Page 64 of Breaking You Open

“Is this about what happened at the gun range?” I ask.

Sparrow keeps shaking, and his tremors come out in his voice too. “Are you a-angry with me?”

“No.” He did freak me out a little bit—okay,a lot, but angry? No. I can never be angry with him. “Why do you always ask that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think youdoknow. You just don’t want to tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, seeming close to tears.

Maybe I shouldn’t pry, but at the same time, some force might be required to get him to open up. It’s like unveiling an infected wound to wipe the dirt and pus away, even if it hurts, and then patch it back up to help it finally heal.

“Were you thinking about him?” I ask. “Aaron?”

Sparrow nods. He wraps his arms around his legs and leans his face on his knees. “I was bathing.”

“Mm?”

“The first time it happened,” he clarifies. “The first time he noticed me.”

“Noticed you?”

“The first time he wanted to be with me.”

I think I know what he’s getting at, but the way he says it is strange, to say the least.

“First time he forced you, you mean?”

Sparrow makes a quiet, whimpering noise, like I just pinched his skin. “No. No, he…he didn’t force me. I wanted it.”

“You were just a kid. A child.”

“He was so cool,” Sparrow whispers. “Even though he had so many friends, he noticedme. He wantedme.”

“So you liked him?”

“Yeah, I liked him,” Sparrow says, louder now. “That’s why it wasn’t like that.”

“Doesn’t matter if you liked him or not. He forced himself on you, multiple times, the way it seems like. It was wrong. He gave you no choice.”

“No.” Sparrow shakes his head, smearing tears onto his knees. “No.”

“Don’t you remember what I told you? How you should always have a choice to say yes or no?”

Sparrow nods miserably.

“Doesn’t seem like it was that way between you two.”

“It wasn’t,” he agrees. “I said no sometimes, and he did it anyway.”

I sigh. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I want to stroke his arms, to make him feel at peace with me, with opening up about this, but something tells me it would only make things worse. “How long did it go on?”

He cowers from my touch, his skinny back drawing away from my chest as his shoulders heave. “Until I left for college.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Because he betrayed me.”

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