She could feel Chase’s anger, but she ignored it. Instead she tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel and studied the glass door Spencer had disappeared through, willing him to come back and let her end this stupid debacle. She wanted to go home, make a pot of tea, and watch, well, not The Hammer. She had recorded the television series but hadn’t watched it yet.
She felt Chase studying her.
“What?” Olivia asked, not liking the perusal. She had lines in her forehead that likely needed Botox. She’d get it if she weren’t so afraid of needles. And she couldn’t remember if she’d tweezed her eyebrows that morning.
“I already know why I’m the way I am. When I was thirteen, my dad let one of his friends have sex with me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Chase knew she had said those words too casually, probably because to say them the way they felt inside her would reveal too much. Telling someone you had sex with a forty-year-old man when you were barely a teenager was akin to lifting one’s shirt and showing that you were wired with explosives.
Made the mouth dry, and the soul tremble.
Chase had never uttered those words out loud before. Not ever. Not to her mother. Not to any of her dozens of therapists. Not even to a close friend. That moldering rot had stayed inside her, locked down, her own “precious” that had turned her into a feverish Gollum hiding her wound from the world. She’d kept what had happened all to herself because her father had told her that if she told what had happened, everyone would think she was a whore, that she’d asked for it. Logically, she knew that wasn’t true, but the haunted place deep inside her didn’t recognize logic. Instead it bowed to fear and loathing.
Olivia jerked her head toward Chase, her expression horrified before she masked it with her noncommittal therapist stare. Chase felt a slight flutter of victory at breaking through Olivia’s control.
“What? You were . . . what?” Olivia stammered.
Chase shrugged and then turned toward the window and stared out at the sign for the coffee shop. Common Grounds. Very California sounding. But the font didn’t match the business name. They’d used an Old English font.
“Chase, look at me,” Olivia said, touching her forearm gently. “What do you mean you were thirteen?”
Chase brushed Olivia’s hand away. “Forget I said anything about it. Guess I thought you should know that I am self-aware. I’ve read a lot of books on childhood sexual abuse. I know why I keep fucking up, so that work is already done.”
Silence sat like a fat slug between them—just icky and bloated. Chase was cool with not talking because, truthfully, she was still grappling with the fact that she’d admitted to losing her virginity to Peter Rinduso, a bit character actor. And that she’d done so to a therapist she hardly knew made it all the worse.