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“Yes. They tell the story of an interesting man.”

Brows lowering, he turns his scarred half away from me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say something upsetting.”

“There’s nothing interesting about these scars. The only story they tell is regret and pain.”

I look down between us, to where the skinny lines mar my forearm. “Mine, too.”

He takes my wrist in hand and rubs his thumb over the scars. “Tell me.”

I don’t want to speak of it now and ruin the contentment, but his eyes implore me. Trusting and brimming with sadness, I recall the same look when he opened one of his own wounds, showing me the pictures of his little boy earlier in the evening.

What could be worse than the pain of losing a son?

Casting my gaze from his, I muster the strength to tear open these scars and let them bleed out for the first time in months. “It was January. My senior year. Everyone was counting down the days, and I was just … trying to hold on. I had no idea what I was going to do once high school ended. And it’s not like I loved the place, you know? Everybody hated me there, except Kelsey.”

“She’s your friend.”

I nod, running my fingers over his fine chest hairs. “Like a sister.” The smile on my face withers with my frown.

“What happened?” Lucian’s voice is a distant sound to the music blaring inside my head, as my memories transport me back to that night.

“I went to a party with her. Wasn’t my thing, but … it was senior year, and she begged me to go. Some guy she wanted to see there. Brady was his name.” I can smell the stale beer and the skunky, pungent odor of weed, from when we entered the house that night. The promise of bad things on the air and across my skin. “There was a boy there. One I’d seen around. Maybe nineteen. Everyone thought he was so hot. I used to hear the girls talk about him in the bathroom. Things they wished he’d do to them.” Shaking my head, I sneer at the stupidity, the naiveté of those girls now. “Imagine my surprise when he sat down next to me. He talked to me. Out of all those girls. I felt so … unique, for once. And he was nice. He talked about books, you know? Something I could relate to.”

“And where was Kelsey when you talked to this boy?”

“She walked off to find the guy she wanted to see there.” Closing my eyes adds vivid colors to the scene--the red lights around the room, the music blaring from the speaker, red cups of alcohol scattered over the floor. Red. “It was so loud. Everyone was drunk. Seemed like, just minutes later, she was stumbling after the guy out to the pool house.”

“Brady?”

I stare off, lost to the memory. The blur of the scene I’ve spent months pushing away with therapy and dark shadows. We’re just having a little fun.

“She stumbled after Brady?” The sound of Lucian’s voice draws me back to the present, and I nod.

“Yeah. Sorry. The beloved son of Tempest Cove,” I go on.

A flash of his naked torso flickers in my head, over the distant echo of laughter.

“She got drunk.”

Screams pierce my ears, and I screw my eyes shut, breathing hard through my nose as the sketchy memories arrive like half-drawn pictures with the edges erased.

“He tore her clothes off. And she was so intoxicated she couldn’t even fight it.”

The sharp tip of a blade scrapes over the stark white paper, connecting the lines of the image in pale gray scratches. I can’t bring myself to look at the mental image forming inside my head--the naked body of a girl lying on the floor. As if I’m looking down at her, scored onto the page in rough strokes.

“There were more of them. His teammates. Maybe four, or five, I can’t remember. They laughed, as he raped her. All of them watching, begging for a turn.”

A blackness stirs in the pit of my guts as the rest of the story seeps out of its locked compartment, the images clearer as more lines converge on the image, dark scratches filling with cold black ink, bringing details to life. Her half-drawn lids. The dirty carpet beneath her. Bruising marks where he held her too tight.

“Where were you when this happened?” Lucian’s voice fades beneath the remembered sounds of grunting and slapping skin, curses and crying.

“I was hiding. Hiding from all of them. I couldn’t breathe. But then I screamed. I screamed so loud, but no one could hear me.” I don’t even realize I’m clawing at Lucian’s chest, until my eyes focus in on the scratches streaked across his skin.

“What happened to the girl?”

What happened to the girl? His voice echoes inside my head.