and I breathed in the scent of his cologne, while his whiskers tickled the side of my forehead.
He put his hand under my chin and raised it so that I was forced to look him in the eye. “Why didn’t you find me? Or yell for me?”
I cringed. “I did.”
Gabe’s jaw flexed, and his arms dropped to his sides. “I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
“It isn’t your fault. The music was too loud. Nobody heard me.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand.
“I would have stopped him if I’d heard. I…I didn’t know…” His voice pitched, and he put a hand over his eyes. “I came over that night. I went to your house. Leandra said you didn’t want to see me. Did you know I was there?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
He scruffed a hand up over his head and down the back of his neck. “I should have known. I needed to know. All of those times I hung out with Cam. All those times he came to my parents’ house and into my home. He was one of my groomsmen.”
I shook my head. “Was?”
He raked a hand through his short hair. “The wedding’s off.”
“I…what?”