My eyes clenched close. I wished I could say otherwise, but while he wasn’t wholly right, neither was he totally wrong. In this instance, neither was great.
“Yes,” I whispered miserably.
He let loose a sharp breath at my confirmation.
“It’s not as facile as that, though. My rational mind knows you didn’t do it.”
“But you’re not rational seconds after you’ve just woken up from a nightmare where you’ve been raped again.”
I sucked my cheek into my mouth and bit down. Hard. “No, I’m not.”
“I always hated Grizzly. I didn’t realize he was a rapist though. Dad always let him get away with shit and he shouldn’t have. He was nothing special as a councilor.”
Still with that same, musing, watchful tone.
This was starting to feel odd again.
Was he angry or upset?
“You saw me without a beard or stubble the other day, Rach.”
“Yeah. I did.”
The pause was loaded, heavy. With what, I didn’t know, until he ground out, “Did I look like Grizzly then?”
My throat suddenly felt tight. Thick. Hope, hot and heavy, settled in my heart. “No.”
He released a breath. “You’ve never slept with anyone…” A hiss sounded down the line. “I know something happened at college. I… I’m not… did—”
For the first time in his life, Rex was clearly lost for words.
Helping him out because it was too painful not to, I muttered, “I never slept with anyone by choice.”
“God help me,” he breathed. “Do you know how much I fucking love you? Do you know what the fuck I’d do to keep you safe? And I didn’t. It wasn’t enough. My own goddamn blood hurt you, and then that bastard—”
Though I heard his pain, felt it now, finally, his words rammed their way home.
I’d misunderstood.
He hadn’t been asking if I’d had consensual sex with anyone.
He’d been saying that he knew I’d been attacked in college.
My throat closed again, but before I could choke, he rasped, “The second Gunner got in touch with me and told me what had happened, I nearly fucking killed myself riding over to your apartment.”
Gunner had been there?
Watching over me?
I thought about Hunter, covered in blood. I thought about Aurora, screaming. My mind turned blank. Black.
Dizziness hit me.
He’d known all along?
I’d imagined he’d picked together the pieces, but not the outright facts.
“What did you do?” I whispered.
“Got rid of the body.”
His voice was flat again.
“I was too late to protect you though. I’m always too fucking late.”
“Rex?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“I-I think I’m going to be sick.”
I heard him yelp my name but I threw my cell down onto the chair and darted inside. Almost skidding as I made it to the bathroom, my knees ached as they collided with the tiled floor.
Heaving, I puked up what I’d eaten, and that was when I felt some hands in my hair and a soft humming noise.
I smelled a fruity perfume and a bump nudged me in the back.
“It’s okay,” Giulia said softly, her fingers still in my hair as she held it away from my face. “It’s okay, Rachel. Get it out.”
My stomach ached from the purge, and I twisted to look at her, eyes wet as I demanded, “What are you doing in here?”
“Rex called Nyx. He wanted me to check on you.”
My bottom lip wobbled. “He knew.”
“About the baby?”
I shook my head. “He knew about the guy who hurt me in college.”
“Does that come as that much of a surprise?” she asked kindly. “Isn’t Rex like the MC’s God? Sees all, hears all, knows all?” Her words were too much like Hunter’s mockery from weeks before. Goddamn men knowing everything but not reacting how I thought they’d react. Giulia, unaware of my thoughts, pursed her lips. “Well, apart from where the Sparrows are concerned. His omnipotence is on the fritz with them.”
I stared blearily at her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “Didn’t mean to get philosophical on you. Are you okay?”
“H-He said he got rid of the body.”
“Isn’t that what they do? Clean up after us?”
“I didn’t kill him,” I whispered.
“Who did?”
“One of my best friends.”
“So, he was protecting him?”
“I-I guess.”
“And was there a police investigation?”
“N-No. It was more of a missing persons case.”
The parallel between the murder of Aurora’s husband and David, Indy’s receptionist, was uncannily similar.
Uneasily, I tilted my head down again, aware that the urge to puke hadn’t abated.
“Never spent as much time in a bathroom with another woman before,” Giulia mused. “Gotta say, I wish we chose one of your living rooms. It’d be a lot more comfortable than this.”
I spat out the last remainder of vomit in my mouth. “You can go, Giulia. I’m okay.”
“Nah, if you looked at yourself in the mirror, you’d realize what utter bullshit that is.” She sniffed. “Anyway, you’re coming to our meeting tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“I’m supposed to.”
“You should come. You’re as fucked up as we are,” Giulia said cheerfully. “Might do you some good. You might stop being so repressed.”
“I’m not repressed.”
Giulia snickered. “Yeah, okay, you tell yourself that. If you’re not repressed, then you’re depressed. Either way, for a shrink who ain’t a shrink yet, Tiff’s pretty good at getting us all to open up and talk about shit nobody wants to say out loud.”
Resting my arms on the toilet seat, I pressed my head to my bicep and whispered, “I don’t know if I belong there.”
“Why not?”
“Lily, Alessa, Amara, and Indy… God, they’ve been through so much.”
“And you haven’t?”
“Not like them.”
“There a limit on trauma and grief?” She arched a brow, but her bottom lip wobbled before she contained it to say, “By that logic, I shouldn’t be there either. Luke Lancaster only shoved a finger in me. Does that mean I wasn’t assaulted?”
“N-No. Of course not.”
“So, if you think I deserve to be there, why wouldn’t you deserve to be there too?”
Her logic was sound. I’d have thrown that reasoning at her too. But I was different, wasn’t I?
When I licked my lips, the taste of vomit had my nose crinkling. With a grunt, Giulia clambered up into a standing position after I helped support her, guilt hitting me when I realized I’d made the heavily pregnant woman kneel on the floor.
She peered in the vanity cabinet and passed me a bottle of mouthwash. “Here.”
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure. You’re going to come tomorrow, aren’t you? No more ‘supposed to?’”
After I swigged some of the mouthwash around my teeth and spat it into the bowl, feeling the disgusting taste disperse as I did so, I closed the toilet lid and flushed it.