Page 82 of What Lies in the Woods

“More like it’s part of why I hate myself so much,” I said. The room was too cold, and my skin prickled with the chill. “There was a reason I knew Oscar would say yes, when I told him to bring a bottle of rum and a condom and meet me in the woods. When I was eleven, right before…” I waved a hand. I didn’t need to spell it out;beforewas enough. “Oscar was joking around. Shoved me up against a wall and put his hand up my shirt. Scared the shit out of me.”

“That goes beyond ‘asshole,’” Ethan said. He was working hard to sound calm and factual. I watched him carefully. Even as I kept my own tone casual, I was relieved at the anger in his eyes, the strain of keeping a civil tone. “He should have been arrested.”

“His dad is the mayor, Ethan; that wasn’t going to happen. Besides, Cody stopped him. Beat the shit out of him, actually.”

“Good,” Ethan said firmly. “Cody’s always had your back, hasn’t he? I’m starting to understand why he’s so protective of you.”

“He’s not that protective,” I said.

“I thought he was going to take me apart when we first met,” he said, eyebrows raised.

I made a feeble attempt at a smile. “The point is, when I asked Oscar to…” I had to stop, take a fresh breath. “When we had sex, it was my idea. I knew it wasn’t healthy. I wanted to get hurt. It was all me.”

“You wanted to get hurt, so you went to someone who’d be happy to hurt you. It doesn’t mean it was anything close to okay,” Ethan said. “And it doesn’t remove his responsibility in any way. You were fifteen. You were achild.”

“It doesn’t bother me anymore,” I said. “It didn’t traumatize me. Not like Stahl. It’s a shitty memory, but I don’t think about it much. Bad first sex. No big deal.”

“Right. No big deal. Which is why you’re shaking.”

I bunched my hands tight in my lap to stop the tremor. “I kept going back. I don’t think I get to complain if I kept going back.”

“You’re talking to the son of a battered woman,” Ethan reminded me. “And you are never going to say anything to convince me what Oscar did was anyone’s fault but his.”

“Fuck,” I said, pulling my knees up to my chest. “I don’t know why I told you any of this. I’ve never told anyone all of it.”

“I told you. I’m good at getting people to talk to me,” Ethan said with a half smile. “People tend to trust me. It’s…” He paused, but pressed on. “It’s actually disconcerting, sometimes. It’s easy for me to get people to talk or to do little things to help me.”

“You are uniquely unthreatening,” I told him.

He made a sound in the back of his throat, acknowledgment and discomfort. He looked down at his hands. “When I was in college I was driving home one night. I saw this girl on the side of the road, walking along dragging a suitcase in the rain. I didn’t really think about it, I just pulled over and offered her a ride, and she got right in. She said she usually wouldn’t, but I had a ‘good vibe.’”

“Unless you’re hiding your ax-murder side business, you are actually a good guy,” I pointed out.

He looked up at me. “But did she trust me because I’mactuallya good guy? Or is it something else about me, something thatseemstrustworthy but doesn’t have anything to do with me, with my character? Stahl—” He paused again. “Alan Michael Stahl convinced at least six women to get into his truck. They got in willingly. He seemed trustworthy. Lots of people said so. The kind of person you told your whole life story to. The kind of person you trusted on instinct.”

“You don’t murder people, Ethan,” I said, unsettled. His gaze stayed fixed on me, and I couldn’t look away.

“But I do use them. Get them to tell me their secrets.”Like you havewent unspoken.

“ShouldI trust you, Ethan Schreiber?” I asked him.

“I want to be someone you can trust,” he said.

“That’s not the same thing,” I said, like it was a joke, not sure how to react.

All he said was, “I know.”

The knock on my door came just as I was stepping out of the shower. “Hang on!” I called, hastily toweling off and pulling on clothes. I trotted to the door, expecting Ethan, and was taken aback to discover Cass standing on my doorstep instead.

She took off her sunglasses and gave me a withering look. “We need to talk,” she said, and stepped past me. I opened my mouth to say something, but all language fled me.

“Cass,” I managed. She glowered me into silence before I could say anything more.

“What are you doing, Naomi?” she asked.

“I—”

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