Page 148 of When a Soul Cries

For years I couldn't even say the word.

Rape.

I asked questions afterward, quietly.

Nobody knew anything.

Or nobody wanted to tell me.

To this day, I still didn't know which one was worse.

A few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.

With Roman.

My eyes burned.

Neither of my boys knew.

Rome grew up knowing I couldn't tell him who his father was, but he never knew why.

Kai didn't know either.

There wasn't some mystery boyfriend I'd refused to name.

I genuinely didn't know who Roman's father was because I had been drugged and raped.

I closed my eyes.

When Rome was born, I had to learn to separate my baby from what happened to me.

He wasn't the crime.

He wasn't the man who hurt me.

He was my son.

And I loved that big-headed little boy so much that I couldn't imagine looking him in the face one day and telling him the worst night of my life was connected to the beginning of his.

So I didn't.

I buried it.

And I thought I'd made peace with that.

Until tonight.

Until my son told me about a young woman carrying wounds that sounded too familiar.

I wiped underneath my eye and frowned when my fingertips came away wet.

“Oh, hell no.”

Another tear fell.

“God, I know You ain't got me up this late crying over thirty-year-old trauma. My eyes already puffy enough in the morning.”

I snatched a tissue from the nightstand and blew my nose.