Page 28 of Fractured Ice

"I know."

"I remember having three drinks." I hear my own voice going higher and I can't stop it. "I only had three drinks, Ethan. I've never blacked out in my life. I don't black out on three drinks."

He doesn't say anything, and his silence is somehow worse than whatever he could say, because I watch him working out how to tell me something and the thing he's working out how to tell me is bad.

"What?" I say.

"I think someone might have put something in your drink, because you’re right, I didn’t actually notice you drinking that much, even though I could’ve missed it."

The room goes very quiet.

"That's—" I stop. Start again. "I was with Emma. I was at a party with people I know."

"I know."

"I only had three drinks."

"Sienna, I believe you."

"You don't just—" My thoughts aren't connecting the way they're supposed to. There are gaps where the logic should be, the same gaps that are sitting in my memory of last night, just empty space where things should be. "If I can't remember, then I don't know what happened. I don't know what actually happened."

"You're safe," he says. "I promise you⁠—"

"How do I know that?" The words come out before I can stop them. "How do I know anything you're telling me is true? How do I know—" I look at him, and the thing I'm about to say is terrible, I know it's terrible, I can hear it being terrible before it leaves my mouth. I say it anyway because I'm scared, my head hurts and I'm standing in a strange room in last night's clothes with a blank space where six hours of my life should be. "How do I know it wasn’t you who put something in my drink?"

Ethan goes completely still.

I watch the words land. Watch his face do something I've never seen it do, something that goes past surprise into something quieter and more damaged, and then he closes it off and just looks at me.

"Sienna," he says, and his voice is very controlled. "I would never do that to you."

"I don't remember anything."

"I know."

"I don't have any way to verify⁠—"

"I know that too." He doesn't move toward me. His hands are at his sides. "I understand why you're scared. I understand why you're not thinking straight right now. But I need you to hear me when I tell you that I found you being walked to a car by a guy you couldn't have consented to go with. Who you specifically told me you didn’t want to go with. I stopped it. I brought you here because your house was further and you could barely walk. I slept on top of the covers. Nothing happened." He holds my gaze. "That's what happened."

I want to believe him. I do believe him, somewhere underneath the panic, somewhere that can still hear the steadiness in his voice and recognize it as genuine. But the panic is loud and my head is pounding. I can't think in a straight line and all I know is that I need to not be in this room right now.

I grab my boots off the floor and shove my feet into them without sitting down, then snatch my coat off the chair.

"Sienna—"

"I need to go." I run for the door. "I need—I just need to go."

"Can you let me⁠—"

I open the door and go down the hallway and down the stairs without looking back, and the February cold hits me when I step outside and I keep walking.

I’m two streets down from the hockey house and I don't remember walking it. I'm in my front door and up the stairs and into my room before I've fully processed any of the last ten minutes, and I sit on my bed and stare at my hands as I try to pull my thoughts into something that resembles order.

I only had two drinks.

I've never blacked out before.

There's a chunk of last night that is simply gone, and I'm a person who takes notes, who remembers the details of conversations I had three semesters ago for sources I might need again someday. But six hours of my own life are just missing, and I don't know what happened during them except for the word of a man I accused of causing it.