Page 79 of What Is Love
Biting my lip, I debated how to answer that.
“Because when you go your whole life being told how worthless you are, it’s hard to believe when someone else says the opposite,” Reid said as he stared at the armchair pushed up against my bedroom door.
Roe and Wyatt looked from him to me when I didn’t deny Reid’s words. I had to stare anywhere but them.
Reid took a seat in the chair. “Did you think this would protect you?”
I went over to my bed and sat on the edge of it. “No. Nothing can. Sometimes I can’t handle that fact. So I do what I can to help me keep myself from being crippled by it.”
The room went quiet, until Roe, who hadn’t said anything since coming inside, asked, “What happened to your knees?”
I glanced down and ran my hands over the cloud-shaped bruises that had formed there. “I told you I fell.”
Roe, who was still standing by my easel, folded his arms over his chest. “Did you actually fall or did someone cause you to fall?” He tried to ask gently, but there was a hint of strain to his voice.
When I didn’t immediately answer, Wyatt said, “I know you’re afraid, but the cat is kind of out of the bag.”
I scooted back a little so I could hug my knees. “I don’t feel like you knowing what happened benefits anyone.”
“Maybe I just need to know, Charlotte,” Roe snapped.
“Why? You can’t do anything with the information except be troubled by it,” I said back.
Roe’s arms fell to his sides and his hands fisted. “I don’t care if I’m troubled by it. Do you not understand why I want to know?”
No, I didn’t.
“He cares about you,” Reid said, as if knowing what I thought. “Might even be halfway to being in love with you.”
Roe shot him a look of warning.
Wyatt came over and sat on the bed next to me. “You share things that trouble you with the ones who care about you. I care about you, too, by the way.”
I played with the cuff of my hoodie as I mulled over what he’d said. Then I took a brave leap. “My phone was dead. So I didn’t get the warning text not to come home from Prue, my housekeeper.”
“If your phone was dead, how did you get home?” Roe asked.
“I walked for an hour. Then Bram saw me and gave me a ride home,” I answered.
“You walked?” both Roe and Wyatt said, sounding shocked.
“Wait, Bram gave you a ride?” Wyatt asked. “Why would he do that?”
Reid didn’t seemed surprised at all. He was leaned back in the chair with an elbow propped on its arm, resting his temple against the tips of his fingers as he stared at me.
“I met him at a movie theater not too long ago and I ran into him again at Noble’s Saturday night,” I answered and shrugged. “He seems like a nice guy.”
Wyatt and Roe shared a glance, both equally baffled.
I sighed before continuing to tell them everything that had transpired with Clay: what he wanted to do to me, how I’d fought, and how, when it became no use and I was all out of options, I had accepted the fact that he was going to rape me. “Then Prue saved me. She hit him over the head with a cast-iron skillet, knocking him out. She rushed me out the door after that. I was lucky enough to happen to see my keys and wristlet on the way out. I didn’t have any shoes and my dress was ripped. I couldn’t walk anywhere looking like that. I charged my phone in my car and called Mac to lend me some clothes and shoes.”
They all went quiet again.
I crawled off the bed and went over to my dresser under the wall-mounted TV. I scooped up the remote I had set there at some point and turned it on. “If you’re staying, want to watch a movie? I’ve never had anyone over before, so I’m a little unsure what to do.”
Arms wrapped around me from behind and I knew they belonged to Roe. “I’m so fucking sorry that happened to you.”
“It is what it is,” I said.
