Chapter 132 Cry it out
Greyson
The city blurred past my window as I drove with no particular destination in mind, just the desperate need to put distance between myself and the memory that had ambushed me in my own bed. My hands gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make my knuckles white, my jaw clenched against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm me.
Cassie's lips. Cassie's mouth. Cassie looking up at me with those trusting eyes.
for a moment just a moment it hadn't been Cassie at all.
I pulled over abruptly, my breathing ragged as I fought against the panic clawing at my chest. The rational part of my mind knew the difference. Knew that what Cassie had done came from love, from desire, from the simple want to bring me pleasure, my body didn't make those distinctions. My body only remembered being twelve years old and powerless and afraid.
My phone buzzed with a text from Cassie, but I couldn't bring myself to read it. I'd seen the hurt in her eyes when I'd pushed her away, had seen the confusion and self-doubt that my reaction had caused. She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve me bringing my damaged past into her bed.
The worst part was the anger I felt toward her, even knowing it was irrational. She'd done exactly what any woman might do for a man she cared about, but in that moment when she'd looked up at me, when she'd had me so completely at her mercy, I'd felt that familiar helplessness creep in. The same helplessness that had nearly destroyed me as a child.
Without conscious thought, I found myself driving toward the suburbs, toward the modest house where my sister lived with her husband and two young children. Meagan was the only person who knew the full truth about our childhood, the only one who'd been there to witness what Jake Turner's father had done to us both.
The house sat on a quiet street lined with jacaranda trees, their leaves just beginning to bloom. It was the kind of neighborhood I had once dreamed of living in – safe, normal, filled with the sounds of children playing and dogs barking. Meagan had built the life here that we'd both fantasized about during those dark years.
I knocked softly, not wanting to wake the Isabella if she was still sleeping. Meagan answered the door in yoga pants and an oversized sweater, her red hair pulled back in a messy bun. She looked so much like our mother had, before the drugs and the violence had hollowed her out.
"Grey?" Surprise flickered across her features, followed quickly by concern. "What's wrong?"
I didn't answer, just stepped inside and wrapped my arms around her. Meagan was one of the few people I could touch without thinking, without calculating angles and exit strategies. She was safety incarnate, the one good thing to come from our shared nightmare.
"Isabella?" I asked when I finally released her.
"School," she said, leading me to the kitchen. "David's at work. It's just us."
She poured me coffee without asking, the same way she'd been taking care of me since we were children. We sat at her breakfast table in comfortable silence for several minutes, both of us knowing I'd talk when I was ready.
"I hurt her," I said finally.
Meagan's eyebrows rose slightly. This was the first time I had ever mentioned hurting anyone in a way that suggested I cared about the damage I'd caused.
"Physically?"
"No." The word came out sharp, defensive. "Never that I love her ."
"Then what happened?"
I stared into my coffee cup, seeing not the dark liquid but the memory that had shattered my morning. "She was... she wanted to pleasure me. for a moment, I was back in Turner's basement."
Meagan went very still. James Turner had been Jake's father, our father's business partner, a man who'd taken a particular interest in us as children when our father had been too high or too drunk to protect us. The basement had been Turner's domain, a place where he'd exercised power over small, frightened children in ways that had shaped us both in fundamental ways.
"What did you do?" Meagan asked quietly.
"I pushed her away. Told her to stop." I ran my hands through my hair, frustration and self-loathing warring in my voice. "She looked at me like I'd slapped her."
"Did you explain?"
"How can I explain that?" My voice cracked slightly. "How do I tell someone like her about what Turner did to us? About what I let him do?"
"You didn't let him do anything," Meagan said firmly. "We were children, Grey. We survived the only way we could."
The memories came flooding back, as vivid as if they'd happened yesterday. Turner's basement, with its single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The smell of mildew and fear. The way he'd made me kneel, made me thank him afterward for "teaching me to be a man." The way he'd told me it was my fault for being pretty, for tempting him.
I could still feel his hands in my hair, guiding me, controlling me. Could still hear his voice, praising me when I did what he wanted, punishing me when I resisted. The worst part wasn't even what he'd done to my body – it was the way he'd made me complicit, made me feel like I was choosing it, like I wanted it.
"I killed him for what he did to you," I said, the words heavy with an old rage that had never fully cooled. "I can't kill the memories. I can't undo the way he trained my body to respond to certain touches, certain positions."
"You killed him for what he did to both of us," Meagan corrected gently. "And you know as well as I do that he had it coming."
I remembered that night twenty years ago, when I'd finally grown big enough, strong enough to make Turner pay. I'd been eighteen, fresh out of the system, but the rage had been burning in me for years. Cassie's father had been the one to help me track him down, had been the one to make sure the body was never found. Even then, he'd understood what kind of monster Turner was.
"She doesn't know," I said quietly. "About any of it. About what I did, what was done to me. She looks at me like I'm some kind of hero, and all I can think about is how disappointed she'll be when she learns the truth."
Meagan reached across the table to cover my hand with hers. "Is that why you've never..."
"Never what?"
"Never let anyone get close enough to matter."
I was quiet for a long moment, considering the truth of that statement. I'd had women, of course encounters that were purely physical, carefully controlled situations where I called all the shots. But Cassie was different. With Cassie, I wanted to surrender, wanted to let her take the lead sometimes. And that want terrified me more than any enemy I'd ever faced.
"She matters," I admitted, the words feeling foreign on my tongue.
"How much?"
"Too much." I met my sister's eyes, seeing understanding there. "I can't be what she needs, Meagan. I can't be normal."
"Who says you have to be normal?" Meagan asked. "Maybe she doesn't need normal. Maybe she just needs honest."
"You don't understand. She's innocent. She's good. She deserves someone who can love her without bringing nightmares into her bed." I thought about the way she'd looked at me this morning, with such trust and desire, and felt sick all over again. "I'm angry at her, and that makes me a monster."
"You're angry at her?"
"For making me vulnerable. For making me want to surrender control." The admission tasted bitter. "For triggering something I thought I had buried. And I know that's not fair, I know she was just trying to show me she cared, but I can't seem to stop the rage."