Reduced to Ashes

by Kay Gordon

  “The heroin she was forcibly injected with is likely laced with Vitratrope,” I told the doctor, making sure he saw and heard that I thought he was an asshole. He had the decency to look mildly ashamed before nodding.

  “Let’s move her into a room for observation.” He went on about pushing saline to try and flush out the toxins, keeping her on oxygen, and running hourly EKGs to watch her heart rhythm. There were also talks of administering more Naloxone if the level of opiates in her system started to hinder her breathing again.

  I waited until we were alone in her private room before clearing my throat and taking one of her hands in both of mine.

  “Dominic is going to be here soon to take your statement.” I wet my lips and tried to swallow around the lump in my throat. Once I heard she’d been drugged twice, I knew I needed to ask. “Before he gets here, do we need…?” I cleared my throat. “Do we need a SANE nurse to come do an exam, sweetheart?”

  Her eyes instantly filled with tears but she shook her head rapidly, rejecting the idea of a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. “He recorded everything, said he was going to send it to you. The first time they gave me the drugs, I think he was going to and… God, Evan, I was going to let him. I couldn’t stop him. But he got a phone call and left me there. The next time I saw him was when the drugs were wearing off.”

  I reached up to wipe the tears falling down her cheeks, careful not to dislodge the nasal cannula that was now giving her oxygen, and she just sniffled while shaking her head.

  “It was like being drunk but indescribably better. All I wanted was for him to touch me and to say kind words. I would have laid in that bed while he did anything, just happy that he was touching me in some way. I feel so gross.”

  Her words made me feel sick to my stomach but I pushed my own feelings back. She needed reassurance from me or the guilt was going to eat her alive.

  “That’s what those drugs do, baby. You couldn’t have done anything about it. I’m proud of you for surviving all of that. You’re so damn strong.” I brought our hands to my face and pressed my lips to her knuckles. “I’ve never been more scared in my entire life.”

  “Me either,” she admitted in a whisper. “Thank you for finding me.”

  A knock on the door startled us both and I squeezed her hand before turning to look at it. “Come in.”

  My best friend appeared, looking completely exhausted, but he offered Victoria a comforting smile.

  “How are you feeling, Tori?”

  “Like shit,” she replied with a groan. “My body hurts. Kind of like I caught a really bad flu and then got hit by a garbage truck the next day.”

  “I’m not surprised after everything you’ve been through.” He took a seat at the edge of her bed and pulled out his phone. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to record your statement.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Dominic thanked her and then let out a sigh. “So, let’s start with what I know. The man who was in the room with you was Morgan Widener. We’ve arrested him and he’ll be transported to the county lock up once his concussion watch is over.”

  “Concussion watch?” Victoria gave him a look and Dom grinned while glancing over at me.

  “Evan subdued him with his fists when we caught him with you in the motel room.”

  She gave me a grateful smile but didn’t reply.

  “We also apprehended Clayton Jarvis as he attempted to flee the premises on foot. The two of them seemed to have turned on each other so we’re getting all sorts of nice information.” He glanced over at me before refocusing on Victoria. “In the motel room, we recovered a half-pound of heroin that was laced with Vitratrope, otherwise known as Sludge. There was also a phone that was still recording video when we arrived. I had a chance to look at the footage, as well as some from earlier, and both Jarvis and Widener will end up with multiple assault and battery charges when it’s all said and done.”

  “Evan.” She looked over at me and tightened her grip on my hand. “Don’t watch those videos.”

  I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t, to give her that reassurance, but we both knew I was going to have to as the detective assigned to the case.

  When I didn’t reply, her face fell and she nodded her head. “Okay.”

  “Can you tell me everything you remember? Don’t leave anything out, not even for Evan’s sake, okay?”

  And she did. I schooled my reactions so she couldn’t see the rage I felt inside. I wanted to find Widener and hit him again. I wished I’d fucking killed him earlier.

  When she was done reliving her nightmare, she was completely exhausted. The Naloxone had worn off and the lingering effects of the heroin were still there. Dominic thanked her and slipped out of the room, leaving the two of us alone.

  Her eyes were closed and her breathing deep as I slipped my fingers through her hair over and over. I studied her beautiful face and made a silent promise that I’d spend forever making sure nothing hurt her ever again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tori

  The days following my abduction were hard. My body was so confused and torn. It remembered the way the drugs felt in my system after that initial injection. It remembered the high that I would probably never achieve again. I’d ache for it some moments, want that feeling of exhilaration more than anything else in the world, but then I’d remember the way I felt once the high began to wear off. The aches, the exhaustion, the disgust.

  I was a mess.

  The only person in my life who might have had an inkling of understanding was my twin. Although he obviously hadn’t had the drugs in his own veins, he had felt some of what I did. When I’d woken up in the hospital, he was by my side with Evan and Dad.

  Vincent looked like shit, though. His face was flushed, his eyes were bloodshot, and he moved like he was in pain. He just stepped to the bed and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight for a really long time. When he finally let me go, he kissed the top of my head and left the room without saying anything.

