Bad Things(72)

His hand went still on me, and my eyes shot open, going to his face.

He was glaring, and it made me flush. “Please tell me you know me better than that, Danika. Seriously. That hurt my feelings. Of course I want to know. Tell me.”

I just nodded and closed my eyes, not wanting to look at him while I spoke.

“Sex…didn’t start out good for me. In fact, it was pretty horrible.” My voice was almost cold as I told it. Just stating facts, I told myself. It was the old you. Nothing to cry about now. “I was,” I searched for the right word, the word that made me sound less like a victim, “coerced.”

“Coerced?” There was already clear rage in his voice. God, the man could get worked up in a heartbeat.

“There’s a bit of a backstory, but it’s boring—”

“Danika,” he said darkly, censure in every syllable. “You know me better.”

I did know better. He’d always been a great listener, a great friend.

“My mother disappeared on me and my sister when I was about fifteen. We tried to hide the fact that she was gone. We were good at covering up for her. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have to, for one reason or another. She was an addict. Hardcore. Opiates had her basically bedridden for my entire childhood. She wasn’t a functional person; she probably didn’t even know what that was.” I’d spent a lot of time trying to forgive her for that, but it hadn’t been easy, and I still wasn’t sure some days if I even knew what real forgiveness was.

“When she wasn’t bedridden, she was gone, doing God knows what.”

He’d grabbed my hands, rubbing the stress right out of them as I spoke. It helped. It felt good, distractingly good, which was what I needed. I hadn’t told this story in a long time, and it wasn’t an easy one to tell.

“We hid it for about a month before social services got wind. I suppose it was with good intentions that we were placed together into a foster home. It wasn’t much of a home, it was a trailer actually, and the family we were put with was…not ideal. It was an older couple, poor as dirt. The wife worked. She was gone a lot. The husband wasn’t.”

His hands tightened on mine briefly before starting up again.

“There might be people with good intentions that help with foster care, but that system is broken. So broken that it puts young girls with old perverts without a qualm.”

“God, Danika.”

My voice was calm and steady as I continued, just stating facts, “We weren’t there long before he started…coercing me. He knew which buttons to push, as predators tend to. Lucy told me that. She’s helped me work through it.”

“He told me that he liked young girls, younger than me, in fact. My sister Dahlia was the perfect age, he told me. But he could be nice, he said. He’d let me be a good big sister and take her place, and if I cooperated, and didn’t tell, and didn’t complain, or cry out, or scream, he’d leave my baby sister alone.”

“How long did this go on for?” Tristan asked softly, something dreadful in his voice. I was thankful that dreadful thing wasn’t for me, but it still made me shiver to hear it.

“It felt like eternity, but it was just over a year. It happened often. In the middle of the day, in the kitchen, anywhere he wanted. He loved to pounce on me in the washroom. He’d bend me over the washer a lot, and I couldn’t make a peep.”

I couldn’t believe that I was telling this to him while I was lying on my back naked, but I didn’t feel the need to cover up, as though I just trusted him that much.

“Long story short, my sister walked in on us. I wasn’t fighting him, in fact I was cooperating, so she thought it was something I’d wanted. That ugly confrontation revealed that he’d lied about not touching her. He’d pulled the same routine on us both. I was a shitty big sister, and I’d failed miserably at protecting either of us. She ran away, haven’t spoken to her since. No idea where she is, but I know that she hates me for what happened to her, and what she saw. She was pretty clear about that. I tried to explain myself to her, but she didn’t want to hear it.”

“God, Danika…”

“He didn’t hurt me.”

He made a choked noise in his throat that told me he took strong exception to that statement.

“Well, what I mean is, he didn’t hit me or anything, but it did hurt. It was horrible, in fact. It’s hard to describe, but when someone takes that choice out of your hands, even takes away your choice to struggle, well, it kills something important inside of you. I’m still struggling to find that something I lost. I struggle every day with it. To feel whole. To feel a sense of self-worth that Lucy tells me everyone should have. It colors every little thing I do, if I’m honest, but one of the most obvious results of that ugliness is that it’s important for me to feel in control.”