“Noted,” he remarked.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell her.”
“I get the feeling she doesn’t really trust me anyway.”
Unable to argue with the truth, she nodded. “She doesn’t really trust anyone with a penis. Plus… I shouldn’t have been so weird around you at that awful dinner. That didn’t help.”
“It couldn’t have been easy for you.”
She choked on a bitter laugh. “Easy? No, none of this has been easy for me. I can’t even climb into bed at night without being terrified of what’s going to be there when I close my eyes. I was doing better for a while, I went 5 days without a bad dream, but then tonight… there was a news story about this kidnapped 15-year-old and then my mom… And that was all it took. Less than a minute of exposure wiped out any illusion of progress and it was just like being there all over again.”
Her voice started to shake at the end so she stopped, turning and looking at the basketball court until she got herself under control.
“No, don’t do that,” he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder, intending to urge her to turn around.
She flinched, closing her eyes and tensing up. He immediately removed his hand and apologized.
“I meant… you don’t have to hide it. That’s why you’re here, get it out.”
“I don’t want to,” she said, shaking her head, still not turning around. “This was a mistake, I shouldn’t have made you come out here. I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“Maybe you need to,” he suggested. “Whether you want to or not.”
Willow shook her head, but turned back around since she felt like she had her tear ducts under control. “What good will that do?”
His blue eyes widened slightly. “Are you serious? It could do a lot of good. It needs to come out. You can’t keep your feelings bottled up inside, you’ll only end up hurting yourself and you’ve been hurt enough.”
There was a retort on the tip of her tongue but she shook her head, resisting. “It’s not fair though. You’re the only person I have to blame, and it wasn’t even your fault. Do you have any idea how confusing that is?”
“Tell me,” he implored.
She shook her head more vehemently. “It’s too weird.”
“Fuck weird,” he said, surprising her. “Let me have it. Tell me I’m a bastard. I’m not gonna hold it against you.”
Her eyes flew to his—she didn’t like confrontation, but she kind of believed him. “How could you not? I mean… it isn’t fair to you either. It’s not fair to me because it happened and I have to live with it, but it isn’t fair to…to yell at you as if you had a choice, as if you wanted to.”
“The hell it isn’t. I made a choice. I only had bad choices, but I still made a fucking choice. A nobler person might have died, but he would have died without raping you, without stealing your virginity.”
Her face crumbled slightly at the words and he heard her breath hitch.
“Tell me what a fucking asshole I am, Willow. I can take it.”
Swallowing hard, she turned away from him, not toward the court, just to the side, so she didn’t have to look at him as he tried to pull the anger out of her.
He moved into her line of sight, raising an eyebrow expectantly.
“No,” she said again, tentatively looking up at him. “I can’t.”
“Tell me, goddammit,” he ordered, his voice lowering instead of rising, since that didn’t seem to be working. When she continued to resist, he aimed a little lower. “Tell me about your dream.”
That hit a little closer. He saw her eyes spark, her cheeks turn pink, her upper lip curl into an unintentional sneer that she caught immediately, pressing her lips together firmly but managing to hold her tongue.
He didn’t want to push any harder than that, but he also wanted her to spill so she would feel better.
Ethan sighed, tilting his head back and peering up at the dark sky. “Come on, Willow.”
When he looked back at her, he saw her hands were clenched into fists and he hoped that she was working herself up, pushing herself, because he didn’t know how much more he could push without making matters worse.