it from your lips.”
I told him what happened weeks ago. Surely, he hasn’t forgotten already. “I … I gathered up my friend and drove her back to her house.”
“And then?”
“We called the police.”
His frown breaks to a partial smile that’s plagued by disbelief. One that tells me he knows more than what I told him. “You skipped too far ahead. Go back a little. What happened immediately after you drove Kelsey back to her house?”
Panic blossoms inside my chest as I stare back at him, the memories of that night crawling out of their airtight boxes, the tiny compartments I’ve constructed inside my head. “Why?”
“Tell me.”
“I … don’t …” Remember. But I do. In the long pause that follows, the images in my head seem to project on the wall behind him, playing like a movie reel. “I went back to the party. Alone. And I found Aedon, Brady, and all their friends back out in the pool house. Drinking and smoking. I nearly choked on the cloud of marijuana clinging to the air.”
“Why did you go back?” His voice is distant, reminding me of days spent sitting in the therapist’s chair while he probed my thoughts for answers. Reasons that would compel me to do what I did.
“I was angry. I wanted to confront them.”
“Wrong. What did you do when you found them in the pool house?”
What did you do?
What did you do?
The words of Aunt Midge echo inside my head.
“I told Brady that … that I wanted him. Only him. So he sent the others out.”
“And?”
An urgency in my head begs me not to answer his question, but I do, anyway, my mouth commanded by an unseen force. “I took my shirt off, to show him I was serious. And he removed his pants.”
Lucian tips his head and strokes his jaw. “Did you want to fuck him?”
“No.” My thoughts are still tied in the dream--or nightmare, rather--spinning inside my head. “The sight of him disgusted me.”
“So, what happened?”
“I knelt down in front of him, like I was going to put my mouth on him. He closed his eyes. And I pulled the knife from my back pocket. I stabbed him. Over and over, I stabbed his groin.” I screw my eyes shut to block out the memory, but it’s all there inside my head. The screams. The fury. “All I saw was blood.”
“It wasn’t Kelsey that Brady tried to rape that night. It was you.”
Eyes still clamped, I shake my head, but the truth in his words are too strong for the months of denial that has served as a shield. Because if--if--I’d so much as dipped a toe into those dangerous waters, there’s no telling what damage I would’ve done to myself in the aftermath. I wanted Brady more than anything my senior year, and when he finally showed interest, all my good sense went out the fucking window. I became a statistic. Another after-school special, warning girls of the dangers of drinking alcohol at a party. Only, instead of Brady looking like the villain, my retaliation made him the saint in all of this, and I became the psycho.
“It was Kelsey’s testimony that kept you from being locked up, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” I finally open my eyes, exhaling a shaky breath. “She witnessed everything, except the stabbing.”
“Tell me about Uncle George. Do you remember how his throat ended up sliced open?”
Lowering my gaze, I shake my head. “I blacked out.”
“He lived. Miraculously, given the depth of the cut. But his wife found the knife in your hands.”
Tears wobble before my eyes, distorting the dark gray sheets. Hold still. I can hear his raspy voice in my ear, smell the beer on his breath, as he yanked down my underwear. The grunting and groaning that churned a sickness in my stomach, while he tried to breach my barrier, too small for his size. The burn. The pain. The sight of his pocket knife sitting on the nightstand next to the wooden horse he carved for me. A knife he always carried around and used to clean his nails. “He tried to hurt me.”
“All of them tried to hurt you. And if you’d had a knife in your hands the other day, when Boyd pulled up beside you?”
“I would’ve cut him with it.”
Lucian rounds the bed, and sits beside me. “Your whole life, you’ve been ridiculed and treated like a monster.” He strokes his hand down my cheek, and at the gentle nudge to my chin, I lift my