Page 222 of The Moment We Know

“Oh, my God.” Kim’s voice had fallen to a horrified whisper. “What’s happening?”

“Stay back,” David told her, just as Paige twisted and kicked him in the ribs, hard enough to send him to the floor.

“Holy shit!” Kim rushed to his side and immediately kneeled beside him. “Are you okay?”

Stunned, ribs aching, he waved off her concern before slowly getting to his feet. “I’m fine,” he said, even though that was debatable.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong with her?”

David ignored her questions, because now was not the time to answer them. “We’ll talk about it later. Right now, I need you to get out of here.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not leaving you here with her like this—”

“Kim, go. It’s going to be fine.”

“No.”

“Trust me, I can handle this. Please, just go home.”

After a long, tense moment, she backed out of the room. When she was gone, David returned to the chaise, where Paige was now huddled in the corner, but this time he kept a little distance between them, positioning himself on the far end, rather than next to her. He had no idea if this was the right thing to do, given what had just happened, but letting her come back from wherever she was to find herself alone on the chair was not an option.

In silence, he anxiously waited and watched. Thankfully, it didn’t take long before she slowly raised her head and met his eyes, and when she did, he was relieved to see she was now present, though disoriented.

“Are you …” he trailed off, not wanting to ask if she wasokay, because that seemed like a stupid question. But, he needed to know. “Are you okay?”

Instead of answering, Paige whispered, “I had a flashback.”

As her face crumpled and she started crying, he immediately moved over and pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest as her body trembled. They stayed like that for several minutes, until she leaned back, sniffling loudly. When she looked like she was going to use the sleeve of her robe as a substitute Kleenex, he stopped her by pulling off his shirt and handing it to her. “Here. Use this.”

“You want me to wipe my nose on your shirt?”

“Sure, why not? I mean, you use my shirts to clean up after sex, so a little mucus isn’t that big of a deal.”

That drew a faint smile from her as she dried her eyes, then wiped at her nose, before proceeding to blow it as well.

When she was done, he asked, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

She nodded, but waited to answer until after she’d folded the shirt and laid it on the back of the couch. “I should have listened to you and Lauren.” She took a deep breath. “But I thought it would be fine, thatIwould be fine. And I was, mostly, until I started to feel like I was drifting with every click of your camera, and everything Kim was doing and saying started to feel like … an insidious echo. I was trying to breathe through it, to stay in the moment, but then Kim said the camera loved me and that was it. That was the trigger.”

He knew from hearing about previous flashbacks, that she was always bombarded with a lot of information, and he braced himself for all of it, knowing it would be ugly.

“I found myself in my bedroom in Carter’s house—the one I never slept in,” she said quietly. “It was shortly after my thirteenth birthday, and he was taking pictures of me.

“I was naked … and so was he. Part of that was because it made playing with his erection whenever he wanted to really easy, but Carter also liked me to see him naked, to know he was turned on, to understand this was foreplay for him.

“He had me laying on the bed with my legs spread, to get a shot of my newly sprouted pubic hair. I’d gotten my first period a few months ago and was going through puberty, and Carter had become extremely fascinated with all the developmental changes taking place in my body, particularly the growth of my breasts.

“After they started to develop, he began taking pictures of me more often, sort of documenting their growth in a sick, twisted way. On this particular day, he was focused on my nipples, playing with them in an effort to make them … hard … and when that failed, he started pinching and pulling on them.”

It literally took everything David had, not to get up and break some shit against a wall.

“When all that did was make me cry—because growing breasts are extremely tender and painful to the touch, even when you’re not having your nipples pinched and pulled,” she continued, “he used ice cubes, which did the trick. When he finally got the desired effect, he smiled and told me, ‘The camera really loves you, pretty girl. Almost as much as I do.’

“And then, everything faded to black.”

When she was done talking, David’s eyes were burning, and his throat was so tight, he thought he might never breathe again. He didn’t even know how to respond to something so obscene, and in the end, all he could manage was a soft, “I’m so sorry.”

She gave a tiny shrug. “It’s my fault.”

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