I stare at her for a long moment, trying to understand how her mind works, how she’s processed all of this. It’s incredible to me. If I believe her, then she’s not angry. She doesn’t hate me. She’s been through something traumatic, but she’s found a way to turn it around, to see it all differently. It’s astonishing.
“Can I tell you something?” she asks, breaking the silence, startling me.
“Of course.”
Sienna swallows, her hands flexing against the side of the bed. “Obviously I wasn’t a virgin.” She laughs, glancing back toward the wall that separates her room from Adam’s. “But tonight… you were only the second man, Damian. And that was the second time. Ever.”
I remember her voice, back in that room, murmuring the answer to my question.Four years. It didn’t completely register, in the moment, what she was saying. That it had been four years meant that the last man she was with was Adam’s father. Somewhere in the backof my head, I’d figured it out, but there was too much going on to really think about it.
But I would have assumed that whoever that man was, they’d had sex more than once.
Just the thought of another man’s hands on her, any man, makes me feel feral. My hands curl into fists, my nails biting into my palms, my jaw clenching. I can’t hate the man entirely—he gave her Adam, and it’s clear that the little boy is her whole world. I can’t wish for that to be undone. Butfuckif I hate the idea that anyone has ever touched her besides me, especially someone who wasn’t man enough to stay with her after what he created.
“Who?” The word comes out sharp, a blade cutting through the air between us. Sienna looks up at me, her mouth twisting in an expression that’s almost amused. As if she finds my jealousy funny.
“You can’t go kill him, Damian.”
“I could,” I growl, and her mouth twitches with that same amusement.
“I’m not going to tell you this unless you promise not to run off and tear apart some man who doesn’t deserve it.”
My eyes narrow. “He didn’t stay with you and Adam. He deserves it.”
Sienna lets out a sigh. “I didn’t want to stay with him. Maybe he does deserve something, but not for that, and not what you’d do, Damian. So just… settle down, and listen, okay?”
I let out a sharp breath. She sounds like she’s trying to soothe a wild animal, but isn’t that what I’ve felt like lately, more often than not? Maybe she sees something of what I really am, after all.
If she does, I’m not sure how she isn’t screaming for me to get away from her.
“Fine.” I lean back against the doorframe. “I won’t kill anyone. Or harm them,” I add, seeing Sienna’s gaze narrow on me. “What is it that you want to tell me?”
She seems satisfied by that, taking a deep breath and letting it out as her gaze flits away from me, and her hands tighten on the edge of the bed. “I went to community college when I was eighteen,” she saysquietly. “My parents got divorced when I was fifteen, and I hadn’t heard from my dad since he left—which was fine, he wasn’t that good of a dad anyway—and my mom could barely afford to take care of herself. She was glad I moved out. I wanted to get as far away from home as I could—in Wisconsin,” she adds, seeing the curious look on my face, “so I took a Greyhound bus to Miami, used the savings I had from waitressing to get a pay-by-the-week hotel room, and signed up for community college. This city… it was the most exciting place I could think of to go. Lights and clubs and music and parties, a completely different world. But I knew I’d need some kind of decent job, so I got work as a waitress again, used my student aid to get a shitty apartment, and tried to do well in class.”
I frown, unsure of where this is going, but I don’t want to interrupt her. And I’m curious about my little wildcat, about who she was before all of this. How she got here. We’ve never talked about it, because that might have invited questions about myself—questions I’m not prepared to answer.
“There was this professor,” she says after a moment’s pause, and every protective, possessive, feral instinct that I have toward her roars to life as suddenly, Idoknow where this is going. I knowexactlywhere it’s going, and I do my best to stifle the urge to demand every last piece of information she has about him before I tear off in search of this man who undoubtedly took advantage of a girl too innocent to know what she was getting into.
Just like you have?The guilt is searing, choking back anything else I could say.
“My literature professor,” she continues. “I was barely eighteen, I’d always loved books as a way to escape, and I was completely enamored with him and how he taught, the way he saw books and explained them, and made them come alive. The other students mostly seemed bored, but I was fascinated. I’d stay after class and talk to him about the lectures—which he loved, of course—and I’d find excuses to go to his office hours and ask him questions, just talk to him.” Her cheeks flush. “He was handsome. Older—late thirties—but I didn’t think anything of it. It seemed sexy, being with an olderman—” Her blush deepens, as she glances at me, seemingly realizing what I have all along… that she’s still with an older man, still getting caught up in something she shouldn’t with someone too old for her, with too much power over her.
She bites her lip, looking away. “It escalated quickly. He was getting a book off the shelf one day, showing it to me, and… I kissed him. I don’t know what came over me. He just… all of those conversations made me feel special. He was older, sophisticated, he paid attention to me. And I ran off, as soon as I did it. I thought he’d be angry, but the next day that I had class with him, he asked me to stay after. He took me back to his office and locked the door…”
Sienna swallows hard, and my hands curl into fists. I’m angry… so fucking angry. I want to go and find the man, rip his spine out, and strangle him with it. He might not have hurt her physically, but he hurt her, and the thought ofanyoneharming this woman makes me feel murderous.
“I hadn’t been with anyone before him,” she whispers. “I’d kissed a boy once, in eighth grade. I was so naive. I knew how it all worked, I’d… touched myself before, but I’d never let anyone else touch me.”
“Sienna—” Her name comes out rougher than I intended, and her gaze snaps up to mine.
“Just let me finish.” Her teeth sink into her lip. “It was so overwhelming. Him touching me, kissing me, laying me back on the desk… it was like something out of a movie, but it was happening to me, and I wasn’t sure if I wantedallof it, just some of it. But he moved so fast I didn’t know how to say no, or if I should… I wanted him to like me. To respect me. It didn’t even feel that good.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “He definitely wasn’t worried about getting me off. He didn’t use a condom, either. I asked if he had one, and he said no, that he wanted to feel me and he’d pull out. But… he didn’t. Obviously.”
Pure, white-hot rage floods my system. Some piece of shit professor took advantage of an eighteen-year-old girl who didn't know better, and she's been carrying that with her ever since.
“He gave me money for plan B, after.” She shrugs, as if it’s long behind her, but something tells me it isn’t. “Obviously, it didn’t work.The next day, when I tried to talk to him after class, he said he was busy. I came to office hours, when his door would be open, and it was clear he didn’t want to see me. That what I thought was this sexy, forbidden love affair was just him debauching a student, and once he did that, he didn’t want me any longer.”
My jaw tightens, teeth grinding together. “And you told him about Adam?”
Sienna nods. “I told him I was pregnant. He said it wasn't his problem. That if I tried to make it his problem, he'd make sure I was expelled and no other college would accept me."