Chapter 185

Ramon POV

I clicked through more articles, each one reinforcing what I already knew. There were no happy endings here. No stories of survivors who stayed with their attackers and built healthy, loving relationships. That narrative didn’t exist because it couldn’t exist.

Rape destroyed trust. Destroyed safety. Destroyed the foundation necessary for any real relationship.

And I had raped Lake. Even if it was “just” statutory rape. Even if I’d been d***ged. Even if neither of us remembered most of it. The fact remained: I’d had sex with a fourteen-year-old child. And now that child—grown into an adult I loved desperately—was bonded to me. Trapped by biology and circumstance and the terrible coincidence that had brought us together.

The only way to free him was to leave.

I opened one last video, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

It showed a teenage girl who’d been assaulted by a family friend. She’d gotten pregnant. She’d kept the baby, tried to