FAYE
As messed up as it is, I forgave Kit about an hour after the boat incident. But he’s been making it up to me ever since, and I haven’t had the heart to turn him down. Let him think twice about throwing me off steep ledges in the future. Plus, what sane girl wouldn’t want flowers, a foot massage, a few orgasms, and chocolate-covered popcorn?
My brother’s pretty much been occupied with Aeris, which is good news for us because slipping out of the house is a lot easier when you don’t have to find death-defying ways to do it. Casen and Josie have been living their happy life, Bristol’s been training down at the rink to gear up for the upcoming season, and Gage and Fulton have probably been getting into trouble with whatever shenanigans they’re usually up to.
“Where are you taking me now?” I ask Kit, struggling to keep up with his long-ass strides. If we could just, I don’t know, hold hands, it would force him to slow down a bit. But we still can’t take that risk in public.
“It’s a surprise,” he says, winking at me.
I’m grateful that I didn’t opt for heels today because my feet would’ve been blistered by now. It’s around midday, with an orange bloomage feathering over the sky, the heat bearable enough to cap my usual amount of sweat excretion. We pass by a few quaint shops—ranging from flower stores to book emporiums to antique menageries—and the space is bustling with a few more bodies than usual. I can smell the wafting aroma of freshly baked pastries from around the corner, and I feel the whoosh of air-conditioning whenever I pass by open doors. Bushels of lilac asters line the sidewalk, scattered arbitrarily among green, overgrown foliage.
Kit slows once he realizes we have two very different staminas, and he walks shoulder to shoulder with me—or more realistically, shoulder to head.
“You’ll like it, I promise.”
“You don’t have to keep doing things for me, you know,” I tell him, wishing I could reach out and waffle our fingers together.
I want to treat him to something for once, spoil him, show him how grateful I am to have him in my life. I tell him all the time, but it’s different when someone’s actually doing something to express their feelings. And it doesn’t help that my L-word plans got totally ruined when Gage and Fulton showed up. I need something bigger than a boat at sunset. Though I am on a college student’s budget, so that might be kind of hard.
His eyes click down to me, the brown of his irises brightened by the sunlight overhead. “What if I want to keep doing things for you?”
A laugh bounces out of me. “Then I’d say that I—”
But as easily as that laugh came, it’s gone within the same second, like an apparition skating between realms. I don’t know what compelled me to look ahead—maybe just natural instinct—but a few feet away from me in the teeming crowd is an all-too-familiar silhouette. A silhouette that I wouldn’t be able to miss anywhere, no matter what hemisphere of the earth I was in. A silhouette that strikes a chord of fear in me, stronger than the fear I feel whenever my brother gets too close to the truth. That kind of fear is amateurish in comparison. Maybe fear is too soft of a word.
This…person…begets a howling pain within me, one that’s been long dormant since I made my great escape to California. It’s been buried deep within me, stirring and stretching like some kind of creature exiled to the very depths of my belly. And now it’s awake. It’s awake, and the pain rears up. It’s as if my body’s experiencing rigor mortis. My breath slows to the point where I’m not even sure my heart is still beating. The edges of my vision fuzz into an ebony haze.
I don’t know if Kit’s still talking to me. I can’t really see him in my peripheral. All I can see is that man’s face, staring straight into me, the exact same predatory eyes that once violated my body all those years ago. Behind his well-liked façade lives my everlasting sentence to hell.
People never know what the devil looks like. They have preconceptions, sure, but they’re wrong. The devil can be your next-door neighbor, your partner, your mother, your ex-friend, you. The devil can be someone you barely know, or someone who’s infiltrated every aspect of your life to bring you the most unimaginable types of torture. My devil is Saxon Thompson—the man who raped me.
There’s no possible way he can be in California. It can’t be him…can it? I’m seeing things. It’s only someone that looks like him. He can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t hurt me anym—
“Faye!” Kit’s voice is like a life preserver, reaching out to me in the dark chasm of my mind, offering security, safety. All I have to do is swim toward it.
I feel his hands shake me, hear his pitch rise with concern, all while blurry bodies continue gliding past me. Everyone’s faceless except for him. And as he stares at me, unmoving, a crooked smile stretches his mouth inhumanly wide, those sharp fangs of his waiting for me to get close enough—waiting for the opportune moment to sink into the flesh of my jugular.
I can’t hear anything over the blood galloping in my ears, over the roaring pain that my body’s been clinging to this entire time. That night comes back in flashes, first starting with my intoxication, then with his hand on my thigh, then with the sickening noise of his skin against mine, and lastly with the ache between my legs like a string of barbed wire shredding my inner walls.
“Faye, what’s going on?”
Kit’s words sound like a foreign language.
