“She was terrified of him. Closed the shop. Broke up with her boyfriend. Came home. Refused to press charges. She didn’t want it in the press. She didn’t want anyone to know. She didn’t want to have to testify.”
I pressed lightly on his head and remained quiet as he recited the litany of what any woman faced when this happened to her: having to make the decision whether or not to endure another violating trauma after experiencing the worst violating trauma a woman could experience.
“Buried herself in the garden. Tempie and Prue begged her to go to therapy. She refused. They stopped because just broaching it brought the subject up and they didn’t want to cause her more pain. I…” he swallowed with difficulty, “couldn’t go there with her.”
“Of course,” I said tremulously, because this man, knowing what happened to his sister, had to have come undone.
It didn’t happen to him.
But anytime something heinous befell someone you loved, in a way, it happened to you too.
“I fucked up, Vivi. I warned Tempie and Prue off. I told them to let her heal how she needed to heal. But the days turned to months, and now it’s been years, and I see all I did wasn’t giving her a safe haven to find a way to heal her wounds and accept her scars. It was allowing her to close the door on her own prison.”
“You take too much responsibility.”
“Tempie was right. We should have pressed therapy. We should have pushed her.”
“And maybe push her away?” I shook my head. “No. You did the right thing. It’s up to her to chart this course, honey.”
“Three years, Vivienne?”
I flinched.
“Right,” he muttered.
“That isn’t on you. It’s not on her either. It’s on that man. God. What an asshole. Did anything happen to him?”
His face shut down.
Oh boy.
“You did something,” I whispered.
“He raped my sister,” he said through his teeth. “And I’m stupid rich. Yes, I did something.”
I grinned.
Huge.
“What did you do?”
He stared at me like I was crazy.
“You can tell me,” I urged. “You didn’t make me sign an NDA, but I swear on all the orgasms you’ve yet to give me, I will take it to my grave.”
“We established yesterday we’re fond of each other.”
Fond?
That was tame for what I was feeling, but it worked for now.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“I’d prefer you remained fond of me.”
“All right, allow me to share, as a woman, there is not one thing you can tell me you did to a man who violated a woman that way, especially Chastity, but really anybody, that would make me even an iota less fond of you.”
“I had him beaten,” he said like a dare, “and raped.”
