Finding Carly (SEAL Team Hawaii #5)(70)

She made it to the hallway before he finally spoke.

“It started when I was eleven.”

Carly turned and stared at the man she loved, the one who’d broken her heart. Now she had a feeling it was about to break for different reasons. Her feet were moving without her telling them to. She walked back to the couch and sat down. She’d wanted him to talk to her, but now she was terrified about what he’d say.

In a million years, she wouldn’t have expected him to say what he did next.

“She was seventeen, and my dad hired her to babysit me. She lived a few houses down from us. Bridget Smith. Such an unremarkable name for someone so fucking evil.”

Carly tentatively reached out and touched Jag’s forearm. He moved so fast she squeaked in surprise as he latched onto her hand as if it was the only thing keeping him from drowning.

He kept speaking.

“She was fun. Let me stay up way past my bedtime, watch R-rated movies, and I could eat whatever I wanted. I loved when my dad went out with his buddies and she got to come over. I didn’t realize she was…grooming me.

“One night, she told me she’d brought over a special movie for us to watch. We went into my bedroom and sat on my bed. She sat with her back against the headboard, and she settled me in front of her. It was a porno. I was scared at first…I knew it was wrong…but she told me not to worry, that my dad was gone and we wouldn’t get into trouble.”

“Holy shit,” Carly breathed. “How old were you?”

“Twelve,” Jag said with no emotion in his voice.

Carly was having a hard time wrapping her mind around what she was hearing. But everything he’d hinted at was beginning to make sense now. She’d always thought it was odd that he hadn’t had any girlfriends, that he didn’t have more sexual experience, but she was beginning to understand.

“We started watching porn together every time she came over. And she began to touch me. I got my first erection with her. I was so confused because her touch felt good, but also dirty at the same time. When I was thirteen, she took my virginity. Gave me a hand job until I was hard, then forced me to lie on my back and…and she had sex with me. I just lay there, terrified out of my mind, watching as she got herself off on top of me. It was almost as if I wasn’t there. She didn’t even look at me. It felt like I was one of the sex toys I’d seen in the movies she made me watch.”

Jag’s words were coming faster now, as if he was purging all the darkness he’d held inside for years, since the sexual assault.

“I didn’t want to be with her, but she gave me no choice. She was older, had been messing with my head for years. She laughed at me, told me I was pathetic. Then she’d force me onto my back and stroke me until I got hard. She never wanted me to touch her, never showed me affection. She just grabbed my dick and got me hard before she climbed on top.”

“When did it stop? Did you tell your dad?” Carly asked softly, wishing she knew what to say.

Jag snorted. “I didn’t tell anyone. I was too ashamed. Felt too fucking…unclean. But my dad found out because he walked in on us one night. He came home early from bowling, or poker, or the strip club…wherever he was, and saw her raping me.”

“Did he turn her in?” Carly asked.

“No. He shut the door without a word,” Jag said, voice flat. “After she left, I waited for him to ask if I was all right. To tell me he’d never let her hurt me again. But instead, he slapped me on the back and said I was a stud. Told me how proud he was of me for banging an older chick.”

Carly wanted to throw up. This just kept getting worse and worse.

“I was too old for a babysitter by then, but she kept coming over when my dad went out. I don’t know if he set it up because he was proud of his fourteen-year-old son having sex with a woman who’d just turned twenty, or if she watched for him to leave at night. But she just seemed to know when he was gone. I kept telling her I didn’t want to have sex, but she’d just grab my dick through my pants and tell me of course I wanted to fuck. All guys did.

“My grades started to slip. I distanced myself from my friends, because I felt so goddamn dirty. They were starting to get interested in girls, and I had no interest in doing what Bridget was doing to me with anyone. I never wanted to be at home, because I was afraid she’d come over if I was, but I didn’t want to be around anyone either.

“One day, just after my fifteenth birthday, she came over like usual. She reached for my dick the moment the door closed behind her. I was fucking mortified that the sight of her made me hard. She’d conditioned me to get an erection just by looking at her. But I’d had enough. I punched her. Hard. I was going through a growth spurt and starting to fill out. I told her to get out and never come back or I was calling the police.

“She laughed. Said no one would ever believe me because she was a woman. She threatened to tell everyone that I raped her. I knew she was right. She told me to get my fucking ass into the bedroom. So I did. That was the last night she raped me. I think she realized she wasn’t going to be able to control me for very much longer. I saw her here and there after that, but we never spoke to each other again.”

“Fucking bitch! God, I want to beat the shit out of her. Ruin her goddamn life! Wait—can Baker find her and do that?”

Jag turned to look at her for the first time, and Carly was stunned to see his lips twitch.