Valorous(27)

“And here I am asking you to go on birth control. I never would’ve asked you to do that if I’d known.”

I comb my fingers through his hair, needing to touch him, to comfort him. “You’re hearing this story for the first time. Don’t forget it’s old news to me. I don’t think about it every day anymore.”

“It’s going to be a very long time before I don’t think about it every day.”

“Is it going to change everything between us?”

He raises his head off my chest. “What? No, of course not.”

“If you treat me differently now that you’ve heard the dirty details, that will hurt me.”

“Nat… Christ… If anything, I love you more than I already did.”

“There’s more.” I’m determined to get through this and be done with it, so I press on. “The cops called my parents. They came to the hospital, and with my permission, the detective in charge told them what’d happened. My father looked at me like I was insane. His exact words were, ‘Are you out of your goddamned mind?’ He absolutely refused to believe that his precious Oren could’ve done what I was accusing him of. He also looked really scared. I found out later why. He’d been up to his elbows in all sorts of shit for Oren, and he had to testify against him to keep from going to jail himself. Somehow, I can’t imagine how, he managed to hang on to a job in state government.”

“What about your mom?”

“She believed me. I could see it in her eyes, but she was completely under my father’s control. He was in charge, and she did what he told her to. He said if I went forward with this, if I pressed charges, I was dead to them.”

“How could he do such a thing to his own child, especially when you’d been so badly hurt?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never understood the dynamics of his relationship with Oren. The cops told him it was no longer up to me. Oren had scrubbed me clean, but he hadn’t removed every trace of himself from me. They had DNA evidence and were moving forward with charges. ‘As we speak,’ the lead detective said, ‘Stone is being arrested.’ Hearing that, my dad dragged my mother out of the ER, and I’ve never seen or talked to them or my sisters again.”

“Good God, Natalie.”

“The sad part is, I wasn’t even surprised that he chose Oren over me. At least he was consistent.”

“What did you do? Where did you go?”

“I got really lucky. One of the detectives took me into his family while we awaited trial. They were incredibly good to me. In many ways, they saved my life by getting me into therapy and helping me finish high school with tutors. The worst part was losing my sisters. I’ve always wondered what they were told and what they know. I wonder if they miss me or think about me, or if my dad poisoned them against me. Candace is in college now, I suppose, but I’ve never been able to work up the courage to reach out to her. If she hates me, I’d rather not know that.”

The sadness is still so pervasive after all this time. “It was a really tough couple of years, but I got through it with the help of the family that took me in and the financial support that flooded in from anonymous donors who hated Stone and wanted to help me bring him down. That money paid for my new identity and my first two years of college. The other half… Well, I’m not sure what I’ll do about that now that my contract has been voided.”

“I’ll take care of that. Don’t worry about it.”

“I will worry about it, and I’ll take care of it, not you.”

“Are you kidding me right now? Why are you in this mess to begin with?”

“I’m in this ‘mess,’ as you call it, because Oren Stone raped me when I was fifteen. I’ve been dealing with it on my own ever since, and I’ll continue to deal with it.”

“You’re not alone anymore, baby,” he says softly, so softly I almost don’t hear him. “Everything is different now, and the last thing in the world I want you worried about is student loans that I could pay off for you tomorrow without even feeling it.”

I’m shaking my head before he finishes speaking. “I don’t want you to do that. I’ll figure it out the way I always have. I’ll get another job.”

He starts to say something, but then shakes his head, pulling away from me.

“What?”

“I’m going to take a shower.”