Jason slid over to wrap his arm around me. “She would’ve killed herself eventually. So, I immortalised her to break the bind.”
“And that's why you never told me the reason you bit her.” I looked up at him quickly. “That's why you avoided it.”
He nodded. “I always planned to tell you, though, Ara.”
“But you. . .” I eyed Emily’s neck. “You ripped her apart when you—”
“I had to make it look like an attack. She wasn’t conscious at the time. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh my God.” I covered my lips with the very tips of my fingers. “Jase, I hated you so much for turning her like that. I—”
“I know.” He took my hand away from my mouth and kissed it. “But I knew you’d learn the truth eventually. It was better for you to hate me at the time than David.”
“Why?”
“You were so fragile. You thought you needed him to survive, which—” He laughed, looking away for a second, “—turns out wasn’t just a psychological dependence, like I thought. It was physical.”
“Physical?”
“Yeah. You literally needed him to survive. Without his blood, Ara, you’d have gotten pretty sick.”
“Oh, right.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “So . . . does David know you remember, Em?”
She nodded. “The first memory that came back to me was . . . that night.”
“That night?”
“The night they had sex,” Jase said.
“But . . . you attacked him when you first woke as a vampire. Was that because of—”
“Yep.” She bit her lip. “I was kind of reliving it.”
I got up on my knees and crawled a bit closer to her. “Em? What did he do to you?”
She wiped the side of her wrist down her nose, her eyes sparkling with a coat of tears.
“Emily, did he rape you?”
“No,” she said, holding a very tight breath, her whole jaw quivering.
“Do you want me to tell her?” Jason asked softly.
She nodded, sniffling.
“Ara,” Jase said, “come here.”
I crawled over and snuggled into his waiting arm, then reached across and took Emily's hand; she was so tense, her small hand wet with tears, tight and almost unwilling to be against mine. Like I was the enemy. Or maybe she was afraid I’d hate her. But, right now, I only felt more love for that poor girl than I ever had before. “It’s okay, Em,” I said, shaking her hand a bit. “I'm not mad at you.”
She nodded against her knee, chewing her thumbnail.
“She knows that, Ara. But she just can’t bear to look you in the eye.”
I squeezed her hand again. “Why? I don’t understand why you’re so upset if you know I’m not mad with you.”
Jason began with a sigh. “She’s never talked about this with anyone.”
“Except Mike,” she said coldly. “And he hates me now.”
“Why?”
“I’m just. . .” She sobbed inaudibly. “He thinks I’m disgusting for letting it happen.”
Jason pulled her into his chest, too, giving her a long kiss on the head, tightening his hold around me at the same time. “You are not disgusting, Emily Pierce. And Mike has no right to blame you.”
“He blames her?” I nearly barfed the words out.
“He wouldn’t listen when I tried to explain. He just thinks I did it because I loved David.”
“Is that not the reason?” I asked innocently.
Her and Jase winced.
“It’s a long story, Ara, and I guess the event doesn’t really have a point of origin. It kind of all led to them having sex, but—”
“The event? I’m lost,” I said.
“Em had been given a hard time at school by a few of the jocks,” Jase explained. “There was this club…”
“We had no choice but to be in it,” Emily cried. “If you wanted to be a cheerleader, you had to run with the jocks.”
I nodded in understanding.
“They were about sixteen at the time,” Jase continued. “And a couple of girls started bragging about losing their virginity.”
“And, naturally, the boys wanted in.” Em half smiled, rolling her eyes.
“They came up with this lottery where they’d put girls’ names in a hat and draw them out.”
“And, what, you’d sleep with that guy?” I asked.
Emily nodded. “Everyone did it. We . . . if any of the girls were against it, they never said anything.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d be labelled a frigid outcast.”
My brows went high and I exhaled loudly. I remembered too well the lows you’d stoop to to fit in at school.
“One day, just after I first met David, my name was drawn,” Emily said.
“To be with David?” I asked, nodding to myself.
“No,” she said. “Brody, that big guy that always threw food.”
My lip turned. “Gross.”
She nodded, laughing once. “I went to the locker room at lunch, but Brody wasn’t there yet. So, I waited. And I was so scared I just wanted to leave.”
I pictured her there in the boys’ locker room, tugging her mini cheerleading skirt down her legs, shuffling her feet, checking the clock then the door. “Did he chicken out?”
“He brought friends,” Jason said.
I stiffened.
“They just wanted to watch—film it, you know?” Emily said, barely able to control her obvious upset. “I tried to back out, so they. . .”
“They pinned her down.”
I covered my mouth. “Was David one of those guys?”
She shook her head. “He was in the club, but he never drew from the hat.”
And I strangely felt relief.
“Anyway,” she said. “I screamed and tried to fight them off. But they were too strong for me. Then, next thing I know, Brody hits the locker and your dad’s there pinning him against it.”
“My dad?”
She nodded. “The boys scattered, and Mr Thompson wrapped me up in his jacket and took me to the office—called my mom.”
“Those boys got a two-week suspension,” Jase said, his eyes narrowing with fury. “And that was it. They weren’t even forced to make an apology.”
“Why?”
“They told the principal they were just kidding—an April Fool’s joke.”