“He asked what I was doing there. If I was your girlfriend.” Her voice sounded thin. Young. She cleared her throat. “At first I thought it might be one of your friends—a guy from the senior class who knew me even though I didn’t recognize him.”
“You didn’t hear him approach? No car engine? No sound of him walking through the woods?”
“Neither.” In her dreams, he showed up like a wraith, ghosting around her in the fog.
“He was probably there before you,” Sam mused. “Covington was probably making sure Gabriella was going to meet him. He could have had a BlackBerry or an early smartphone that he used to contact Gabriella even as hewatched her through the window of her own home. He could have watched you watching us.”
“Maybe.” She swallowed over the raw words in her throat. “All I know is that his grip got tighter and he dragged me backward.”
She’d hardly fought. The fear and surprise had caught her off guard.
“What else did he say?”
“I blanked for a little while. I mean, I have a vague memory of him saying other things into my ear while he brought me deeper in the woods, but my brain was screaming at me to do something. To shout. Get free.”
“Did he have your mouth covered?”
Her eyes burned at the question. At the memory. She shook her head. “He latched on to my chest and my hips. Pinned the back of me to the front of him. I wanted to scream, but I was scared. And when I opened my mouth, no sound came out.”
More than anything else that happened that night, that was what stayed with her most. Not the forcible touching. Not the ugly words or things he’d eventually threatened. It was that—when she’d had the chance—she hadn’t been able to make a sound.
“Don’t blame yourself. Different people respond to fear in unique ways. No one can predict how they will react in a crisis.”
And she’d reacted like a frightened child, waiting for someone else to save her.
“Eventually, he told me he had a knife, and he would use it if I made any noise.” Her breathing came fast and shallow. Reliving The Incident had that effect. “He put one hand up my shirt. One hand down my pants.”
“Amy.” Sam’s grip on her waist tightened. “I’m so damn sorry?—”
“Let me just get it out,” she blurted, having come too far to stop. “It could have been worse, and I was afraid that any minute he’d throw me down and rape me. But he seemed content to stare up at the Chance house—maybe looking at Gabby through the window—and molest me with his hands. He rubbed my body against his, although he never got naked or anything.”
She’d burned her clothes in the fireplace when she’d gotten home. Then washed for hours afterward, until she shivered uncontrollably in the bathtub, unable to rinse away the feel of his hands in her underwear. Inside her. Years later, a counselor helped her work through some of her intimacy issues, but she’d remained—technically—a virgin for a long time afterward, unable to feel good about her body since her innocence had been lost that night in a terrible way. A way that made it so difficult to face physical intimacy.
She’d numbed herself to everything and everyone, a coping mechanism that had made it difficult to feel pleasure later. She’d tried to explain to one of her college boyfriends. But he’d only remarked that she was lucky she hadn’t been raped, and his dismissal had grated on her endlessly. She’d been assaulted. Violated. And that was when she realized she needed counseling to heal.
Even now, it took her a moment to realize she was crying silent tears. Sam wiped them away gently with his thumbs.
“What made your attacker leave?” he asked, pressing soft kisses to her eyes.
She’d closed them, forgetting to anchor herself in theworld around her as she’d gotten lost in that night. Damn it. She forced them open now, peering into Sam’s gray gaze, which was full of concern.
That connection felt right. Good.
“Maybe the sound of the garage door lifting at Gabby’s house?” She sifted through the ugly memories, searching for concrete details. “He ran toward the car as it backed out and shoved me aside.”
“You didn’t look at him then?”
“At his back? I guess so. He was wearing a dark hoodie and jeans. I couldn’t see much in the woods. And he stayed out of the beam of the headlights when the car rolled out of the garage.” By then, she’d been so traumatized she hadn’t been thinking about Gabriella or Sam. Her thoughts were solely on her body and the way he’d used it. The way he’d made her feel dirty, and the fact that she hadn’t screamed for help.
Scared silent.
“Did you see or hear him get into a vehicle?”
“No.” After Gabriella had left the house—or at least, she assumed now it had to have been Gabriella—there had been quiet in the woods for long moments until Sam jumped in his car and followed in the same direction.
He kissed her forehead. “Thank you for trusting me with what happened.” He brushed her hair off her face. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and I’m even sorrier that you carried the burden alone for so many years.”
“I didn’t have any useful information anyway.” She wanted to make him understand why she’d maintained her silence. “If I thought it would have helped you, I would have spoken up sooner. But I never saw his face. I couldn’t identify him—then or now. I don’t know if I ever metCovington as a teen, and I didn’t put the old pieces together until you told me what happened to Gabby.” She shrugged, frustrated with her ignorance. “And, for what it’s worth, I didn’t carry the burden alone. I told my mother after it happened.”
