Page 82 of Bound By Threads
“If you really killed him for me…” She looks me up and down. “Then, where was that energy for Crew? For Roman? Foryourself?”
I stare at her in shock. “I?—”
“Because you three,” she continues, stepping even closer, “you shattered me. You knew me, knew everything I was going through. You looked me in the eyes and still chose to ruin me. Your dad was a monster, but he never pretended to be anything but. You? You left me in that room with him. You pretended to look at a broken girl like she could be your world, and then shattered her for your amusement.”
My voice feels trapped. I can’t breathe… can’t think.
“Let me make it right…”
She doesn’t respond at first. Just studies me, her face unreadable. Her silence is louder than any scream.
“You want to make it up to me?” she asks, her voice filled with confusion.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Then leave me alone.”
The silence rings in my ears. I feel the demand in my bones.
“And stop begging,” she adds, her lip curling. “It’s embarrassing.”
I flinch. She might as well have slapped me because I’ve uttered those same words to her once upon a time.
“What else? I’ll do anything but that.”
She thinks for a moment, then she leans into my face. “Kneel.”
I don’t move. Not right away.
I drop to my knees.
Her words hang in the air like smoke, thick and choking. Leave her alone. Don’t beg. It’s embarrassing.
But I am embarrassed.
Not because I’m kneeling in front of her, not because I’m pleading, but because she’s right.
I let her drown in silence and greedily stole parts of her for myself.
I look up at her, really look at her, and it’s like seeing her for the first time. Her arms are folded like armor, jaw clenched like she’s holding herself together by sheer will.
“I didn’t know…” I whisper.
“That’s the point, Elijah,” she says. “You should have known. You were supposed to be the one who saw me. You said you did. You said I was safe with you, and you made me feel anything but.”
My stomach twists.
“I meant it.”
“No, you meant I was safe until you were done with me,” she spits. “But I was never safe. I was cornered at every turn by the three of you, humiliated,violated, and every time I begged you with my eyes because my voice was stolen, you ignored me because it didn’t fit into your narrative.”
She paces now, each step like a drum beat echoing in my chest.
“Every time you would lock me in a classroom, I heard the click like a countdown,” she says. “And I would break… again and again. The pain. The fragmented memories of that night would break me apart, and I’d have to face you three straight after, like I wasn’t already teetering on the edge.”
Lottie takes a deep breath, haunted brown eyes finding mine. “I didn’t just survive him. I survived you, and I had to do it all without ever being allowed to scream. Dying was the best thing I ever did.”
She turns her back on me. Arms shaking, and it takes everything in me not to reach out and pull her into me.
