“I’m not sure it’s a good idea—”

“William.” I cut him off. “I was here just three days ago, eating dinner in your house. You told me that Sela sometimes withdraws into herself. You told me if I ever caught her doing that, I had to pull her right back out again. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“She can be fragile sometimes,” he says softly.

“That’s not something I respected about her today,” I tell him with bruising honesty. Sela may want her dad to know exactly what went down and I’m prepared for this bear of a man to try to whip my ass for it. “But I swear to you, I understand that now and I’m going to treat her with the care she deserves. I just need to talk to her.”

“Did you hurt her?” His voice is hoarse and pained.

“Badly,” I admit.

William’s eyes get wet and his gaze slides away from me and out to the street. He swallows hard, takes a deep breath, and looks back at me. “Sela’s had immense suffering in her life. She’s—”

“I know,” I tell him, because by those words it’s clear to me that William Halstead knows his daughter was raped and he’s suffered for it as well.

“You know?” he asks with surprise.

“Yes, and I handled it badly. I hurt her badly. So I’m begging you, William…please let me go in there and beg her forgiveness. Let me show her I can be a good man. Let me take responsibility for my wrongs and give me the chance to make it right for her. At the least, she deserves to know how very sorry I am.”

He raises a meaty hand and scrubs his fingers through his hair, scratches at the back of his neck in contemplation. Finally, he nods and steps to the side of the porch, giving me silent permission to enter.

I expect him to snarl words of warning, or threaten to throw me out if I upset her, but he merely says ever so quietly, “Please make it right for her.”

“I will,” I say confidently, even though I’m scared shitless that I’ll never see Sela look at me again with warmth, care, or desire.

The house is quiet when I walk in and I assume Maria’s not here. I walk back to Sela’s room and don’t bother to knock on the door. I twist the knob and slowly open it, peering into the gloom. The lights are off, and the only way I can see Sela’s bed is from an outdoor light that’s on right outside of her room and illuminating the front yard. The glow filters in through the open blinds and I can see Sela laying on the bed, on her side, curled into a ball. My heart squeezes in pain over her attempt to crawl into herself.

There’s enough ambient light that I make my way over to the side of her bed, reaching out to turn on the small lamp on her desk as I walk by it. My gaze locks on her and I’m surprised to find her staring straight at me, her blue eyes flat and empty.

Three more steps and I’m beside the bed. I kneel down on the carpeted floor, restraining myself from reaching out to her. Her face is blank, not a drop of emotion showing, but her eyes are slightly red, which tells me she’s been crying.

I take a breath, let it out, and tell her, “You were raped by JT.”

It’s an emphatic statement. Not a question, not a guess, not a possibility. It’s fact. It’s truth.

So I acknowledge it.

She doesn’t respond, but I don’t want her to. I have so much more to say and I’m afraid her next words may very well be to tell me to get out.

So I press on. “It took only moments after I slammed that door in your face for it to sink in. Penetrate the truth of what you were saying. For me to believe you unequivocally. But you were already gone.”

Another breath, and I quickly press forward, needing to explain my bad behavior before I could request absolution.

“Sela…you don’t know much about my past, and if you give me the chance, I want to tell you all about it, but just know this…I couldn’t even focus on what you were saying to me. It’s like your words weren’t punching through the anger, and I’m so fucking sorry for how much anger there was. My past has shaped me, and one of my weaknesses is a lack of tolerance for dishonesty. I couldn’t see past you being in my office. I reacted so badly, and I’m ashamed and sickened of what I did to you. I have no excuse though…not really. I should have given you time to explain. I should have trusted there was an explanation. And when you told me that JT raped you, it truly just didn’t seem possible to me. I thought you were talking about since you and I had met, and I just knew that wasn’t the case. Knew it in my gut. But then quickly, I started thinking about everything I knew about you, and I remembered how you looked at JT that day you walked up to him at that Sugar Bowl Mixer. That look on your face. You hated him, and I realized…you had been raped by him. It had just happened long before you and I ever met, right?”

I don’t wait for her confirmation, but I do lean forward a little closer to her as she stares at me. I don’t think she’s even blinked once during my story.

“I ran out of the condo after you, not five fucking minutes after you left. I couldn’t find you. I went to your apartment and waited forever. I went back to the condo, hoping like hell you’d come back. I finally tracked you down here, and I had to come and tell you how very sorry I am for acting so harshly and not believing you. You have to know I’m going to beg your forgiveness after we talk, but please know this…I’ll never forgive myself for what I did. I care about you so—”

“How did you know in your gut?” she asks softly, her first words to me, and I almost shudder in relief just from hearing her sweet voice. It’s like music to my ears.

“Know in my gut?” I ask, confused.

“You said you knew in your gut I couldn’t have been raped by JT since we’d met.”

I hold nothing back, because if Sela grants me with her grace and forgives me, there aren’t going to be any fucking secrets between us. “Caroline was raped,” I say softly, and she gasps in response.

“Oh no,” she says, sitting up slightly and leaning on her arm to peer at me. “Caroline?”

I nod, my heart twisting over the shit my sister’s been through. “I’ve seen the hell a woman goes through right after. You weren’t going through that, so I finally figured out…he had to have raped you a long time ago. Not to say you don’t continually live with it day in and day out, but I’ve also seen how the healing can occur, and how you can move on with life. You clearly were doing that too. With me. It just finally made sense that you were talking about sometime in the past with JT.”