Page 10 of Bruise Me Tenderly

I move into the kitchen and pull two bottles of orange juice from the fridge, offering Judson one.

He takes it but doesn’t open it. Instead, he leans back against the counter and just plays with the lid, fidgeting nervously. It’s strange to see. Judson’s never been a nervous person.

I take a sip of the juice and watch him stare down at my kitchen tile as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.

“What do you want to talk about?” I ask as I toe my sneakers off.

“I need to tell you something about…about why Ian took us in the first place.” He’s mumbling, as if he’s hoping I don’t actually hear what he’s saying.

My muscles freeze as I look up at him. “What are you talking about? We both know why Ian took us. He made it pretty obvious.”

“No, I mean…” He takes a breath and swallows so hard that I hear it in the silence of the kitchen. “I met him the day before he took us. At that party you didn’t want to go to at Portland State.”

My stomach drops. “What do you mean? What the hell happened?”

“He hit on me about thirty minutes after I got there. I wasn’t interested; turned him down. He was so much older than me, and I was about to graduate high school, you know?”

His voice sounds like it’s coming from far away as I try to understand what he’s saying. All this time, I’d thought it was random, that Ian saw us as a crime of opportunity. But it went deeper than that.

Judson shifts his weight from one foot to the other and goes back to staring at the tile under his boots. “He kept pushing, asking me, and I finally told him I was hoping to hook up with my best friend.” He pauses before adding, “It was the truth. Just…so you know.”

I don’t try to respond. I’m not sure my mouth will work right now.

“Um, so I thought that was the end of it,” Judson continues when I stay silent. “But then a bunch of us were in the pool, and he grabbed my ass. He played it off like it was an accident, but one of the other guys made him get out and leave.”

The confusion in my head starts to clear as he keeps talking. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before? When we were stuck in Ian’s basement?”

“What was I supposed to say? That the reason we were abducted was because I turned some random guy down at a party? Everything he did to you was my fault.”

The guilt in his words is enough to pull me from my shock. “Judson—”

“That day he took us, he told me he was going to ruin you to the point where I wouldn’t want you anymore,” Judson says, his voice hoarse. “I wish I could tell you how sorry I am, but I don’t have the words. And I would go back in time and change it if I could, let him fuck me at that party, and maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe… Maybe he wouldn’t have hurt you if I hadn’t turned him down.

“Judson.” I don’t even remember moving toward him but suddenly I’m in front of him, my hands wrapped around his upper arms. “Look at me.”

He drags his gaze up to meet mine, and I can see the guilt buried so deep inside him, it’s like a living part of him. He truly thinks he did something wrong that night at the party.

“It’s not your fault,” I say.

“If I’d just—”

“It’s not your fault,” I interrupt firmly. “What happened to me, to us, that’s on Ian. That’s not on you. None of it is.”

“But he hurt you,” he whispers. “He hurt you just because I told him that I liked you.”

“It’s still on him,” I insist. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “I need you to know that I would’ve lived with him forever, done anything he asked, if he would’ve spared you. I told him that, but…it didn’t matter. He’d already decided to hurt you. I couldn’t take him out of it.”

“Judson…I can’t believe you offered that to him.”

“I would’ve given him anything if he’d just left you alone.”

The raw honesty in his voice nearly guts me. He’s been holding onto this guilt for so long. This is the real reason why he ran away. Judson could’ve faced Ian and everything thathappened to him, but he couldn’t face what he thought he caused Ian to do to me.

“It’s okay,” I say, squeezing his arms. “Judson, it’s okay. I don’t blame you.”

“You should,” he mumbles, and the two words nearly kill me. He sounds so unsure of himself. He sounds defeated. As if he’s waiting for me to change course and tell him that he’s right, that I hate him for all that happened.

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