Dissonance (45 page)

“After that, I was too afraid to tell him ‘no’ again. The bruise he left on my stomach took over two weeks to fade. It hurt, constantly, for days. I didn’t want to do anything to make him angry again, so I did what he told me. I sat by while he slept with other girls, I let him… have me when he wanted. I thought about telling Eli a few times when things were bad, but I never did. Somewhere along the line, I accepted that I didn’t deserve anything else. My father had known it, Derek knew it, and the last thing I wanted was for Eli to realize that I was so pitiful. I knew Eli would never hurt me, but I was afraid he might love me less. I could’t handle that. Derek knew that, I think. I think he may have known from the start that I was too pathetic to save myself.

“The day everything changed was about a month after that. I was assigned to work on a project with a classmate of mine, Jeremy. He followed me out of class one day so we could keep talking about how we were going to divide up the work. Derek saw him talking to me by my locker. I saw him standing there, watching us. He didn’t say a thing, just stared at me with a scathing look that absolutely terrified me. That afternoon, when I got home, he was already waiting outside. He’d cut out of school early so he would be there before me. I should have told him to leave, but I knew he would never listen to me. I should have called someone, Eli, the police, anyone, but I didn’t. I let him come inside even though I was more terrified than I had ever been.

“There was something different about him. He seemed more on edge than normal, like he was vibrating with the energy of whatever he was containing. I stood back from him, afraid to be too close. He started asking who I had been talking to earlier. I tried to explain he was my partner, that we had been assigned to work together, that I didn’t have a choice. He started screaming at me then, telling me that I always had a choice, and that I needed to keep in mind who I belonged to. He was losing control, and I knew it. I tried to back further away, but he noticed. He charged across the room before I could get anything between us and grabbed me. He dragged me into my room, holding me with one hand on my arm, and the other fisted in my hair. I started crying, I begged him to let me go. He laughed at me. It was the most chilling sound I have ever heard.”

I was fuming, shaking, absolutely ready to fucking burst. I felt like I was going to be sick, knowing that what Charlotte was going to say next would destroy me.

“He… he pushed me down onto my bed. There was this look in his eyes, this sadistic look that fucking terrified me. I started fighting him off, but it only seemed to excite him more. I could feel his… his arousal pressed against me. He pinned down my arms and just looked at me like I was being ridiculous. I’ll never forget the things he said to me. ‘See, sweetheart? Your job is to please me.’ He always called me ‘sweetheart’ when he was angry. He told he would do whatever the hell he wanted with me. ‘You want to act like a whore?’ he said, ‘I’ll fucking treat you like the whore that you are.’”

The bile rose up in my throat hearing her repeat his words. Everything in me burned with the desire to find this goddamned monster and kill him with my own hands. My fists were clenched so tightly that the entire lengths of my arms were starting to cramp, but it was all that was holding me together in that moment. I hated myself for having called her “sweetheart” all those months ago. I hated that I had triggered such a terrible memory for her. But above everything on the damn Earth, I hated that motherfucker with an insurmountable fury.

“I kept trying to fight him off. He started kissing down my neck, and I lost it. I started kicking everywhere I could. Somehow, I caught him just when he shifted his weight, and made him lose his balance. He started falling off the edge of the bed, but he didn’t let go of my wrists. I fell with him. We hit the dresser, and some of the stuff I kept on it was knocked off. A picture frame I had with a photo of my mom fell near his head and shattered. He got me beneath him again, and the look is his eyes was of undiluted rage. He slammed my body back so that my head hit the floor. Everything went blurry. He had both wrists again, trapped under one of his hands. I was too disoriented to stop him.

“He told me I would regret fighting him. He said he was done wasting his time on a useless little whore like me, but that he’d make sure everyone would know exactly what I was first. I didn’t know what he meant. I was trying so hard to focus, but the dizziness was too much, and I felt like I was going to pass out. Until… there was this searing pain in my left arm.”

It took me a minute to process what she was saying. Only when I watched her wrap the delicate fingers of her right hand around her wrist, did it sink it. Her scar. She hadn’t done that herself. She had not been attempting suicide. Me, Eli, Alex, hell probably everyone who had ever seen it just assumed it had been self-inflicted, when all along, she had been hiding this.

“He left me like that. It was bleeding so much, but I could barely move. If Eli hadn’t come home when he did, I… I don’t know what would have happened.”

Charlotte didn’t say anything for a long time. She just held her wrist, cradling it in front of her as if she was feeling the pain all over again. I waited, but she stayed quiet. Unable to contain it anymore, I moved from my chair to crouch in front of her, taking her shaking wrist into my hands.

“Angel,” I began, my voice cracking from the emotions choking me, “why didn’t you tell Eli what happened? Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?”

She finally looked at me. Her golden eyes were bloodshot, tears I had never expected or wanted to see her cry rolling down her cheeks. She shook her head slightly, her eyes looking so scared at the very thought. it really sunk in then. Even after all this time, she really believed that anyone – myself included – that found out the truth would somehow love her less because of the things that monster did to her. I had to make her see that that wasn’t true.

