Addicted(45)

“It’s fine. You just caught me off guard. But I guess that proves your point, doesn’t it?”

It kind of does, but I’m not callous enough to say that. So instead, I concentrate on my own past. On the two-ton elephant in the room that just won’t go away. “My past—the rape—” I force myself to say it. “It was bad. It was really bad, Ethan, for a really long time.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

“That’s the thing, you don’t.” I slide off of his lap, kneel next to him on the carpet. “You can’t. You weren’t there when it happened. You weren’t there afterward when my parents made me feel like a bargaining chip. Like a—” My voice breaks, but I swallow the emotion down.

Ethan wanted to talk about this, so we’re going to talk about it. Right here, right now. And when this discussion is over, I’m going to lock this shit down deep and I am never, never, going to talk about the rape, or what came after, ever again.

I make myself the promise, hold it tight inside myself as I struggle for the control I need to get through this one last time. “You weren’t there when Brandon spent the next year making my life a living hell. When he called me a whore and talked all his friends into groping me and touching me and trying to f*ck me. You weren’t there for any of that.”

Ethan looks sick. “Jesus Christ, Chloe. I’m sorry. I’m so f*cking sorry that you had to go through that.”

“But that’s the thing. Your apology doesn’t mean shit to me, Ethan. It doesn’t make what Brandon did any less awful. It doesn’t make my parents any better people. It doesn’t change a goddamned thing.

“And that’s why I don’t want to talk about it. Because when I do, I get angry.” Tears press against the backs of my eyes, but I blink them away. I’ve cried enough over this, cried enough over a monster who doesn’t deserve it. I’m done with tears and I’m done with him.

“I get so goddamned angry. And sad. And confused. And hurt. I get totally and completely f*cked up. And I don’t like being like that.

“I spent years of my life like that, just going through the motions. Barely living because I was so caught up in the past that I couldn’t see the present. I don’t want to live like that anymore, Ethan. I don’t want to be that girl for one more day. For one more second.

“Because when I’m her, I’m ruined.”

“You’re not—”

“I am. And if you don’t believe me, all you have to do is see how I was after your bro—after Brandon—showed up here. It—it wasn’t a good two weeks, okay?”

Ethan’s face crumples then. His shoulders hunch and his whole body sags. For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks as ruined as I feel. “Chloe. Chloe, I’m—”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry!” I throw his words back at him, albeit louder and more shrilly than he ever said them to me. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault any more than it’s mine and I don’t want your f*cking apology. Got it?”

He looks like he wants to argue, but in the end he just shoves his hands through his hair, and nods slowly. “Yeah.”

“I love you, Ethan. More than I ever thought I’d be able to love anyone.”

“I love you, too, Chloe.”

“I know you do. Which is why I’m doing this. There’s no one else on this earth I would rip myself open like this for, not once but twice. I want to be with you. I want a real chance to make things work. But you need to understand that I can’t do that if the past is constantly there between us. I can’t do that if I’m constantly thinking about Brandon or my family or how many pieces inside me just don’t fit together right.

“I’ve survived this long because I locked the past up deep inside of me. I don’t think about it, I don’t bring it out and poke at it when I need something to do. I don’t acknowledge it at all.

“And before you say anything, I know that’s not healthy. More than one shrink has told me that repression isn’t acceptance. But you know what, I can’t accept this. I will never accept it. And I can guarantee that if I dwell on it, if I let myself really understand what it means that Brandon is your brother, and that the woman who paid my parents all that money to get him out of trouble is your mother, then we will never be together. Never.”

Ethan blanches, looks sicker than I’ve ever seen him. “Chloe, that’s not—There’s something—”