Page 54 of Bitter Truths

Max: It was on social media. I’m so sorry

A low wail escapes me, and I drop the phone to my side, staring at the wall. Images of Jason looming above me rake over my skin like razors, and I gasp for air, rolling over before thumping to the floor.

I can’t breathe. I can’t. My lungs are so tight. Curling into a ball, I wrap my arms around my waist and cry, the sound echoing in my ears.

Aaron appears in the door with a worried expression and drops beside me before grabbing me up in his arms. Desperately, I clutch him, scratching my hands over his shirt as my shame passes over my skin like open wounds that leave me abraded and raw. I can’t get the stink clean. I can’t ever be fucking clean.

“What is it?” Aaron asks, grabbing my head and searching my expression with wide eyes.

But I can’t speak, I can’t do anything but choke on my sobs as I convulse in his arms until finally, he picks me up, sets me on the bed, and clutches me from behind. In and out of the void I go, fading as exhaustion overwhelms me until I wake and remember the painful fucking reality again, to which I writhe with the agony of it.

At one point, I think I’m dreaming when I hear Griffin’s gruff voice, but when I blink my eyes open later and shift on the bed, I glance down at the hand around my waist and know it’s him.

He has distinctive hands, huge with long graceful fingers that surely were made to hold the football. It’s as though God decreed it so.

With a sad smile, I pull away and sit on the edge of the bed, rocking myself while I fight the fucking panic once again. I thought I could move past this or at least live with it, but the last of my dignity and hope for a regular future fade away.

I can never be free of this, for even if there weren’t videos, now out there in the world, the stink still bubbles below the surface, and no matter how many times I try to cleanse my soul, it won’t wash clean.

But in the wake of my shame is that bone-chilling rage that’s never left. I welcome it, let it warm my insides and push away the pain. Straightening stiffly, I stare into the void and smile. I’m done being the girl who lays in bed for days and doesn’t eat.

No, she’s moved on and transformed, and I’d rather die than let those fuckers steal any more of my soul.

Glancing back, I find Griffin still sleeping, his handsome features relaxed in repose. My stomach clenches at the sight because he’s so beautiful, and he finally wants me, but it wasn’t meant to be. It would seem we were doomed from the fucking start.

I turn away from him and that dream and drop to the floor, searching for my phone and looking up my tormentors one by one. I studiously ignore social media, although I can see already I have hundreds of notifications. I can only imagine what the messages are, most certainly not those of concern and love.

By the time Griffin rolls over and wakes up, I’ve created a list and made notes about each of Jason’s friends, formerly high school football stars.

There’s Jason, of course, who was the ringleader to my defiling.

Will Jameson covered my mouth when I tried to scream.

Chris Doherty pushed my face away while he rutted inside me.

Billy Cross left bruises on my thighs, and Randy Hughes puked in the bushes after it was over.

To my dismay, I found that Billy died in a car accident, and it just goes to show how sick in the head I am that I’m disappointed he’s not still alive. You’d think dying in a fiery car crash would do it in terms of payback, but no, I wanted him—all of them—to bleed.

“Hey,” Griffin says gruffly behind me.

“Hey,” I whisper, staring at the wall.

Truthfully, of anyone, it’s Griffin that I don’t want to see the videos. Despite everything, I couldn’t bear to see the disgust in his eyes. I made the ultimate mistake, and nothing I do will ever erase it from my past, but on the wings of this is the burning feeling in my heart telling me if he hadn’t baited Jason, this would never have happened.

Even then, he couldn’t get past the games, but the problem was I didn’t fucking know I was playing a game, and it was all based on lies at that. He was punishing me for something I didn’t fucking do.

And so what if I had? Too fucking bad. It didn’t mean he could torture me for years.

“You should go,” I say in a brittle tone.

The silence raises the hair on my arms, and I shift when he says coldly, “Just like that?”

“Yes, I . . . appreciate your concern, but don’t you think it’s a little hypocritical?”

Sighing long and loud, he moves over in the bed until he’s sitting beside me, and his thigh is brushing my shoulder. His warmth feels so good against my perpetually cold skin that I don’t move away, but even that frustrates me because I can’t just let him go.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong. Maybe, as I thought before, I need to suck Griffin in and use him like he’s used me, and then drop his ass and see how he feels about it.

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