“I chilled out a bit at Sarah Lawrence. I realized I didn’t like the slut label, and started campaigning against slut-shaming, women’s rights, equality, all that, as well as being a little less overall slutty. But only a little. I believed in all that women’s lib stuff, still do, but…I don’t know…it was misplaced passion. I’d created this whole persona, this Lexie who was one big spiky armored shell. All slutty and a show-off and a flasher and a skinny-dipper in public pools in broad daylight, someone who could outdrink football players, and all that. It was a persona, my armor against the world. And then, at some point, it just stopped being a persona and was justme. Because I’d forgotten how to be the other me, the quiet shy little victim girl who let her music teacher sexually abuse her for four years.” She laughed. “I don’t even think that Lexie exists anymore. Henley fucked it out of me.”
She turned on the chair and faced me. “So. There’s the story, the secret I could never tell. You are the only person, aside from Henley and me, who knows about it.”
I looked at her, love and compassion in my eyes, fighting for the right words. “Lex, I…I don’t know. I want to hunt down and kill that fucker, slowly. I want to get Crow to come with me, because that guy can be colder than fuckin’ ice. I want to hurt that motherfucker, and make the hurtlast.”
“That won’t fix me,” she said.
“I know.” I sighed, rubbing my face. “It’s just how I feel at this moment. I want to kill that guy. I hate that that happened to you.”
“Not as much as I do.”
“Obviously.” I reached out, and she let me take her hand. “I know there’s nothing I can do to change that, or tofixyou. I think…I think you should see a therapist. And I’m not joking. I have had therapy in the past and I know it can help.”
She reared back. “You have?”
I nodded. “Yep. In Dallas, between tours. My partying on tour was becoming a problem, and my lifestyle of taking advantage of groupies was, too. I don’t mean take advantage in a nefarious way, they were always throwing themselves at me, and I only hooked up with the ones who threw themselves at me. I just mean the opportunity was there and I took advantage of what was offered.”
She squeezed my hand. “I know, Myles. You don’t have to explain that.”
“After what you just told me, I feel like I probably should be more honest about that part of my past.”
“I can smell a predator a mile away. But you’re agoodman, Myles.” She smiled at me. “A really good man. The best. And a sexual predator is the last thing you are.”
“I want to be able to help you, Lexie. I want there to be something I candoto make it better.”
She slid off her chair and onto mine, and curled up on my lap, her head on my chest. Snuggled close. “You can do this. Just hold me.”
“This I can do.”
“It means more than you understand, Myles.” A soft breath of relief. A sniffle. Tears in her voice. “I can’t believe I told you.”
“I’m glad you did. Thank you for telling me.”
“Was I at fault? For not saying something right away?”
I knew I couldn’t give her the knee jerk pacifying answer. “Honestly, no. You were thirteen. He was in a position of power. He had your dream in his hands. He was the authority, and you were a child. A girl. Someone who didn’t know any better, who was put in a horrible, impossible position. I mean, obviously, for your own sake, I wish you had been able to tell someone, but I know from having heard similar stories that telling may not have made it any better or even ended things. Having met your mom, though, I’d like to believe she would have believed you.”
“I can’t tell her, Myles.”
I pulled back. “What? Why do you say that? I think you should. She needs to know.”
“It’ll crush her. She’ll take it as her own failure.” A sniffle, a sob. “I was good at hiding it. She couldn’t have known, but I do admit she knows there is something I’m hiding.”
“There’s a part of me, possibly a cruel part, that wants to say she should’ve justknown, and that maybe she is a little culpable. That she should have been paying closer attention to you. That your mood changes, your withdrawal, were signs that something was wrong.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“That’s a different conversation.”
“Yeah, it is.” A sigh. “I’m tired, now.”
I lifted her, stood up with her, and carried her into the bedroom. I lay on the bed with her and cradled her from behind, holding her tight.
I drifted, and thought she was long since asleep.
“Myles?”
“Yeah, Lex.”
