I pull out my phone from my back pocket and dial his number.
“Damn you, Killian,” I mutter as the call goes to voicemail,again. “Killian, please. Where are you? I just need to know you’re okay. Call me back.” I hang up, then dial Jett’s number.
He picks up on the fourth ring. “Hey.”
“Is Killian with you?” I ask.
“No, he’s not here. Everything okay?”
I heavy a sigh. “He took off pretty quickly and I don’t know where he went. Will you call me if you see him?”
“Sure, babe. I’ll tell the guys to keep an eye out for him.”
“Thanks.”
There’s a rumble outside and I dart to the window just as Killian pulls into the driveway next to his truck.
“Wait, never mind. He’s here,” I tell Jett before hanging up.
I rush to the front door and tug it open just as Killian makes his way up to the porch. Without looking at me once, he brushes past me and disappears into the house, his eyes vacant.
Shutting the door, I follow him through the house. “Killian?”
He drops onto the couch, resting his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his hands.
I perch on the edge of the coffee table in front of him. “Where have you been? You’ve been gone for hours. I’ve been so worried.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s going on? I’m sorry if I upset you by not telling you about the messages, I didn’t want to worry you for no reason.”
He lifts his head to look at me. “Not upset with you, butterfly. Never you.”
“Killian, you told me you’d try to work out this relationship thing, that means sharing the parts of yourself no one else knows, sharing the burden you struggle to carry by yourself. Your problems are my problems. Talk to me.”
He shifts his gaze away from me, like he can’t bring himself to look at me directly. “The texts you’ve been getting, I know who’s been sending them. They’re from a guy I knew in prison.”
I frown. “O-kay…? But why would he be sending me those sorts of messages? Personal ones? Intimate ones?”
“To fuck with me. Mess with my head. It’s revenge for what happened back then, for what I did to him. You’ve gotta understand, I didn’t have a choice, I—I couldn’t take itanymore.” His voice cracks a little at the last part and my heart squeezes.
“Take what? Did you hurt him? Did he hurtyou?”
“He—” He stops himself, scrubbing a hand over his beard as his knee bounces restlessly.
There’s a long pause before he lifts his head, the unshed tears swimming in his eyes are something I never expected to see there. “He raped me, Kaia.”
33
Kaia’s sharp intake of breath cuts through the deafening silence filling the room, the air around us shifting the second the words leave my lips. It grows heavier, bearing down on me making it harder to breathe as the weight of my words settle over the both of us.
It’s the first time I’ve ever said those words out loud. Besides Kaia, there is only one other person who knows the truth of what happened, he just decided to pretend it wasn’t. It was easier for him to look the other way. It’s a truth I’ve had locked up tight inside and shoved into the darkest corners of my mind, forcing myself to forget it ever happened but itwas impossible. The memories were always there. His face haunting my dreams at night, the images so vivid I wake up drenched in sweat imagining I was back in that tiny cell at the mercy of a monster.
I hold her gaze as the word sink in, her eyes turning glassy and red-rimmed while her chin trembles.
I drag my eyes away from her with a shake of my head. “Don’t give me that look.”
“What look?”