“I love you, Charlotte.” Her eyes grew wide at my declaration. “You told me all of this, and I still love you, more than anything. Nothing can change that. I want to kill that fucker for the things he did to you, but none of it changes how I feel about you. I hate that you pushed me out, pushed all of us out for so long because you were afraid of that.”

Her head shook slightly, like she was scared to believe what I was saying. I grasped the wrist she was trying to subtly pull away from me.

“This scar? It does not define you. No matter how you got it, it can never define the beautiful person you are. All it can ever be is a mark from the past, a symbol of pain that I wish more than anything that you could have never experienced. It doesn’t ruin any part of you, inside or out, and neither does anything you just told me. Our pasts don’t define us, Charlotte, and even if they did, all yours would say about you is that you were an innocent girl who was hurt by a fucking monster. None of what happened was your fault.”

“I never did anything to stop him,” she answers.

“No, baby. Don’t think for one second that because you didn’t know what to do that you are to blame,” I told her emphatically. “He is to blame for every single thing he did. Your father is to blame for hurting you. You are not to blame for one damn thing.”

Her lower lip quivered, and I wanted this all to be over. I wanted to move forward, to spend the rest of my life showing her that she was so much more than just worthy of love. There was still one more thing I needed to know though, one more part to the story that I needed to understand.

“Charlotte,” I hedged gently, hoping I wouldn’t push her too far by asking, “what happened over the summer, before you moved here?”

She gave a small nod, like she had expected that question. “I ran into someone I had known in high school. We were sort of… catching up, I guess. Then, he mentioned Derek. He asked if I had heard what happened. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

She stopped, and I had no idea what she was going to say. Had that fucker found her? Hurt her again? God, I didn’t know if I could handle that.

What she said when she continued was not what I had expected at all. “Derek… he died. Just a few months before that, he died in a car accident. He had been driving drunk, and he ran off the road.

“I was happy. It’s disgusting to think of being happy about someone dying, but I was so fucking happy that he was dead.” I could not blame her for one damn second. I was fucking happy he was dead too, even if I had wanted to do it myself.

“But then,” she continued, “thinking about him triggered a panic attack. That was when I realized that he would always have power over me, even though he was gone. I didn’t… I don’t think I meant for it to go that far. I was just trying to make the pain stop, so I started taking the pills and drinking. I just wanted his voice out of my head.

“I felt so horrible when I woke up and Eli was there. He didn’t understand, and I had no idea how to take away the pain I caused him.”

I could not stop myself anymore. My beautiful, damaged girl. She had been tormented by her past, and I hated it. I hated that her fear had nearly taken her from all of us. I pressed my lips to hers, reassuring myself that she was really there with me, trying to show her that I was still hers completely. Nothing could change that. Knowing the truth of her past only made me want to take every bit of pain she had known from her. It made me want to shower her with love until she no longer felt trapped as she had for too damn long. This kiss wasn’t the frantic one I had given her earlier, this was me loving her lips, savoring every heart-stopping second. I was breathing her in, drowning in her. I gave all of myself into that kiss, and only hoped she would give me all of her in return.

I broke away from her, meeting her eyes as I pleaded, “Tell me that you love me, angel. Give me that, and I’ll give you everything I have, forever.”

Those eyes that had captured me since the first time I saw her still held trepidation, a hesitancy that I knew would take a long time to remove. What they did not show, was fear. There was a lightness to them, a surrender that I had been dreaming of for so long.

Then, those sweet lips opened, and gave me the greatest gift I had ever known.

“I love you, Logan.”

My lips were on hers in an instant, my heart felt like it might burst from my chest. There was no containing myself. I grabbed onto her hips, pulled her flush against me, and urged her legs around me. I stood without hesitation and carried her into the apartment. I was taking her back to my bed, where she belonged, where I had been lying awake night after night because she wasn’t in my arms. I did not care what happened when we got there, just so long as I had her in my arms again.

I sat on the plush mattress, keeping her in my arms so that she was straddling me. Our kiss had grown deeper, and I was already rock hard beneath her. When she started to circle her hips against me, I nearly lost it.

Groaning, I pulled back. “I love you, baby. God, I want you so badly.”

“Please, Logan, I’m yours.”

That was all I needed. My fingers were immediately reaching beneath the hem of her shirt, pulling the damn thing up and out of my way. I hardly paused to appreciate the sight of her satin bra before I was disconnecting it and tossing it away, too. Her exquisite breasts were bare, her pink nipples puckered. I pulled one sweet tip into my mouth, laving it with my tongue and hollowing my cheeks as I sucked on it. The once slight circling of her hips dissolved into outright grinding, causing me to thrust up, wanting inside of her more than my next breath.

Before I knew it, I had her on her back beneath me. I whipped my shirt off, lowering myself on top of her. As I took her sweet lips again, I marveled at the feel of her soft breasts against my chest, the warmth of her skin seeming to radiate deep within me. She was really back in my arms. She loved me. I felt like I had the goddamn world right there in my hands.