She gives a tiny nod and drops her gaze from mine, her fingers plucking absently at the sheet. “It was ten years ago.”

“I am so sorry, baby,” I say, and I bring my hands to rest on the edge of the mattress. My voice cracks, almost deserts me, when I say, “I’m so fucking sorry, Sela. I can’t stand to know you were hurt like that. It’s tearing me up and I want to do something to make you feel better, but I don’t know what to do other than beg you to let me try.”

She drops her gaze again, her brows furrowing inward with consternation. For a moment, I know what I did was so heinous I feel like she just starts to slip away from me, but then her eyes snap back up to mine in question. “Do you really believe me?”

“That JT raped you?” I ask, but I know that’s what she wants to know. “Yes. I absolutely believe you and I’m so fucking sorry that I wasn’t telling you that immediately when you said it. I was just so angry about finding you in my office.”

“But I was in your office. I stole your key, made a copy, and was searching through your office,” she says with a pointed look.

“You forgive me Sela for what I did and you get a fucking pass on my office. In fact, you can look through anything in there you want.”

And Christ above answering my prayers, she smiles at me. It’s small and quite thin, but it’s genuine.

She pushes up further on her arm, leans in toward me. “You hurt me.”

“Yes,” I whisper, my breath now frozen in my lungs as I await her verdict.

“Don’t do it again.”

“Never,” I vow.

“It’s actually a good thing,” she says softly, and her hand slides across the bed to rest on mine. “That you hurt me.”

I blink at her in surprise, my wrist turning so I can clutch her fingers. “Excuse me?”

“For me to be hurt like that, it means I cared for you deeply, otherwise your reaction wouldn’t have mattered to me.”

I grip her her tighter, almost afraid to hope.

“And for you to be so angry,” she continues. “To the point where you weren’t even really understanding what I was trying to tell you…Well, I guess that speaks to the same thing. You had feelings for me you felt were betrayed.”

“Yes, but that’s no excuse for—”

“Beck,” Sela cuts me off, leaning closer to me. She rests her forehead on mine before whispering, “I’m tired, and I’d really like to go home to our condo.”

“Thank fuck,” I mutter before surging up and onto the mattress, pulling her hard into my arms. She presses her face into my chest, her arms wrapping around me, and I feel like I can finally breathe for the first time in hours.

The ride back to San Francisco is quiet but there’s no tension. I don’t have the stamina to hold on to it, and I don’t have the strength to consider what’s happened today. Beck holds my hand tightly, still expertly navigating his Audi through the darkness. Rush hour is over and the ride into the city goes by quickly.

Despite what I did to him today. Despite what he did to me. Despite what he’s learned, despite the pain we’ve both caused, the silence is comfortable and unassuming. I know we have to talk, and I know he needs details. But God…I dread giving him the details. I know deep down the only reason Beck appears so calm right now is because he’s in shock over what he’s learned today, and I suspect still mired in guilt for the way he treated me. When he learns the whole truth of what happened to me…when he gets those terrible, sordid details…he’s going to go ballistic. I just know it.

I need details too, because Beck’s seen the devastation that rape can cause a woman. He’s lived through it with Caroline, and despite the ache I constantly carry around due solely to that one hideous night of my life, my thoughts keep coming back to Caroline and the horror that she shares with me. I tried a survivor’s therapy group about six months after my first hospitalization, and by the third session, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to share what happened to me, and I didn’t want to know what happened to the other women. Much of that had to do with the fact that I really didn’t know what happened to me.

I had flash memories that I didn’t realize were memories, but rather suspected they were nightmares. Vivid splashes of images and feelings that I thought were nothing more than my mind playing horrid tricks on me. The doctors explained that Rohypnol, in addition to relaxing me to the point where I wouldn’t have been able to fight my attackers, causes partial amnesia. I existed in a world where I couldn’t separate fact from fiction. It meant that I could give precious little in the way of valid information to the police to help them pursue my attackers.

I had no clue where Dallas and his friends had taken me, so the police couldn’t investigate. I was too high to pay attention. I didn’t even know Dallas and his friends’ full names, no clue where they were from, or how the police could locate them. I had very little memory I could provide about what happened before I was given a drink laced with a date rape drug called Rohypnol, and that was due to the sole fact that I was stoned out of my mind when we arrived at the party. It was tremendously embarrassing to admit those things to the officers while my parents listened. They never showed an ounce of disappointment in me, which was a blessing, because the weight of my own self-hatred for putting myself in that situation was crippling.

So I had just tiny clips of moving images, almost like I was watching a movie in bed while on the verge of going to sleep. Not sure what I was seeing, not sure if I had seen it before, and completely clueless about whether it really happened at all. The only solid proof the police had that I had been raped was the blood in my underwear, the tears and bruises in my most private places, and the semen in my hair. Obviously, there was no match to the DNA in any criminal database, which meant my attackers didn’t have criminal records.

So the case was dropped for lack of evidence, and I was left to rebuild my life around a crime that would never be solved.

Beck pulls into the garage of the Millennium Tower and inches into his reserved space. He opens my door and takes my hand to help me out of the passenger seat. His touch is warm, dry, and comforting as we make our way up to the penthouse.

The minute we step inside, I have an immediate burst of relief mixed with a touch of uncertainty.