Page 117 of Our Little Secret

“Bully you?” Brooke repeated.

“You know you do. You always have!” She was steaming, still itching for a fight.

“Bully?”

“You know what I mean. You’ve always been bossy, telling everyone what to do. Get everyone to take the blame for you.”

“What?” Where was this going? Why was it coming out now?

“Just ask Keith Turnquist,” Leah said with a knowing smirk.

“Keith?” Brooke said. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“I know what happened that night, Brooke. So does everyone else. He saved your ass.”

“He nearly raped me,” she replied.

Leah shot her an oh-really glance and Brooke turned her attention to the brake lights burning ahead.

“You assaulted him,” Leah said. “I heard Mom and Nana. The only reason you weren’t charged was because you were underage.”

“That’s not the way it was.”

Leah snorted her disbelief, and for a few seconds Brooke remembered that night. The party. The crowd . . .

She and Keith had been drinking and arguing. They’d been at a teen party outside the city in a house in the woods, somebody’s relatives’ house who were away for the weekend. They were drinking and high when Keith talked her into stepping into a bedroom with him. She’d known it was a mistake the minute he’d opened the door, where two twin beds were positioned on either side of a window. In one a couple was already naked and going at it, moaning and so out of it they didn’t know anyone had entered or just didn’t care.

But Brooke wanted nothing to do with sharing the space and making out on some little girl’s bed with unicorn sheets and pink-striped wallpaper. She spied a Barbie Dreamhouse tucked into one corner, tiny dresses hanging in the closet. As Keith used his body to block the door and walk her backward toward the vacant bed, she tripped over some toy, a sharp plastic dinosaur.

“You need to take me home,” she insisted.

“Come on, Brooke,” Keith said, pulling up her blouse and pushing her onto the rumpled unicorn sheets. Some little girl slept here.

“No.” She wasn’t about to give her virginity to him on a twin bed where some unknown child slept. Even half drunk she knew better than that, and she really didn’t like the idea of the other couple, naked and groaning on the matching bed.

“It’ll be good,” Keith promised and was working at his fly, lowering the zipper.

“No, not here.” She pushed hard, throwing him off her and stumbling out into the living room, filled with smoke and loud music and people she didn’t know. Keith followed after her.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

“I want to go home.” And she was out the door, determined to walk the three miles if he didn’t take her.

“Brooke!” he yelled through the hot summer night. “Goddamn it, Brooke. Well, fuck!” and he was jogging closer to her. “Okay, I’ll take you home.”

But she didn’t believe him. Freaked out, she took off, running across the side yard, past the parked cars and into the surrounding woods. Moonlight pierced the leafy canopy, but she was drunk and scared and he was thundering behind her, catching up.

She didn’t see the exposed root and stumbled. His hand caught her shoulder, twisting her back, but she went down, landing hard, a sharp rock piercing her neck.

Pain screamed through her shoulder.

And there he was, leaning over her, just like he had in the bedroom. “Get away from me!” she screamed.

But he kept coming, on his knees, touching her. “It’s going to be all right,” he said, a dark shape. Oh God, was he unzipping his fly again? She didn’t wait to find out.

She felt the rock beneath her hand. Sharp on one side, wickedly sharp on the other. Her fingers curled around it, and as he got closer she swung, smashing the sharp edge into his face.

He howled.