She nods faintly, then her lip trembles.
“I think I said yes,” she whispers, tears spilling fresh down her cheeks. “I think I gave him my consent at the bar. I was drunk… but I left with him willingly.”
My heart breaks clean in half.
I lean close, keeping my voice steady, unshakable.
“Listen to me,” I say firmly. “You were drunk. That is not consent. Not legally. Not morally. Not in any world that matters.”
Her breath stutters.
“You didn’t do this,” I continue. “Nothing about this is your fault. Not a single damn part of it.”
I brush my thumb carefully over her temple, nowhere near the cuts.
“I said yes, Tank,” she says again. Tears slide down her face and drop on the sheet, but her eyes are distant. Hollow. “I asked him if he was going to take my virginity, and then I left with him.”
The word hits me like a bullet.
Virginity.
My breath leaves my body in a violent rush, like someone just punched me straight in the chest.
“I held onto it,” she continues quietly, staring at the back of the driver’s seat. “For someone special. I thought that mattered.”
My jaw tightens.
“I thought if I waited… if I stayed pure enough, innocent enough, eventually someone would choose me.” Her mouth curves in a sad, humorless smile. “But all it ever did was push people away.”
The wordpureechoes in my head like a gunshot.
Too pure. Too innocent.
My words.
The ones I used every time to keep her at arm’s length. Every time I told myself I was protecting her instead of just being afraid.
She swallows hard.
“So I thought maybe if I stopped being that…if I stopped being the girl no one wanted to touch…then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much anymore.”
My chest burns.
I say nothing, because if I speak, I might shatter the fragile calm she’s clinging to.
And because the truth is crashing down on me all at once.
She didn’t give herself to a stranger because she wanted him.
She did it becauseItaught her that what made her gentle made her unlovable.
Every push. Every ignored call and text. Every rejection.Ibuilt the road that led her straight into the hands of a rapist.
If I had just accepted what I felt.
If I had made her mine instead of pushing her away.
If I had chosen her the way she deserved.
