She stopped fighting me, confusion and resolve on her face.
“Well? What happened after the douchebag made the biggest mistake of his life?”
Biggest mistake for two reasons. One, because I was going to kill him for ever hurting her. And two, because he let this fine woman go in the first place. He’s probably married to some pain Jane housewife type now too, coming in his hand at the thought of the untamed pussy he let go. What a fucking idiot.
It was not a mistake I would make.
Nancy held my stare and I felt my heart burning in my chest, ready to fucking explode out of it. There was so much rawness in her eyes. So much I hadn’t ever seen before. It fucking cut me like a knife to the stomach.
“What happened?”
I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want to hear anything else she had to say, because there would be no taking it back once she’d said it. Once the words left her mouth. I already had a bad feeling, an idea of what she was about to say before the words left her lips, and yet it still filled me with fury when she uttered them.
But I had to know.
“It was his prom. He was older than me, and I was lucky to be going to it. Afterwards, we went to a party at his house. Everyone was drinking, and despite me being trailer trash—”
“Don’t call yourself that!” I interrupted, and she rolled her eyes.
“Despite that fact, I hadn’t gotten drunk before. It was late, and we were making out in his bedroom. I knew what he wanted to do, and I wanted to do it too. He’d been asking me for weeks, and each time I’d said no. But it felt right, you know?”
My chest rumbled as she looked up at me, a sad smile playing at her lips as she saw my jealousy.
“We had sex, and it wasn’t great, but”—she shrugged—“it wasn’t awful either. He said it would get better now that I’d done it once, and I thought he meant when we did it again the next day or whatever.” Nancy shook her head and looked away, shame covering her.
“Nancy?” Her name was a whisper, rage fueling my blood at the thought of another man fucking her, but the thought of what might come next was what was making me feel sick.
“He said he was going to get us a drink and to wait there for him, that maybe we’d do it again when he got back. I didn’t really want to. I was sore, but I said okay. I was in his bed, waiting for him to come back, when three of his friends came in. I wasn’t frightened at first—I had met them once before—but then they came over to me and pulled the covers away.” She bit her lip and I pulled her against my chest.
“It’s all right, I get it,” I muttered against her hair, kissing it.
Her body was tense against me as I thought of all the ways I was going to kill these little high school fuckers. Only they weren’t in high school anymore. Now they would be grown men and fair game for the pain I was about to inflict upon them.
“It’s not okay, Sketch. I know that now. After that night, everyone knew I’d had sex with all those boys. They told everyone it was my choice and I was ridiculed and bullied. After weeks of seeing them walking around school and everyone shunning me, I couldn’t take it anymore. So I got as much money together as I could and I left Miles City without a word. I was so ashamed. I felt like it was my fault that it happened. I was there, in his bed naked.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I managed to grind out.
“But it was, Sketch. I never actually said no to them.”
“That don’t mean shit. They knew what they were doing was wrong.”
She shook her head, and goddammit I wanted to hit that beautiful face of hers in the hopes of knocking some damn sense into her.
“You were scared,” I insisted. “And they took advantage of that fact. A woman don’t have to say no for it to mean no. That’s just what pussy boys say to get what they want. But a real man knows the difference, and a real man would never need to do that to a woman.”
She nodded. “I was scared, but I knew it was wrong, Sketch, and I still did nothing to stop them. I just froze.”
I didn’t know what to say, and perhaps what I said next was the wrong thing, but I don’t regret saying it because if I regret saying it then maybe what happened next wouldn’t have happened.
“So why didn’t you stop it?” I scowled.
Nancy wasn’t the sort of woman to just roll over and accept shit. She came out fighting, kicking and scratching. She was wild and reckless, and had bigger balls than most men. Scared or not, why the fuck hadn’t she said something to stop it?
She looked up at my beseechingly. “I thought he’d stop it.”
It took me a moment to process it, but then the full implication of what she meant hit home like a sucker punch to the stomach.
