Page 58 of Seduced By You

I shook my head. “It’s about time. This thing… it’s a poison, eating me from the inside. Telling you might be the cure I’ve searched for since it happened.” I set down the glass. “Give me a minute.”

I stood, paced, rubbed my lower back, paced some more. The jumble of words forming the basis of an explanation gathered together in my mind, as if a magnet was in the center of a circle and each word was powerless to resist the pull. Slowly, as if by magic, they made a sentence, then a paragraph. I remained standing but found the courage to look Lee right in the eye.

“I crept toward the crying. I didn’t want to intrude on someone’s privacy if they were having a moment. Lots of kids got homesick as the term progressed.” I took several deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. My heart flopped about inside my chest so much that I considered the possibility that the arteries had detached. Although if that were the case, I’d be dead.

Like Henry.

Fuck.

“Breathe, Kadon. You’re freaking me out. Here, squeeze my hand.”

I held on to her, my one sliver of stability. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say we were on a boat in rough seas. The floor beneath my feet undulated. I slumped onto the bed.

“He… the bully… Henry… he had Samuel. He had S-s…” Ah, fuck.I can’t do this.I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“I think we should stop.”

“No!” I swallowed. “No. If I don’t do this now, that’s it. I’ll never be able to tell you, and I don’t want to keep secrets from you. Not from you. Not anymore.”

“Okay, okay.” She ran her free hand up and down my arm.

I took several more deep breaths. No idea where it came from, but a calm settled over me. Maybe Lee was passing her strength to me through our joined hands. I locked eyes with her again.

“Henry had Samuel bent over a table in between the bookcases. Samuel’s pajama bottoms were around his ankles, and Henry was…” Nausea ripped through my stomach.

Lee’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God, Kadon. No.”

“I lost it, Lee. This surge of anger, of blind white rage, overtook me. I must have blocked out what happened because the next thing I remember was Henry lying on the floor with blood gushing from the back of his head. Samuel pulled up his pants and ran screaming from the library. I slumped to the floor. That’s where the school nurse found me. The rest of the night is a blur. Blue flashing lights, the principal’s agonizing cries, police asking me questions. My dad arrived the following afternoon, and somehow, he made it all go away.”

“What happened to Henry?”

“He… died. Samuel told the authorities that I hit Henry, and he fell and cracked his head on the corner of the table. Blunt force trauma, according to the coroner.”

She steepled both hands over her nose and mouth and just… stared. At me, at the floor, out the window. I understood her state of shock. I was in the same place. It had taken me nine years to tell anyone outside of the authorities and my family.

Even if it cost me my friendship with Lee, I’d never regret her being the one I finally confessed to.

“The boy, Samuel. What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. His parents came to pick him up the next day, and I never saw him again.” I worried my lip, stopping only when I tasted blood. “I never paid for it, Lee. My father whitewashed it away, as if it never happened. But it did happen. Henry was a living, breathing human being, and I killed him.”

“Henry was a rapist.”

A shudder racked my body, the images from that night as clear today as they were nine years ago. “Yes, he was, but that didn’t give me the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner.”

“Kadon, it was anaccident.”

I shook my head. “No. An accident is where no one is culpable. I heard that same excuse so many times from my parents and my brothers after I returned home to Seattle, but they were wrong, and you’re wrong. If I hadn’t lost my temper and hit him, Henry would be alive today.”

“And Samuel? What would have happened to him if you hadn’t stepped in? Have you thought about that?”

I had, many times, yet I always focused on the life I’d taken rather than the life I’d saved. If I knew what happened to Samuel, I might get some closure. All I’d ever wished for was that, unlike me, he’d been able to put those horrific experiences behind him and move on with his life. He deserved to be happy.

I hadn’t yet figured out whether I deserved the same.

“You should try to find him. Samuel, I mean.”

I gave her a watery smile. “Funny you should say that. I’ve had a private investigator on the case for about a year, but so far, nothing. The authorities sealed the records because we were minors, and the Swiss are world class at keeping information secure. It’s their superpower.”

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