“Yeah, you should have,” he said, staring into my eyes without apology.
“But we—”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. “Let me just take a wild guess, okay? Humor me.” He pushed off the counter with his foot and moved closer to me, so that he was only a few inches away. “He never took you out. He never showed you his apartment; he just fucked you in his car or his office.”
I opened my mouth to scream at him, to say something back, to refute his disgusting words. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t, because he was right. So, I just snapped my mouth closed and cried.
My body somehow became even more numb as pins and needles sliced over every inch of my skin. My heart shattered into pieces, and I was so angry with Ryan for calling me out on all of this. Yet, all I could do was nod helplessly.
“You are so much better than that, Brooke. And you deserve more than what he gave you.” His eyes melted, looking at me with an intensity that I could only dream about. “The question you need to answer is why didn’tyousee that?”
“Oh, that’s pretty easy, Cage. All you men suck the confidence right out of us. Every time you choose the sexier, younger models of us. Or catcall us while we walk down the street.” I shifted closer to him, and tightened my hands into fists, jabbing them on my hips. “It’s from all those times you men said you’d call and didn’t. All the secret texts you all send to other girls. It’s working in an office where the majority of the men talk about what you might look like naked. It’s the thousands of magazines and television shows telling us we are not good enough how we were born. Or the boys that promise they’ll give you the world and ask out the prettier girl in the office, because she flirted with you. All that great stuff and more. Mix that with the sheer terror that you might one day die, alone, still looking for a hand to hold yours.”
