“I can’t,” I choke out.
“You can’t seriously want to protect him?” Landon barks, then grimaces, glancing away. “Sorry.”
“I’m not protecting him,” I admit before turning to Mum. “I’m so ashamed. I said yes. They’ll know I slept with a married man.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. Ever,” Mum declares fiercely. “Please, let us do this. Don’t make the same mistake I made. Don’t keep silent, Charlotte.”
“Kayla,” Dad whispers, reaching for her.
She shoves him away, glaring. “No. He sexually assaulted her. It’s rape,” she screeches. “My baby girl. Just because they were together, that she said yes, it doesn’t matter. She said no; she told him to stop. And look at her, Myles. Look at your daughter.”
“I am looking,” he yells.
“Stop!” I choke out.
“I am not letting her suffer through this alone. I am not my mother. She has me. I promised myself to never let this happen to my kids.”
“I know you aren’t. I never said that,” he tells her, trying to keep his voice calm.
“She has us to help her,” she tells him, before turning to me. “Please don’t make the same mistake I made. You have a choice; I’ll never take that away from you. It’s always your choice, but please, please don’t let him get away with this. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
“But I said yes.”
She pushes away from the bed, her face turning red. “But you told him to stop!” she screams. “You tried to push him off and he pinned you to the bed.”
I flinch at her tone, my entire body trembling.
“It’s okay,” Landon whispers, pulling me into his arms.
She whirls on my dad. “We were supposed to protect them. We failed them.”
“Stop!” Jacob screams, pushing through the door, his eyes wild as he stares at our mum. “Stop. Please, just stop.”
“Jacob,” I whisper.
He turns to me, his tears spilling down his cheeks.
“I knew he was a bad guy. I went to Landon and Maddox. I knew it,” he tells me, banging his chest. “I could have stopped this. I could have stopped this.”
“Son,” Dad rasps, stepping toward him.
He pushes Dad away and locks his gaze on me. “Please, let them help you. Just let them. You don’t need to do it alone because you aren’t. We are here. We want you to be happy and safe.”
“Jacob,” I call out, clutching my chest.
He wipes his tears with the sleeve of his shirt. “Just listen to them. I miss my sister. You haven’t been the same for a while now and it’s because of him. Now we have you back, let us make it better.”
“Listen to him,” Landon whispers.
I grasp his hand and turn to him, feeling the breath in my lungs get stuck. “I just want it to stop hurting.”
He shifts on the bed, facing me fully. “And we’ll make it stop, Charlie.”
“Okay.”
He jerks for a moment. “Okay, you’ll go to the hospital?”
I nod. “Yes,” I rasp.
“You’ll talk to the police?”
Fear snakes down my spine. “Yes.”
“I’ll go call the police now,” Dad informs us, before meeting my gaze. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I’ll call the hospital, so they know to expect us,” Mum whispers.
“I’m sorry for disappointing you,” I croak.
She walks over, leaning down to press a kiss to my head. “You’ve never been anything but a blessing, sweet girl.”
I begin to sob once again, and Landon pulls me into his chest.
A throat clears and Jacob shuffles in the doorway. “I’m going to call Lily to get Jaxon to sort your cat out.”
He leaves, and once he’s gone, Landon bends down, kissing my forehead. “I’m so fucking sorry, Charlotte. So fucking sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything,” I whisper, gripping his T-shirt. I glance at the sleeves of the large hoodie I’m wearing, my brows bunching together. Where did that come from?
“Yes, I did,” he declares, his voice raw. “I wasn’t there for you. I haven’t been for a while. I’ve been a bad friend. I—”
“Stop, this is no one’s fault but my own.”
“No, it’s not,” he states fiercely. “I’ll make this better, Charlotte. You’ll see.”
“None of this seems real. He was married, Landon. He was making a fool out of me this entire time and I didn’t know,” I tell him, and inhale. “How could something that was meant to be special, turn out like this? It doesn’t feel like I was sexually assaulted, but I feel… I feel…”
“Feel what?” he rasps when I don’t continue.
I blink my lashes up at him, feeling them soaked with tears. “I feel dirty. Unclean.”
“Because you were sexually assaulted,” he tells me.
I close my eyes, pain washing over me as my stomach cramps. “It wasn’t meant to be like this.”
He presses a kiss to my head. “Charlotte, you are special and one day, you’ll meet someone who sees that and cherishes it.”
I wipe my wet cheeks with the sleeve of the hoodie, breathing in the spicy cologne. “No one will ever want me. I thought he was it. The one to change my life.”
He tenses beneath me and I pull back, finding his jaw clenched. “Charlotte, can you remember when we made a promise to let you guys date and find love on your own terms and we wouldn’t get involved?”
My heart hurts because it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t want love if that’s what it ends up like. “Yeah,” I croak out.
“The deal’s off. When I find him, I’m going to kill him.”
My breath hitches. Not in fear of him hurting Scott, but of him getting into trouble for hurting Scott. “Landon, you—”
“Sweetie, we are going to get you to the hospital. I have a spare set of clothes here,” Mum announces, and I turn, finding smudged mascara under her eyes.
“Go with your mum,” Landon orders, getting up from the bed.
I slowly get to my feet and watch him leave, worried about our future. I glance at Mum, my lower lip trembling. “Everything is happening too quickly. It doesn’t feel real.”
She hesitates for a moment before stepping back. “I don’t want to force this decision onto you, or make you feel something that isn’t true to you. But I need you to understand, rape isn’t just being dragged into a dark corner by a stranger. You could ask a strange man back to your hotel room, initiate the entire thing and still say no and mean no. You could go to bed with your husband and if you say no, you mean no. If they don’t stop, if they force you to continue, it’s sexual assault.”
“But I said yes,” I whisper pathetically, the empty feeling spreading in my chest.
“Because you were manipulated into it, whether you believe it or not right now. Narcissistic people do it in a way that will make it seem like it was your idea. I bet he put you down often, made you feel small or even commented on the way you dressed. I bet he turned disagreements you had around on you, made himself superior to you.” She pauses, her expression grimacing in pain. “He should have stopped when you told him to. He never should have laid a hand on you.”