The images shifted, and I was back in prison, full of rage yet unable to do anything about it as they took turns fucking me while the guards let it happen. All this time, I thought she’d callously tossed me aside, but I hadn’t known why. Knowing didn’t resolve anything, didn’t bring me closure, and it sure as fuck didn’t absolve us of our sins. Knowing only made me feel worse, because she’d suffered in silence out of fear for me.

I risked a glance at her, searching her expression for signs of duplicity. I’d rather find she was lying than accept what she’d told me as truth, but the same harrowing pain I’d seen in the mirror, day after day for the past eight years, haunted her face. I had trouble reconciling the Zach I remembered with the picture she painted. We’d been close, fiercely competitive but like brothers, and to find out such vile poison ran through his veins, that he’d hurt his own sister and threaten me…I couldn’t comprehend it.

I dropped my bloodied fist, and it was a miracle my hand wasn’t broken. Her whimpers tore through me as I staggered into the bathroom, heart pounding so fucking hard, I thought it would rip from my chest and tumble to the floor. Flinging the door to the medicine cabinet open, I pulled out gauze and wound it around my hand, but my head was still back in the bedroom with her, still wrapped up in the waves of shame that emanated from her being.

I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs, especially when I laid eyes on the bathtub. Water still pooled around it, evidence of my torture methods. What I’d done to her in order to get the truth…now I wanted nothing more than to undo it, to go on believing she’d been a spoiled teenager, pride bruised over rejection. Just a selfish kid who’d flung out a single lie without giving thought to the destruction she’d cause.

Swallowing hard, I brought my injured hand to my throat, as if that would alleviate the need for air. I had to get out of there for a while, had to get my head on straight before I tried to straighten out hers. I almost laughed. How did one straighten out so many years of pain and betrayal?

She was huddling under the bedding when I returned to the room. I pulled on a pair of jeans, and the weight of her stare pressed on me, burned to my bones.

“Where are you going?” she asked.