Layne’s jaw tensed, but he showed some guts and nodded.
“We were only days away from graduation, and I stupidly thought I was going to make it without any major issues. The first thing that I had planned … I was going to change my name and leave Arkansas. All I wanted was to fit in and be accepted, and the only way I knew how to do it was to start over. Cut my past off like a cancerous skin growth.”
“That’s why you came to Washington?”
“Yeah, and I gave myself a different name. No one knows me by Victoria. When I left Little Rock, I left her behind.” I took another drink of water. My throat was tight at the thought of speaking the horror out loud. “It was after seven that night, and I was headed to the shower in the girls’ locker room. When I rounded the corner, Chloe was waiting for me. She wasn’t surprised to see me, and I immediately knew in my heart you’d betrayed me. Before I could take off in the opposite direction, a foul-smelling cloth covered my nose. I don’t remember anything after that. Only when … I woke up.” I squeezed my eyes closed, unwilling to allow the tears to fall in front of him.
“When I parked the car that morning and saw you, it horrified me. I’d never witnessed anything like it. And how a human being could do something like that to another …” His jaw clenched. “The teachers were already with you, and I hurried into the school building to find Chloe. When I did, she was with a group of girls, laughing about what they’d done. I grabbed her arm and reamed her right in front of her shitty friends. I told her how disgusted I was, then I broke up with her,” he admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets.
My brows shot up, and shock traveled through my entire being. “You broke up with her?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t associate with anyone so coldhearted and ruthless.” He scrubbed his face with his hands and exhaled a heavy breath. “Our relationship was over before she did that to you; I just didn’t want to deal with her dramatics until after graduation.”
I rubbed my arms, realizing I was still wearing his jacket. “I didn’t even know the extent of what she’d done until they removed me from the flagpole.” My voice almost sounded foreign to my own ears. Hearing Layne finally speak about what had happened … It was almost as if I were reliving it all over again. But I needed to know the truth.
Pinching the bridge of my nose in order to hold on to any semblance of sanity, I inhaled slowly, filling my lungs with the fresh evening air. “I woke up hours before anyone found me. I can’t explain to you the terror that consumed me when I was unable to move. My heart was pounding so hard that I thought it would betray me. It would have been a blessing if it had.” My voice shook as I recalled the trauma. “As you saw, my mouth was taped closed, and I was duct-taped to the flagpole that stood at the entrance to our high school. It was then that I realized Chloe hadn’t acted alone. There was no way one girl could have held me up and ran the tape around me.”
“Tensley.” Layne’s gentle tone did little to calm my nerves. He placed a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off.
“When the teachers broke me free, I was too weak to stand, but it didn’t escape me that I was completely naked.” A hard, clipped laugh rushed out of me. “I stood naked in front of two male teachers. Thank God they’d cleared out the rest of the students. They covered me with a blanket as the cops showed up. Mrs. Glendale walked me to the locker room, and when I passed the mirror …” I lost the battle, and tears streamed down my face. “They’d chopped off my hair, and all that was left was short, jagged pieces jutting out of my head. Bitch was painted in red across my forehead.” I angrily swiped at the tears that fell. “They stripped me of my clothes, hair, and dignity, Layne. The entire school saw me! I fucking hate you for telling her where I was hiding.” Spittle flew out of my mouth, and I sank to my knees as my sobs wrecked me.
A strong arm encompassed me as Layne sat next to me on the ground.
“They got away with it too. A cousin of one of the girls was an attorney, and all they had to do was community service. What the fuck kind of sentence was that?” I continued to cry into my hands, furious with myself for showing my vulnerability to him, but it was the first time I’d spoken about the incident since it happened.
“I had no idea. Please, you have to believe me. I know you had a tough time at home, but you and I had classes together. Hell, we were study partners in tenth-grade biology. I realize we weren’t friends, but I never wanted you to get hurt. When I mentioned to Chloe that I thought you were living in the janitor’s closet, it wasn’t because I was trying to be mean. I was concerned, and I asked her because I wanted to know if her dad could help you find a better place to live. I was worried.”
My cries settled down, and I pulled away from him. “What?” That was the opposite of what I’d expected to hear.
He leaned his head back and stared up at the star-filled sky. “I never meant to cause problems for you. I actually tried to help. No one lives at school, hiding, unless it’s super shitty at home.”
I sat up, surveying him. He seemed sincere, but there was no way to know if he was lying to me.
Layne’s arm slipped away, and I leaned against the cement bench, even though my back screamed in protest. Maybe I was more banged up than I thought.
“I realize you have no reason to forgive me, but I’d like to try to make it up to you. Let me help while Benji is recovering. Give me a chance, Tensley.” His blue eyes pleaded with me, but somewhere deep inside my soul, I had a feeling I wasn’t the only person he was trying to make amends with.
Unable to answer him right away, I mentally reviewed what had just occurred between us. Had I been blaming him when he hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened? Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe something had changed him. If I understood anything, it was leaving my past behind and creating something better, or at least new.
“You’re on probation.” I looked at him, gauging his reaction to my comment, but it didn’t seem to faze him. “Benji is my best friend, Layne. You have no idea how much I love him or what I would do for him. What happened to him tonight was a hate crime, and I hope those motherfuckers go down, but I might need a ride to the hospital some … or someone to talk to about shit. Since you were there and witnessed it—”
“Anything you need,” he interrupted.
My pulse did a double take, and my walls crumbled a little while he stared at me. How had everything changed in an evening? With one brutal beating and a near rape, my world as I knew it had turned on its axis.
“We should go back in and see if there’s any update, not to mention you’re shivering.” Layne stood, then held out his hand to me.
I placed mine in his and allowed him to help me stand. “I hurt,” I admitted.
“I know. You put up a hell of a fight tonight. Would you let a doctor look at you?”
Placing my fingers over the sharp pain in my side, I nodded. Layne continued to hold my hand as he guided me back into the emergency room and directly to the front desk.
“Excuse me, she needs to be seen. She was in the same attack as Benji Parker,” Layne said, keeping his focus on me.
“Of course,” the nurse said. “Just fill out this information and have a seat in the waiting area. We will tend to—”