Bad Things

20. Fight For You

It's down to this 
I've got to make this life make sense 
Can anyone tell what I've done 
I miss the life 
I miss the colours of the world 
Can anyone tell where I am 
'Cause now again I've found myself 
So far down, away from the sun   

- 3 Doors Down.

____________________________________________

Minutes passed.

Hours.

Days.

It could have even been years as far as Shawn could tell. Time kept moving, snow falling and accumulating around him, but Shawn didn't. He just sat there, still, frozen, frigid water seeping through his clothing and snowflakes melting in his hair. His body shook with cold, but still he didn't move himself from his spot against the cemetery wall.

His hand clutched Camila's letter, and the manila envelope containing the legal documents now rested in his lap. Over and over again he replayed what his father had said, the words he'd read on the documents, but nothing made sense.

Do you have any idea what you've done? Any at all?

Shawn closed his eyes and rested his head back against the hard, cold wall. His thoughts were jumbled, nonsensical. He felt the snow falling on him and tried to concentrate, to figure out what to do next, but all he could see was Camila the last time they'd been together at the cemetery. He could feel her hands on him, her teasing kiss on the end of his nose, see the flakes as they'd clung to her lashes, and the pink of her cheeks when he'd said he wanted to marry her someday. Then he recalled the words on the document, her signature scrawled across the bottom, his father's voice as he'd told Shawn to sign it too. And it was as if all those moments, all those times he'd felt like maybe, just maybe it would all be okay, were ripped away. Stolen. Thrown into the wind.

Rape.

They were accusing him of rape. He still couldn't wrap his mind around it.

You don't have to force yourself on a girl to be accused of rape!

He wasn't stupid, he knew the difference between statutory rape and rape, rape. But he couldn't get past the ugliness of the word, the connotation it held. It didn't matter what kind it was, whenever anyone heard the term, they would all think the same thing: that he'd forced himself on her, taken advantage of her in some way. Forever that image would be associated with him.

A sexual predator.

A monster.

A stigma that never went away.

It had always been in the back of his mind that he had done that. That he had taken advantage of her, that'd she'd been too out of it to know better and he should have. She was drunk, wasn't thinking clearly, and he had pinned her up against the door and taken her anyway.