“Some of them were… graphic,” she continues, eyes still locked on the mirror. “Not flirting. Not admiration. Fantasies. Instructions for me, as if I were a willing party. Step-by-step plans for the minute after midnight. They weren’t all sexual, either. Some of them were so much worse. Those were the ones that were investigated, I found out. Apparently, the cops already had a pretty big file as well.”
I can’t get air all the way into my lungs.
She swallows hard and pulls the towel out of her hair, letting her damp locks fall over her shoulders. “And the countdown sites—people commenting under them, cheering, joking, trading screenshots of me—pictures that they edited so I was… doing things.”
She shivers hard, and I step forward to cut her off. That’s enough. I shouldn’t have pushed her. It was a mistake.
I lean down behind her and pull her back against me, wrapping my arms around her tightly.
“Hey,” I say, and my voice comes out rough, like my throat’s been scraped raw. “Hey, look at me.”
She meets my eyes in the mirror and tilts her head, letting her temple rest against my cheek.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you went through that, and I’m sorry that I made you relive it,” I whisper.
“You didn’t make me,” she says quietly. “And it doesn’t affect me the way it used to. It’s still sick, obviously. It’s all very disgusting, but I’ve learned to put it in the past. I left because I felt like, by being a part of it all, I was enabling it. I know now how stupid that is. It wasn’t my fault. It was their fault—completely. But at the time, I felt so ashamed, reading the things they were saying about me.”
My arms tighten around her. “Those men should be put in the ground,” I say, quiet and vicious.
“I agree with that. Unfortunately, it’s not usually what happens.” She leans back against me. “It created tension between my mom and me. Because she’d dealt with it her whole life and she had her own armor, her own way of pretending it didn’t touch her. And I was—” She huffs a breath. “I was young. I thought she should be angry all the time. I thought she should want to burn the world down.”
Her mouth presses into a line.
“We got over it,” she says. “Eventually. She accepted that modeling isn’t what I wanted to do, and I accepted that she had her own way of dealing with things. But it changed how I saw things. It changed what I wanted my life to be.”
I press my mouth to her damp hair, a careful kiss that’s more comfort than anything else.
“I don’t blame you,” I say, and it comes out like a vow. “Not for leaving. Not for being angry. Not for wanting her to feel it the way you felt it.”
Her fingers curl over my forearm like she’s anchoring herself.
“I know you know this,” I say, softer, “but shame belongs to the people who did it. Not to the girl who was just trying to live her life.”
“Took me a long time to realize that,” she says quietly, eyes shining.
I’m still pissed off. More than pissed off. I want to hunt people down.
I want to find the people who sent the letters, the cops who did nothing, the agents and managers who left those boxes in such an easy-to-find place. I want heads to roll.
I calm myself down by holding Elsa longer.
Her shoulders rise on a breath, then fall.
“I guess we should get up,” she murmurs.
“We don’t have to,” I say.
“If we don’t, I’m going to starve,” she says.
My laugh rumbles out, and I pull back.
“Can’t have that,” I say, taking her hand to pull her up.
She drops her towel and walks to the dresser, still naked and comfortable about it, even after everything shejust told me.
I feel a surge of pride at her bravery, at how she picked herself up and didn’t let it change who she is.
“Any chance we’re leaving the apartment today?” she asks lightly, turning toward me.
