His jaw gritted. “Like I said...I was trapped.”
“Trapped because you secretly wanted her?”
His head snapped up. “What?” His eyes narrowed. “Why the fuck would you ask something like that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Anger flickered through me. “You’re a guy. She was small. You could’ve fought her off. I mean...if you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have been able to get hard—”
“Fucking hell.” He swooped up, dragging hands through his hair. “I know you hate me. I know you’re currently tied up and cursing the very air I breathe, but do you truly think I wanted her? Wanted her over you? Do you honestly think I went to her willingly?”
My chest rose and fell with quickened breaths. “You broke up with me in front of her. How am I supposed to know if you did that because you two were playing some twisted game—”
He bent and grabbed my face, his fingers digging into my flesh. “I deserve your doubt. I deserve you thinking the worst of me...after all, look at what I’m fucking doing. But...O, you couldn’t have hurt me more if you’d tried.”
My chin arched in his hold. “Well, good. I’m glad you’re hurt. Maybe now you’ll understand how I feel.” Yet more cursed tears welled. “I trusted you, Gil. I gave you everything I had, and instead of telling me how I could help you, you went behind my back and decided for me. Twice!” I sniffed coldly. “You did it at school. And you’re doing it now. We were family. We made a deal to be there for each other—”
“I was trying to keep you safe!”
“Safe by sleeping with her?”
“Yes!”
“All because she threatened my future.”
“Yes, okay?! I was an idiot. I—”
“You’re a walking disaster for blackmail.” I wanted to laugh at the absurdity, to cry at the tragedy. “I could’ve handled my own future, you know! My grades were good. She couldn’t have stopped me.”
“You’re right.” He let me go, pacing in front of me. “I’m fucking pathetic. I try to do the right thing, but I always fail. She told me she’d destroy your hopes of university and dance. She said I could never talk to you again. That I had to give her my virginity and—”
“You—” I choked. “You were a virgin?”
His boots stuck to the floor as his body sagged with crippling confession. “My virginity was yours. I was waiting to make sure you were in love with me.” He looked away, unable to hold my stare. “Because once I took you, there was no going back. I was going to marry you and move you away from that shitty place. I had it all planned—”
“Wait.” Fury tangled with my sadness, making me tremble in my ropes. “You’re telling me...that all this time...you saw a future together? You were going to marry me...?” A wash of tiredness crashed over me, scrambling my thoughts. I struggled to pull them back into comprehension. “You let her ruin us, all because you were too afraid to stand up to her!”
“It was my word against hers.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “There was no way I could’ve won.”
“The truth would have won.” I blinked back another tug of tiredness.
“The truth was I was the son of an alcoholic pimp who beat me. My upbringing wasn’t with siblings but with whores. Tallup was a Christian teacher who lived with her mother and did charity work. Do you honestly think I stood a chance? That her word against mine wouldn’t win? She could do whatever she fucking liked, and there was nothing I could do.”
I swallowed hard. “And what exactly...did she do to you?”
Shutters came down over his eyes. His hands balled as pure rage dripped over him. “I already told you.”
I shook my head from yet another lick of lethargy. “You slept with her.”
His teeth bared. “Yes.”
“How exactly? If you didn’t want it, how—”
“She tricked me into taking Viagra.”
“Oh...”
Time froze.
Everything stopped.
And I saw this from an outsider’s point of view. I heard my judgement. I saw my dread. And I despised myself.
This isn’t me.
I wasn’t a woman bound and trapped by a man willing to kill me. I was just a girl, judging a boy for sexual molestation. I did what chauvinistic society did to girls who were raped. I blamed him. I believed it must’ve been his fault.
But it wasn’t his fault.
And it wasn’t fair to use my hurt against him.
The truth stabbed me right in the chest. “You didn’t sleep with her, Gil. She raped you.”
God.
She raped him and cut him off from everyone.
She—
I want to kill her.
Rip out her heart and burn it on a pyre.
My fingers turned numb along with my tongue, shutting down piece by piece. “She abused you. God, Gil, she took everything from you—”
He held up a hand, his entire frame shaking. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t you fucking dare feel sorry for me. Do not be that good. Do not be that fucking kind!”
“But you were just a child. And she was our teach—”
“Stop it. I want you to hate me. You need to hate me.” He howled at the ceiling. “I need you to resent me with everything you have. Be disgusted with me. Curse me. Fuck, please.” He fell to his knees. “I can’t do this if you forgive all my sins. I can’t do this if you still love me...no matter what I fucking do to you.”
Another lash of heaviness slithered through my brain, scattering my thoughts before realigning. I blinked back the increasing lethargy. “You dealt with that...on your own.” I cried tears for the boy I’d lost. “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t trust me to help you. You were all alone.”
He rocked with his hands clasped in prayer, bowing to me, placing me in position of a goddess. A goddess of death and destruction. An offering to a bigger, more malignant power. “I thought I could keep you safe.”
“Instead, you cut me out.” My voice was silk-wrapped daggers. “You ruined both of us.” I longed to touch him, to hug him. If I touched him now, I might be able to stop him from doing this. I finally knew what’d twisted him up so badly. “It’s okay. It’s over now.”
My roped hands reached for his face to grant him absolution. To let him know, I might hate his actions tonight, but I didn’t hate him—no matter how much trust he’d shattered. “Gil...it’s over. Untie me. It’s not just your word against hers. I’ll stand beside you. We’ll ask for help together. We’ll save Olive some other way.”
“Olin.” His tears fell openly now. “Goddammit, I—”
My fingers grazed his five o’clock shadow. He reared backward, terror filling his gaze. “Don’t. I’ll break if you touch me. I’m breaking already.”
“Let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re not alone anymore.” Another crush of exhaustion pressed into me, forcing me into haziness. My eyes unfocused on the rope around my wrists. My mind flickered on and off. I licked my lips, clawing my way back to lucidity. “I forgive you for this, Gilbert Clark. I forgive you for everything. Just let me go and...” Reality checked out for a second, my brain tiptoeing into sleep. I opened my eyes with a jerk, raising my heavy head. “What...what’s going on? Why am I so tired?”