With her curls tickling my cheek and her breathing growing more even in my ear, I closed my eyes and took my first deep breath in hours.

I opened them again only when the car rocked to a stop. One of the officers led us inside the building and into a narrow corridor with doors on each side and a row of uncomfortable chairs where Noelle and I were told to wait. When he disappeared around the corner, we were finally alone together.

Still, for a few long moments, neither of us said anything, both of us blinking into the harsh fluorescent light, disoriented.

There were so many questions, I didn’t know where to start, or if now was even the right time to say anything.

In the end, Noelle was the one who spoke first. Staring down at her hands, she murmured, “I met him at a friend’s party when I was fifteen.”

“Noelle,” I whispered. “We don’t have to talk about it now.”

“Yes, we do,” she firmly said. “I should have told you long ago.”

Shutting my mouth, I nodded for her to go on.

“Kyle was really popular; everyone kind of knew his name and a lot of the girls I knew were crushing on him. He was nineteen then, four years older than me. It . . . it felt good when he spent the whole evening with me and gave me the most attention out of everyone.” She swallowed audibly, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “After that party, we started hanging out almost every day and after just two weeks he asked me to be his girlfriend.

He was really sweet, always buying me flowers and taking me to fancy places and stuff. It was nice to be desired like that. So I said yes.

“I didn’t tell my mom about him because I knew she wouldn’t have liked the big age gap between us. At that time she was recording her third album and spent pretty much every minute at the studio, so she didn’t even notice. Whenever she asked me where I was spending the night, I just told her I was with a friend.”

Her eyes were glazed as she stared at the white wall in front of us.

“After only a few weeks he began talking about moving in together in the future, marrying, even having children.” I inhaled sharply through my teeth. Noelle looked over at me for a brief second. “A major red flag, I know. At the time, I didn’t take it seriously—he was dramatic like that, so I just laughed every time the topic came up. The second red flag in hindsight was that I was suddenly spending all my free time with him.

Whenever I wanted to leave, he asked me to stay longer, spend the night at his, even skip classes. After a while he started asking me where I was going every time I left, wanted to know exactly who I was meeting or talking to. One time I caught him going through my phone, but he just laughed it off and made a joke out of it, said something like Just making sure you’re not cheating, and I dropped the subject. Without me noticing, he restricted any kind of contact with my friends, especially male ones, and even classmates, until he was pretty much the only person I had to talk to.” She shook her head and murmured, her voice hoarse. “I was so dumb back then.”