summoning the courage to say them out loud. “He’d said, ‘Tell me you’re mine.’ I just wanted it all to be over, so I kept repeating I was his. Thought it would help him…finish quicker.”
“Jesus.” I scrub a hand over my face, my expression pinched, my teeth digging into my bottom lip, causing it to bleed. I need the pain to distract me before I do something rash.
“Afterward, I couldn’t move, in shock. Then he forced me to get up before we were caught. I was in a daze as he dragged me out of the house and toward his car.” She laughs slightly, looking up to the sky. “Do you want to know what detail has always stood out in my mind about that night?”
I want to tell her I don’t think I can stomach it, but instead, I remain silent.
“He opened the car door for me. My own husband never did that. And here was this man who’d just forced himself on me acting like the perfect fucking gentleman. Like it never happened. I’d wondered if I’d imagined it all.”
“You got into the car with him again? Even after—”
“I was scared, Wes. I remember my entire body trembling violently. I worried what he would do if I didn’t. So I did. And for the first time since we’d met, neither of us spoke a single word to each other. It wasn’t until he pulled up in front of my apartment that he finally did.”
“What did he say?”
“He knew how much I hated the constant media attention after my mother’s death. So he told me if I were to report this, it would turn into a circus. That my photo would be plastered on every news site out there. Then he said no one would buy my story anyway, since he didn’t do anything I didn’t want. Like the cursed Echo I was, I repeated it back to him. Told him he was right. That I’d wanted it. I was too frightened to disagree.”
I hang my head, squeezing my eyes shut, balling my free hand into a fist. I know the statistics about sexual assault on college campuses. Being the overprotective older brother I’ve always been, I did a ridiculous amount of research on this stuff before Julia went off to college, armed her with more material on the topic than necessary, along with a can of pepper spray and a pocket knife. But as Londyn’s story reminds me, it’s not the masked man in a dark alley you have to watch out for. It’s someone you know. Someone you trust. Someone you let your guard down around.
“Did you report him?”
“Not right away. I thought if I could get through the last month of school, it would be okay. I didn’t know if I could sit through all the questions I’d have to answer if I were to report him. I’d stopped going to the coffee shop. Purposefully avoided spending any time outside of my apartment unless necessary. But then…”
“Yes?” I lean toward her, absentmindedly running my thumb along her knuckles.
“Then I missed my period.”
I suck in a breath, hanging my head, my lips pinched with tension. “Jesus…”
“That’s when I decided to come forward.”
“So he was arrested, right?”
She barks out a sarcastic laugh, rolling her eyes. “Don’t I wish. My school touted having a sexual assault task force as part of their campus police, which was where I was told to report this because it happened on campus. But when I did, they made me feel like I was the one in the wrong. They didn’t take me to an office. They took me to a fucking interrogation room. Made me sit there in an uncomfortable chair while I waited for someone to take my statement.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I asked myself the same question. Then I figured it out. Do you know what was different about me compared to any of the other students who’d reported that someone had stolen their laptop or their car was keyed?” She gives me a knowing look.
“Oh.”
“Because I’m not white. My father warned me about this when I’d applied to this college. Told me the nearby town wasn’t exactly diverse. Neither was the student body. But I didn’t care. I wanted to go there because they had a great art history program.
“When a supposed sexual assault special officer, who just so happened to be a white man, finally came in to talk to me, he accused me of stealing the keys to