Page 109 of If All Else Sails
“Stop. I was going to tell you anyway. Maybe just not...tonight.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Wyatt, please. It feels good to tell you. It isn’t a big deal,” I say. Wyatt rears back in the dark, but I keep my hand on his cheek. Steadying him, steadying myself. I’m not sure which. “I was still fully clothed and he didn’t—”
“Josie.” Wyatt’s voice is a harsh whisper, a rusty blade sawing through the darkness.
I blink away the tears gathering. “I mean, comparatively, it was nothing. Legally speaking, it was barely assault. Almost nothing happened. So many women face so much worse.”
“It’s not a competition,” Wyatt says. “You don’t need to place what happened to you on some sliding scale and decide how youshouldfeel based on what could have happened or what happened to someone else. Trauma is trauma.”
I scoff. “It wasn’t trauma. Just something that made me skittish around athletes.”
And maybe men in general. But I don’t say that. This experience isn’t why I haven’t had a serious relationship. It’s unrelated. I just haven’t met the right guy.
I can feel Wyatt fighting with himself, tension radiating through him.
“When we met and I tried to shake your hand,” he says, and I know where he’s going with this. “You flinched. This is why?”
“The guy was a football player. Huge. Maybe it’s not fair, but you’re a big guy. I just...reacted.”
“What’s his name? The guy who did this.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I should tell you.”
“I think you should. I hope you hurt him.”
“Knocked him out.” I’m proud of this fact, and I’m sure he can hear it in my voice.
“Good.”
“I hit him with a ceramic unicorn I made at camp in middle school. I’m not even sure why I still had that or why it was in reach. The thing was ugly and covered in glitter. Apparently, some got in his eyes. Scratched his cornea.”
“I hope he went blind,” Wyatt says. I’m used to him sounding gruff but not fierce like this.
I like it a lot.
“He didn’t. Went on to play college ball at some D2 school.”
Now Wyatt does growl. Not a rumble, but an actual legitimate growl. It makes me grin in the dark.
“Are you going to turn feral?”
“Who says I wasn’t feral already?” he asks, and I shiver, then snuggle closer.
“Touché.”
Silence descends. A comfortable one. Soft, like the dim light blanketing us. Forgiving. Kind. A sense of relief unfurls in my chest, easing the tightness that wound through me at Wyatt’s question.
I want to wiggle even closer. To wrap myself completely in Wyatt’s warmth and solid presence.
“Should I sleep on the boat?”
Apparently, I’m theonlyone who wants to be closer.
