Tears sting at my eyes as the feeling of being rejected builds inside me. I could stand by and just let it come like I did the last time, but unlike Sean, Ethan seems like he’s worth fighting for. “I don’t want how I’m feeling to go away.” His lips part, about to say something, but I interrupt him, deciding that it’s time to let him know who I really am on the inside, without the pills, the shots of Bacardi, without the makeup and fancy clothes.
“When I was fourteen and I went off to boarding school, I met this guy,” I begin, summoning every speck of courage I’ve kept locked inside me. “Actually, I kind of made us meet. I was feeling really lonely and this group of girls—the Precious Bells”—I roll my eyes at how ridiculous it sounds—“said they would be my friend if I hit on one of these older rich guys who liked to hang out at the library for some reason.” I can feel the ring on my finger weighing a hundred pounds. The ring Sean gave to me, telling me he loved me, whispering a false promise of loving me forever. Suddenly, I don’t want it on my finger, branding me and what we did together. I don’t want to remember his love anymore. Or him. Who I was with him. I want to move on, become a different person—a stronger person—so I slip it off and toss it onto the nightstand next to me.
Ethan watches me with curiosity, trailing his fingers back and forth across my stomach. “Are you okay?”
I nod, returning my wrist to his hand, and continue with my story. “I hit on him and he seemed to be interested. At first, things moved really slow, a few text and e-mails, but then we finally met up and everything changed. We kissed and for the first time in my life… I felt loved.” I pause, catching my breath. Ethan looks like he wants to say something, his forehead furrowed as he swallows hard but I keep going because I need to get it all out. “Anyway, to make a long story short, I was really stupid and pretty much would do anything he told me to do because I thought he loved me.” I pause. “The first and only time we had sex”—I bring my free wrist up, the scar on it matching the one on my other wrist—“he tied me to the bed with ropes, even though I wasn’t really into it.” I nod at my stomach and he follows my gaze to the faded scar traveling across the bottom section of my stomach. “And then… well, I’m pretty sure you can probably figure out what happened next.”
His skin turns white as he stares at the scars on my stomach and then his gaze returns to mine. “Those are from the ropes because some fucking guy tied you to a bed?”
I nod and then shrug. “It was my own damn fault. I told him no once, but he said it’d be okay, so I believed him and went through with it.” Tears burn at my eyes as I remember how confused I felt, how lost, how disgusting and yet at the same time loved I felt. “And it kind of felt good at first, but then when he…” I breathe out, letting the words rush out. “Well, he got really rough with me and I was too afraid to ask him to stop, too afraid I’d lose his love.” I suck back the tears, forcing myself not to show the shame I feel on the inside. Keep it trapped. “Afterward, he left me and I never saw him again. I guess his girlfriend, who I didn’t even know about, found out about me but honestly I’m pretty sure he was done with me… I could see it in his eyes when he finished fucking me that he was done.” I pause, taking a deep breath. “What made it worse was that everyone found out about it and told me that I was a slut.” I give Ethan a moment, because he looks like he’s about to freak out. “I should stop, right? This is too much.” I start to sit up, ready to go and give him some breathing room from my slutishness and depressing story.
“How old was he?” he asks through gritted teeth as he gently pushes me back down on the bed. “This guy.”
“Twenty-two,” I say and feel him cringe. “Anyway, it was a long time ago and I’m sure he’s completely forgotten about me at this point. I’m just trying to tell you why I am the way I am. I’ve spent the last six years popping pills and having sex with random guys because I seriously feel like I don’t deserve anything better.” I’m about to cry and I hate myself for it. I feel so ugly right now, but Ethan deserves to know who I am, what he’s going to get into if he chooses to be with me. “I’m fucked up, Ethan. I never feel loved, yet I always keep looking for it, hoping that somehow it really exists.”
He watches me for an eternity. “The guy who was twenty-two was fucked up. He should have never been with you, let alone tied you to a bed your first time.”
“I instigated our relationship… It wasn’t entirely his fault.”
“I don’t give a shit who instigated it. You were fourteen and didn’t know any better.”
I roll my eyes, more than anything to keep the tears from escaping, because he’s saying everything I wished my mother would have said when I told her, but instead she told me it was my fault and made me feel more like the whore everyone was telling me I was. “I didn’t put up very much of a fight when he was tying me up.”
He scoots closer, placing a hand on top of my rib cage, just below my breast. “Lila, everything about that story was wrong on the guy’s part. He was way too old to be messing around with a fourteen-year-old. It’s disturbing and wrong and illegal.”
“My mother didn’t think so,” I say, speaking more to the ceiling than to Ethan, my eyes locked on a crack running from the top of the wall to the fan in the middle. My vision is still blurred with tears, but thankfully no more are forcing their way up. “She said that she expected nothing less from me and then she handed me a pill so I wouldn’t have to feel all the guilt and shame I’d been feeling.”
He rolls to his side, putting his body above me, so his face is directly in my line of vision. “Are you being fucking serious right now?” Anger flashes in his eyes. “Your mother’s the one who got you started on those pills?”
I nod, startled by the fury in his eyes. “Sh-She thought she was making me feel better.”
“Your mother’s an idiot,” Ethan says, shaking his head. “Lila, seriously. That’s not normal at all. God, I hate this. I hate how parents are supposed to be the adults, and yet they act like children and bring their children down with them. It happens all the time and it’s ridiculous.”
I’m not sure what to do, all I know is now I’m worried he’s going to leave me because of how fucked up my family is. “I… it was my own fault for taking it.”
He shakes his head resolutely as he cups my face and grazes his thumb across my cheekbone, staring intensely into my eyes. “No, it wasn’t. None of what happened was your fault.” He stares at me for an eternity and I have no idea what he’s thinking, whether he’s going to leave me, what he’s going to say. Then he slides his hand down my shoulder, rests it on my side, and he pulls me against him as he turns, hugging me against him, our bodies pressed together. And it feels so amazing, just to be hugged, to know that someone cares about me, that he’s not going to run away and leave me.
“You deserve so much better than what you have,” he whispers against my head. “You really do.”
A few tears fall from my eyes, not just over my mother or what Sean did to me, or even how I spent the last six years of my life. I cry because Ethan’s holding on to me and for the first time in my entire life, I feel like someone wants to hold me just as much as I want to hold on to them.
Chapter Fifteen
Ethan
I would have never guessed. Looking at Lila, I’d always seen a beautiful girl, one who I thought had been spoiled most of her life. She seemed to always get what she wanted and did whatever she wanted. There were a few brief moments when I saw sadness in her eyes, but I never, ever thought it would be from something as dark as what she told me.