Page 86 of Burned

The room shrinks. The walls move closer. The air goes thin.

I shake my head.

She wheels closer. “What did Caleb do to you?”

I laugh. One horrible, broken sound. “What didn’t he do?”

Cass goes still. The words hang there. Too much.

Not enough.

“I don’t mean…” I stop. I can’t unsay it. My mouth refuses to move.

I’ve never told Cass any of it. I think about the part I told Lucian. When Caleb would come into my bedroom at night.

How he never touched me, but how he would stand there, naked, staring at me. I would lie, frozen, unable to move or scream. Then, he would say, ‘Watch me, baby sister. Watch what youmake me do.’ Then he would… I’ve never gotten that image out of my head.

But there was more. More than what I told Lucian.

My body remembers. It always has. It always will.

I was older. The hallway. The grip. The smell of his drink. Cass asleep upstairs, broken and medicated and finally not crying. Ryan in bed. Me thinking if I screamed, he would wake. If he woke, Caleb would be worse. If Cass heard, she would try to crawl to me.

The image lives inside me.

Cass trying to crawl.

That is why I stayed quiet.

Just like Caleb knew I would.

I guess standing at the end of my bed, pleasuring himself while watching me, wasn’t enough for him.

I wrap my arms around myself. Finally, I say, “He cornered me.”

Cass makes no sound.

I keep going because if I stop, I will never start again.

“After you came home from the hospital the second time. Not the first. The second.

You were sleeping. Ryan was asleep. I was trying to clean up because there was blood on the bathroom floor from when he?—”

My throat closes. Cass’s face crumples. Not fully.

She catches herself.

I hate that we are both so practiced at catching “He grabbed me in the hall,” I whisper.

Cass looks like she wants to talk, but no words come out.

“He didn’t…” I shake my head hard, as if that can knock the memory loose. “Not all the way. I fought. I think I fought. I don’t remember it cleanly. He held me against the wall and put his hand over my mouth and said if I made a sound, he’d go wake Ryan and let him watch what happened when women caused trouble.”

Cass makes a sound then—a tiny, dying sound.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I froze.” The words tear out of me. “I froze. I stopped fighting because I thought of Ryan. I thought of you upstairs, unable to move. I thought if I made it worse, he would hurt both of you. And I froze.”