Chapter 3

There I was, lying on my bed with Heather, who was crying her heart out after revealing her darkest secret to me. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say to make it better. Time just went by. When Heather stopped shaking, I thought that she had gone to sleep. I was wrong.

“Thank you, Nathan.” She whispered.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Unfortunately nothing I can think of. You know that my father is a judge. He has contacts all over the country. He is protected.”

“But...” I started.

“Stop it. There is nothing you can do. Since that first night, there have been many more. The last couple of months he has become rougher while taking me. He started hitting me. The bruise in my face is the first time, that I was not able to cover it up. He even told me that he was going to lend me out to his friends. From the way he told me about it, I think that it’s common practice to lend out daughters or kids in some kind of group. I am deathly afraid, of what else might happen. Over that time, I have thought about this a lot. I could run away, but if they found me, I would be worse off than I am now. I have no idea what he would do, but it would certainly be bad. In the end, the only possibility seemed to either kill him ... or myself.”

I simply crushed her to my chest.

“Nathan, he had been raping Harmony for years. My mother’s sleeping disorder started after Harmony moved into her new bedroom. Mom must know about it. I bet that is the reason why she has been taking sleeping pills all those years. She must know that he has been coming to me, ever since Harmony left for college.”

“I am so sorry. I am so so sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s because of my own experiences that I can tell you, that there is nothing wrong with your love for Sarah. You love her enough to never hurt her. I wished you were my brother.”

Wow. That was unexpected. Considering how her life at home must have looked like since Harmony left for college, I understood where that came from. With nothing to say, I just kissed her on the top of her head and held her tight. Despite all the revelations of the day, I was, as weird as it might be, happy. There were tears in my eyes, I was holding a badly damaged girl in my arms, a girl to whom I had just confessed my darkest secret, but I was happy.

I sighed, content to lie on my bed with Heather in my arms. At the same moment in which I tried to kiss her on the top of her head again, Heather tilted her head back, to be able to look at me.

Right now you are waiting for me to describe how my lips magically touched hers, after which we fucked like bunnies. Come on, confess it. God, you guys have a dirty imagination...

When my lips touched her, the sensation was not what I had expected. The texture was all wrong, the hair tickling my lips confused me. My lips were right on her left eye. Both of us were frozen, trying to determine what just happened. After a few seconds, Heather started to giggle. The small movement of her head made her lashes tickle my lips. A moment later, both of us were laughing, the depressing topics seemingly forgotten.

It took quite some time for us to calm down. Laughing aloud was kind of liberating, allowing us to shed the darkness that was clouding our minds. It felt good, really good.

Our laughter seemed to have alerted Sarah to our presence. She came into my room, saw us on the bed in each other’s arms. Her facial expression changed from curiosity to surprise and seemed to cloud over when she came to an understanding of what she was seeing. I looked at Heather to see her reaction and when my eyes returned to my little sister she was sporting a forced smile.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just heard laughter and was wondering what was up in your room, Nathan. I’m not going to bother you any longer. Have fun.” Sarah said. Before I could answer her she was gone and the door closed.

“That was strange,” I said.

“Wow. Who would have thought.”

“Hm?” I was being very eloquent.

“It seems your case is not entirely hopeless,” Heather answered, smiling at me.

“What are you talking about? What case?”

“Sarah? Your sister?”

“What about her? Maybe I could sense your decision to kill yourself, but I can’t read your mind.”

“Men are just dense.” The smile left her face and was replaced by pity.

Maybe so. She was not making any sense to me. What the fuck was she talking about? I was just hoping that this would not lead to another evening of my family talking about my girlfriend.

“Nathan, what did just happen? Tell me in your own words.”