VIOLET
SEPTEMBER | COLUMBUS, OHIO
I told Colton everything.
The situation surrounding it. The aftermath. How I called my mom and begged to come home and she wouldn’t let me. How I couldn’t talk to my dad because he was visiting Maya.
“A boy hurt me,” I told her.
“Boys hurt girls all the time,” Mom had said. “If we all quit every time that happened, there wouldn’t be female surgeons.”
It reinforced the shame I felt. This was the curse of being a woman in a male-dominated society. I should have known better. I felt stupid for putting myself in a situation where I was an easy target. After talking to my mom, I felt like it was all my fault, and that if I didn’t get past it, I was a disappointment, yet again.
I couldn’t afford more disapproval from my parents.
Who I really wanted was Maya, but she was studying abroad during my freshman year. The irony was that she would have been studying at Alden, been there for me, if my parents hadn’t pushed her so hard to be perfect and do everything.
All I wanted from my mom was comfort, and maybe a littlerage on my behalf. What I got were unfair questions. Why would I want to leave Alden, my dream school, an Ivy League school? Why was I at a party in the first place? Didn’t I know dating was a distraction from school? Maya didn’t date. Why couldn’t I be like Maya?
I internalized those questions. I swallowed the victim blaming along with every other bitter pill from this.
Now, I knew it wasn’t my fault. If a friend told me this happened to them, I’d never blame them. But eighteen-year-old Violet didn’t know that. Eighteen-year-old Violet wanted to please her parents, to be as “good” as her older sister. Maya never caused problems like this. I needed to do what my mom said. Suck it up. Move on. Get on the straight and narrow.
So I stayed at Alden. I pretended I was fine. Better than fine. I was a woman on the prowl. A maneater. I acted like I was “easy” to blend in with my sexually liberated friends, but when push came to shove, I never sealed the deal with any guys. I could put up the front. I could be who I wanted to be, and not the wounded, broken person I was afraid of becoming. I would defeat the bruises and the black hole in my memory.
The night I met Colton, I was confident I could maintain my rise-above-it attitude. But then I saw him: the boy who hurt me.
I hadn’t seen him since the night it happened, and I almost convinced myself it was all some weird hallucination. And anyway, our school was big enough that I assumed I could coast through the rest of my college career without seeing him.
As it turned out, that was not the case, because he was goalie for Alden’s hockey team. And I, fool that I was, was in the hockey house. The lion’s den.
I tried to talk myself into staying, that I could handle being in his presence. He should have been afraid of me. I knew whata piece of shit he was. Or at least, who I thought he was. Hard to prove something you only partially remembered.
But all that false swagger couldn’t stop me from shaking, panicking, feeling sick—until I backed into Colton. Colton, who was the exact ray of sunshine I wished I could be. Who I pretended to be. A guy who was naturally lucky, who didn’t know what it was to suffer.
That ray of sunshine gave me exactly what I needed that night. A night of mostly sober beer pong. A night of kisses and cuddles with no pressure for anything else. A night of sweetness that still gave me giddy stomach swoops to remember. I gave my limits, and he respected them. He never pushed. He always listened.
And now he was here, listening again.
“My god,” he breathed. “Can I hug you?”
“I’d love that,” I squeaked.
Colton twisted himself around the console to get a good grip on me. I savored his body heat and the mineral scent of rain. He stilled. “This does not help me like your parents any more.”
I laughed and gave him a big squeeze before letting go. “Yeah, that didn’t do our parent-child bond any favors.” I stared at the dash, figuring out how to tell him the next part. “So the reason I left, both times . . .”
Colton’s eyes misted, but his hold on my hand stayed steady. “Did I do something he did?”
I winced. “You had always been safe for me, Colt. You always listened. But . . . I didn’t know it was coming, or that it even bothered me, and I froze. I didn’t know how to tell you because I didn’t understand it myself. I think it was . . . the position. Going from the back. It’s like I went straight back to that dark place.”
“No spooning. I remember.” Colt’s brow lowered, and helifted my hand to kiss the back of it. “I wish you could have told me. I’d never have done something to hurt you.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears built in me again. “I wish I could have too.”
Colton was quiet for a long time, giving me space to cry, himself space to process it. He spoke low, and with conviction. “Do you know who did it?”
His expression was full of nothing but concern. I had no logical reason to fear telling him. But I also knew how strong the brotherhood of hockey is, especially for him, who really treated his teams as family. He could deny everything. He could say this person isn’t capable of this, flip it back on me somehow. That betrayal might be the worst thing to come of this.
