Savage Hearts

But I was there the night Todd’s human mask fell away and the devil beneath came out to play. I felt the cruelty in his touch. I heard him laugh while I cried and begged them to stop. I watched him smile as his friends took turns until the world was full of pain and blood ran down my thighs, mixed with the stickiness of other things I couldn’t bear to think about.

And I remember the last words he shouted after me as I hobbled away from the pool table and ran, half-naked and sobbing, across the frat house’s back lawn toward the quad.

You know you loved it, doll. Come back when you’re ready for more.

Or maybe we’ll come find you, Sammy.

The threat was the kill shot.

I had no idea how I would survive what they’d done once, let alone if they did it again. The terror the thought instilled, combined with the physical, mental, and emotional pain of the attack, swept through me like a hurricane, shattering the walls of the fortress protecting my most private, secret self.

And then J.D. put the video of what they’d done on the campus website and shoved the naked, innocent thing they’d exposed out into the driving rain.

It didn’t matter that my face wasn’t visible in the thirty seconds of footage or that it was only up on the site for a few hours before the administration shut it down. Everyone had already seen; everyone was already wondering who the girl might be. Hearing the hushed speculation in the library was like living through it all over again. I started to fear that it would never be over, that I would keep living through it, over and over again, every day until the day I died.

I spent January in hell, ravaged by rage, fear, and shame, forced to pretend everything was okay while I waited to find out if I was pregnant or if the test I’d taken at a local clinic would come back positive for HIV.

I don’t remember telling my gossipy roommate that I’d heard it was Deidre Jones in the video. I don’t remember going to classes or getting up for my morning run or exactly what I said to my stepbrother, Alec, the one time I worked up the courage to ask him why he hadn’t stopped them.

Why he hadn’t saved me.

But I remember the day I learned that Deidre had hung herself in her dorm room with crystal clarity, right down to the jeans I was wearing and the pattern of the coffee grounds floating in my cup when I heard the news. It was the day that everything changed, the day I began to hate myself as much as I hated the boys who had broken me.

By the time I took the stand in a packed Los Angeles courtroom, I thought I knew hate inside and out. I thought I understood it in a way I had understood very few things in my twenty years of life.

But I was wrong.

Todd’s gaze meets mine across the crowded courthouse steps and an ugly grin curves his full lips, and at that moment, I realize that hate is fathomless.

There is no end to it. I could sink down, down, down through the inky depths of my hatred for Todd Winslow for years and never reach the bottom. I could drink and eat nothing but hate and never be filled. And I could spend the rest of my life applying bandages to the wound he and his friends have ripped in my soul and it will never heal.

They say love and hate are opposite sides of the same coin, the two great transformative forces in the universe. One leads to light and freedom, the other feeds a fire that will consume you whole.

Anyone with sense would choose to be free.

I have parents who love me, believe me, and support me. I have a boyfriend who wants to be by my side, helping me pick up the pieces of my shattered life. The trial is over and I’ve spared Danny as much of the horror as I can. Now, all I have to do is pick up the phone. I know he will meet me on the island where we fell in love, hold me as long as I need to be held, and dedicate himself to loving me enough to make up for all the pain and injustice.

But I’m not sure there is enough love in the world for that. Enough love to make up for Todd’s smile. Enough sand in the hourglass to make me forget that I went to the mat with evil and evil won.

But there might be enough hate.

Hate enough to make me strong, hate enough to turn a wound into a weapon.

I hold Todd’s gaze, memorizing the exact curve of his lips, silently promising myself that one day, not too long from now, I will wipe that grin from his face. I will show him what it feels like to have every scrap of dignity, safety, and happiness stripped away and to be left twisting in the wind while the vultures swoop down to feed.