I can feel Xander’s curious stare on the side of my face, but I don’t look over, watching the people swim around in the heated pool instead.
“Alright noted, next topic,” he says, clearing his throat. I can hear the hesitancy in his voice, but I don’t care. I wasn’t going there. “Tell me about yourself then?”
“What do you want to know?”
“You don’t talk a lot about your family, what’re your parents like? Siblings?”
I snort. “My dad’s been a distant dick most of his life. My brother usually the same. Some days he has his moments when I don’t want to shove his face in a toilet.” My tone syrupy. “So, I guess he’s not bad.”
Finn’s gesture at the amusement park had been nice and there had been no hidden agenda behind it. The action was thoughtful. Which is how he’d got the last part added to his explanation.
“What about your mom? She’s got to be better, right?”
I wince. Not in the slightest.
“She’s dead.”
I finally look over at him and his frown is focused forward. “Rory, I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he says, remorseful.
My chest tightens. The strain is as strong as the fists balled at my sides.
“You don’t need to apologize.” Not after what she’d allowed to happen.
The memory I try and push away but like a snake, it slithers its way out of that box I’d kept it locked away in for years. Blocking it out was the easiest way to cope and move on.
Now it seems my time has run out. That nightmare deciding to make an appearance I couldn’t stop from coming forward. The thought pulverizing me like the weight of a torpedo when I was nothing more than a splinter of a person in comparison.
I choke on my own breath. Xander was speaking and he was nervous. My brain was registering him talking but I couldn’t answer. My tongue wasn’t working. Stuck, caked to the roof of my mouth.
Count to five, hold it in. Count to five, release. Count to five, hold it in. Count to five, release. Count to five, hold it in. Count to five, release.Dammit.
It wasn’t working.
His hands draw closer. Skimming the edge of my comforter. This wasn’t his room, my mother’s down the hall. Why was he here?
My breathing drawing out into short pants.
I couldn’t stop, couldn’t unsee it in my brain.
Slowly they make their way under the cover, and I know why. His hands find my thighs, and I stay frozen, too afraid to move. Inching themselves higher and higher up my leg…
Xander was still talking. Too distracted in his own nervousness at what he’d just asked to know that I was dying all over again inside.
My young, hardly a teenage self, turned into damaged goods by a man who knew better. I, Rory Hale, am broken beyond repair but breathing,barely.
“I-I have to go.” Somehow managing to spit out the words.
If Xander responded, I didn’t hear because it was too late. I was already gone.
thirty-seven
Rory
“Whatareyoudoinghere?”
“Looking for the kitchen,” he says lightly.
I can’t help the soft smirk that crosses my lips. Cole referencing what I’d said that night at the back-to-school bash at his lake house.