I can’t…I can’t be here. I can’t do this again. I thought it was over. I thought I was free. I thought I was better.
But I wasn’t really better, was I? I was running. Eventually my past was going to catch up to me.
I wish I could say that Kit’s voice was what brought me back to the land of the living. But it wasn’t. It was…his.
“Faye Hollings?”
My eyes strain to stay on him, to not water at the reminder of that night. Sweat besmirches every inch of my exposed skin as bile rises in my throat. I couldn’t say something if I tried. If I open my mouth, I’ll throw up.
That charming smile—the one that made him universally loved by everyone in our grade—is saccharine, the kind that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
“Saxon Thompson. From high school. Oh my God, it’s been like…what? At least a few years since we’ve seen each other,” he says with a radiant expression, looking exactly the same as I remember him. Conventionally attractive, well-dressed, with coiffed, brown hair and ice-blue eyes that freeze me.
Kit’s been clocking this entire interaction with tense shoulders, an untrusting glare, and a grizzly growl rumbling in his chest. But Saxon is as oblivious as he was in high school, only seeing what he wants to see, what will benefit him. Everything else simply doesn’t exist.
Saxon’s gaze has attached onto me like some kind of parasite, burrowing in even the tiniest of crevices. All he needs is a drop of my blood and that moldering rot can begin to spread through blackened tissue. Infection, illness, then death.
“How have you been? You look amazing.”
How can he say that? How can he act like he doesn’t remember? Unless he doesn’t. Unless that night was so inconsequential to him that he forgot he sexually assaulted someone he considered his best friend.
Kit steps the slightest bit in front of me, shielding me with his gargantuan body and sticking his hand out. “Kit Langley,” he greets, receiving a rather enthusiastic shake from Saxon.
Saxon’s smug little face lights up, yet it doesn’t make him look appealing like happiness does on other people. All those controlled wrinkles—manufactured to look genuine—make him look like the lowest life form there is. Repulsive.
“Oh, I know who you are. Big fan of the Reapers. Me and my boys are season ticket holders.”
Kit’s grin is as wide and false as Saxon’s. But unlike Saxon, Kit’s fist curls and uncurls, the surface of his knuckles stark white, stressing the delta of protruding veins on his hand.
My pleading eyes momentarily find his, and when he looks at me, the intensity in those whiskey-dark pools softens to the subtlest of glows. Even the tension pinched in his jaw falls away. He takes a fortifying breath.
“That’s nice, Paxton. So you live in Riverside then?”
Information. Information is good.
“It’s, uh, Saxon. And just visiting a friend, actually. I live up in Wyoming.”
Wyoming. That’s far enough away that I could never see him again—if I’m lucky. At least he’s just passing through. You’re okay, Faye. You’re safe.
“Well, you’ve wasted enough of Faye’s time, don’t you think? We should get going,” Kit hisses from behind a row of perfect teeth, camouflaging the snarl he probably wants to give Saxon instead.
Saxon’s about to say something, but Kit shoulders into him, whisking me away as quickly as possible. Once we get some good distance between us and him, the crowd swallows Saxon’s figure whole, not even leaving the tiniest remnant of him left that could confirm he was ever here in the first place. Kit picks me up in his arms bridal-style, and I interlace my arms around his neck, hiding my face in the cotton of his shirt.
As soon as we round another corner, we arrive at the narrow entrance of an abandoned alleyway, one shadowed by neighboring shop overhangs. He gently sets me down.
“Breathe, Princess. You’re okay. You’re safe,” Kit whispers, his voice a million shades softer than it was only moments ago.
I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to talk again. I know, that sounds a little dramatic. But I’ve never experienced something so scary in my life—not counting that night. I felt like I had to flee to protect myself, that he would hurt me in broad daylight. I don’t mean hurt like punch or kick me. I mean hurt like…touch…me. Even a platonic touch, like a hug or a handshake. Nonconsensual.
Kit’s eyes are attentive and responsive, his stare an impasse that I’m not quite sure how to navigate. His irises are the color of crushed, brown coneflowers, turning a hint darker with volcanic anger. “Who was that man?”
I don’t say anything.
His large, rough hand palms my shoulder, a silent attempt to siphon the worry out of my quaking body and into his robust one. I wish I was one of those girls who stayed strong in times of chaos, who stood her ground and spoke up when she felt threatened. I wish I had spit in Saxon’s face. I wish I had slapped him. I wish I had communicated to him just how deep my rage goes. And now, I’ll never see him again, and I’ll never be able to confront him about that night.
