My eyes met his.
“You did not do anything wrong.”
I buried my face in my hands and cried. Aiden stood, gently lifted me up, and held me.
“Shhh, it’s all going to be okay. I promise you, Arabella. It’s going to be okay.”
After I finally cried until I had no tears left, Aiden asked if he could bring in one of his therapists. Her name was Christina Nash.
Christina and I sat for another hour and talked, with Aiden staying in the room at my request. I was already amazed by how much the burden I’d been carrying had lifted off of my shoulders the moment I’d told Aiden. Telling Christina lifted it even more. Being able to talk to someone about how I’d felt at the time—as well as now, nearly ten years later—was incredibly healing. I’d known I needed to speak with someone. To get it out and not hold it in like I had been doing, but I just had to work up the nerve to do so.
“Do your parents know?” Aiden asked.
I shook my head. “No. They’ve tried countless times to talk to me, but I’ve always shut them out.”
Christina and Aiden exchanged a look before she asked, “Did you tell anyone other than Lori and Aiden?”
Nodding, I said, “I told Abby. I made her swear to me she wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Bishop. I just…I needed to tell someone.”
Christina reached for my hand. “I’m glad you finally sought out someone to talk to, Arabella. Keeping things like this inside makes it harder to heal.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve been in a sort of hell for so long, I wasn’t even sure I could live a normal life any longer.”
“You can, and you will. Just hearing from someone else that this wasn’t your fault is a step toward healing. I know Lori and Abby told you that, but at the time it was all so new. We’re going to be here for you now, too.”
I looked at Aiden. “I need to tell Hunter, but I’m so afraid of what he’ll do, not to me, of course. I know Hunter would never hurt me.”
Aiden cleared his throat and looked at Christina, who gave him a quick nod.
“Arabella, I’m speaking to you as one of Hunter’s best friends. When you tell him, you need to have someone there with you.”
Christina nodded in agreement.
“Like Abby?” I asked.
Aiden shook his head. “No, like me or Kyle or Bishop…or all three of us.”
“It might also be nice to have Abby there with you,” Christina added with a soft smile.
“Why do you want me to have you guys there?” I asked.
Aiden rubbed at the back of his neck as he exhaled. “The only way I can explain this is to use Willa as an example. If Willa came to me and told me she’d been raped, no matter how long ago it had been, the rage I’d feel would be…extremely strong. A part of me is going to guess that somewhere deep inside, Hunter knows you were raped, or at least that something very bad happened to you. That’s going to make him upset, knowing he thought it but never acted on that thought. Or that he couldn’t have prevented it.”
A sick feeling hit me so hard, I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Let me add, I wouldn’t be upset or angry at Willa,” Aiden quickly explained. “But I would want to kill the man who touched her—and I promise you, Arabella, that will be exactly how Hunter feels.”
Christina spoke next. “He’s also going to experience his own grief and guilt for what happened to you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in confusion.
“I agree with Aiden. It has likely crossed Hunter’s mind that you may have been raped, even though he probably won’t allow himself to go there. No one wants to think that someone they love has been violated in that way. Hunter is going to go through his own phases. Anger, sadness, guilt. He’s going to question how he didn’t know or couldn’t tell that you’d been raped.”
“I pushed him away for all those years, so he wouldn’t be able to tell.”
Christina nodded. “I would also hazard a guess that at some point over the last ten years, most likely right when you broke up with him, he may have thought you cheated on him and you simply felt too guilty to admit it.”
I frowned. Hunter would think that, given how I’d ended things. Suddenly, the conversation we had at The Coffee Pot came back to me. “Oh no,” I whispered.
“What?” Aiden and Christina asked at once.
“Um, when we met for lunch, things got heated between me and Hunter, and I got up to leave before either of us said something we’d regret. Hunter told me he’d tried to hate me. We exchanged some words, and I know he’s going to feel guilty for some of the things he said. I know him.”