As I sit here, feeling as if I don’t have a single ounce of strength within me, I realize that as the mania subsides, I’m left with a desolate emptiness. Just minutes ago, I was full of Sela, and now there’s a hollowness surrounded by a bitter husk.

I hear a sound on the other side of the door, and of course I know it’s Sela.

A hoarse bark of a sound…a pained sob perhaps? An attempt to get me to feel bad about what I’ve done?

My fingers curl inward, press into my palms, and I have to push hard against the overwhelming need to open that door to comfort her.

I push up off the floor and stalk through the living room, trying to get as far away from the door and the sound of Sela crying. I cross my arms over my stomach, hugging myself almost protectively, and pace back and forth along the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the bay.

Something hits the door. A tinny sound, barely noticeable, and my head jerks that way. I take a step in that direction and halt myself.

Turn back around, face the window.

My body tenses, waiting to hear something else. Maybe Sela isn’t done and will start trying to call out to me through the door. Maybe she’ll try to throw more fiction at me, and in fact, maybe that’s why she’s silent right now. Her brain is working up a new web of deceit in which she’ll try to capture me.

I wait and I wait, yet I don’t hear anything else.

Please, Sela…say something and make a liar out of my feelings right now.

Dropping my arms, I walk hesitantly to the door and lean so my ear is placed against it. I don’t hear a sound. I put my eye to the peephole, bracing myself to see Sela curled into some pitiful fetal position.

There’s no one in the hallway, although I can’t see all the way down to the elevator. For all I know, Sela’s waiting there, ready to spring out at me.

I think about her last words. Those I do remember.

“JT raped me.”

My teeth gnash over the ludicrousness of that statement. While I haven’t spent every waking minute with Sela, I’ve spent enough time with her to know that couldn’t have occurred. Not only was there very little opportunity, but I think I’d fucking well know if something horrific like that had happened to my girlfriend.

I know what rape does to a woman. I’ve seen it.

Fuck, I’ve felt it. I’ve felt a woman sobbing and shuddering in my arms, sunk in despair and pain after she was brutalized. JT is a shit, an abuser of women, and I’m not sure to what lengths he’d go anymore. But there’s no fucking way JT raped Sela in the past several weeks we’ve been together. I would have absolutely known something was wrong. You can’t hide something like that.

You can’t.

I know the only fix is time, and that’s not even a complete fix. A rape victim needs time and support and assurance. She needs love and the ability to work through the shame and humiliation. That shit doesn’t happen in days. It doesn’t happen in months.

It fucking happens in years.

And all of a sudden, something strikes out at me with such force and detailed clarity that I actually stagger back from the door a bit.

It’s a memory of Sela on the first night we met.

Sitting on a barstool and staring across the room at JT.

With anger.

I remember seeing it clearly on her face, and thinking it was odd that she’d be staring at him that way. I had assumed that night was the first time Sela had met JT, and that’s why it was so weird that she’d be looking at him that way.

Unless that wasn’t the first time they met.

“JT raped me.”

She didn’t say when, did she?

My mind races as I try to recall the last ten minutes of my life and I can’t pull forth anything. I can only remember her looking up at me, arm outstretched, as she said, JT raped me.

I assumed she meant since she and I had started up together. I assumed she was lying and inferring JT had done something nefarious, knowing my relationship with him has been strained and hoping I’d take her side over his. I immediately discounted her proclamation because I know what rape is, and there’s no way in hell that could have happened since we met.

But what if he fucking raped her long before she and I ever met? What if she was at that Sugar Bowl Mixer that night with the intent to confront her attacker?

That first night we were together. Sela’s juices on my mouth and her neck and chest flushed red from orgasm.

“That was the first time a man has made me have an orgasm.”

Sela had not been able to orgasm with a man before.

It had seemed impossible to me then, knowing a beautiful, sexy, and vibrant woman like Sela couldn’t attract a man who would bend over backward to make her come. No one could take one look at Sela lying on a bed, legs spread and eyes full of uncertainty but with a tinge of hope, and not do everything in his fucking power to make her come until she’s screaming his name out to the heavens.

A woman not achieving climax with a man.

That’s a serious sexual hang-up.

One that could be caused by being raped.

Everything hits me at once. I’m practically blinded by images and memories of the last few weeks, all little details that I can now piece together.

Sela’s not your typical Sugar Baby. It’s a ruse to get close to JT.

Sela’s naïve when it comes to sex.

The aloof nature with which she held herself away from me.

The moments of uncertainty I saw on her face when we were intimate.

That absolute antipathy she had for JT the few times they’ve been in the same room together.

The fact I’ve come to see that JT has the potential to really harm a woman.

“I swear to God, Beck…this is about JT,” she had cried out to me as I dragged her out of my condo.

Sela was raped by JT before we even met.

The absolute truth of that hits me square in the center of my chest with the force of a wrecking ball.

“F-u-u-u-u-u-ck,” I groan painfully as I lunge for the door, absolutely sickened by what I’ve just done.

I jerk it open, my eyes immediately going to the array of items that I vaguely remember flying out of Sela’s purse when I kicked it through the door. My head jerks to the right, toward the elevators, but she’s gone. Her purse is gone, and she’s gone, but she left behind all that shit that spilled out. My gaze drops down farther and I see the condo key with the blue rubber cover on the head of it.