She went to the hospital. The police were called. She filled out a report and told them he’d forced her to shower. They used a rape kit anyway. The whole procedure was invasive and time-consuming. She went home, showered again, and went to bed. The next day, she had her locks changed and the windows in her apartment inspected. She took a week off from work and had way too much time to think, analyze, and wonder when he’d spiked her wine. She had never once left the table. Follow-up with the doctor showed genital injuries. Semen was found. The authorities talked to her “date,” and he convinced them that their time together was consensual.
The system for date-rape-drug testing didn’t help her either. The equipment used wasn’t sensitive enough to detect substances at low concentrations. Days had passed between the time Lily had been given the drug and when she arrived at the hospital.
It was over. Only it wasn’t. Not even close.
Bug. Twenty-seven. Five foot two inches. Smart. Dreadlocks, dark eyes, perfect teeth, wide smile. Cheerleader for the varsity football team. Held down by a defensive linebacker and raped by the quarterback and a wide receiver. She hoped to see them at her ten-year reunion. All The Crew did. She’d reported the football players to school authorities and had gone to the police station with her parents. The rapists were from affluent households, though. Bug was not. They were white. She was not.
Malice. Verbally and physically fucked by those she trusted most.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sawyer climbed into her car. She needed to stop by Connor’s apartment and grab some things for her trip to River Rock. But first she pulled out her cell and sent Harper a text, asking if it was okay if she slept on the couch tonight, telling her she’d explain everything when she got there. There were a half dozen missed calls from Connor and double that number of texts. She deleted all of them without bothering to read them first.
By the time Sawyer buckled her seat belt and turned on the car’s engine, her phone buzzed with a reply from Harper, letting Sawyer know she could stay the night.
On the drive, Sawyer’s mind swirled with thoughts of her sisters. Their relationship was complicated. Sawyer couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive her older sister, Harper, for abandoning her. Let it go . . . Live in the now . . . Take responsibility. All good advice she’d received over time but not at all helpful. The thing that stung her most was that Harper was too messed up to talk about those dark days, holding them deep inside as if she thought that might make them disappear.
To be honest, it was a wonder the three of them had come from the same two people. Harper had been a wild child who had since morphed into a cleaning fanatic and control freak. Aria was a worrier who shied away from conflict, intent on keeping everyone around her satisfied. Although many people pierced their bodies as a form of expression, Aria once admitted to Sawyer that she did it as a form of self-therapy and stress release.
And then there was Sawyer—paranoid, unable to trust, and angry. Angry with her uncle for abusing her and Aria. Angry with her parents for being blind to it all. Angry with Harper for abandoning her. And especially angry with herself for being unable to move on.
At the advice of a counselor, Sawyer had hired a private detective she couldn’t afford and had gone in search of her long-lost sisters. Five minutes after she’d handed the PI her money, she had an address for a Nate and Harper Pohler.
She was twenty when she found them living in the same house they lived in now. Harper insisted Sawyer live with them while she worked on getting her degree. Sawyer hadn’t liked the idea of moving in with her sister, but neither did she enjoy living in a run-down apartment.
Once she moved in, every day was like Groundhog Day. Sawyer woke up, went to school, came home, studied, and went to bed. Nobody talked about the elephant in the room. Everyone simply went about their business as if everything were hunky-dory.
Her sisters’ ability to wash their hands of the past had only made things worse for Sawyer. For eight years she hadn’t heard from them, and yet they wanted to pretend everything was fine. It was bizarre, and it pissed her off. She struck out in the only way she knew how, by ignoring them, including all their small talk: How was your day? How are you doing? Do you need anything? Are you hungry?
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you, and fuck you.
Except she also made sure they knew she was around by being loud. She walked loud, talked on the phone loud, made coffee loud. She wanted to punish them for leaving her behind, and she had been doing a pretty good job of making all their lives miserable until Aria had taken Sawyer aside and told her what had happened, starting with her own nightmarish childhood—every disgusting detail.
Until that day, Sawyer had thought she was the only sister who’d been abused by Uncle Theo and his friends.
But she’d been wrong.
Aria told her that every time Mom and Dad had left Uncle Theo to watch over them, Harper would put Sawyer to bed and then run off to party with her friends. At first, Aria had enjoyed her time with Uncle Theo. He would make her hot cocoa, and they would watch movies together. She would often wake up the next morning feeling nauseated. It turned out Uncle Theo had drugged her and taken her to rape fantasy parties where she was passed around.
It all sounded much too familiar. Until their little talk, Sawyer had no idea there was a name for that sort of perversion.
Rape fantasy parties. Big business. Big money. Who knew?
Aria said Uncle Theo had threatened to kill family and friends if she ever told a soul. So she’d kept quiet. He’d done the same with Sawyer. Threats were a common tactic used by many sexual abusers.
Aria also went on to explain—something she’d often heard from Mom too—that Harper had been a rebellious child who drank and did drugs, nothing like the uptight woman who now used a lint roller on the floor of her bedroom to get every hair.
It wasn’t until Harper was dropped off at one of her uncle’s parties, where she stumbled into a back room and saw what was happening to Aria, that a plan to escape River Rock was set into motion.
The only thing Aria remembered about the night she and Harper left River Rock for good was being jostled awake, then staggering barefoot down the gravelly drive before being shoved inside the back seat of a truck, where she blacked out. It dawned on Aria only later that Uncle Theo had drugged her before he’d left the house after warning them to stay put until he returned.
That same night had been seared into Sawyer’s brain to relive over and over again—crying and out of breath, cold and shivering, she’d stood on the front porch, watching the twinkling back lights of a truck disappear down the road, her sisters inside, leaving her alone, and then Uncle Theo’s hand clamping down around her shoulder before he dragged her into the house and handed her off to four strangers.
Nothing was ever the same again.
The days had melded into eternity until her parents returned home. Sawyer had cried with relief, but Mom and Dad hardly batted an eye when they learned that two of their daughters had run off. Her parents had always been neglectful. They’d allowed their daughters to wander miles from home when they were much too young to do so. Sawyer and her sisters used to walk home from school, never worried about the time. They made their own meals, did their homework unassisted, figured things out on their own without much supervision.