Page 157 of Penance

My heart hurts and I can’t do anything about it.

I force myself back to my feet, mud staining the knees of my dress, strands of hair clinging to my tear-dampened cheeks.

Why?

Why would he do this to me?

I force myself to keep walking, moving deeper into the woods where the trees grow closer together, the trunks wider, the roots more twisted and gnarled. My shoes are not made for this. It’s more pain, only now it’s physical.

What am I supposed to do?

Where do I go?

I couldn’t go to my parents, not after everything that happened.

They won’t believe me.

They won’t believe that Draco hurt me.

But, did he?

Has he hurt me at all?

The thought strikes me like lightning.

But I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes.

He raped me.

He—

Did he?A voice in my head asks.You liked it.You came harder than you ever have.

No.

No, that can’t be true.

Can it?

My legs burn as I climb over a fallen log, my heel sinking into the muddy earth and nearly landing me flat on my face again.

I’ve never been this deep in the woods before.

Good girls don’t wander alone in forests.

Good girls don’t cum on their rapist’s cocks and confess their love while they’re doing it, either.

I laugh, and the sound is unfamiliar. It’s swollen with anxiety and tinged with hysteria.

I haven’t been good, I’ve just been afraid—afraid of stepping out of line, afraid of disappointing my parents, afraid of God’s judgment. All that fear, and here I am anyway, fallen from grace.

The trees suddenly thin, and I stumble into a small clearing where sunlight pours from the sky, unfiltered by the skeletal, leaf-bare branches. It feels like a spotlight, like I’m on display.

Ripe for the picking.

Ripe for the judgment I deserve.

I stop, bending over with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. The air tastes different here—cleaner somehow.

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