Saying no, being ignored, and then consenting to more later on?

To be clear: this is a recollection of a potential sexual assault.

The possibility that I was sexually assaulted has been weighing on my mind lately, and I don't really have a dedicated space in-person or within my social group to discuss this. Talking about this with my friends is difficult with the exception of one, who has a history of being sexually assaulted, although it's still a sore topic to bring up. Regardless, nobody that I know really knows how to approach this with me. I'd like to lay it out here and maybe better understand what happened, especially because this community is dedicated to this, with people with backgrounds in this.

In the last month or two--I honestly can't remember when and don't want to look back on the timeline, but assume late March/early April--I didn't explicitly give consent for a sexual interaction between me and another person, and it happened anyway. Later sexual interactions occurred and I initiated a couple, and I regret all of them now, and I never wanted to have sex with this person, but the conflict is that I did.

I'd told this person in previously that I didn't want anything sexual to happen between us, and they said they were okay with that. But a few days, maybe a week, after telling them this, I was alone with them in their room and kissing escalated to touching, which was them pulling my hand towards their crotch.

I didn't say explicitly "yes" or "no," and when I spoke to them later on about this situation, they described my response as "flirtatiously denying" to touch them. I was saying things like "not right now" and "you wish" and "yeah, no," which was the closest I got to saying "no, I don't want to do this." But they kept pulling my hand downwards, and I eventually, y'know, did what they wanted?

I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to deep down? But I was so uncomfortable with it in the moment, and I kept backing away, and I hated it, and thinking about it now sends me into a whirlwind of panic. I know that I didn't want to, but I did. And there were so many interactions between us where something sexual happened and I didn't even "flirtatiously" deny to do anything--there were some that I initiated and that make me sick now, but that I initiated.

What makes it worse was that they brought this interaction and a lot of other sexual interactions between us to our friends, and he described everything we did and argued that I consented to all of it. I never said "no," but I also never said "yes," and I reciprocated when it was happening.

All of my friends know about it and that's really driving me into a spiral. That was where a lot of their knowledge of the situation ended, and I lied a lot to my friends to cover up this situation (which is not just the potential sexual assault, but a lot more that I won't get into), so there's also probably a doubt in their minds about anything I have said and could say to them in the future about this.

I keep thinking about the whole "would you rather believe a potential liar or a potential ***?" argument, and I keep remembering how I've been proven to be a liar about other things, so it feels like people are looking at this more as "would you rather believe a liar or a potential ***?" even though I'm not lying about the potential sexual assault.

I'm struggling a lot to process this while also trying to work through my relationships with people, understanding my wrongdoing in other parts of the situation, and helping people forgive me for what I did. Nobody's told me as such so far, but I'm afraid that by bringing this up, I'll be drawing away from recognizing how other people have been hurt by this.

I know that I have to rebuild people's trust in me and that I'm not a victim for having to do that, but it still feels awful, y'know? I told one of my close friends who was really hurt by the situation and they said, "I want to believe you, but do you know what it sounds like?"

Or something to that effect, because I can't remember verbatim.

I'm conflicted about this. I'd like even just one person's opinion about this who isn't involved at all. Like, an unbiased (or as close to unbiased as it gets, because this is a trauma community) third party.