Page 169 of Pretty Little Lies

My shoulders slump on their own because if it resonates with him… “It does?” He nods, but he doesn’t give away any more. It doesn’t take away what Reeve almost took from me, but if he’s been hurt like that, I could see why he’d want to rid someone else of something so horrific. “You were abused.”

It’s not a question.

Just a need to understand something about Reeve that makes him tick.

“And I was the abuser, too. It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s a demon I live with every day?—”

“No,” I carp out, because I instantly don’t believe him. “You would never abuse kids.”

“I abused my sister.”

My blood runs cold then. My skin breaks out in goosebumps, but I don’t sense any warnings of danger that he would ever lay a finger on my sisters or me. I’m not sure if it’s naive confidence and denial or my precarious radar is turned off.

“Why would you do that?”

Reeve only stares at me for a second longer before he looks to something else in the room. “It’s not a pretty story, McQueen. It’s one I’m ashamed of. One that eats at me every day. It’s why that night…in The Landings…”

“The one with The Void?”

He bobs his head because doesn’t bother looking at me. “It killed me to even fake rape you that night because it brought back so much shit I did—” I can hear the disgust in his tone, and it mindlessly makes me grip the sides of his face to force him to look at me.

“You’re not a bad man,” I tell him as I hold his broken stare. “I won’t believe it. I know you’re not.”

“I almost blew your dad’s head off,” he deadpans, conjuring that thought to run through my head, but I understand that he’s trying to fend me off after all.

“I heard you when you said what Emilio told you. And, if that hits home?—”

“I raped my sister over and over again so that my mother would stop fucking torturing thegayout of me.”

My fingers slip from his skin and down his cheeks before they land at the edge of his jaw.

I refuse to accept that as the full answer.

I know that’s not him.

It’s a gut feeling. One that I’m not going to dismiss as my being stupid again. Reeve would never hurt a woman like that.

“Reeve…”

He blinks, hazel eyes shrouding in unshed tears, and my heart immediately breaks for him.

I obviously don’t know the story, but it’s never going to change the way I feel about him.

“I think I love you and I don’t want to lose you over this.”

Talk about getting hit over and over again with words of vulnerability and secrets today. I’m not sure how much more Ican handle, but Reeve’s words sink into my head and soul like a permanent tattoo that’ll never leave.

“I’m not sure if you’ve caught on, but I’m bi,” he tells me. “My mother hated it. Despised me because I didn’t center my focus on just girls. She caught me making out with some dude when I was thirteen and practically beat me to death with a fucking pan.” My grip on his jaw tightens as I hold on to him for more. “The bitch doesn’t cook.”

He swallows, and I can tell how hard this is. That he doesn’t want to divulge in all the secrets lining underneath his mellow skin, but he opens himself up to me anyway.

“Rosie.” He says the name with a broken pain that hits me square in the gut. “She was my twin sister and a little bit of a wallflower. We were super close, typical twin shit. I was her voice most of the time and she was my sounding board. The night my mother found out that I wasn’t abiding by girls lead to everything that happened after that.”

I brush his face with my thumb, urging him to go on because I have this deep-seated notion that he has to explain all this to me.

“My mom smokes Camel’s…all the time. She told me that I’d like pussy. That there was nothing like it in the world. She held a butcher knife up in the air and told me that if I didn’t find one to screw than I’d have to keep doing what she had planned all along. But it didn’t stop her. It only served to teach me a lesson and for Rosie to eventually commit suicide over it.”

“No,” I blurt from my lips. “Reeve, I’m?—”

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