Maddie pressed her fingers to her mouth, tears pooling and catching in her lashes, and Caleb felt her hand tremble. He wanted to look away, to hide away from her when the disgust would inevitably enter into her gaze. He didn't know if he could handle seeing it.
"She'd leave me alone for a couple weeks, maybe three, and then it would happen again. And it went on for almost two years. And then I found my out," he murmured, pausing to take a breath. "She'd left her email open one day. She was an accountant at a law firm in the city and I found emails from someone she worked with that seemed odd to me. I did some more digging and eventually found some documents she'd hidden in a folder at home and found out that she and this partner of hers had been embezzling money by manipulating the accounting records at the firm. I found bank statements in foreign accounts with her name on them. They'd stolen over $150,000 over a period of a year and a half and no one had caught on to what they'd been doing since they only took a little at a time."
"Oh my God," Maddie whispered.
"I had proof and I took all of it. Shortly after that, I confronted her. I was in my senior year. She was furious. And scared. I told her that she would never touch me again or else she'd go to prison. I'd make sure of it. To this day, I regret not exposing her. After that, she left. She quit her job, left my uncle, and disappeared. I don't think she trusted that I wouldn't say anything, not with prison time hanging over her head, or me speaking out about the abuse. My uncle didn't understand at first. He was sad, angry. The person he'd known was a lie and we never heard from her again."
"Did you-," her voice was hoarse when she spoke. Clearing her throat, she asked, "Did you ever tell him?"
Caleb ran a hand through his hair and was surprised when he saw it was shaking. "No. I didn't. About either."
"Why not?" she demanded, wiping at her cheeks. A spark of fury lit her gaze, which made his brows furrow. "After what she did to you, you should've torn her apart and not have looked back. It's despicable! She deserved prison. She deserved worse!"
Shock pierced him. He had expected her disgust, her pity. He'd even prepared himself for her revulsion. What he hadn't expected was for her to be inflamed, and on his behalf. An unfamiliar emotion choked him.
"I just wanted her gone," he admitted, voice ragged, like he hadn't spoken for decades. "I wanted her out of my life forever."
"It doesn't work that way, Caleb," she whispered, eyes glassy with tears. "She's still in your life. Even now. I can see it."
He closed his eyes.
"I know."
Caleb remembered the helpless look on Maddie's face when he'd woken up in the middle of the night, sweating, panicked. He'd brought that wall between them. She'd wanted to help him, had tried to talk about it, but he'd shut her down and pushed her away.
"I didn't want you to look at me differently," he murmured, turning his head away, frowning. "I didn't want … " he trailed off, not knowing how to explain it.
"I understand, Caleb," was her quiet reply.
With her words came relief. Unbelievable relief that staggered him. He'd imagined telling her about his aunt hundreds of times. It had always been hanging over his head and now that pressure was gone.
"You told me once that I was a victim," he started. "And that there was nothing wrong with that. And you were right."
"Caleb … "
"She was thirty years older than I was. I was sixteen when the abuse started. Sixteen. Younger than Peter is right now. I was young and she was the most manipulative person I've ever met. I've come to terms with a lot of what happened, but this will always be with me, Maddie. I realized a long time ago that it will never be gone, no matter how much I want it to be."
"What happened to her?" Maddie asked quietly.
"She's dead," he said, clenching his jaw. "In November, I got a call from a lawyer, saying she left me money in her will. I told him I wanted nothing to do with it. He didn't tell me how she died and I didn't ask."
"In November?"
Caleb nodded, leaning his head back against the head rest. "It was that night," he murmured. "When you found me outside. When we kissed. I'd just received the voicemail."
Her lips pressed together in realization but she didn't say anything. She just continued to hold his hand. And he remembered her words to him so long ago, when she'd found out that his uncle died.
Sometimes all you need is someone to sit silently with you and not say anything at all.