Fight or Flight(58)

“I was fourteen when shit got real. One night they had a party and I was in my bedroom, kept awake by the music and laughter. I was sitting by my patio door instead of in my bed when my bedroom door opened and a man appeared.

“I’d sat frozen in fear as he searched the bed for me, his eyes darting around the room until he found me. Then slowly he closed my bedroom door and locked it. I didn’t recognize him. I just knew what he wanted as soon as he started unbuckling his belt.”

I felt Caleb tense and gave him a reassuring but wobbly smile. “I launched myself out the patio doors so fast. Our house was all on one level—a huge sprawling bungalow. I’d used that door many times growing up and I just fled in my pajamas, running through the neighborhood until I got to Nick’s house. He wanted to tell his parents.”

“You should have,” Caleb bit out angrily.

“I wasn’t as scared about being taken away from my parents as I was scared about being taken away from Gem and Nick. They were my family. That became even more apparent when I confronted my parents about what happened and they insisted I must have been mistaken. They didn’t want to hear it. They never wanted to hear anything that would kill their buzz. Anyway, I convinced Nick and Gem not to tell anyone, but Nick was furious. He made me promise that I would stay with either one of them on the nights we knew my parents were having one of their parties. For the most part we could plan ahead and I only had to use that door as an escape a couple more times before I left for college.”

“Only?” Caleb snapped. “For Christ’s sake, Ava, don’t play it down. Your parents were … are negligent arseholes.”

I flinched but I couldn’t argue with him. “Yeah.”

Caleb flopped onto his back, heaving an exasperated sigh. “So what happened with Nick and Gemma?”

“We were all just friends until that night I escaped from the stranger in my room. Nick became my protector. Suddenly he wasn’t just Nick, the boy I grew up with. He was the really cute boy who seemed to care about me best in the world. I had developed an impossible crush on him but hadn’t realized how badly until that night. He was a year older, girls liked him, and I never thought he’d return my feelings. But that night when I’d snuck into his bedroom to stay with him, he told me he loved me.” I almost smiled at the bittersweet memory. “I told him I loved him too and he kissed me. For the first time in a long time I felt safe. But telling Gem was awkward because I didn’t want her to feel like a third wheel. She wasn’t too happy at first, worried about the same thing I thought, but Nick and I never left her out if we could help it.

“It got a little messier as we got older and Nick and I started having sex, something in retrospect we probably did when I was too young. But sex didn’t seem like such a big deal to me.”

“How young?”

“My fifteenth birthday. I know that probably doesn’t sound young to a guy, but I think it’s young.”

He turned his head on his pillow, his expression tender. “It is young. I’d lose my mind if I even thought my sisters had lost their virginity at that age.”

I shrugged sadly. “It was Nick. I thought he was my forever.”

“And Gemma?”

“Was pissed. She definitely felt left out after that. In fact, she promptly went out with the shadiest guy in school and lost her virginity to him in the back of his pickup.” I felt despondent at the memory. “At least with Nick I’d felt loved at the time. I think she secretly blamed me for that decision.” I pushed up into a sitting position, drawing my knees into my chest as I looked down into Caleb’s sympathetic gaze. Not once, when we’d first been on those flights together, would I have ever thought he’d look at me with such tender patience. “Things seemed to normalize, though. We grew close again, and she went back to being my family, like always. Gem more than anyone was my family. I think I always knew in the back of my mind that if something happened between me and Nick I’d still always have her, so I gave her more of me than I gave to anyone.” Tears filled my eyes.

“Ava.” I felt his hand on my knee, reassuring me.

I sucked back the tears, still feeling that pain deep in my chest, like a knife wound no one could heal. “But unbeknownst to me she was in love with Nick. She finally confessed it to him after he proposed to me, realizing that if she didn’t it would soon be too late. She told me later that he admitted that he loved her too; he just hadn’t thought she loved him back in that way. So they started their affair, too afraid at first to tell me.”

Tears slipped down my cheeks before I could stop them. I looked away from Caleb, staring at the window as I struggled to control my emotions. “When I found out, I told her she should have confided in me years ago. That I’d always loved her more than I ever loved Nick when we were kids and if I’d known back then I would have stepped aside before it was too late, before I’d given him everything.” I wiped at the tears running down my face. “She cried so hard when I told her that, but I couldn’t see her pain back then. All I saw was her betrayal. Even if they’d just told me right away, you know, rather than having an affair behind my back. It would have hurt but not nearly so much.” I turned to Caleb, to find his expression dark, fierce. “I always wondered if she knew he’d sleep with me after being with her. Or did he tell her that he wasn’t sleeping with me? Because our sex life never waned in those months they were cheating.” My upper lip curled in disgust. “In fact, I remember afterward, after overanalyzing every little thing about that time, that he seemed insatiable in those months. I thought it was because we were engaged. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. Now I know that he was getting off on it—on having two women. Two best friends.