“It’s okay,” Lana tried to soothe Rhodes, but she didn’t seem sure herself. “Phil will know what to do. We have the witnesses. We can do this.”

“Who the fuck is Phil?” Dale asked.

“Not every cop on your squad is crooked,” Rhodes spat at him. His eyes connected with mine and recognition hit. Officer Martino.

Dale shook his head, thumbing the fresh wound on his lower lip and chuckling at the blood. “Again. No evidence.” He shook his head, still smiling. “I knew you were still out there. One by one, girls I had an eye on for so long started disappearing. Moving away. None of them went to the cops but I knew something was going on. And I just had a feeling it was you.” His eyes were so dark, so venomous. “You drove me to drink pretty hard this summer, little girl. But let me just remind you, you’ve got one cop and fifteen mentally unstable girls against a man whose family has owned this town since it was founded. Who do you think comes out on top, baby cakes?”

I cringed at his pet name for Lana. She fired off something else, but I didn’t hear it, because an idea of my own set my heart racing again. Thumbing through the settings on my watch, I ended the voice recording and used my finger to slide the playback option. When I hit play, the yelling in the room ceased.

“It’s just amazing. You were always pretty, but he made you…” A rustling noise. “Let’s just say I can see why he was so quick to claim you as his own.”

I shivered at the replay and slid the playback further. Rhodes’ eyes were wild as recognition hit. He heard what Dale had said to me and he layed into him again, his fist rearing back before connecting again and again, but I screamed at him to stop.

“Just wait!” I hit play again. Dale was now bleeding from one eye, too.

“I’ve been gathering witnesses. I have fourteen girls willing to testify against you.”

“And I’ve got three highly-respected doctors who will diagnose every single one of them with some form of mental instability. It’s my word against yours. And theirs. Sexual assault is one of the hardest crimes to prove, baby, and let me assure you, I am the only one who comes out a winner in the end.”

Dale’s voice was soft, but I could still make it out. My nose flared as I held the watch higher. “Let’s see you try to refute that in court.”

Lana’s eyes glossed over, a smile spreading on her face. Red and blue lights broke through the dark foyer and sirens surrounded us. I watched the lights play off the horrified look on Dale’s face as cops burst through our front door that had already been broken down.

“Oh my God!” My mom’s voice rang from the stairs. She flew down them, hugging her nightgown tightly to her body, her bright blonde hair in disarray. “What the hell is going on?!”

“Dale Poxton, you’re under arrest for the sexual assault of Lana Rhodes,” an officer said as he forced cuffs on Dale’s wrists. Dale laughed at him, but the cop was clearly not amused as he continued reading his Miranda Rights. Lana eyed him with disbelief just as Officer Martino slid up beside her. She jumped into his arms, hugging him tight.

“I don’t understand,” she breathed, pulling back to face him.

“What, you think I’m the only good cop in the Poxton Beach Police Department?” He smiled crookedly at her and she gazed up at him like he was her hero. I realized that for all I knew, he might have been.

“What are you doing? Let him go!” My mom chased after the cops as they hauled Dale out of the house, still reading his rights along the way. We all followed them outside, though Rhodes had to support me as we walked. I was shaking so violently I couldn’t stand on my own.

The scene in the yard was so surreal. I should have been focused on Rhodes’ arms around me or Lana’s face as she smiled through the tears of happiness in her eyes. I should have ran to my mom to explain what happened, except I didn’t really know myself. I wish I remembered what it felt like to be safe again in that moment, but I don’t.

I remember the lights.

I remember I wanted to photograph them, the way the red and blue splashed across his cold, emotionless face. But I knew even if my feet could move from the place where they had cemented themselves to the ground and I could run for my camera, I wouldn’t be able to capture that moment. There was no shutter speed, no lens, no lighting technique that could properly encapsulate everything I felt as I stared into his eyes. I had trusted him, I had loved him, and even though my body had changed that summer, he’d made sure to help me hold on to who I was inside regardless of how the exterior altered.

But then everything changed.

He stole my innocence. He scarred my heart. He took everything I thought I knew about my life and fast-pitched it out the window, shattering the glass that held my world together in the process.

I remember the lights.

The passionate, desperate, hot strikes of red. The harsh, cruel, icy bolts of blue.

They symbolized everything I endured that summer.

And everything I would never face again.

I squeezed my eyes shut as if it were the lights that had attacked me and not Dale. Rhodes pulled me closer and I buried my face into his chest.

“I trusted him,” I choked out.

“I know you did, Bug.” He ran his rough hands through my hair, trying but failing to soothe me.

“It hurts,” I groaned, clutching at my heart through the thin fabric of my tank top. My chest burned, like acid was slowly leaking between my ribs. Fresh tears fell in lines down my cheeks in the same course as those before them. “It physically hurts. So bad. Why does it hurt?”

Rhodes sighed, holding me tighter. He held me as close to him as he could, shielding me from Dale, from the lights, from the pain. “It’s weight,” he said, kissing my hair. And that’s when I felt it — all of it — all at once. “This is your weight.”

It took hours to file the police reports and get medically cleared. I had a pretty nasty gash on my head from hitting the floor when Dale smacked me, but other than that, I was just “shaken up,” at least that’s what the paramedic said. It seemed too simple to describe how I felt in that moment, but I was just thankful Rhodes got there when he did. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t shown up.

I didn’t know what time it was when our yard finally cleared of all the cop cars. Our neighbors were still lingering in their lawns or behind their windows, phones glued to their ears, no doubt spreading gossip through the town about Dale Poxton being tossed in the back of a police car. When the last car other than Officer Martino’s pulled away, it was just him, Rhodes, Lana, Mom and I left. We all stared at each other, no one moving, no one really knowing what to do next.