Page 64 of Keeping Her Under
He pulls away from me, but he keeps hold of my shoulders. He squeezes them tight enough to leave bruises. “What?”
“I raped Summer.” My words break over the agony.
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t do that. You must not’ve heard her say no –”
“She didn’t say no –”
“Then it’s not rape!”
“Yes, it is!”
“No, it’s not. That’s liberal bullshit.”
“What’s rape, Ash?” I scream, shoving him away from me.
“When it’s violent –”
“Mom’s boyfriends weren’t always violent.” I shudder. “Some of them even sucked me off first.” Their disgusting slime rushes through my veins. My soul.
Asher grabs my hand and squeezes it tight. But his touch isn’t grounding anymore. He isn’t the man I always looked up to and trusted to put me right. Because he must’ve known. All this time, he must’ve known I was a rapist, and he let me believe I wasn’t.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” I rasp, barely able to breathe. “You hate rapists, just like me. But you turned me into one.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You suggested I roofie my dates!”
“Yeah. Your dates,” he stresses. “They all wanted to have sex with you, and you had sex exactly how you always have sex. So just because you didn’t get a consent form doesn’t mean it was rape, cuz. They consented to being unconscious for it when they wanted to have sex with you.”
I breathe heavily, struggling with my thoughts.
“What would have happened if they’d touched you?” he asks softly.
I flinch, and although I don’t answer, my silent words pulse between us. It would’ve been worse for me. I would’ve been triggered. Got violent. I could have really hurt them… Like I did with the girl at Lance’s place.
So is he right?
Or is Alina the one I should be listening to?
I also saw the trauma in her eyes. The lingering PTSD… And then there’s the other thing she told me.
“I got myself drunk,” I say. “So does that mean I consented?”
I want him to tell me yes. That I wasn’t raped then. That I managed to be powerful in a situation where they sought to make me powerless.
“You were a child,” he says softly.
I flinch again, my chest breaking, caving in. It’s getting hard to breathe. Hard to see.
He pulls me into his arms and holds me tight. “You’re not a rapist, Rath.”
I used to always believe his words. I used them to pull myself out of my misery time and time again, trusting he’d never lie to me.
But he loves me more than anything.
And look at how many lies I’ve told out of my love for Summer.
“Summer called me a devil,” I say, my stomach churning. I know that she didn’t mean it as a term of endearment now. The horror in her eyes wasn’t because of her coma-induced nightmares but rather because she’d been aware of me raping her.