  I rolled over in my bed the Tuesday morning after everything happened and found Evan propped up against the headboard, shirtless and reading something on his phone. It was obvious that he’d been awake for a while but like every other morning since I’d been discharged from the hospital, he didn’t leave the bed. He didn’t want me to be alone.

  A smile curled along the edges of his lips when he saw that I was awake. “Hey, baby.”

  “Morning,” I replied, moving closer until my head was in his lap. “You been awake long?”

  “About an hour.” He put his phone down and reached out to push some hair off my cheek. “How’d you sleep?”

  The stilted, polite conversation had become our new normal. His touches with me were tender, although completely safe. He watched me like a hawk, as if he was waiting for me to have a breakdown. The kid gloves were firmly in place and it was driving me nuts.

  “Ev?”

  “Yeah?”

  I turned my head in his lap and stared up at his handsome face. He had bags under his eyes that told me he wasn’t sleeping. The stubble on his face was thick because he hadn’t shaved it since the morning I’d gone missing four days before. Everything was still tormenting him just as much as it was me.

  “Will you make love to me?”

  The hand that was on my shoulder tightened and his whole body went tense, but he immediately shook his head. Before he could vocalize his protests, I sat up so we were face to face.

  “Please. I need you. I need to feel that connection, that rush that I can only get with you.”

  He looked so damn torn. I knew he missed it just as much as I did- the intimacy, not the sex- but he was so afraid of hurting me or doing too much too soon.

  “Tor,” his voice was almost a plea but I could tell he was only holding on by a thin thread.

  I smiled at him and sat up. Reaching for the hem of the oversized t-shirt I was wearing, I pulled it over my
head in one swift move. He maintained eye contact with me for about ten seconds before sweeping his hot gaze lower. The appreciation he had for my naked body was written all over his face.

  Wearing nothing but my underwear, I moved so I was straddling his lap, feeling the proof of how much he wanted me against my thigh. I ran my hands up his firm, sculpted chest and didn’t stop until my palms were cupping his scruffy cheeks. My forehead pressed to his and his bright blue eyes were almost on fire as he stared into my own.

  “I love you, Coleman.”

  One of his large, warm hands ran up my bare back and stopped once it was on the base of my neck. The other hand wrapped around my lower back and brought my chest flush against his.

  “I love you, too,” was all he said before his mouth captured mine in a gentle but urgent kiss. My hands moved from his cheeks to the back of his head and I parted my lips, inviting him in. He took the invitation and I moaned at the contact.

  He maneuvered us until I was flat on my back with his body hovering over mine. He trailed his lips down my chin, my throat, across my chest, and only stopped once he was at my breasts. His tongue lavished one nipple while his fingers did the same, making my back arch with pleasure

  My fingers gripped his hair and my breathing quickened when he continued his descent. His tongue dipped in my belly button momentarily before his fingers gripped my underwear and slowly pulled them down.

  He tossed the material over his shoulder with a wicked grin and slowly spread my legs. With a groan, he buried his face between my thighs and I gasped at the feeling of his wet tongue against my sensitive flesh.

  I didn’t need drugs to make me feel euphoria. Evan Coleman did that all on his own.

  He used his tongue, his fingers, even the scratchiness of his would-be beard to bring me to the edge quicker than I thought possible. I climbed higher and higher and when the pleasure hit its peak, I remembered what pure, real bliss was.

  The orgasm felt like it went on forever and Evan didn’t pull back until my body was wrung dry. He kissed the inside of my thighs and grinned up at me as he used the back of his hand to wipe his face.

  “You good?”

  “Never better,” I managed to choke out, causing him to laugh softly.

  I felt completely exhausted in that moment but the exhaustion quickly faded away when Evan rid himself of his boxers. Desire roared back to life and I welcomed his weight when he settled back on top of me. He reached over to the nightstand to grab a condom and I shook my head, grabbing his wrist to stop him.

  “We don’t need them anymore. It’s been seven days.”

  He stared at me for a moment, absorbing my words, and then his lips curled up into a smile. “Right.”

  Our mouth came together in another kiss but it was different, raw with passion. When Evan slid his hot, hard flesh inside of me, we both moaned.

  The sex was desperate, sloppy, and out of control.

  In other words, it was perfect.

  Sounds of our bodies connecting, our heavy breathing, and moans filled the room and I knew Evan was close by how tense his muscles were. He shifted his hips, situating himself in a way he knew set my body off, and dropped his forehead to mine.

  “Love you so much,” he said through grit teeth and I just nodded, unable to speak as the second orgasm took over my body. He groaned and buried his face in my neck, letting himself go.

  I closed my eyes as I tried to catch my breath, wrapping my arms around his back to keep him close. A smile teased at my lips and I don’t know how long we laid there like that before Evan shifted so he could brush his lips against mine.

  “It’s good to see your face so relaxed. Even in your sleep you’ve just looked so stressed.”

  The dreams, which felt so real earlier, suddenly felt like nothing. And I had Evan to thank for reminding of that.

  I cuddled up against his side when he rolled us. It was about two minutes before I made my confession.

  “I keep dreaming about it.”

