Chapter 65

“I don’t know. I just accept everything my father says. And though he saw Ethan’s bruises, he never saw my suffering.” I shrug. “No… I don’t like being around them. I get angry when I’m with them. A lot. I don’t like who I am around them, and I don’t like the memories that come back.”

“And yet on Wednesday you’re going there.”

“For Ethan. He doesn’t know about this, and I’m not going to tell him. He thinks I had a falling out with our parents as a teenager.”

“You don’t have to go,” Marcus says softly. “You can see Ethan here. If he knows you’re at odds with them, he’ll understand.”

“Maybe. But he really wants me to go. And there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

Marcus studies me, then says, very slowly and carefully,

“Including letting a predatory photographer abuse you?”

The tears I’ve held back burst like a broken levee.

“Yes,” I answer, rough and shaking. “I could have walked away. I could have stopped it. I could have done