“I’m not lying…” I don’t know why I insist with the lie. Maybe it’s a perverse sense to see how far I can push him. How much damage will he do? Will he beat me if I tell him I want Maddox to do to me all the sick and perverted things he’s been wanting to do to me since they adopted me? Will he kill me if I say I’d give up my virginity to a boy I hardly know than ever allow him to forcibly take it from me? He thinks he owns me. He thinks I’m his property. In his disgusting, deluded mind, I belong to him. To him, my vagina belongs to him because he touched it first, long before I even knew it was there. Long before I knew ‘secret touches’ weren’t supposed to be something that happened between a man and a child.

“Mallory’s car broke down after school. Luckily your father was able to drop her off at home. She told him she was waiting for you at the field after track practice, and you weren’t there,” Rachel explains, her voice still quiet, like raising it higher would anger the monster standing right between us. “Where were you, sweetheart? We’re not trying to make you feel bad, but your father and I were worried sick.” If she’d witnessed the slap and everything shortly after, she makes no mention of it. Why would she when she’s a victim herself? Why make herself a target of the monster’s wrath? I guess it’s easier burying your head in the sand and pretending nothing is happening.

In the seconds of silence that falls on us like a thick shroud, I try to find an answer to her question. An answer that’s not going to incur more of Tim’s wrath. It’s one thing to think about antagonizing him, and another thing completely different to actually do it. I’m saved from saying anything by the unexpected pounding at the door. There’s a brief pause in which Rachel and Tim share a look before Rachel, being closest to the front entrance, walks the three steps it takes to open the door.

My heart thuds against my breastbone in both elation and fear at the sight of his intensely handsome face. Maddox stands at the door like some archetypal bad boy, with his tattoos and gauges. He wears that same blasé expression that seems to be his signature, along with his half-cocked grin.

“Yes?” Her voice isn’t the least bit warm or welcoming, and I’m sure there’s a deep frown line of disdain knitting her brows together.

“Hey, sorry to bother you. I’m a classmate of Aylee’s. We were working on a project together in the library earlier. Anyway, I gave her a ride and I guess she dropped this on her way out of my truck. I was wondering if I could give it back to her?” While he holds something up in Rachel’s line of sight that I can’t see from this distance, he takes advantage of his immense height to look over her head. Our eyes meet but only for a few fleeting seconds before Tim steps in my line of sight, effectively blocking my view.

“Get upstairs.” So much of me wants to ignore his order and sidestep him, but I don’t. I only jump into action when he barks, “Now!” in my direction.

It takes forever for me to climb the stairs, not because I’m in any great pain but because I don’t want to leave. Tim trudges to the entryway, and I want to hear what he’ll say to Maddox. Will he warn him away? Tell him I’m unstable, go into excruciating detail how I’ve attempted to kill myself three times over the last year alone? Will he tell Maddox of my nightmares, the ones where I wake up screaming because in them Tim is holding me down to eviscerate what’s left of my innocence? I wouldn’t put it past Tim to say all this. To tell Maddox the extent of my mental illness just to make him stay away from me. And he will, I’m sure. Not only did I follow him to his home, but if Tim tells him all these things about me, it’ll only drive home for Maddox just how truly crazy I am. And no one wants to be associated with crazy.

It hurts my heart to think that Maddox will see me like that. Painted in the light of a mental patient. I hate that I even care, that his opinion of me matters. At the top of the stairs, their conversation is too muffled for me to hear or understand anything. But it’s brief and soon enough I hear the front door close and Tim’s heavy footsteps. I run to my room, close the door, and turn the lock in place. With my heart in my throat, I wait. Five…ten minutes pass, and then…

“Aylee?” The inquiry that follows the soft knock on my bedroom door has my body sagging in relief.

I open it to find Sarah’s sad face staring back at me through the dimly lit hallway. “Hey,” I greet with a small, pained smile, my cheek still throbbing. “What’s up?”

“Are you okay? Daddy didn’t hurt you...right?” There’s a plea in her voice, a glint of hope in her blue eyes that my next words will be exactly what she wants to hear rather than the brutal words of honesty. She wants me to lie to her. Rachel wants me to lie to her. Like mother, like daughter. They can’t face the truth. Tim is a great dad to Sarah. He’s never struck her. And I want to believe so badly that he’s never inappropriately touched her. Sarah worships her father. Rachel worships her husband. He hits her but the fact that he shows her affection outweighs that tragedy. Tim is beloved in this house by two very deluded people.

“I’m okay.” It’s not the truth. But not a lie either. I’m going to be okay because I’ve been through this before. Much worse than this. “Did you want something else? I’m really tired. I was going to take a shower and go to bed.” I’m not up for entertaining her right now.

She pouts disappointedly, “Okay, then we’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Yeah, tomorrow.”

I’m closing the door when she stops me. “Aylee?”

I sigh. “Yeah?”

“Daddy…daddy loves you. You know that, right? Even when he does bad things…he still loves you. He loves all of us.”

His love is wrong. He loves me the wrong way. Will she understand if I tell her that? Will she understand the implication?

With a nod, I bite the inside of my cheek. “Night, Sarah.”

I see it on her face; she wants to say more. Tell me more positive shit about her father so that I don’t think badly of him. She wants to take me into her idyllic world and show me that her dad isn’t the monster who preys on me. I don’t give her a chance to speak further as I promptly close the door with her still standing there. I come away from the door, and OCD has me triple checking the knob just to make sure it’s locked. I assume Rachel has gotten Tim’s attention somehow or he’s on his way to his den in the basement, where he’ll spend the next few hours drowning in amber liquid. The sudden strong urge to shower brings me to my bathroom and it’s beneath the running jets raining down on me that my body truly relaxes. When I’m done, I head back to my room and catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror. There’s a bruise forming from where he hit me. By tomorrow it will be hideous. Glaring at nothing in particular, I walk away, unable to look at myself for too long. Before crawling on my bed, I find my cell phone inside my backpack and bring it with me. There’s a long, colorful text from Mallory.

What happened to you today?

I waited forever!!!

Wish you would’ve told me you were going to ditch me!!!

You’re such an airhead, Aylee.

I swear to God, if I wasn’t your best friend, I’d kick your ass. You better text or call me when you get this.

Guilt bubbles like acid burning the inside of my stomach. I feel terrible for not telling her I wasn’t going to meet her. It simply didn’t cross my mind, but I still feel horrible. My thumbs hover over the touch screen keypad ready to type a long, sorrowful message that would detail exactly why I didn’t bother to meet up with her. But something stops me. Realization hits me from all sides and I know without a single doubt that I don’t want to share this with her. I don’t want her to know about Maddox and the fact that I went to his apartment. I don’t want to tell her about the diner or the truck or that he came to my door just a bit ago. I don’t want to tell her about any of it. If she knows, it’ll spoil it. I don’t know why I think this, but I want to keep this a secret. I’m filled with so many secrets. But this one is special. This one I want burrowed deep inside the fibers of my flesh, because it’s not wrong. It’s not twisted. It’s not stained. It’s mine and it’s clean and it’s precious. I set the phone down on my nightstand. I’ll talk to her tomorrow. I’ll make it up to her some other way.