  “About what, baby?”

  “About how it felt to have those drugs running through my veins,” I admitted in a whisper. “I keep dreaming that I’m trying to feel that good again but nothing works. At some point in my dream, Widener appears and tells me that it’s no use, I’ll have to give in and take the drugs.”

  “Jesus,” he croaked, increasing his hold on me. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No, don’t you understand, Evan?” I moved so I was draped across him, cupping his cheeks again. “You just proved that dream wrong. You reminded me that nothing, no drug in the world, gets me as high in the clouds as what we just did. I feel like a queen, like I can do anything, after we make love.”

  We kissed again and it wasn’t long before I was climbing on top of him, riding back up to the clouds.

  I never wanted to come down.

  –––

  Despite my protests that I didn’t need it, I ended up in therapy again. Every person I loved in my life insisted on it but it wasn’t until Captain Stevenson held my job over my head that I gave in.

  So I went once a week for a whole month and continued going regularly at less frequent intervals after that.

  My new therapist was a nice woman named Alba and she helped me come to terms completely with the assault and the drugs. And even though I thought I was over everything with Tristan, Alba allowed me to see that I hadn’t really let it go. I finally got to a point where I was good with what happened all those years ago and she helped me to see that I could be myself without guilt.

  Tristan didn’t end up in jail again since he didn’t physically send the video but he did get sentenced to another few years on probation. He was also forced to serve court mandated anger management and to do a thousand hours of community service. The court awarded me a large amount of reparations but I didn’t want it. I donated every penny to a women’s coalition without blinking.

  Just as Keith and Ruby were moving back in to their newly constructed home, Evan was leaving his. He packed up all of his stuff and we merged lives just six months after we found each other. We weren’t ready for babies and marriage hadn’t been brought up, but I couldn’t imagine doing the mundane, daily stuff without him.

  “Evan?” I walked through the garage door early one morning in February, a few weeks after he officially moved in and three months after the abduction, and dropped my work bag down onto the table.

  It was a Friday so I knew he’d be awake since he was had to be at the station by nine. When he didn’t reply to me calling him, I figured he was out for a morning run so I poured myself a glass of orange juice and headed up to our bedroom.

  His missing sneakers told me my hunch about the run was right. I sat down on the bed, still in the yoga pants and long-sleeved shirt I’d put on when I left the station. If he was out for a run, he’d need a shower when he got back and we could save water by showering together.

  Logic.

  I scrolled through my phone while I waited, catching myself up on the local news. When a headline caught my attention, I froze.

  Man serving lifelong drug sentence killed during prison riot.

  A booking photo of Clayton Jarvis accompanied the article, which detailed how he’d been stabbed the night before. By the time the riot had been broken up, he had already bled to death and they had no idea who was responsible.

  I had a hard time finding any sympathy for Jarvis. It wasn’t even because of what he did to me, either. So many lives had been irreparably changed or ended thanks to the drugs he and Widener peddled around the city.

  Jarvis had pled guilty and testified against Widener for a life sentence that gave him a chance of eventual parole.

  Widener, on the other hand, was given a sentence of more than two-hundred years in prison. The trial had been shortly after Christmas and I’d testified, telling my story in front of a jury. Because his crimes included violence, Widener would never be released on parole.

  B
oth Evan and Dominic were awarded several accolades in their part to take down a major drug ring. Between the information they managed to get out of my two tormentors and the leads they found after knowing Widener was Zero, all the roads to Sludge had been completely demolished.

  It wasn’t to say it would never show up again but our local high school hadn’t seen any of that horrific drug on its campus since Widener’s arrest.

  My nightmares were gone and the feeling of being on the drugs had faded away into a dull memory, making me wonder why it’d plagued me so much at the time. For the first time in my adult life, I was completely happy.

  Not content. Not comfortable. But really and truly happy.

  “Victoria?”

  Evan’s loud voice from downstairs startled me and I closed out of the article I was reading so I could drop my phone onto the bed next to me. The anticipation of seeing him never got old.

  My boyfriend appeared in the doorway a minute later, sweat soaking the long-sleeve shirt he was wearing. He grinned at me and immediately toed off his sneakers.

  “I was hoping you’d make it home in time to shower with me. I missed you last night.”

  This was our thing when I got off shift. Even though I usually showered at the station, I gladly showered again when I got home for the chance to be with Evan. Sometimes our showers were sexy and mind-blowing but more often than not they were full of intimacy without the sex.

  “I missed you, too.” And I did. The nights spent without him were always long. “Get naked, Coleman.”

  He leaned down and gave me a long kiss before pulling back and stripping out of his sweaty shirt. I watched as he threw it into the hamper and rid him of everything else until he was gloriously naked.

  Holy hell, my man was fucking hot. I never got tired of looking at him.

  “Your turn to get naked. I’ll start the shower.” He disappeared into the bathroom and I watched his muscled ass go as he did.

  Thirty minutes later, I was sitting on the edge of the bed in my bathrobe, feeling thoroughly worked over in the very best way. That morning’s shower had definitely been one of the sexy and mind-blowing ones.