Page 50 of Love is Angry

I nod once. “I…Yes. I… Maybe…” God, how do I say this? Do I want to say this? Can I say it?

Roxanne takes my hand in hers, smoothing her thumb over my skin. “Breathe, Madison?” she says and I listen immediately, sucking a heap of air into my lungs.

I can feel her eyes. I can feel the sorrow in them, the fear, the care. It makes me hate Julian even more.

“Did someone…” she starts and I don’t want her to finish. I don’t want her to finish because she can’t tell me my own story. She can’t say the word and make it real. She can’t.

“Raped,” I say and I’m not sure how I find the strength, but the word is out there. The word is out there, and Roxanne is saying nothing.

She is horrified. Her big black eyes are round and glassy as tears work their way up. She feels this deeply. Oddly enough, I’m the one broken, yet she is the one expressing emotions I’ve been trying so hard to keep down and tightly bottled.

“You should go to the police,” she says.

“No. I can’t. it’s not an option.”

“You need to. Madison, you were raped. It’s the course of action that is taken when something like this happens. It’s the course of action you need to take –– for you, for the other women this man might have hurt, for the other women he might hurt.”

I give her a bitter half-smile. “I can’t.”

“You have to. Good grief, does your family know?”

I shake my head. “My mom is out of the picture. Left us when I was fifteen. And Dad…no, I can’t tell him. It would destroy him.”

“If you give me the guy’s name, I can at least run it by Julian. You know us well enough to understand how well connected my husband is, he could—”

“No!” That came out too strongly, and I have absolutely no control over myself. I drop the glass. It shatters onto the marble floor, forcing Roxanne to take a few steps back. The water splashes all over my boots, and tears roll down my cheeks. I cannot hold any of this back.

Oh, god, I am so fucking broken.

“Please. Let’s not get him involved,” I say, trying to keep whatever is left of me together. “Please.”

“Madison…” Roxanne stares at me in disbelief. It isn’t astonishment that mars her otherwise beautiful, sharp features. It’s fury. Fuck me. She knows. She doesn’t have to say anything. I can see it in her eyes. She could tell from my reaction.

A minute goes by. Slowly. Heavily. Painfully.

It feels like forever.

The way she’s looking at me says a million more words than anything she could say.

“I wasn’t his first, was I?” Every inch of me is crawling. My heart squeezed, harder than it’s ever done before. Roxanne exhales deeply. She seems disappointed. Nauseated. Disgusted. Not with me. With Julian. “He can’t know. You can’t tell him. He’ll destroy me. My dad. You can’t. Please.”

She takes my hands in hers. They feel cold and sticky with sweat. I can only imagine what’s going through her head.

“Madison, I understand.”

I give her a confused look, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat.

“He hurt you. He hurt you in ways none of us could ever repair or undo or even make up for,” she says, her brows slightly furrowed as her voice echoes sympathy. “You have suffered so much, and, yes, I know my husband. He is petty and vengeful when crossed. That being said, I will promise you one thing. You keep this to yourself, Madison, you stop this from infecting my family, and I will make sure he will never do it to anyone else, ever again.”

I am shuddering and crying again. It’s too much. It doesn’t make any sense. I feel so lost. So alone.

“Julian will get what’s coming to him,” she says firmly. Too firmly. “Your name will not come up, I promise. But I need to protect my son and my daughter. They don’t deserve to share in your shame and your pain. You understand, right? I have to protect my family.”

I stare at Roxanne in sheer disbelief as I realize what’s going on here. Not only am I clearly not Julian’s first “slip,” I am not even the first to cross paths with her afterwards. She has asked others before me to keep quiet. I wonder how many of the women I read about, those accusing Julian of sexual harassment, I wonder how many had this same talk with Roxanne Spaulding-Echeveria.

Were they raped, too? How many did she talk out of reporting Julian’s misdeeds. How many did she convince to move on with their lives…or else? Did she know, right from the get-go, that it was Julian who hurt me? Is that why she reeled me into this conversation? Not to help me, but to see how much I’d reveal, to remind me of just how powerful her husband is, if I dared to tell her the truth?

And is she lying when she says Julian will get what’s coming to him? Maybe. Maybe it’s all a lie. Her concern, her sympathy, even in the midst of begging for my silence. Maybe it’s the same lie she promised all those other girls.

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