astronomyb0y:
He cannot shake his head fast enough, trying to interject to combat her thoughts.
“Hate you? God, Hannah, no. No. I thought you hated me for what I’d done.”
He’d been just like the guys that had objectified her that night. Justin and that picture. That list that he had been happy had named her Best Ass. He had gone into that bedroom, excited about the possibilities, just like the typical teenage guy.
When she speaks again, her words blindside him. Rape. It’s surreal. A word he has only ever heard on the news or in some other type of media. Something outside of his own life. Whenever he has heard it, the thought of what happened makes him sick to his stomach, not understanding how someone could take in that fashion.
His mind goes blank for a moment, feeling like the wind is knocked out of him. His hands go limp, eyes unfocused for a beat, just enough for the headlights to swerve and for him to feel the uneven warning strip along the outside of the road.
“Shit!”
He jerks the wheel, adjusting their direction up the hill. His speech is a mixture of, “Shit,” and “Sorry,” and he feels like an absolute asshole right then. A minute ago he was thinking about their makeout session and now he’s got all these conflicted emotions running through him. Anger at someone doing that, especially to Hannah. Shock. Sadness that she’s dealing with that.
His hand reaffirms its grip on hers, fingers pressing into the backs of her knuckles in a lame attempt to reassure her that he’s there. He just needs to get up this hill, park the car, and – there. He pulls off into a graveled area, not even extracting his hand to put the car into park, too afraid to pull his hand away as though he were pulling away.
Questions swarm his mind but he cannot bring himself to voice any of them. Who? When? Does anyone else know? How? Do you want to press charges? Do you want Tony to kick his ass?
“Do you –” he stops to clear his throat, hating that his voice is rough when nothing happened to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Her body tenses as the sudden profanity escapes his lips, but she knows he must be completely on edge by now. She almost can't believe she's saying it out loud, but telling Clay was her only saving grace right now.
Big, blue orbs fill once again with salted water, and she's shaking, lifting the flask to her mouth once more.
"I...I don't know. Do you wanna hear about it?"
She's not going to push something on him that he doesn't want to hear. The situation was bound to disturb him, just like it had herself. Except, he doesn't have to deal with the aftermath. He doesn't have to live with the fact people use her as an object, see her as one, talk about her like one. She's never felt more WORTHLESS since he took her at his will, and if Clay doesn't want to hear it, she has enough respect for him to accept that.
"It's not PRETTY. I'm warning you."
