Free Equilibrium (Marauders #4.5) by Lina Andersson Page A

though, and he laughed as much as she did when she stretched her arms in the air, reaching for the sky, and screamed with joy.
    Anything seemed possible when she was behind one of her brothers on their bike. Like she could go anywhere, do anything—be anyone.
     
    ~oOo~
    Eliza
     
    I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, or why, but I could breathe around Roach. There was no pressure at all when I was with him. Maybe it was simply that he never looked at me like he was trying to see a glimpse of the old me, or that he never looked… pleased when I smiled—like he had been waiting for it.
    I kept asking him questions, and he kept answering them, and finally I had to ask him why he never asked me anything in return. Why he wasn’t trying to make me talk, either.
    “It’s not about that, Princess,” he answered me. “You’ll talk when you’re ready. Not gonna force you, I told you that. It won’t do you any good anyway. Just means I’ll bring up shit you’re not ready to deal with.”
    “Maybe it would be good to make me deal with things.”
    “Yeah, but I leave that to your shrink.”
    I could breathe even easier after that.
    Roach mostly worked late evenings at The Booty Bank, so he had the days free. He spent most of those at the clubhouse or in the garage. Even if he wasn’t working as a grease monkey, he kept fiddling with his own bike a lot—just like they all did. That was when I liked talking to him best, because it was less intense when he was focusing on something other than me. That was when it happened, when I started talking about it—about when I was taken. Gradually, just mentioning it at first. It was as if I was testing him to see if he could take it. He could. He didn’t flinch, didn’t do any of those faces, but he was paying attention. And then he said that thing that really set me off. Not in a bad way, but it made me prepared to talk and even discuss it. We weren’t at the garage that day, so it was more private.
    “Maybe you should stop calling it when you were taken ,” he said.
    We were sitting on the deck outside my house. Mom had gone grocery shopping, and Dad was off for some club business that didn’t require Roach’s presence. I’d asked him to come over, and it was actually the first time we were hanging out at my place. I wasn’t ready to take him to my room yet, but he hadn’t even suggested it.
    “Why?” I asked. “Does it matter what I call it?”
    “Credit where credit’s due. You didn’t survive getting taken . You survived a lot more than that.”
    “I’m not sure I want to think about it as more than that. I mean, it’s the only sexual experience I’ve had.”
    “It wasn’t sexual. A sexual experience isn’t something you have to survive. ”
    Just after it had happened, my parents had avoided touching each other in front of me. I didn’t know if it was on purpose, but they were usually all over each other, but they hadn’t then, and it had hurt a little. It was as if I’d needed to see normal, loving touch, and I’d been really relieved when they started again. So I understood what Roach meant about the difference, and I hoped it was true, but I wasn’t sure.
    “Someone asked whether if I’d been… raped, I was still a virgin.” No one had actually asked that. It was something I’d thought about, and I’d googled a little. Or a lot. I cleared my throat. “Kind of. But I mean, at the same time I’m not.”
    “Why not?”
    “Well, I don’t have a hymen.”
    “It’s not about a hymen. Some girls lose that while riding or bicycling, and they’re still virgins.”
    I glared at him. “It’s not the same. I had dicks shoved into me. Several dicks, several times. I needed surgery afterwards.” I hadn’t planned on saying it like that, and I held my breath while I waited for his reaction, which never really came. At least not like I had expected it.
    “I know it’s not the same, but my point was rather that it doesn’t have to do with a