Page 33 of Into Pitch

“I hate you for asking,” she mutters low.

“I know,” I murmur.

She unfolds the page, smoothing it out over her knee as she takes a deep breath to steady herself. And I note that she doesn’t look back up to me again as she begins.

“Dear Sadie,” she reads. “You’re not broken. You weren’t difficult or dramatic or too much. You were a kid who needed someone to step in, and no one did.”

Her grip tightens on the paper and I rest my finger to my cheekbone where I sit relaxed, eyes boring into the flush that curls over her cheeks.

“You learned early how to read a room and decide whether it was safer to speak or stay quiet. That wasn’t weakness though, I want you to know that. It was survival, and you did what you had to.”

What did you have to do?

“You didn’t imagine what happened, and what happened to you mattered, even if no one said it. Even if it was easier for everyone else to pretend it didn’t.” She pauses, breath hitching.

I sit a little straighter in my seat again, because this isn’t entirely about mom anymore.

“You deserved protection from Peter and Heath. You deserved to say no and it be heard. You deserved a mother who didn’t… who didn’t let it happen.”

I go very still, and I don’t need it spelled out clearly to read between the lines of what she’s said to understand it. Exploding right now won’t do me any good, nor would it help her. So I grab that wild, bucking sensation in my chest and shove it down so deep that it snarls and snaps. It pleads for the taste of copper on my tongue and the red to fall over my vision.

“That was harder. Saying it to myself.” She states, snapping me out of my own turmoil.

“Why?” I ask, a little breathless.

“Because that means I can’t minimize it anymore.”

Exactly. Now I need to learn to do something with it before I do something reckless instead.

“The two men,” I start, apparently ignoring my own advice to not push on it.

“Heath and Peter,” she drawls slow after a beat.

I wait, because if I ask the one question I want to know for certain, the rest will come out in a tidal wave. One I have no control over and I don’t want her caught in the crosshairs of it.

“Heath was around when I was little,” she continues. “One of my mom’s boyfriends. He got angry and loud, and… handsy.”

My jaw tightens before I consciously stop it.

“She didn’t stop him,” Sadie adds. “That was the first time I realized my mother wasn’t the only thing I needed to hide from.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight.”

The number lands a blow and my nostrils flare.

“And Peter?” I grit out, knowing damn well I’m losing the plot. That the reins of control are slipping free as I scramble for them.

She exhales slowly. “Peter was different, and… patient. He was even nice, and he made me feel special. Like I was older than I was.”

I don’t interrupt, because I’m too fucking busy keeping my fingers from snapping my pen in half.

“He groomed me,” she murmurs simply. “I didn’t have the language for it back then, but I do now. I only got away from him because I ran.”

“At seventeen,” I finish.

She nods and the pieces click together with sickening clarity. The patterns and the avoidance of connection. The way she keeps men at arm’s length until she doesn’t—and then chooses ones who feel dangerous because danger itself is familiar.