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“Mr. Dugger,” my professor cut in with a warning voice.

Glancing at her, I sniffed in outrage. “What?”

But the teacher merely sighed in exhaustion. “Just watch the video.”

Blowing out an extremely loud calming breath, I spread my hands and bit out, “Yes, ma’am.”

Waverly’s mom glared at me a second longer, then resumed playing the clip.

I made sure to keep my eyes on the screen this time but hearing how the poor woman drank too much and passed out at a party only to wake up with two guys on top of her made my jaw creak as I gritted my teeth.

How could anyone just sit here, watching this shit as calmly as everyone else was?

Was I sharing a class with a bunch of robots or what?

I glanced toward Amelia, only to see her wince, and I finally started to feel a little better.

In front of me, another chick slapped both hands over her mouth, and I revised that I maybe wasn’t the only one after all.

But this video was still fucking brutal.

When a third victim appeared on the screen, I almost threw up my hands in defeat and demanded to know how many fucking testimonies we were going to have to sit through.

If Ms. Breeker was trying to make me detest sex so I stayed off her daughter for the rest of forever, I think it just might be working.

After another half a dozen of these, I was probably going to cut off my own dick.

“My babysitter killed himself when I was nine,” the third victim started talking, making me sit up straighter and blink at the screen.

But dead, male babysitter? Why did that sound so familiar?

“So my family took me to this new center that had just opened in town to help me deal with my grief.”

Holy shit. I knew this girl. A vague memory of her face flooded my brain as I recalled the first day of attending grief counseling. The weird girl I’d first sat by, the one waiting to die. She’d had straight, long hair just like the outline of this girl. Same slighter frame. Same dead babysitter.

“I attended once a week for the next six years until I was fifteen,” the distorted voice went on. “But about a year into it, I started to notice some of the girls would be taken off for special, private sessions with the director.”

Sprout.

My stomach churned with unease. She’d been one of Gerald Sprout’s victims. I knew it with every fiber of my being.

But I still found myself blurting, “Are these girls local ?”

Leaning toward me, Amelia scoffed and muttered, “What? Recognize one of your victims?”

I sent her an icy glare, telling her to fuck off with my eyes, while Waverly’s mom frowned at me , saying, “Where these stories come from are of no consequence. It’s the trauma they’ve experienced that we’re focusing on.”

As she pushed play again, I returned my attention to the screen, unable to stop staring at that silhouette.

I could still remember how shocked and betrayed I’d felt when I’d seen the story hit the news. The leader of the very center I’d attended to get help for the loss of my mother had destroyed the lives of thirteen girls. The director had raped and groomed them the entire time I’d gone there.

I’d met my best fucking friends in that place. I’d learned how to deal with my grief there. I’d grown into the man I was now because of that center. Nothing had helped me like it had.

It’d been so unbelievable and surreal to learn that the very place that had been a salvation and safe haven for me had been hell and damnation for others.

Anger flamed up my throat as I listened to the girl in the video feel envy for all the special girls who got alone time with Sprout.

“And then, one day, he finally called me into his office,” the shadowed figure announced, and I closed my eyes briefly, shaking my head.

“At first, he was just really nice and understanding. He gave me candy. He listened like he cared and rubbed my shoulders to put me at ease. It started so subtle and painlessly. But the touching grew gradually more and more with each week until it became hard, if not outright impossible, to tell when things went from acceptable to outright inappropriate. There was never some hard line where I realized, here, this is when it went wrong. He just kept telling me we had a special bond, so it was okay to do things no one else did together. He’d get me to take off a new article of clothing every week, just to get comfortable.

It never actually made me feel more comfortable, but I did it so I wouldn’t disappoint him—so he wouldn’t know something was wrong with me for not liking it.

Because, clearly, something had to be wrong with me if I—if I didn’t want to do what my hero was asking me to do. I had to be the problem, right?”

I shook my head, wanting to tell her no. No, it hadn’t been you, darlin’. It had never been you.

“I’d always thought rape had to be a violent act.

That the victim had to struggle and scream, and the man had to hit her and leave bruises all over her poor, battered body.

But I never struggled. I never said no. He never hit me.

I never actually thought I was being raped.

I mean, sometimes I’d be sore for days afterward, and I wouldn’t know how to get myself to stop bleeding down there?—”

Lifting a hand to my mouth, I squeezed my fingers around my lips and tried to keep my breakfast in, all the while damning Gerald Sprout to a long, painful death, full of fear and the removal of many, many body parts.

“But I never told him no,” that disembodied, mechanical voice repeated.

“I started to hate myself for not wanting to visit his office anymore, for no longer wanting to be one of his special girls. And yet, I’d feel abandoned when he’d pick someone else to visit him.

When he’d finally call me back again, I’d put more effort and energy into learning how to give him the perfect blowjob, how to widen my legs just the way he liked, how to bite back the sounds of pain he disapproved of.

So he wouldn’t forget me. So I wouldn’t be useless. ”

I hissed out my anger.

I’d had no idea the motherfucker had done so much more than just rape them. He’d fucked with their heads and made them think they’d had to do it—willingly—to be important, that something was wrong with them for not wanting it, that they were the problem.

God, I wanted to kill this bastard. Badly.

“He always said I had to learn how to do it right if I wanted to have a happy husband someday. I’d need to be able to please him too. So he’d love me.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. This shit was fucked up.

Needing to disconnect, I looked away from the screen, inadvertently making eye contact with Ms. Breeker.

She stared back at me stonily, making sure I kept paying attention.

“When I was fifteen, his actions finally came to light to someone who wanted to stop him. This person went around to people he thought might’ve been targeted by the director.

I still remember the day he showed up at our house and sat down with me and my parents in my living room to ask if I was a victim too.

Except I didn’t feel like a victim. I felt like the villain. Like a dirty, nasty, awful person.”

Fucking hell. This poor girl. I just wanted to hug her and tell her she wasn’t bad. Not at all.

“There was so much shame and self-disgust inside me when my mother looked at me and knew what I’d done.

And I just—I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t—” The shaded outline on the screen shook her head.

“I tried to kill myself within the month. I went back to the center one evening after it closed, and I overdosed on some pills I found in my dad’s medicine cabinet, trying to end it all. ”

When she paused to lift her trembling hand to her hair and tuck a piece behind her ear, I caught sight of a slim wrist that briefly left the shadows, and in that one moment, my entire life changed.

Because there was a black feather tattooed to the side of that wrist.