I speak for the first time, gargling around the shards of glass in my esophagus. “He was…”
Kit connects the dots faster than I can, which I’m thankful for. I don’t think I could bring myself to say the word. Words hold a lot of meaning, weight. They stick with you. They represent different things. And some words are more dangerous than others. Some words serve as a constant reminder of the victim you are. No matter what the context is, or who says them, some words follow you like a tenebrous shadow. Always there. Until they merge and become one with you, with your name, with your achievements.
Kit’s lips knot, then tighten into a straight line. “Was that the man who…raped…you?”
It feels like there’s a giant ravine separating me and Kit. A ravine that holds all the trauma from that night—that’s preventing me from going to him and living out the rest of my life safe in his arms.
I nod, feeling my tear ducts begin to sting, unable to stem the emotions bleeding out of me. My nose is stuffy, my mouth begins to salivate, and my stomach roils with queasiness.
I’ll never be able to move on if I don’t work through this trauma. I’ll never truly be happy with Kit if I don’t let him in. I have to be the one to jump the gorge. My little ledge of safety is slowly crumbling, torpedoing to that lightless bottom. I have to take a leap of faith. I don’t want to end up trapped in a deep, dark cave.
“Senior year. Prom night. He—I—everything’s so blurry. We were drinking. A lot. We were having a good time. I w-was never interested in him romantically. We just went together as friends.” The words rush out, the percussion of my breaths matching the plink of dirty rainwater on the corroded fire escape beside us. “We stayed at a hotel for the night since our prom was a city away from our hometown. I was tired. I was drunk. But Saxon was wide awake. B-before we agreed to go together, he always made jokes about wanting to have sex on prom night. The girl he was seeing at the time, she was asked out by another guy. I was…the backup.”
The more I talk about it, the worse the pain gets. Like someone taking a scalpel and slicing me from navel to throat. Gloved hands ripping my skin back, baring my bloody ribs to recycled air, then those same hands plunging into the fleshy matter of my internal organs. While all I can do is watch.
The angles of Kit’s face are blade-sharp, the muscles in his upper body coiled in on themselves like a cobra waiting to strike. His hands are still bleached white from excessive tension, and there’s something alarming about his stare—the ferocity behind it strong enough to weaken knees and topple empires.
Tears, snot, and saliva slick my face in a disgusting resin, and the heat in my body is catapulting to new temperatures. My hands continue to shake, clawing rapaciously for something to stabilize myself. “I was barely conscious. He started touching me, soft at first, but the more I tried to move, the rougher he became. I wasn’t aware enough to fight back even if I wanted to. Then he stripped me of my clothes, whispered terrible things in my ears, penetrated me without any precautions to dull the pain. I remember trying to scream, but I don’t think anyone could hear me.”
“Oh, Faye.”
I look up at Kit through fogged eyes, my breath gossamer-thin, my heart skittish, somehow trying to hide itself from him, even though it’s stored safely in the chamber of my chest.
More salty rivulets cascade down my undoubtedly blotchy face, pebbling at the red seal of my waterline. “I was terrified.”
Kit holds the side of my cheek with his hand, his touch velveteen despite the callouses weathering his palm. I reunite with his touch, feel my heart peek out just the slightest at the familiarity, feel the tears dwindle to a slow-moving pace.
“I’m sorry, Faye. I’m so sorry that happened to you. I wish I had known you back then. I wish I could’ve protected you.”
“I wish so too.”
“I can’t believe I just let that fucker walk away unscathed,” he chews through his teeth. His voice has just the right amount of venom to kill a grown man—or Saxon.
A frown snakes onto my chapped lips. “Kit, I don’t want you to do anything. It’s…all in the past now. I don’t have any evidence he even assaulted me. I couldn’t take him to court. I don’t think I would even want to.”
“You deserve justice,” he growls.
“A lot of victims don’t get the justice they deserve.” I swallow down some of the remaining terror in my body.
“Please, Kit. I just need you to be here with me,” I beg, and almost instantly, the fury notched into his incensed features disappear. He’s been freed of the wrath-like creature operating his movements. No curled lip, no trembling fist; even the twin, black holes of his eyes are starting to lighten.
He embraces me in a hug that almost knocks the wind out of me, his arms squeezing so tight that I’m not sure if he plans on letting go. “Thank you for telling me, Faye. I need you to know that as long as I’m in your life, I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you, okay? I never want you to feel that kind of pain ever again.”
I’m on my tiptoes as I bury my face in the crook of his neck, clinging to his shirt like he’s my salvation, breathing his strength into me so that one day I can protect myself.
“Thank you, Kit.” My heart’s pushing against the prison bars of my ribs, trying to slither its way through the gaps, trying to get to him. My blood pumps for him, my lungs breathe for him. Kit’s the reason I’m alive right now. If he hadn’t picked me up that night at the gas station, I don’t know where I’d be.
