Page 56 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

Silence fills the room, heavy and cautious. I can feel the worry rolling off of her even though I’m not looking at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says in a whisper. “It was too much.”

ㅤ

He stalks forward, closing the small distance between us. I gasp as I back against the lip of the sink. He brackets me against the counter, his large hands white-knuckled as they curl into the hard surface.

“Take it back,” he says. A soft command.

I stare up at him. His eyes are so dark I almost can’t tell they’re different colors.

“Damien—wh-what?”

“Take the fucking apology back. Now.”

“O-okay. I take it back,” I say. “I’m—”

I swallow just in time to not apologize again.

“I never want to hear you apologize for telling me about your hurt, understood?”

“Yes,” I say breathlessly.

“And I need to hear you tell me that you know you didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

“It’s not about deserving or undeserving. It’s just something that happened. I’ve moved on from it and—”

I come up short when he frowns, his jaw flagging with tension.

“Go ahead...Finish that sentence.”

I’m so startled by this sudden departure from what I’m used to that the words spill out of me in a rush. “I’ve moved on from it and healed. I’m okay now.”

“Bullshit,” he says. “You can’t be okay when you still think it’s your fault that it happened.”

“But Nan said—th-that I shouldn’t have trusted him—”

“Respectfully, fuck what your grandmother said. I know you loved her and I’m sure she was wonderful, but even the people we love the most can hurt the shit out of us. I don’t care if she thought you were naive, or gullible. Or if she warned you to stay away from boys or encouraged you to quit school before something happened. You. Did not. Deserve that. Let me hear you say it.”

I feel a flush creeping up my neck and into my face. I can’t tell if I’m embarrassed or if something else is going on. A too-long silence passes between us, and he looms closer, invading my space until he all I can see is him.

“Say it, Lillith.”

I swallow dryly. “I didn’t deserve what happened to me,” I finally whisper.

“Louder than that. Like you actually fucking believe it.”

“I didn’t deserve what happened to me,” I say a little louder, and I feel a little crack inside of me, dangerous and fraught.

“And one more time,” he says, his intensity finally easing a little. One of his hands lifting and carding through my hair. “Just so I can hear it again.”

“I didn’t deserve what happened to me,” I say, and this time the dam bursts. Tears spill out of my eyes before I even realize what’s happening.

Damien exhales, relieved, before his hand in my hair braces behind my head. He pulls me against his chest as I start sobbing like a baby. I wonder if I’ve ever allowed myself to cry about this. I can’t remember a time that I did.

I love Nan so much. But she wasn’t one to suffer foolish choices. Her favorite phrase was “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” To her, the subject of my attending public school had always been a stupid game and the stupid prize had just been a long-delayed inevitability. When I came home, cold and covered in congealing blood and smelling like iron and sweat, she just exhaled a long-suffering sigh and went upstairs to run a bath.

She left me alone that day, and at the time it felt like a mercy compared to the lectures I’d gotten used to during high school. I was already hurting, and I didn’t think I could bear hearing her tell me that she’d told me so. Once I was clean, she served me my favorite dinner and kissed me on top of the head before going back to her knitting. And that was that. An olive branch of sorts.