“Nothing you tell me changes anything, Eli,” I murmured against his head. “Do you understand me?”
Eli disengaged himself from my arms and took several steps back. He wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve. “I was the one who started it,” he whispered.
I didn’t believe that for a second so I said, “Eli-” but he cut me off.
“It was a few days after my sixteenth birthday. My mom had flown to Mexico to visit relatives and Jack…Jack and I were celebrating the fact that I’d gotten my driver’s license with an action movie marathon.” Eli took in several deep breaths before continuing. “He let me have a beer. I liked it so I asked for another one and he gave it to me.” Eli’s voice cracked when he said, “It was so much fun hanging out with him like that. But the second beer was too much for me. When I woke up the next morning…”
Eli shook his head and wiped at the tears that had started to fall again. “I was still on the couch in the den and there was a blanket over me. I knew right away that…that I’d had sex. I was really confused and when Jack came in to check on me, I started crying and asked him why he’d done that to me.”
Eli began sobbing, but when I reached for him, he pulled away. “Please…please just don’t touch me right now, okay?” he begged.
“Okay,” I said softly, though touching him was all I wanted to do. Except for finding Jack Cortano and ripping his fucking head off.
“Jack was really upset and told me it was a mistake. He said…he said I’d gotten drunk and had started touching him inappropriately and that he’d tried to stop it, but that he hadn’t wanted to hurt me. He said I seduced him.”
“Bullshit,” I snarled.
“He showed me proof.”
Fury was rolling through my blood so my voice was louder than I’d meant for it to be when I asked, “What proof?”
“There were security cameras throughout the house. They were always on, including in the den. He showed me the video of what we’d done.”
Disbelief tore through me and I started shaking my head.
“It’s true,” Eli whispered. “I saw myself performing oral sex on him…I wasn’t fighting him and there was a point when he tried to stop me, but I didn’t. I didn’t struggle when he was fucking me either.”
I grabbed Eli, even though he’d asked me not to. “Even if I believed that shit, it wouldn’t fucking matter! He was the adult and he had no right to touch you. He raped you, Eli. Pure and simple!”
Eli flinched and tried to escape my hold. His despair quickly turned to anger. “Don’t you get it, Mav? I let him do it! That time and all the others! I never told him no! I whored myself out just like when I was a kid!”
“Others?” I bit out. “How long did it go on for?”
“Until I left for college and a few times after.”
Nausea rolled through my belly. Eli must have taken my silence as proof that I believed what he was saying, because he yanked his arm free and said, “I told you, I deserve whatever I get.”
“Just because you never told him no doesn’t mean you wanted it and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you consented!” I snapped. I stepped forward and grabbed Eli by both his arms and forced him backwards until his back hit a tree. “He raped you, Eli! And when I find him, I’m going to make sure he never hurts you again, do you hear me?”
Eli refused to look at me and my anger intensified.
“Tell me the truth. Did you want him to do that to you?” I asked. “The truth,” I said firmly. “Forget the guilt about what you think happened that first time, forget what you think you deserve.”
“No,” Eli answered without hesitation. “I didn’t want it.”
“Then why-”
“He never let up!” Eli cried out.
“What do you mean?”
“After that night, he kept telling me I’d done something to him. I’d changed him. He still loved my mother, but he loved me too…that I could give him something that no one else could. I told him that it couldn’t ever happen again. That I didn’t want it to happen again, but he wore me down until one night I finally stopped saying no. I didn’t let him fuck me again, but I…I…”
“You performed oral sex on him,” I finished for him.
Eli nodded. “And then that stopped being enough and he wanted more. The guilt of what I was doing was killing me. My own mother’s husband,” Eli whispered. “I told him I couldn’t do it anymore…that it was wrong and I wanted to stop. He started making threats after that…subtle ones. He talked about leaving my mom because he couldn’t live with being around me and not being able to touch me. He…he made her so happy. I couldn’t let that happen.”