“I only ever played Seven Minutes in Heaven once, when I was fourteen,” Lexie said. “The guy shoved his hands down my pants and touched me. I bit him and kicked him in the balls.” She sounded so proud of herself that the sad tension, which had been growing in the room, broke and everyone started laughing. Even Ellie. She looked up to see Lexie shrugging, although her cheeks were pink and her smile wasn’t entirely genuine.

“A guy tried to follow me from a party back to my dorm when I was in college. He kept catcalling me and asking me why I was being a bitch by ignoring him. I kept walking faster, but having to chase me just made him angrier,” Angel said, giving Ellie’s hand - which was no longer a fist - a little squeeze. “I was lucky, I found a campus security guard on the way and she chased him off. She’s the one who told me about the self-defense course the campus offered.”

The words bubbled up inside Ellie and it felt like her chest hurt from all the years she’d spent pushing them down, holding them in. Her gaze dropped back down to her knees where Leigh’s hand was still resting. Where she could see Angel’s hand gripping hers out of the corner of her eye.

“My high school boyfriend raped me at a party,” she said, choking off the words as a sob rose in her throat. Her shoulders hunched forward, waiting for the blow. The questions. The disbelief. The judgment. The usual reactions.

Angel’s hand gripped her harder.

“Oh honey....” Kate’s voice was so much closer and Ellie looked up in surprise as the light around her dimmed and she was suddenly in the center of a protective circle of support and love. They were all around her, someone perched on her right, Angel leaning in from the left, hands on her shoulders, her legs. Tears rose. Hope, almost too painful to bear, slid through her.

“We were both drunk, but I didn’t want it... I didn’t. I said so. I’d told him maybe we could, before the party, but when he started pushing me I said no.” Her voice hitched as the tears slid down her cheeks. They swam in her eyes, making it impossible to see.

“We believe you,” someone murmured. She didn’t know who, but it didn’t matter, because everyone else was immediately saying it too, their voices full of concern without an ounce of doubt or disbelief.

Not one of them asked if she hadn’t been clear. Not one of them asked why she’d told him ‘maybe’ if she was going to change her mind later. Not one of them tried to get her to ‘see his side.’ They just surrounded her with complete and total support and love.

They were on her side.