Page 24 of Cross the Line
My tears.
My rage.
I open my mouth, only to close it again. Nothing comes out. I’m speechless. Wordless. Mute.
What do I say?
What can I say?
Because nothing is okay.
It’s not going to be okay, because I can’t fix it.
I can’t undo what those bastards did to Eli.
I can’t ever make that better.
…And what good am I to him if I can’t do anything?
Eli glances up from the table where he’s been ripping sugar packets apart, pouring the granules over the puddles of his tears—like he’s trying to turn something bitter into something sweet.
His hands shake harder now than they did before. Harder than when he told me the story behind the photos.
Except, it’s not a story.
It’s his reality.
His living, breathing, corroding pain.
“Eli…” I choke around the lump in my throat, leaning back against the wall across from him. It’s the only thing keeping me from throwing my arms around him, from wrapping him up in me.
“Please don’t. Don’t look at me like that,” he breathes, voice raw. “I’m not a victim. I don’t want to be a victim.”
“You’re not,” I say quickly. My feet carry me toward him before I even register it. I stop a foot short, my hand reaching for him.
This is why he doesn’t like being touched. Why he flinches from proximity… from intimacy.
Dark, tear-bruised eyes drop to my hand gripping the edge of the table. I’m holding on just to keep myself from taking something that isn’t mine to take.
Slowly, he brings his hand closer and sets it beside mine. “JJ?”
“Eli.”
“You can touch me,” he murmurs, sucking in a deep breath as he pries my fingers loose from the table one by one, sliding his beneath mine. “I like it when you touch me.”
Those words are salvation. The only ones that stop the endless hole in my chest from swallowing every ounce of hope I have left.
I clasp his hand, tracing my fingertips across the flat of his wrist. He’s still shaking. His skin is as cold as the shock quaking through me.
“Why didn’t you report it?” The question slips out before I can filter it. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Those bastards get to go on with their lives like… like…”
My head’s stuck. My heart’s frozen. On. One. Thing.
Eli—my brooding, beautiful Eli—was raped.
All this time. Years of knowing him. Of watching him. Of falling in love with him. All those moments of searching his eyes for the reasons he was closed off?—
I never saw it.
