“I would hate to know you’re taking advantage of a caring doctor by telling a story you knew would get back to me. A way of making everybody feel sorry for you.”
She glares at me with what can only be cold hatred. “You saw those guys. Would you put it past them to do something like that? They couldn’t fuck me, so they figured out a way around it. They got off. They had the added pleasure of making me want to scrub my skin until it shredded.”
She goes back to reading her book while I stand here, speechless. Something toughened this girl up. I suspected she had plenty of grit, seeing as how she made it through captivity in one piece.
But this is a different level. She’s been hurt before. So much so that she’s built thick walls around her. She has ways of coping, even if she doesn’t know it. At some point, she was forced to adapt. “Why didn’t you say anything to anyone?”
“You mean to you since you’re the only other person I really talk to?” She barely glances at me before turning the page. “You said I deserved everything they did to me back there, right? I didn’t feel like wasting my time telling you if you were only going to shrug it off.”
Whatever words I want to say evaporate into thin air.
Of course, then she lifts her head, staring at me with a questioning expression. “Why do you care anyway? You literally did the same to me.”
I don’t have an answer for her. Especially when I’ve done worse to her, and that’s infuriating. I’m not any better than those fuckheads. Since there’s nothing to say, I leave her to go back to her work—though I make a point of leaving the door open.
We’ll see how long it takes for her to come out. If she is going to come out at all.