Page 276 of Faking the Goal

She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out at first. Her whole face crumples as another sob forces its way through her.

"My stalker."

My grip tightens around her arm before I can stop it. "Who is he?"

She looks at me then, really looks at me, and the horror in her expression tells me the answer before she manages to force it out.

"He was my foster brother."

I stiffen. For a second, all I can hear is the shower striking the porcelain and Taylor's uneven breathing beneath it.

The words keep repeating in my head, each time carrying more weight than the last. Not some stranger. Not her ex-boyfriend, who I'd been suspicious of from the beginning. Not even Corey, who had never been able to look at us without that cold, murderous stare every time he caught us together.

Her foster brother?

What the hell?

Taylor lowers her gaze to the water gathering around us, her arms tightening around her knees until her knuckles turn pale. Her lips move, but no sound comes out at first. She swallows several times as if the memories are lodged in her throat, and when she finally begins speaking, the words come slowly and unevenly, broken apart by long breaths and sobs she keeps trying to hold back.

She tells me she was around six when she was placed with that family. A married couple with two children of their own—a fifteen-year-old son and a ten-year-old daughter. She remembers being frightened when she first arrived, carrying everything she owned in one small bag and trying to make herself as quiet and agreeable as possible because she had already learned that foster homes were easier when she didn't cause trouble.

Their son had been kind to her in the beginning.

At least, that was what she believed.

He paid attention to her when everyone else was busy. He brought her snacks, helped her reach things on the higher shelves, and sat beside her whenever she looked lonely. He made her feel special in a house where she was painfully aware that she was the only child who didn't truly belong there. Then he gave her Snowy, a tiny white kitten he said was hers to keep, and from that moment on, six-year-old Taylor trusted him completely.

As she speaks, her eyes remain fixed on some distant point beyond my shoulder, as though she is no longer seeing the bathroom around us. Her fingers start rubbing frantically over her arms, dragging across her wet skin again and again, like she can still feel something there that the water isn't washing away.

"At first, I thought he loved me," she whispers, and the shame in her voice makes something inside my chest tear open. "Not like that. I didn't know what any of it meant. I just thought he was being nice to me."

His attention changed gradually. That is what she remembers now. The way he started finding excuses to be alone with her, how his hugs lasted too long, how he became angry when she wanted to play with his sister instead of staying near him. He would tell her she was special, that she was his little kitten, and then remind her that no one else in the house understood her the way he did.

Even at six, she knew something about it felt wrong. She just didn't have the words for why.

Her breathing catches, and her whole body folds inward as she tells me that he began coming into her room at night after everyone had gone to sleep. She doesn't describe exactly what he did, and I don't ask her to. I don't need the details to understand the terror in her face or the way her hands shake harder every time she says he touched her.

Every instinct inside me is screaming to get up, find him, and make him understand what terror feels like.

But Taylor is still talking, and I force myself to remain still because this isn't about what I want to do to him. It's about what she needs from me.

She tells me she wanted to scream every night. Wanted to tell someone.

But every time she tried, he threatened to kill Snowy.

So she stayed quiet.

And to a six-year-old little girl, she truly believed her silence was the only thing protecting the one thing she loved most.

The rage pounding through me becomes so violent that it feels as though my heart is trying to break through my ribs and tear its way out of my chest. I can barely breathe around it. I have taken pucks to the throat, been slammed into posts, and stood in front of men twice as wide as me charging the crease at full speed, but I have never felt anything as overwhelming as the helpless fury burning through me now.

Taylor wipes at her face, though the shower makes it impossible to tell where the water ends and the tears begin.

"I tried," she says, her voice splintering. "I really tried not to tell anyone."

The apology in those words nearly destroys me.

Taylor's breathing grows uneven. She presses the heels of her palms against her eyes as if trying to stop the memories from coming.