Page 129 of Break Away
Even saying it, even dragging whatever this was into the middle of a crowded bar, he couldn’t hold her stare.
“It was a party,” he said, his voice thinner now. “People were drinking. Stuff happened.”
“What stuff?” I asked.
My voice did not sound like mine anymore.
Maddox lifted both hands. “Man, don’t make it weird.”
Briggs stood so fast his chair scraped hard against the floor.
Rider’s palm struck the table, flat and sharp. “Answer him.”
Maddox’s mouth tightened, and the ugly thing inside him came out mean because fear always made cowards crueler.
“We all took a turn fucking her that night,” he said, looking at me instead of her. “Darian filmed it, and yeah, it got passed around. People talked. That’s all.”
The room fell away from me.
They gang raped her.
There was no version of Aura Clarke who had chosen to fuck a room full of men while saying careful, stop, don’t, and no. No version of her who would have let Darian film it or pass it around. Maddox could call it fucking until his tongue rotted from the lie, but I knew her.
They raped her.
Aura’s face didn’t crumple. She didn’t gasp or do anything big enough for strangers to name. Her expression went blank, but her eyes changed, and the look in them hit me harder than any punch ever had.
Panic.
Real panic.
Not the sharp, polished survival she wore like armor. Panic, raw and exposed, broke through her so quickly she couldn’t hide all of it. Her eyes shot toward mine, wide and black and terrified, and for one fucked-up second, I saw exactly what she needed from me.
Stop him.
Not save me. Not fix it. Not ask questions.
Stop him from saying another word.
My hands curled against the table, every muscle in my body tightening until I felt my pulse in my teeth. I began to move, but Maddox kept talking, too stupid and too vile to realize he had just handed death a chair at our table.
“She acted like she didn’t know,” he said, his mouth curling as his gaze slid back toward Aura. “Like she was some victim after the fact. But come on, girls like Aura know exactly what they’re doing when they get a room full of guys worked up.”
Briggs made a low, dangerous sound beside me, and Rider said, “Holy fuck.”
Maddox looked around, gathering whatever attention he could scrape from the edges of the room. “I’m just saying what everybody said. She wasn’t exactly fighting it in the video.”
Aura’s order pad slipped from her fingers.
It struck the floor with a flat little smack that somehow cut through the noise of the entire bar. The pen followed, bouncing once near her boot before rolling beneath the table. Her tray tipped next and clattered against the floor, and that sound finally made people turn. Heads lifted near the bar. Hannah looked over from the service well. A football player halfway through laughing stopped with his mouth open.
Aura didn’t look at any of them.
She looked at me.
The panic was worse now. Fear cracked straight through the center of her face, and I hated myself for every second I had ever thought she was cold. She looked younger. Not weak, never weak, but cornered in a place she had clearly spent years making sure no one could drag her back into.
Maddox laughed beneath his breath. “See? Still dramatic as hell.”
